Dear Church Family,

Most of you know by now, this will be Pastor Carey’s last Sunday serving on staff with us. He has been a tremendous blessing and a friend to many. He and Dena and their boys have given us many years of worship leadership and we are grateful. We also trust that because of this leadership, Lakeside will press on and worship the King of Kings and Lord of Lords each week!

I also wanted to invite you all to our annual Paluxy Baptist Association meeting this coming Sunday evening. Lakeside is the host and I will be the preacher. We will have testimonies and reports at 4pm and the worship service will be at 5pm.

I read this devotional this week and thought it might bless you—

“Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” – Matthew 16:28

Read that slowly.

Some standing here. The people in that crowd. Before they die.

Every one of them is dead now. Two thousand years later, Jesus still hasn’t returned.

So was He wrong?

Skeptics think so. The philosopher Bertrand Russell pointed to this very line as evidence that Jesus expected the end of the world within His followers’ lifetimes, and didn’t get it.

But Russell made the mistake almost everyone makes with this verse: he stopped reading.

Here’s the thing most people don’t know. The Bible’s chapter numbers aren’t original. They were added in the 13th century. Matthew wrote one continuous story, and the very next sentence is this:

“And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.” (Matthew 17:1–2)

Some standing there. Three of them.

Six days later, they saw it.

Mark does the exact same thing: the promise (Mark 9:1), then immediately the mountain. Luke does too (Luke 9:27–28). All three Gospel writers who record this saying place it right before the Transfiguration. That’s not an accident. That’s how they understood it.

On that mountain, Peter, James, and John saw the Son of Man in His kingdom glory. Moses and Elijah standing with Him. A cloud of light. The Father’s voice: “This is my beloved Son… listen to him.”

A preview. A glimpse behind the curtain of what the whole world will one day see.

To be fair, Christians have read the verse in other ways too: the resurrection, Pentecost, the judgment on Jerusalem in AD 70. These all point to the kingdom breaking in within that generation. But the Gospel writers themselves put the answer right next to the question.

And Peter never forgot it. Thirty years later, near his own death, he wrote:

“We did not follow cleverly devised myths… we were eyewitnesses of his majesty… we were with him on the holy mountain.” (2 Peter 1:16, 18)

Notice what Jesus had been talking about just before this promise: His coming death. Taking up your cross. Losing your life to find it (Matthew 16:21–25).

He showed them the glory before the cross, so they’d know where the cross was leading.

He wasn’t wrong.

He was early, for three men, so that the rest of us could trust what’s still coming.

Press On!

Mark