J. Davy Crockett III

There were five kids in my blended family, growing up during the 1950s, and my stepfather was a genius at keeping all of us busy. As kids, we were allowed to play, but first, there was a myriad of chores and maintenance projects that kept us busy doing productive things. The usual chores, like regularly mowing the lawn, trimming hedges, and raking leaves, over time grew into adding an extra room to our house, painting the house, stripping hardwood floors for waxing, and painting and hanging wallpaper in an upstairs apartment. All this industry did not go unnoticed.

At a time when we are inundated daily with a tsunami of negativity and dark, foreboding developments around the nation and the world, a real-life story of courage and overcoming adversity is a welcome break in the weather. Such is the story of a man and his afflicted son who refused to be stymied by disability—and set a wonderful example of determination and perseverance to people everywhere.

In this unsettled world, there is renewed interest in Bible prophecy. A search on Amazon, the world’s biggest marketplace, will easily generate a list of 100 books the retailer “recommends,” which only scratches the surface of the number written on the subject. Most of them have one thing in common: They are wrong.

While many books claiming knowledge of prophetic matters may seem to contain elements of truth, they often misunderstand or misapply the Scriptures, and thus completely fail to interpret prophecy correctly.

Some time ago, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor, now retired, of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper wrote an insightful editorial entitled, “Where are we now?” Commenting on the intractable political divide and civil unrest in the United States, the editor looked back to June 16, 1858, a time when the nation was facing a crisis as the prospect of civil war loomed over the issue of states’ rights and slavery.