By Elizabeth Prata
In a few weeks I will have been blogging here at The End Time for 17 years straight. I’ve mainly posted a blog a day. This blog comprises 7,105 essays, with few repeats. That is not a testament to my skill or ingenuity, but a testimony of how unfathomable the depths of scripture are and how infinite this seemingly finite book is.
The earliest blogs from 2009-2010 didn’t transfer from Blogspot when I exported them to WordPress here, because there was a byte limit to the export. That’s OK, many of them were newspaper eisegesis anyway. I grew out of that thanks to the Spirit but I still remember and value the initial rush of understanding post-salvation. I was amazed to have at hand so many answers to the complex questions of life that I’d futilely searched for, such as ‘why are the Jews so hated?’ ‘what is the point of life?’ ‘why are there earthquakes and other natural disasters?’ ‘why is there always turmoil in the Middle East?’ and so on. The Bible held those answers and early blogs were my outworking of my theological education on those matters as I then saw the world with new eyes.
As for 2025 here at the blog (and the podcast- which I have been highly irregular on recording), the answers continue. The essays are still an outworking of my own processing of matters I’m studying. They are also answers to reader questions, using the Holy Spirit-given spiritual gift of discernment He has dispensed to me. Or encouragement for ladies in these dark times. Those remain my focus 17 years later: theology/doctrine, discernment, and encouragement.
2025 wrap-up
I began 2025 with this essay on January 1: 7 bullet points on why the Passion Conference is one to avoid. I had spent some time in 2025 re-vamping some of my discernment articles into shorter essays, with added content, and to that end, I created the ‘bullet point’ series. Attention spans have shortened in the last 17 years. Also, some people just need a ‘cut to the chase’ moment, so that is what I named the series.
In 2025 I published 361 posts. My streak of ‘every day/365’ was interrupted by a period of illness. Working in a school, lol, I get sick a few times a year. This year I had a high fever for a few days and did not produce an essay. One of the days I missed posting was because I’d lost power for 24 hours, sigh. It was a rough day being launched back to the 1800s with no electricity! lol.
In my “Spotify end of year round up” I learned that the most listened to podcast essay was the one titled: Listening to Wives: Lessons from Genesis. It was played 215 times more than any other episode. I wonder what caught the people’s attention? If you prefer reading to listening, the essay is here to read.
Spotify says my listening audience increased 53% over last year. 999% of those listeners were new. So I feel doubly bad I have not paid as much attention to recording my essays as I should.
This year for my Bible reading plan, I used the John MacArthur Daily Bible: Read the Bible in One Year, with Notes from John MacArthur, NASB. I loved it and I’ll use it again. I liked the leather binding, the easy to read pages, and of course the content is wonderful. I never write in my Bibles, I use arrow post-its. You can see all the interesting things I’d tabbed for follow up!
Other Bible Reading Plans I have used in the past have been the McCheyne, Grant Horner, G3 (several inside a bundle), and one a friend wrote that was chronological. Justin Peters is reading what appears to be M’Cheyne’s plan, (the link is to Jan 1 reading,) https://youtu.be/ewqy6JKOhAM. Ligonier lists many choices for Bible Reading Plans in 2026, here.
The ever-dependable and solid Michelle Lesley has a roundup of Bible Reading plans by type, here.
Other links: Grant Horner’s , M’Cheyne‘s , MacArthur Daily Bible , G3 5 Day Bible Narratives Reading Plan (free downloads accompany this bundle, listed below:)
Free Downloads
- 5 Day Bible Narrative Reading Plan
- 52 Week Religious Affections Catechism
- Personal Journal
- 2023 Reading Plan csv
- Reading Plan on Google Calendar
Books
These are the book I’d read in 2025. I listed the religious ones first (10 of them), and secular ones next (16 of those) for a total of 26 books read this year.
- Human Nature in its Fourfold State, Thomas Boston (not finished yet)
- Innumerable pamphlets like Free Grace Broadcaster and others from Chapel Library,
- Jonah & Nahum: Grace in the Midst of Judgment: (A Verse-by-Verse Expository, Evangelical, Exegetical Bible Commentary on the Old Testament Minor Prophets – MOTC), John MacArthur,
- The Scandal of False Teaching, James Durham,
- The Greatness of the Soul and Unspeakableness of its Loss Thereof, John Bunyan,
- Christmas According to the Gospel, Allen Nelson IV,
- Christ Triumphs Over Sin and Death: The King’s Victorious Return, John MacArthur,
- Love Came Down at Christmas, Sinclair Ferguson,
- A Word Fitly Spoken: Theology of Communication, Aaron Garriott (not finished yet),
- Finishing Well, John MacArthur
- The Bookshop, Penelope Fitzgerald (novel),
- The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore, Evan Friss (non-fiction),
- Bendigo Shafter, Louis L’Amour,
- Laced (Regan Reilly Mysteries, #10), Carol Higgins Clark,
- Land of My Heart (Heirs of Montana, #1), Tracie Peterson,
- The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 3, Beth Brower,
- The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 2, Beth Brower,
- The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 1, Beth Brower,
- Midnight at the Blackbird Café, Heather Webber,
- Wreck of the Medusa: The Tragic Story of the Death Raft, Alexander McKee,
- Beautiful Day, Elin Hilderbrand,
- The Innkeeper of Ivy Hill (Tales from Ivy Hill, #1), Julie Klassen,
- The Rural Life, Verlyn Klinkenborg,
- The Full Cupboard of Life (No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, #5), Alexander McCall Smith,
- The Berry Pickers, Amanda Peters,
- Morality for Beautiful Girls (No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, #3), Alexander McCall Smith
What’s Next in 2026?
I plan to keep writing, as long as I feel that is what the Holy Spirit wants. I do plan to try and record more essays. I received a free gift from Chapel Library of Pilgrim’s Progress parts I and II, and I will read that. I also ordered booklets from Chapel Library (for free) Bunyan’s The Fear of God and The Acceptable Sacrifice: The Excellency of a Broken Heart – Bunyan.
I inventory all my books using LibraryThing (a free online system but you can set it to private) and I was surprised to find that after John MacArthur, the authors I have the most books from are RC Sproul (28), and John Bunyan, (17). Next was Jonathan Edwards with 11 books by him or about him.
Chapel Library is a ministry offering older theological material to download or sent through the postal mail in hard copy for free.
Chapel Library: “Classics to read and share! Want a packet mailed to you FREE? Chapel Library will ship 1 order of up to $20 value per month to your door free of charge.”
What a blessing they are.
2025 was a big year in my opinion. We had the Steve Lawson adultery scandal in 2024 and a few months later Lawson breaking his silence in 2025. Josh Buice, president of G3 Ministries outed as a liar and a hypocrite. We lost Voddie and MacArthur and James Dobson. The assassination of Charlie Kirk shook evangelical political conservatives to the core. It seemed to me that Kirk’s killing caused a major shift of some kind from which we are still feeling the fallout.
False teacher Jennie Allen shifted her sadly growing “If:Gathering” conference to a streaming global event. It was 24 hours of featuring many false teachers such as Allen, Francis Chan, Christine Caine etc on every continent (except Antarctica & Greenland.) The internet and streaming are boons for those behind closed countries, homebound, and the general person who wants access to a wide variety of Christian material and preachers. However it is fraught with pollution that satan is so good at infiltrating. Gather25 was a discerner’s disappointment.
People look at the numbers and say foolish things like “But look how If:Gathering has grown so much in 10 years! God MUST be behind it!” No. Look at how fast sin had grown from the garden to the Flood, from Genesis 3:1 to Genesis 6:5. Satan was behind THAT. Growth and speed are not always God-given indicators of theological solidity.
So my goals this year in 2026 are to keep reading, keep praying, keep writing, record and publish the podcast more regularly, keep attending my church and serving and worshiping there, keep working at school, keep loving the people around me. In my opinion, the key to the Christian life is consistency. This blog essay by John MacArthur addressing the unremarkableness of a normal Christian life (outwardly) caught my attention when it was published almost 15 years ago. Here it is again, if you are feeling disadvantaged, useless, inconsequential because you are not doing “BIG THINGS!” for Christ, don’t feel bad. Jesus wants unremarkable faith in ordinary, consistent lives. He grows us incrementally as we make steps, sometimes strides, sometimes stumbling, only to be picked back up by grace to continue plodding ahead.
Sometimes he raises up a Paul or a Martin Luther or a John MacArthur. You can count on one hand those men or women who have made a huge, positive, detectible impact for the faith. But we cannot count the innumerable Christians who lived faithfully all their believing lives and died in obscurity- who made impacts too. That’s you and me. And remember, heaven is not a place for Christian celebrities. There is only one celebrity there. JESUS.
Happy New Year to all my readers. I wish you a frutiful and thriving 2026!
the-end-time.org 