THE BEGINNERS LEARN ABOUT THE SECOND COMING

 

I remember her as a brunette woman with her hair tucked back into a tiny bun. But it was her eyes that fascinated me. They radiated love.

Sister McPherson, as we called her, was my first Sunday school teacher. She didn’t mind that I didn’t have fancy dresses or pretty shoes—or that I was covered with freckles. I usually had at least one dress. Otherwise, I wore my brother’s hand-me-down coveralls.

Maybe she liked my red curly hair combed into little coils like Shirley Temple’s. Well, on the other hand, maybe she didn’t even notice. There must have been at least ten or fifteen of us little girls and boys tucked into that tiny classroom for preschoolers—the “beginners” class.

The teacher took flannelgraph pictures and arranged them on the “flannel board” as she told us Bible stories.

Most of my family were new Christians, yet Mom probably could have told me those stories at home, but in those years following the Great Depression Mom was busy cooking, cleaning, planting, hoeing and canning to make sure the ten of us had food on the table. In later years, as the baby of the family, I remember family devotions, but not Bible stories like Sister McPherson told.

As I listened to the wonderful amazing stories from the Bible and memorized the verses she taught, light dropped into my young heart. God loved me and had a plan for my life.

It wasn’t very many years before Sister McPherson died. Mama took me to the funeral. Nevertheless, I wasn’t upset. I was somewhat sad, but the woman planted such faith in my heart I was tempted when I went by the casket to shout, “In the name of Jesus rise up!”

Seemed I knew God has a part in our home going as well as our living, though, and I was content.

Yet, I knew in my heart some day soon she will be resurrected.At that time Jews came from all over the world and Israel became a nation, the prophecy of Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry Bones, fulfilled. The church was so excited I knew about the Second Coming and even as a beginner, I knew Jesus was coming back to earth. I still have that expectation many decades later..

“But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.  For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

“ For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:  Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.  Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).