From the Editor Nov/Dec 2015
Dear Friends,
Christmastime is my favorite time of year. Perhaps it’s because I never celebrated Christmas when I was growing up. I was probably 10 before I even learned Jesus was Jewish.
I was 30, poking around a clearance rack at Marshall’s department store, when I first heard about the Second Coming. A young woman approached me, introduced herself as a Bible college student conducting a survey for a class she was attending, and wondered if she could ask me a few questions.
“Sure,” I replied. “What do you want to know?” “Do you believe Jesus is coming again?”
“Well,” I said, “I’m Jewish. I don’t believe in Jesus at all, and I didn’t know He was supposed to come again.”
“Oh,” she said, looking somewhat puzzled as to what to say next. “Thank you,” she replied politely. Then she turned around and walked away. Clearly, she had not been trained at the Billy Graham School of Evangelism.
Today, many years later, I’m finding most people don’t know much more about the Second Coming than I did, or its monumental significance to world history.
At Christmastime we focus on the First Coming, when the great God of heaven humbled Himself to enter time and space as a human being to become the final, perfect sacrifice for sin under the Levitical system. But His birth is only half the story. His reign is the rest of the story, and that happens in conjunction with the Second Coming.
So in this issue of Israel My Glory, we give you the whole story. Our theme is Jesus Is Coming Again. Gracing our cover is a beautiful photograph of the Eastern Gate in Jerusalem, which will open again when the Messiah returns. We invite you to rejoice with us over Christ’s birth, which demonstrates His unfathomable love for undeserving humanity. And we hope you’ll give thanks with us that, because He is God and rose from the dead, He will come again and make right everything that is wrong with this wicked, profane universe. For in His resurrection and return lies the hope of the world.
Merry Christmas from all of us at The Friends of Israel. And Maranatha. Our Lord, Come!
Waiting for His Appearing,
Lorna Simcox
Editor-in-Chief
