The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for my blog. I’m pretty sure you’ll want to read about it:-)!
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,600 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people. Ladies and Gentlemen, All Aboard – It’s time to jump on board the Messiah Connection Light Train and take a little trip!
Click here to see the complete report.
2011 is officially history now!
It happened as of about 10 hours ago as I sit writing this post! It’s a time to feel good about a new beginning, a clean slate, a fresh start, new opportunities and adventures. This feeling will last at least until about your 2nd day back to work or school and you realize that for now things are not that much different in reality than they were the last week. Time will tell and there’s always hope. Here’s to wishing you and yours the best in the year to come!
Welcome to 2012 and Happy New Year!
2012 is undoubtably the most hyped up year in the “apocalyptic/end of the world” sense that this world has known since the year 2000. The year(s) leading up to 2000 were hyped up by the fact that we were entering a new millennium, which is in fact a rarity, since it does only happen once every one thousand years. The year 2000 was also hyped up by the Y2K scare, which was basically a theory that the world’s computer systems would not know how to handle going from 12/31/99 to 1/1/00. And this “numerical glitch” would send our post modern world and technology back to the turn of the 20th century. This real life “back to the future” scenario would make our electrical grid non-existent, world financial markets would crash, airplanes and satellites would fall from the sky, food supplies would stop, the mark of the beast would be initiated, world-wide anarchy and chaos would ensue, and on top of all this, aliens would probably attack our poor state of existence. Looking back, this sounds ludicrous, but at the time I heard all of these theories from respectable, educated persons. I knew people at the time, who had been preparing ”hideouts” in the country, stockpiling canned food, water, and weaponry (yes, guns and lots of ammunition), for the mass hysteria that would be our existence at 12:01 am, January 1st, 2000. At the time, I worked for a mobile paging and phone company. The owners of the company were planning to “camp out” in the server rooms on New Year’s Eve 1999 in case there was any “technical difficulty”. I was also in a band at the time and we had a gig on NYE in a town about 30 minutes from our hometown. One of our band member’s parent’s was “extremely concerned” about us “traveling” 30 miles to play a Rock n’ Roll show on this most fateful of nights. On the way to the gig that evening, we spotted numerous bonfires and camping sites off the highway in the distance, safe from all of the world’s troubles (though these self-proclaimed hide-outs could hardly be verified as such since they were only 200 yards from the highway!). As a group of teenagers, we could feel the excitement in the air that evening and we all hoped ”something might happen”, and we all thought it would be “very cool” if it did. How awesome, we thought, would it have been to be on a stage, playing a rock n roll song, when the world stopped turning! That’s how a 19-year-old thinks, or at least that’s how I thought.
None of that happened of course. The New millennium and Year began just like all the rest before them and by the time September 11th, 2001 happened, the world had all but forgotten about the perceived threat of our existence with Y2K, as a new era of reality and fear in the name of Terrorism had begun.
2012 is another one of those types of years. It has been hyped as such for at least more than a decade. I remember seeing a tv show (I forget the channel) in 1998 about the end of the Mayan calendar on December of 2012. Why didn’t they date past that date? What will happen then? Does it predict the end of mankind’s existence as we know it? Why? What? Why? How? When?
Here is what I do know; There will be shocking things happen in 2012. There will be unbelievable events happen in 2012. It will be the end of the world for millions of people in 2012. I can guarantee that. But, does that make me a prophet, a modern-day Nostradamus? Does it mean that 2012 will be all that it’s hyped up to be in the doom & gloom department? Probably not, at least not according to the popular view of it. I do believe that we are getting nearer to the Lord’s return (everyday in fact), and that leading up to this nearness, there will be birthpains before the birth of a new age. The Messiah said so in Matthew 24:3-8. The Biblical view of these things is vastly different from the popular view though. For in the Bible, the end of this age doesn’t signify the end of mankind and all death and despair. Though that is a reality in the Bible, what is in greater focus is the Age to Come, an age of increased peace and joy due to the Messiah’s rule and reign over this earth with Justice and Truth. The end of this present age will segue into the Age to Come when the Messiah returns and sets up His world government from Jerusalem.
I hope to publish a post about Yeshua’s (Jesus’) return and the peace of Jerusalem in the coming days. I hope that you would add these two things to your prayer requests/resolutions for 2012. Maranatha!
To end on a lighter note, I heard a joke a year or two ago about the Mayan Calendar that went something like this:
Happy New Year everyone and many blessings to you in the Name of the Lord for 2012!
May grace and shalom be multiplied upon you in the name of Messiah Yeshua!
