by Walt Hibbard

The year is 1955. The place is South Bend, Indiana. A bride and groom who live in Elyria, Ohio, married only four months, are traveling by car toward Illinois to spend their first Christmas together with the bride's parents.

Suddenly in the black of night, a car comes careening around the corner and slams into a red Studebaker sport car. The drunk driver, coming from a Christmas party at work, thinks the young couple are "his friends" and accompanies them to the hospital. The bride suffers a shattered femur and wrist; the groom receives only minor injuries.

And so begins seventeen weekly trips on the train from Elyria, Ohio to South Bend, Indiana (225 miles each way) by the groom to visit his injured bride, confined to her hospital bed with her leg in traction. Those train trips provided a wonderful time for the groom, who had become a Christian only about a year before his marriage, to study his Bible and experience the grace and comfort of God. What had started out as a tragedy was becoming a grand opportunity to sit at the feet of Jesus, Who was teaching this young man many new things about His Word and blessings. His special field of study always turned out to be eschatology.

The seventeenth train trip brought the bride and groom back to Ohio, where they announced to their church congregation that an addition to the family was expected in the near future! Through all the physical hardship that the bride endured came the glorious birth of their first child, a son, not many months after. He was called the "miracle baby" because no one thought that he could be normal with all the pain killers and drugs that his mother took during her stay in the South Bend hospital.

A couple years later, with the boy and his younger sister now family members, an irresponsible teenager driver came around a curve on a rain-drenched night and totaled the small foreign car that this family of four was riding in, throwing the mother (six months pregnant) and the two kids onto a lawn near the road. The father was able to get out of the car and comfort his wife and children. Ambulances came screaming and rushed everyone to the hospital. The mother began to fade in strength as it became clear that she had suffered a ruptured spleen with rapidly diminishing blood pressure and death fast approaching. Once again the Sovereign God called on a brilliant surgeon (noted for his fast operating skills) to come to the rescue, and using metal stitches, managed to close the incision in record time, saving her life. The father was on another floor of the hospital with cracked ribs, praying for the life of his wife and mother of their children.

A week later the mother gave birth to a stillborn baby boy in the hospital with the graveside service following, with neither parent attending because of injuries. Once again the Sovereign Lord spared the life of the mother, the husband and the two children, but chose in His wisdom to call the third child to Heaven.

Many years later, after the son himself was married, that dreaded word of diagnosis echoed through the corridors of the medical center announcing that this mother had contracted breast cancer. After over four years of struggling through radiation and chemotherapy, the Lord called this dedicated Christian mother Home to be with Himself in those lovely rooms described in John chapter 14. She was faithful to the end, something that she had prayed that the Lord would in His grace enable her to be. That day in April 1983 at the graveside service something amazing was taking place!

Her husband, a student of eschatology for over 28 years, had adopted the full preterist view of the prophetic events, holding that all of the end-time events described in the Bible, the Great Tribulation, the Second Coming of Christ, the Resurrection of the Body, and the Last Judgment had already happened by A.D. 70. The oldest son, sympathetic to this view, was also standing at the graveside with his father. As the pastor began to preach on II Cor. 5, taking the traditional Reformed view about "disembodied spirits" awaiting the yet future resurrection of dead bones in the grave, a strange inner peace struck the hearts of both father and son. For both of them knew that their dear wife and mother had ALREADY received her glorious, incorruptible, immortal, imperishable spiritual body as Jesus had called her Home. No waiting for another thousand or two thousand years or more, in a state of nakedness (II Cor. 5:3). No incompleteness, but a full salvation! Glory!

The days following her death were lonely and difficult for all the family, but the "preterist hope realized" gave glad assurance that she was truly with Jesus and was enjoying eternal fellowship with her Wonderful Lord, having the same kind of body that He had following His victorious resurrection on earth. The Lord was indeed the firstfruit, the harvest followed in A.D.70, and this dear Christian wife and mother joined the "immeasurable throng" in Heaven in 1983.

The mixed emotions of loneliness and yet inner triumph and peace filled the life of the new widower during those days, until the Lord God sent another wonderful Christian lady to brighten the life of that widower. Having brought this lady through many difficult trials herself, the Lord united them in Christian marriage in 1984, bringing completeness once again to their home.

The Lord blessed that home with the birth of a baby girl in 1985, the child of her father's older years (like Abraham's Isaac). When this girl grew to ten years old, once again that dreaded word fell like a sledgehammer on this family! This time it was ovarian cancer that brought a similar, yet different, experience into their lives.

As the calendar passed the year mark, in April 1996, the Lord again voiced His call Home to the family, and this second faithful wife and mother, with a prayer of thanksgiving on her lips and pleading for the Lord's care of her family, was taken into Glory, spirit/soul and resurrected body into the Arms of Jesus! She, too, was faithful to the end as she prayed she would be.

Losing two wonderful Christian wives is a tough pill to swallow. The loneliness has continued now for the past three years and counting. Father and 13 year old daughter, both full preterists, know that their wife/mother is eternally complete in Heaven with Jesus. They thank their Sovereign God many times over for "taking such good care of Mommy." They know there is nothing incomplete about her salvation. She is with all of God's saints, making the courts of Heaven ring!

The man in this story (once again a widower for the second time) has held almost every eschatological view in the book, from his days of studying the old Scofield Bible on the train to South Bend and back to Ohio, to when, as a post-millennial partial preterist, he saw Chapter 17 of Luke's Gospel, and knew from that time on that there was no dissecting of the Olivet Discourse, it all spoke about events to be fulfilled by A.D. 70, and he became a full preterist -- the only view that withstands scrutiny because it is God's truth. After all didn't Jesus PROMISE that He would return while some, not all, of the people He was speaking to were still living? (Matt. 16:28) And didn't the Apostle Paul record in I Cor. 15:23 that the resurrection would be fulfilled at the same time as the Second Coming? And didn't our Lord promise that the Judgment was "about to be" (Matt. 16:27 with parallel verses in Revelation)?

What has kept this "double widower" going during the time from his quiet conversion from liberalism at the age of 27 into Bible-believing Christianity? The mercy and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is the answer! Indeed, he has found that His grace is indeed sufficient for ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that God Himself chooses to decree in the lives of His children. And interestingly enough, it has been the preterist view of eschatology, with all its harmony and fulfilled promises, that he has leaned on more than anything else, especially during the times of losing his two wives. Indeed he can say, the Lord God has used those hundreds of Scripture portions to be "verses of blessing" for this undeserving Christian man.

This is the first time that this writer has put into print this story of his life. Rather, it is not the story of his life; it is the story of how the Triune God has demonstrated His grace and faithfulness to this man and his family members over these many years. If anyone who reads this, even if only one person, is prompted to explore the spiritual nuggets of full preterism, let me say this:

This nontraditional view of eschatology and soteriology is so sound, so scriptural, so real and so true that it will bolster your faith in Jesus Christ and in the truth of His Holy Word, the Bible. The words of Jesus, they are true! He has kept His promise! You knew He would, didn't you? And He did, just when He said He would, too! Together, let's PRAISE HIS HOLY NAME!