Get Ready

By Fred Pruitt

I lifted this quote from someone’s post on Facebook. It is from Corrie Ten Boom, 1974. Whether or not one believes in the “tribulation” or “rapture,” Corrie’s words, as a Nazi Death Camp survivor, carry very great weight, and I am certain, appropriate for our time.

Corrie said:

“There are some among us teaching there will be no tribulation, that the Christians will be able to escape all this. These are the false teachers that Jesus was warning us to expect in the latter days. Most of them have little knowledge of what is already going on across the world. I have been in countries where the saints are already suffering terrible persecution.

In China, the Christians were told, “Don’t worry, before the tribulation comes you will be translated – raptured.” Then came a terrible persecution. Millions of Christians were tortured to death. Later I heard a Bishop from China say, sadly,

“We have failed. We should have made the people strong for persecution, rather than telling them Jesus would come first. Tell the people how to be strong in times of persecution, how to stand when the tribulation comes, – to stand and not faint.”

I feel I have a divine mandate to go and tell the people of this world that it is possible to be strong in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are in training for the tribulation, but more than sixty percent of the Body of Christ across the world has already entered into the tribulation. There is no way to escape it.

We are next.”

Europe in the 1930s had no idea of the evil that would overtake them in the coming years. Settled, educated, intellectual Europe? How could these things be?

American Christians likewise, who have no experience of the physical and mental persecution that is already present in the world, most likely also think, “That couldn’t happen here.”

Jesus did not come to give us peace on earth and a secure human society, at least not in this current world. All who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution, the scripture says. The offense is always the Cross and the Stone of Stumbling that confounds reason, the Lord Jesus Christ Who died and rose again from the dead. It is not the time to be complacent in our faith in our current world.

One of my musical heroes is Donovan, who put out a song on an album in 1970 called, “Riki Tiki Tavi.” The message of the song is encapsulated in these words:

“Better get into what you gotta get into

Better get into it now, no slacking please

United Nations ain’t really united

And the organisations ain’t really organised

 

Riki tiki tavi mongoose is gone

Riki tiki tavi mongoose is gone

Won’t be coming around for to kill your snakes no more my love

Riki tiki tavi mongoose is gone

 

(Every)body who read the Jungle Book knows that Riki tiki tavi’s a

mongoose who kills snakes

(Well) when I was a young man I was led to believe there were organisations

to kill my snakes for me

(ie the), church, ie, the government, ie, the school

(but when I got a little older) I learned I had to kill them myself

 

(I said) Riki tiki tavi mongoose is gone

Riki tiki tavi mongoose is gone

Won’t be coming around for to kill your snakes no more my love

Riki tiki tavi mongoose is gone”

This is the message I get from the song, which goes right along with Corrie’s word. When I was in the most intense period in my spiritual search that eventually led to Jesus, hearing this song lit a fire under me.

BETTER GET INTO WHAT YOU GOT TO GET INTO!

DO IT NOW, NO SLACKIN’ PLEASE!

Donovan didn’t yet know who killed his snakes, but I found out for myself, and  I began to see that that this snake-killin’ HAD TO START IN ME, and for me, I knew my time was up. No more piddling around. No more, “Eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow we die!”

Today is the Day of Salvation. Today, as the Hebrews writer said, is the Day of salvation. We are not waiting for some other day. We live in the eternal right now, but we are not ignorant of the temporal.

These are very disturbing times.

Still, we are always more than conquerors in Christ Jesus. The whole world lies in the lap of the “wicked one,” but greater is He Who is in us, than he that is in the world.

Look up, for your redemption draweth nigh!

Maranatha!