This commentary will be a bit personal, so I must warn that included is information I believe the Lord wants presented, but that the writing of it might be taken as self-attention gathering allurement. Please know that’s not what I intend.

While working in advertising many years ago, I served as creative director in a couple of ad agencies. We, of course, worked to put our clients’ businesses in the best possible light, and create allurements aimed at potential customers of our clients’ products and services through regional and national print and broadcast venues.

We constantly searched the recesses of our brains for the cleverest, yet on-the-mark lines of copy (word pictures) to attract customers for our clients and to demonstrate to our competitor ad agencies just how good we were at the business of advertising.

Annual awards were presented for such narcissistic endeavors. I loved the business of advertising, but, being younger than the agency heads, I never got caught up in the higher level of the business where the  top guys would gather to accept the awards.

The one time I wish to relate here, in which the part I loved–the creative process—was involved is captured in the title of this commentary. I’m sure the phrase has been used many times since that moment long ago. But it was the first time it was used, and we all sat around the ad agency’s creative environs wishing we could have thought of it.

It was emblazoned across a billboard. I can’t remember the ad agency who came up with it, or which funeral home it was created for, but it was, at the time, absolutely the perfect slogan for a funeral home: “And in conclusion…”.

I guess that thoughts of funeral-type things are always close to the surface of our thinking, particularly the older we get.

My eighty-fourth birthday is the day after we post this article, and I’ve been listening to the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham, who died considerably younger than I am at present, as I write it on Tuesday July 28. So the slogan from long ago came to mind in a most poignant way.

Here I sit, thinking on, praying on, and writing about the biblical conclusion of things–Bible prophecy.

It comes to mind of the many great friends that have gone to their heavenly rewards, some considerably younger than I am now. Like Dr. Dave Breese, truly one of my most beloved friends, who helped me get started with my first book—Storming Toward Armageddon.

Dave, one of the most eloquent and brilliant spokesman for God’s Word, was just seventy-three when he was called into Heaven.

I think of my wonderful friend Dr. Tim LaHaye, who was sixteen years older than me. I remember this because the first time Tim and I met, he figured the age difference with a smile. Tim is certainly now enjoying the tremendous rewards of heavenly life–eternal life!

Then I think on the great preacher and teacher Dr. J. Vernon McGee, who inspired so many of us with his down-home, but tremendously powerful, teachings. He was…well…he was eighty-four when he passed into that heavenly dimension! Eighty-four!… Well…I’m now 84!

Time to think of what the slogan I remember so vividly from those many years ago really encompasses! ”And in conclusion…”.

This is not meant to be read like my own impending epitaph. I trust the Lord has me here yet for His own purposes. I won’t go into the widow-maker heart attack and heart stoppages way back on Good Friday, April 22, 2011, and the miraculous trip to Heaven and back three times. (Well, I guess I just did go into it again, but just can’t help myself.) It’s a witness, and I will always interject it when opportunity permits.

And the witness–the main reason I believe I’m still topside of the soil, as I like to say—is to tell that God is warning the world that the end of this age (Age of Grace or Church Age) is about to come to an end. This means that the worst time in all of human history, as Jesus Himself stated (Matthew 24: 21), is about to come upon rebellious humankind.

The Tribulation will be the last seven years that will put an end to humankind’s rebellion against God. It will be Daniel’s seventieth week.

The telling of this terrible era of Heaven’s punishment against earth’s rebels, found mainly in the book of Revelation, detailing twenty-one judgments in a series of three specific acts of God’s wrath: seven scrolls; seven trumpets; and seven bowls, will be God saying, in effect, what that billboard advertisement presented all those years ago.

And in conclusion…

The Lord is indeed slow concerning His judgment. He is not willing for anyone to perish in their sin. He pleads for all to come to repentance. But His patience is not without limits, and it is obvious to any true student of Bible prophecy that this generation is bumping up against the very end of this age of God’s patience.

The Rapture of all believers, lifting them (harpazo) into the presence of Jesus Christ, who will receive (paralambano) them unto Himself, where they will be with Him forever.

Now this is the way those of us who study and put forth God’s Word –particularly His prophetic Word—want ultimately for all who will heed Heaven’s call. This is the end of all things as God wants them to be, because that end is really the Beginning.

Accept Christ and the redemption God offers through His Son’s death, burial, and resurrection. The words of that slogan I remember will then have a wonderful, not a fearful, meaning.

And in conclusion…