Old thoughts about the Rapture

This is from a column that I wrote two years ago, when I was still somewhat of a neophyte in the world of eschatology. The idea that the Rapture was coming sooner rather than later hadn't really hit me yet, and the whole idea of the Rapture was still something to be toyed with. As I've written over the last few days, the Lord is getting very serious over the Second Coming of Christ, and the Rapture is no longer just a theoretical plaything. It's coming, and it's coming soon. Are you ready? 

We have such fear for the future of our country, our planet. Global warming, warring nations, pollution, media desensitization, pornography, libel and slander as a way of doing business; drug use, homosexuality, and self-inflicted denigration as “lifestyle choices”; and most of all, the impending death of the family unit. As Christians, all we feel we can really do is throw up our hands and say something pithy like, “Well, it’s a good thing the Rapture is coming, so I don’t have to put up with all this for too much longer!”

So, my question is… Is it?

Is it really a desirable thing for the Rapture to come as soon as possible? Or is that just a figure of speech, our frustration talking when we feel too small to fix any of the problems ourselves?

Well, let’s look at the idea, and evaluate.

What will actually happen when the Rapture takes place? (Before we proceed, we need to stress that for the purposes of this argument, we are assuming the pre-tribulation position on the controversy regarding when Christ will take His people home. I would suggest that if you are of the “mid-trib” or “post-trib” schools of thought on Revelation, you’re not very anxious to have the seven years of Hell on Earth begin while you’re still on it! But in my humble opinion, the Believers are guaranteed to be raptured before the Tribulation by Revelation 3:10: “Because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth.” Paul agrees in First Thessalonians 3:9, where he says, “For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.”) The other obvious reason for the assumption that the Rapture will happen before the seven-year Tribulation is that the long list of Scriptural verses warning that paraousia could happen at any time. If we know the sequence of events that will occur during the Tribulation, the Rapture is virtually scheduled, thereby contradicting the Word of God.

Well, as far as the saved are concerned, we will immediately leave the earth and go to heaven. At least, that’s what most interpretations say. The poor schmucks who didn’t let Christ be the Lord of their lives (and that will include many, many people who go to church regularly – how many depends on how strict the Lord’s standards are…and since to Him, a Sin is a Sin, we can assume that His standards are strict) will remain on the planet, and then the problems of today will be replaced by sevenfold more troubles of a much less trivial kind.

Depending on your mindset, that may or may not be a big deal to you, the true believer.

My first thought is of the large group of folks that I know who, for whatever reason, will be left behind despite what they thought they believed. And those are a huge percentage of those folks whom I care deeply about – unsaved friends, even family members. Do I want to see them suffer through the Tribulation? Of course not! I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy!

Setting that aside for the moment (as if I could!) let’s return to the selfish viewpoint. What’s the best for us, the saved Christians who will be “taken up” before the bedlam begins? You’re going to be going to heaven regardless, right? No matter when you die, your eternal soul will be given a new body, and you’ll be walking with Christ in Heaven for the rest of forever. That’s a guarantee from the only One whose guarantees are diamond-clad, so no worries there. (Unless, of course, we’ve chosen the wrong version of our religion – after all, there are millions who picked a different sect than we did, absolutely certain that they’re the correct ones…)

So, if you’re going to heaven when you die no matter what…and you’re guaranteed to be part of the New Heaven and New Earth when the Second Coming of Christ has run its course of judgment… what’s the rush?

Ø  To escape from this world? That sounds like a suicide wish! How about working to improve this world instead?

Ø  Just eager for the Second Coming to arrive? Well, aren’t you the adrenaline junkie! If you’re looking for excitement, try sticking around on earth after the Rapture – that’s where the real action will be! Actually, I have a relative who’s so eager to see what will happen that he wants to do exactly that: live through the “adventure” of the Tribulation. We’ve tried explaining to him that an “adventure” is backpacking through the Sierra Nevadas; the Great Tribulation will be a slaughter.

Ø  Working to hasten the Lord’s promise? Silly child: God has His own timetable. You can’t rush Him. The Lord has said, many times in many ways on many occasions, that He will save every last one of His elect no matter what, and that includes delaying His return until He is assured that all of His lost sheep have been found first. Whether we think that the world has reached our personal tolerance level of iniquity or not is irrelevant – the world has been filled with grievous sin from the outset. Remember, even a few generations after the Flood hit the earth’s “reset button” because of the sins of the first world, God eliminated Sodom and Gomorrah for the same thing.

In fact, there are a goodly number of folks in Jerusalem this very minute, working to have the Temple of Solomon rebuilt and sacrifices started so that when the Lord returns, the prophesies regarding its abuse by the antichrist and its positive use by the King of Kings can be fulfilled. Ancient mixtures of the Lord’s prescription of anointing oil have been discovered; delicate political work between Judeo-Christians and Muslims who also have their holy places in the vicinity is being done, all in a frantic effort to be ready when God says “it’s time”.

Why?

Why the rush? Our Lord said that these things would come to pass, so therefore they will. If they’re not in place at a particular time, then they weren’t meant to be in place at that particular time. Remember, to God, all of time is visible at once. He does not see life sequentially, as we mere mortals do. He sees the time of Revelation “now”, and He knows what “will” happen because to Him, it is happening. It has happened. Therefore, He knows that all the pieces will be in place when the events of the Rapture happen. Our trying to rush things doesn’t affect His timing one iota.

Now, if events that lead to those pieces being place “happen” to occur, that’s probably His doing, too. So, if these well-meaning folks in Israel happened to find the elixir that will anoint Christ upon His return (which they did, by the way, in a deep cave about ten years ago or so), then that sounds like a sign to me. But if a well-meaning wealthy developer just decides he wants to get the Temple rebuilt, goes out and hires religious experts to make sure it’s all done the way God demanded it be done, and buys his way through the bureaucratic process to get it done…does that change the Lord’s timetable? No. He will do what He will do, when He plan to do it. (As His thoughts are certainly above my thoughts, it’s not impossible that such a developer might indeed be God’s chosen agent. Let’s just leave it at, “it’s less likely than not”.)

†

What I also wonder is this: does Satan have any idea when the Tribulation is coming?

You would think, on the surface, that he’s got to know, because he has to have the antichrist in place to rise to power in advance. My understanding of the Scriptures is that the antichrist rises to power almost immediately after the Christians are removed from the picture (and that opinion is shared by Tim LaHoye with the world in his Left Behind series). If that’s the case (and it can’t be too far after the Rapture, because the antichrist will desecrate the Temple just 3 ½ years after the Rapture, presenting himself as the new god, so he’ll have to work up to that point fairly quickly), how does Satan put the antichrist in power at the appropriate time if he doesn’t know when the Rapture is coming?

But I’d have a hard time believing Satan would be “in” on that particular piece of information, because Christ promised that “concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Matthew 24:36). So if the angels of heaven don’t know, I’d guarantee the fallen angel Lucifer doesn’t know, either.

So, he’ll have to figure it out with the rest of us. But he’s one of the best students of the Scripture – it’s his business to figure it out, and he’s had thousands of years to study it. So he’ll be looking for the key events that lead up to it. Some have presumably already happened; the re-founding of Israel as a political nation is the one most scholars point to when they proclaim “the end of the world is nigh”, especially when it happened way back in 1948 (even if you use the 1967 date, we’re closing in on the generational deadline pretty quickly, no matter how you define it).

Read First John, 2:18-19 à “Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore, we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might become plain that they are not of us.”

From the above passage, I side with my wife on this particular issue. There are billions of non-Christians in the world at any moment, and it would seem to my feeble mind that it would be most practical for the Prince of the World to simply have a potential antichrist-in-waiting at all times. Every few years, Satan moves a new player into place, just in case the ball happens to drop during that particular time frame. Not happening this go-around? The potential villain fades along with other power-hungry sinners, and a new possibility is raised up in his place. Many think Hitler was one of Satan’s best chances, for example, although I’m not convinced. (I believe he was the instigator of the events of the Fourth Seal. See my recent article about the impending Rapture here.) Undoubtedly someone that most of us don’t know much about is being groomed right now, should the Rapture happen soon and the Devil’s lone half-court shot at victory arrives. (Of course, Democrats will tell you it’s Donald Trump, and Republicans will tell you it’s Hilary Clinton. But then, Democrats thought it was Mr. Bush, and Republicans thought it was Mr. Obama…)

†

Many of the necessary precursors, of course, have already occurred, which is why so many of us are so certain that the End of the World is within our lifetime. Some of the prerequisites are things that would have been impossible for all of human history … until now. Here are a few to consider:

·         The creation of the nation of Israel is a prophecy that seemed impossible for centuries, and when it happened in 1948 it became the only time in history when a culture of people reunited under a sovereign flag after centuries of separation – just as the Bible said would happen. But even more incredibly, the dead language of Hebrew returned to life and is the national language of Israel in both theory and fact. No dead language had ever been revived into common usage, and yet Hebrew – which wasn’t even readily spoken in Jesus’ time any more! – WAS revived by Eliezar Ben-Yehuda, who championed the cause and created the modern words to add to the ancient language. That act was followed by the use of the language in the resurrected Israel, as it was required to be used by and taught to the new citizens of the country, many of whom came from far-off lands, in order to unite them under a common tongue as well as a common religion. What are the odds of reviving a dead language in such a manner? No one can even guess – it’s impossible to imagine it happening once, let alone again. (AND, remember that the Biblical prophecies state that the Second Coming will happen very quickly following these events, so we must be prepared!)

·         As discussed above, the Third Temple is already in preparations to be built. Because of recent discoveries on the actual site of the original Temple which Solomon built three thousand years ago (north of the Dome of the Rock, not on it as thought for centuries), it can be built without violating any existing structures, especially not religious shrines, and especially not Muslim shrines (problematic at best!). Combine that with the reconvening of the Sanhedrin after nineteen hundred years, the rediscovery of the mollusk which makes the long-thought-lost blue dye for the sacred High Priest robes, and the finding of the precise Oil of Anointing mixture specified in Exodus 30 (including an ingredient previously thought impossible to recreate), and suddenly the time is right for the construction of the Temple which must resume functionality before Tribulation starts (when, 3 ½ years in, the antichrist will desecrate it and declare himself to be God). When a red heifer, free of blemish is found, as per Scripture, is found, then the time has essentially arrived. Now, there is a very legitimate school of thought on this topic that notes that the Bible never specifies that the Temple WILL be rebuilt! Many think that the Western Wall (or “Wailing Wall”) is more than sufficient to fulfill the prophecies. But if that’s the case, then again, everything is ready for Him.

·         Matthew 24:38-39: “(Like the time of Noah,) for as in those days before the Flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the Flood came and swept them all away, so will be the Coming of the Son of Man.” What more poetic moment to fulfill this pair of verses than the time of the ‘final’ victory of gay marriage AND the highest obesity rate in the history of the “civilized” world?

·         In Revelation 9:16, we see reference to an army of 200,000,000 men, coming from the east to attack Israel. When in history could we ever have had a 200 million man army? Imagine the reaction if Christians had read this in 100 AD, just after it was written: there weren’t that many humans on earth!…Except that now, China has a population seven times that number, including a huge surplus of men (thanks to the one-child-per-couple policy and the prejudice towards having a boy to maintain the family name), maintains a large army due to Communist-styled policies, and could muster that number in three months?

·         Revelation 11 tells us of the Lord’s Two Witnesses, who will prophecy for 3 ½ years, “clothed in sackcloth”, able to withstand any attack (“fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes”) except that from “the beast from the bottomless pit” (usually presumed to be the antichrist), who will kill them once they’ve finished their testimony. God will raise them after 3 ½ days, and in verse 12, “they heard a loud voice from heaven saying, Come up here! And they went up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies watched them.” The last is the key phrase for our purposes, because the implication of Revelation 11, verses 9 and 12b, is that all of the people and tribes watched them; all of their enemies …and they will have heretical enemies throughout the world after three and a half years of preaching the Truth despite the antichrist’s rule. So, you figure – big deal, they were telecast. It would be big news, so of course it would be broadcast live on all the news channels. BUT…before, say, 50 years ago, that would have been completely IMPOSSIBLE, of course!

†

Another thought of mine about the timing of the Rapture…

Our Father in heaven likes certain numbers, especially when it comes to numbers as they involve lengths of earthly time – seven days and particularly forty days; the number twelve shows up more often in other contexts. Consider a couple of parallels, both of which Christ Himself brought up while earth-bound:

Ø  In Matthew 24:37, as he is discussing the Second Coming with the apostles on Mount Olivet, Christ brings up Noah and the Flood, and how nobody knew what was coming “until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away – so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” (Matthew 24:38-39) How long did it rain? Forty days and forty nights, and after that the new man, Noah, would return to the earth.

Ø  Back in Matthew 12, Jesus is being pestered by unbelieving Pharisees to give them a sign of His divinity, which He was not interested in providing to cynics. To them He said, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For, just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Ninevah will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.” (Matthew 12:39-41) Jonah may have just as well been Christ when he said, “I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and He answered me; out of the belly of Sheol (Hell) I cried, and You heard my voice.” (Jonah 2:1-2) His first cry to the city of Ninevah when he returned from “the dead” (which he was assumed to be when they threw him overboard) was that in “forty days, and Ninevah will be overthrown!”

Ø  (A side note about Matthew 12:40 – Jesus said He’d be buried three days and three nights, when in fact He rose after just two, Good Friday and the next Saturday, rising Easter Sunday morning. I understand that’s how they counted that sort of thing then; I just don’t know what to make of Jesus’ statement.)

When Jesus died, He was indeed dead for three days (the rest of Friday, all of Saturday, and presumably a small part of Sunday – technically, less than 48 hours, to be truthful, but Hebrew tradition says that any part of a day counts as a day, so they would say it was three, and that's who matters in this case), and walked the earth for forty days before ascending to sit at the right hand of The Father. The other interesting passage comes from Matthew 27:52-53, where “many bodies of the saints (as opposed to the ‘sinners’) who had fallen asleep (died) were raised, and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they went into the holy city (Jerusalem, the City of David) and appeared to many.” Translation – it was a Biblical Zombie Apocalypse! (Maybe not “apocalypse”… how about “sighting”? How about “Zombies From Heaven”?

So, consider this possibility: IF there is a verifiable zombie sighting anywhere in the world this year, especially around Easter Sunday, be prepared – we might just be forty days away from the Rapture! (Or…maybe they’re just filming another George Romero movie.)

†

The Bible is very insistent on one thing: we Christians must always proceed as if the Rapture could happen at any moment. But why does it say that? Why does Christ insist we simply be ready at all times, instead of saying, “OK, it’s scheduled for Thursday May 28^th – mark your calendars!”? There are many important reasons –

Ø  So we will keep pouring over the Bible. It’s important to continue to search for the hidden truths in Scripture, to continue to grow as Christians, and not to get complacent about our lives while we’re on this earth.

Ø  To push the need for worldwide evangelism so that every human on earth will have heard the Gospel, which is one of the other conditions that needs to be met. Remember, God wants to harvest every one of His elect, so all of our efforts in the areas of evangelical missions throughout the world, medical efforts, orphanages, and the like are of vital, even critical importance. In my mind, that may be the one thing that’s keeping Christ from returning sooner rather than later. We must get the Word to ALL people.

Ø  To push us further forward on our journeys to become more like Christ; to deepen our spiritual lives and force us to surrender completely to Him. (And, to repent of our sins now, while we still can!)

But, is the Rapture truly imminent? The definition of “imminent” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is that it is “happening very soon; ready to take place.” But, if we’ve ascertained that there are indeed events that must happen first – all the conditions that have already been met, like the formation of Israel, or telecommunications; or the ones that we have YET to see, such as the Russian-led attack on the Holy Land that most readers of Ezekiel 38-39 believe must occur first – does that not mean that the Rapture is NOT “ready to take place”, and therefore cannot be imminent? (My current reading of Ezekiel places this attack MUCH later, well into the millennium.) How could a Bible student of the 1500’s take seriously the “imminent” return of Christ while reading the qualifications in Daniel, Isaiah, and Revelation, and knowing full well that it couldn’t happen any time soon? And yet, Martin Luther sincerely believed that Christ was returning within his lifetime. Was he delusional? And if not, are we just as delusional if we’re as sure as Luther was if we think it’s coming during ours?

Interestingly, many of the “early Biblical scholars” – early meaning the second century AD, such as Iranaeus and Barnabus – placed the Second Coming at approximately 2000 years after the First Advent of Christ, meaning about…now. Iraneus (120-202) sums up the prevailing opinion of the early church (once the first generation had died off, and Matthew 24:34 no longer seemed to apply to them) as follows: “For in as many days as this world was made, in so many thousand years shall it be concluded…” Even two hundred years before Christ, the Jewish Talmud records that revered Rabbi Elias declared that God’s Great Plan for man involved a great Sabbath Week, concluding with a thousand years of peace. “The world endures six thousand years: two thousand before the Law; two thousand under the Law, and two thousand under the Messiah. This period is called Yemoth ha-Mashiah.”

Remember, the number seventy is critical in eschatological study – primarily, the number appears in Daniel’s “seventy weeks” (more accurately termed “seventy sevens”) – and two seventies have already appeared (three, if you count inaccuracies!). The time period between the fall of Israel and the elimination of Jewish rights on the land was exactly seventy years. The time period between the first legitimate purchase of land by Jews in Israel (after close to two millennia away) in 1878 and the founding of the nation of Israel on May 14^th, 1948, was exactly seventy years. (You could argue that the fact that the final destruction of “Herod’s” temple in Jerusalem was in 70 AD, except that it dates from an erroneous calculation of Jesus’ birth…) Moses, in Psalm 90, tells us that a generation – “the years of our life” – is seventy years, and we await the fulfillment of “this generation shall not pass”…well, seventy years from the founding of Israel comes in 2018. How significant is that? Hard to say… Addendum: Given my "encouragement" by the Holy Spirit to write almost exclusively about the End Times and Salvation from here on out, I'd say that 2018 is looking more and more significant - and, having said that, it's no guarantee of anything. We Christians may all be here twenty years from now, still waiting, or it may happen before I finish this sen

There is a website that I track closely, www.daniel11truth.com, whose author has remained anonymous for two justifiable reasons (one the avoidance of seeming self-glorifying, the other for his or her personal safety in case of offending the wrong people), which very meticulously tracks movements and news stories that match Scripture. The one critical discrepancy between the typical interpretations of Daniel 9 and 11, Revelation, the three Gospel renditions of the Olivet Concourse, Ezekiel 38-39, and the other major eschatological passages of Scripture and the one here on daniel11truth, boils down to one crucial observation that most theologists blindly ignore: God bases ALL of His Scriptural writings using Israel as the focal point. “North, South, East, West”, and other key adjectives do NOT refer to worldwide directions but rather to the same things that EVERY OTHER direction in the Bible refers to. So, a power to the north means we’re looking at ISIS-controlled territory, not Russia per se; West does not mean the US, and so forth. I will leave the rest of the explanations to the author of the website, who is absolutely meticulous about the precision, the proof, and NOT reading into Scripture non-Biblical assumptions or elements. This is the only explanation I’ve ever read that accurately and reasonably includes and ties together the predictions of Daniel 11, Matthew 24, and Revelation (which all predict the exact same set of events: the end of the world as we know it. And I Feel Fine… because I’m confident that I’ll be saved as a Christian before the bad parts happen.). Take twenty minutes. Read the basic arguments. (There is far more information there, but twenty is all it will take to understand what’s actually happening.) Interestingly, the events of Daniel 11 have already come true once, in the two centuries before Christ, but the jump from verse 35 to 36, where the antichrist appears, never made sense until now, when the telescopic property of Daniel 11 revealed itself, as Christ and John in the New Testament said – its events would be “unlocked at the end of days”…which is now.

Here’s what I see, in agreement with the above website: The impending battles already started between the semi-official nation of ISIS (aka “ISIL”) and the Arab nations headed by Saudi Arabia (“north” and “south”). The pieces of Daniel 11:21-24 have already been fulfilled; verse 25 is in progress as I write this (spring 2015), and if it takes more than one year to reach verses 29-30, I’ll be very surprised. If Christ’s sheep stay here long enough to turn a calendar page to 2019, this entire essay is in error. Addendum: as I wrote last week, we're already at verse 30. The next Biblically significant event should be the Rapture itself. 

But it could be. Jesus warned us that we would not know the moment, and that’s why it’s hard to rely on things like the “blood moons” and such (only the September 2015 one, by the way, is even partially visible from Israel, which as mentioned would be the only one of note) – if it seems like you have a specific day in mind, you’re almost certainly wrong.

The point of all of this intellectual meandering is, don’t get too wrapped up in trying to predict the exact date and time “when” – just understand that it’s not an “if” for our generation. It will happen in our lifetime. And then, stop worrying: as with all other worries, leave it on the Lord’s lap and be done with it. But, for those of you who are still growing impatient for paraousia, I leave the last word to the Man who should always have the last word.

      “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away. But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” (Matthew 24:34-36, ESV)