At least the year 2020 will stick in our minds more quickly, as we get used to writing the new date on our papers, documents and checks. For some of us, it took to the end of the first decade of the 2000’s to quit reverting to writing the dates as 19_ _ something! We have come to this last Sunday of the second decade of this century, and we’ll soon be “in our twenties.”
One of the first events of 2020 for Wendy and I will be to travel to Tucson to attend the funeral of my own pastor, J.C Joiner. Pastor Joiner graduated to Heaven this past week, at the age of almost 90. He has been the pastor of the New Testament Baptist Church in Tucson for over 60 years.
I was saved under his ministry in 1971. Over the years, NTBC has sent out over 350 people to train in Bible colleges for the ministry. Many pastors, missionaries, church staff workers, and teachers have been called into the ministry over the years of Brother Joiner’s pastorate in the church he planted there in Tucson in 1959. No doubt, we will see many of them there next week at the memorial service.
I was able to talk with Pastor Joiner a couple of times just a few days before he died of the cancer of his liver, and I was blessed by his complete peace and surrender to the Lord’s will in it all. Though he will be missed, we are confident in the fact that our parting is not permanent. It is as the Bible says, we “sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.”