I ran out of time last week to finish the story of 13-year-old Rosa Frankson, who endured persecution, beatings and torture for the sake of the Gospel. I’m getting ahead of myself in saying so, but her life and her testimony affected the whole community of Point Hope, Alaska.   After three or four days of hanging between life and death, and fading in and out of consciousness, she was awake and talking to the attending nurse. "You need to know Jesus like I do," she said. The nurse teared up, and not knowing what else to do or say, reached over and patted Rosa on the head. "You're going to be OK, Rosa."

For reasons that are perfectly understandable when you realize how much we have been contaminated with the culture and mindset of death, God’s people want to be “raptured” out of here to escape all those things that Paul experienced for the sake of the Gospel. I want to begin today with a story of a young woman who experienced much of what we have just read in II Corinthians.   Her name is Diana H. Hopefully, we will be able to have her share her experiences in person, but for today, let me give you a very brief overview of her life.

It was my intention to begin a series on Covenant today, but because of a number of ongoing discussions with different groups in the past few weeks, I felt the necessity of changing gears for the next few weeks. Most of us have grown up within the structured church world and subjected to a variety of teachings concerning “The Great Tribulation.” In fact, there is no such thing in the Word — anywhere — as “The Great Tribulation.”