The artist and cartoonist Thomas Nast used to perform an interesting feat. He would take a canvas six feet long by two feet wide and place it horizontally on an easel before his audience. Working quickly, he'd sketch in a landscape: green meadows with cattle, fields of grain, a farmhouse, bright sky, fleecy clouds-a typical pastoral scene. And he'd step aside to the audience's applause.
Then Nast would begin to dab in a few dark colors, as if touching up the painting. But soon his strokes appeared reckless. He'd blot out the bright sky, the fields, and the meadow. When dark slashes of paint had obliterated the whole composition, making it look like something angry and abstract, Nast would step back and declare, "It's finished."
Typically, the audience wouldn't know how to respond. Should they applaud, or should they weep?
But Nast would ask the stagehands to turn the canvas to a vertical position. And suddenly there would appear a painting of a spectacular waterfall plunging over a cliff of dark rock bordered by shrubs and trees-a stunning composition.
The picture of the end times can look quite scary. It can look quite chaotic. All those woes poured out, those trumpets of doom blasting, those plagues devastating the earth. The end of the world can seem to be a series of dark-colored slashes on the canvas of prophecy.
But Jesus turns the picture right side up. He turns the whole planet right side up! Jesus standing tall as the Alpha and the Omega, as the Bright and Morning Star, as the leader of the armies of heaven coming to the rescue.
By Mark Finley
Source: Signs of the Times, Copyright (c) March 1995, Pacific Press, http://www.signstimes.com
From http://www.witandwisdom.org
Used with permission
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