Let me invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Malachi. Chapter 4. Malachi chapter 4. We're gonna be looking at this chapter today and if you want to give a title to the message, it would be preparing for the day of the Lord.
on election day in 2004, so it would have been November of 2004, my oldest son, Brendan, And I, were in Washington DC with other members of my mom's side of the family. My mom's brother was being buried at Arlington National Cemetery that week. So we got to experience what life is like in Washington DC on the day of a presidential election. And when it was determined that George Bush was the winner of that election over John Kerry, word began to spread throughout Washington DC that George Bush would be giving his victory speech in the Ronald Reagan, Building, which was not too far from the White House.
And my son and I were near the White House when we heard this news. So we hurried over to the Ronald Reagan. Building, hoping to get inside to hear George Bush's victory speech that he would be delivering. It turned out that everyone else had the same idea.
When we got to the Ronald Reagan Building, there were at least 200 people in line in front of us and no one in the line knew whether or not we would succeed in getting into the building. When we learned that we would not be able to get in that way and the line did not move at all. We left that line and went to another entrance into the building where we stood behind another few 100 people, all of whom, like us, were hoping to get into the building. Eventually, we all learned that there was absolutely no way any of us were getting in the building....