Mandela, Paul Crouch, and others

In Inventory Management, FIFO (First In, First Out) is the concept that is used to ensure that store materials do not become dated/stale and end up as waste. It would be good if that were applied to human living too, but life happens!
In the past few days, Nelson Mandela passed on. He will not be needing an introduction, at least not in Africa, in the next 50 years I believe. A few days before him, Paul Crouch also passed on. He was the audacious founder of TBN. He set the stage for gospel tv when it was unpopular and probably unheard of. He reached peoples that could not be reached by direct contact. His reach and appetite remained unrelenting since 1973. He died at 79. Earlier in the year, Prof Howard Hendricks passed on. He was tutor and mentor to about 10,000 pastors.
On the death of Mandela, I wonder if that is not the demise of the conscience of Africa! And what happens where there is no concscience??
Everybody, at least, every ‘important’ person has something to say about how good a man, how pure a heart, how tall a frame, how compassionate, how unbreakable a person he was. I even decided to remove 27 years from his life to see how long he lived outside jail! 68 years! Quite some years indeed–at least for someone who had something to do!
When there is a mass harvest of great men from the earth by the One who has set up the whole thing, when there is a shift, an overhaul of enduring leadership, what do we expect? Since there will be no vacuum allowed, some other people will surely step into those shoes. But then, who appointed these men? Who appointed Mandela? Who appointed Crouch?
As some of that generation continue to run on ‘extra time’ and we expect FIFO to take effect, we should prepare to wear big shoes, hot shoes! When all was well in Egypt, God was taking Joseph through a gruelling time, preparing him for his breaking out! When there was peace in Israel, God was grooming David with lions and bears! One wonders how much wealth and affluence it takes to make a great man in the 21st century.
One thing was common with these men however, they saw needs and they rose up to meet them; so can we!