Chapter
10
POST-TRIBULATION
RAPTURE
(Tribulation
of the Saints)
While
you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck
the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron,
the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at
the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer.
The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that
struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.
Daniel 2-34,35 NIV
The
verse above is a composite of two important points. First, it gives
reference to the church as the rock that destroyed Satan’s kingdom.
Jesus said in Mat 16-18,19, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on
this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not
overcome it” NIV. The name “Peter” literally means “Rock.”
Jesus was using Peter in this verse as a microcosm of the church,
prophesying that all the power of evil will one day attempt to overpower
it, but will not prevail. Second, this rock is God’s tool of divine
judgment, hewn from a mountainside without human agency as an act of
God. This is a word picture of God throwing His people at the base of
the statue, whose frail external form is flesh and blood, but their
internal unity gives them the durability of a giant boulder.
According
to Mat 24-21, the tribulation will affect the whole world, but Jesus
spoke about it as will effect His disciples. He spoke about the events
that would befall those who dwell on the earth at the end of the age,
but He said these things to warn only those who believed in Him. Jesus
never claimed to care about the world; He wouldn't even pray for
unbelievers (Jn 17-9) but credited the Father for loving the world (Jn
3-16), so that those who reject the gospel offend the Father, which is
far worse than offending Jesus. Therefore, the
Rapture is post-tribulation in that Jesus referred to it as the tribulation
of the saints.
The
passage above speaks of a rock that was hewn from a mountainside without
human agency, meaning it was an act of God. The rock represents the
Church, though most would say it represents Christ; in fact, it means both. 1Peter 2,4-8 says, “As you come to him, the living
Stone-rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him- you also,
like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy
priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through
Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says: "See, I lay a stone in
Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame." Now to you who believe, this stone is
precious. But to those who do not believe, "The stone the builders
rejected has become the capstone," and, "A stone that causes
men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall." They stumble
because they disobey the message-which is also what they were destined
for.”
"Conglomerate"
is a type of rock that is composed of smaller rocks cemented together by
fossilized sediment. Peter said, “You also, like living stones, are being built
into a spiritual house….” The rock that was hurled at the base of
the statue and smashed it into little pieces was composed of many tiny
rocks that made up the one big rock, who is Christ. This should not be
hard to understand, but we have been erroneously taught for decades that
the Church will not be here during the last day’s events, because of a
misguided Pre-Tribulation Rapture theory. There will be a Rapture, but
not when most people say it will occur. This all-encompassing belief of
a Pre-Tribulation Rapture that people refuse to abandon obscures
our view of understanding many crucial principles of Scripture, and for
this reason, we have a flawed scenario of endtime events.
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The
Pre-Tribulation Rapture sounds good; it makes sense; it wraps up nicely;
it makes us feel good, but it just doesn’t stand up to Scripture. God
intends to keep His Church here longer than most people anticipate,
because He wants to use His bride to destroy the antichrist’s
one-world empire, but not in our delirious state of apostasy. Heresy is
generated, not from heretics who have no idea what they are teaching,
but from the multitudes who would listen to them. There is no
freethinking in the Church today, by evidence that if you are not the
pastor of a Church or some other authoritative figure you cannot tell
anyone anything, and there are hardly any critical thinkers fostering
the doctrines that churches embrace. Instead, they accumulate teachers
in accordance with their own desires, who satisfy an itch they have for
a certain brand of truth. It is why so many people know so little about
God and have come to believe so many heresies about the Bible. It would be okay if their inaccuracies were
harmless, but few heresies are harmless, since Satan is usually behind
them, and he has no interest in hatching harmless heresies. It seems
ninety percent of all Christians believe the Church will not be here
during the tribulation, which means they don’t think they will have to
prepare for hard times. That is going to fester into a very serious
problem as we draw closer to the end.
When
we think of the unrighteous steward and the strategy he used to make a
living, minimizing the debt that people owed his master; Lk 16,1-13),
the Pre-Tribulation Rapture follows this pattern. Pastors have been teaching their congregations for
generations easy-to-believe Pre-Tribulation Rapture theology to keep the
people happy and coming back to their churches and tithing. All false
doctrine leads back to money in that Satan needs to reward those who
perpetuate his lies, suggesting that the people literally bought a more appealing
rendition of the gospel. People don’t want to be Raptured to heaven so
much as they just want to escape from hardship associated with the
antichrist coming to power. They are missing the point of being endtime
Christians. The privilege is not in being Raptured, but in being
constituents of a worldwide revival that will win millions of souls to
the kingdom of God. What happens to those who try to warn
people about God’s merciful intensions of keeping us here so others
can be saved, and using adversity to cleanse the Church in preparation
for receiving His glorious kingdom? They are squelched! With a large population
with itching ears and a lot of teachers ready to tell them what they want to hear,
we get a spoiled
Church that embraces a lot of false teachings, and are ill prepared for
hard times.
Pre-tribulation
theorists rightly believe God will deliver us from the antichrist, but
what they fail to realize is that He will deliver some of us as martyrs
for Jesus. Most churches teach that God will spare us from
Satan’s wrath, even though such theology flies in the face of the word
“delay,” which was the term Jesus used to describe His second coming
in the parable of the ten virgins (Mat 25-5). God wants to give us an
opportunity to mature and serve Him as His dedicated worshipers before
He takes us home. Most Christians think it would be evil of God to leave
us here, but why should He deliver us from the very problems we have
created through our own apostasy?
We
are in fact living in the age of the Ten Virgins, which is a parable
about apostasy. Both the wise and the foolish fell asleep, but the first
trumpet of seven will awaken them. Rev 1-10 says, “On the Lord's Day I
was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet.”
Then Rev 4-1 says, “After this I looked, and there before me was a door
standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me
like a trumpet said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must
take place after this" NIV. We have the first two instances of the
word “trumpet” in Revelation sounding like a voice, so when the
first trumpet sounds, it is
tantamount to the sound of an angel’s voice. Therefore, in the parable
of the Ten Virgins, when they hear a shout, it is
tantamount to the first trumpet.
This means the Ten Virgins are asleep during the
Seals of Satan’s
wrath.
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The
Great Endtime Revival will begin shortly after the first seal; the gentile Church
will struggle to unite and ultimately fail, because of all the bogus teachings and theology
they have collected throughout the age of grace that conflicts with the many denominations of
Christianity. Then
prior to the trumpet judgments, God will raise up His Two Witnesses
who raise up His 144,000, who will lead the gentile Church into one
faith and one truth, which will lead them into the
wilderness and victory over Satan. Both the wise and the
foolish will awaken at the first trumpet, but the foolish will not be
prepared for revival. God will require them to have a genuine faith in
Jesus that exceeds a broken-down religious representation of faith. When God calls
them to trim their lamps, the wise will shine in a darkened world, but
the foolish will realize their lamps are fading and will walk away from
God by their own volition. This will happen during the
seven trumpets, when God hides His Church in the wilderness.
This parable means two things: (1) the
foolish virgins will fail to participate in the endtime revival; (2) consequently, they will fail to participate in the Rapture. At the
seventh (last) trumpet the dead will rise first, starting with the Two
Witnesses
who have been killed by their enemies, and then the Rapture will occur. The foolish virgins will
come banging on the door crying for God to open up for them, and He will tell
behind the door, “I never
knew you.”
A
time is coming when we will need to have a personal relationship with
God or we will side with the antichrist. We want God to use His Rapture to deliver us from adversity, but God wants to use adversity as a
catalyst for growth, requiring us to trust Him through the coming
tribulation. He wants to keep us here, because He has plans on using us
to derail the kingdom of antichrist as an opportunity to prove for the
sake of eternity that the goodness of God dressed in the frailty of
human flesh triumphs over the power of evil. The lesson He
earnestly desires to prove to Satan and to the rest of His creation is that rebellion
is a really bad choice, and that the attributes of God encapsulate the
absolute truth, not just because He said so, but because He proved it…
twice, first through the flesh of His Son on the cross, and a second
time through the flesh of His beloved people. Are you ready to defend
God’s truth with your life?
God
has the perfect opportunity to fulfill Scripture by leaving us here
among our enemies, knowing that difficulties will foster
unity, which is all God has ever wanted for His people, and we have yet
to realize it. If the Rapture doesn’t occur in a timely fashion many
"Christians" will get mad at God and quit believing in
Him. Remember, God allowed Daniel to be thrown into the lion’s den for
continuing to worship his God against the law of the land. Also,
Shadrach, Meshach and Aded-nego were thrown into a furnace of fire,
refusing to worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar set up
(analogous to rejecting the mark of the beast and refusing to worship
his image). This is the attitude God wants to instill in His people;
listen to their statement of faith:
Shadrach,
Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do
not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown
into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it,
and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not,
we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship
the image of gold you have set up." Dan 3,16-18
Note
that God did not deliver Shadrach, Meshach and Aded-nego, or Daniel, or
Moses from their trials, but through them. Therefore, it shouldn’t
surprise us that this is God’s plan of deliverance for the last
days. Had they read their Bibles a little closer, they would have known
better than to teach the Rapture as God’s tool of deliverance, for God intends to use suffering as a way
of escape. God’s only
promise of the Rapture was that He would delay, but this is not what the
Church wants to hear, so they have done what Paul prophesied they would
do in 2Tim 4-3,4, “The time will come when they will not endure sound
doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate
for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; and will
turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths”
NASB. Now that the Church has removed the threat of personally
experiencing the horrors of endtime prophecy from their theology, people
don’t have to prepare for hardship, so they no longer need to take
their faith seriously, freeing them to live anyway they choose. While it
is true that God will not judge His people along with the unbelieving
world, that doesn’t mean He has to Rapture the Church, any more than
He Raptured Abraham’s brother, Lot and his family during the judgment
of Sodom and Gomorrah, or Moses and the Israelites during the plagues of
Egypt. Rather, He instructed Lot and his family to flee from the city into the wilderness, and he instructed Moses to remain in the land
of Goshen.
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Contrary
to popular belief, the Church will be here to see Satan’s Mark of the
Beast, which proves two things: (1) a massive spiritual revival
unlike the world has ever seen will occur in the last days (see: Joel 2-28;
Rev 7,9-17), in that the whole purpose of the mark is to expose
Christians for the purpose of rounding them up for execution. (2) It
also proves that the Rapture has not yet
occurred, since you cannot have the antichrist rounding up Christians that
don’t exist. God would not Rapture a disorderly mob
of undisciplined scoffers, nor would Satan be
concerned about them. Instead, God intends to present to Himself a Church
without spot or wrinkle or any such thing short of being holy and
blameless (Eph 5-27). This requires a spiritual revival that will pull
together those who presently reside in the Church, who love the Lord and
are willing to repent of their religious complacency, while adding
millions more to their numbers. There are those who would tell us that
if there were such an endtime revival, it would pertain to those who
were left behind from the Rapture, but they don’t understand the
magnitude of this revival, that it is far greater than a mere remnant. Those who
are left behind, who are saved after the Rapture will be a mere drop in
the bucket compared to God’s plan of filling up his kingdom at the end
of the age (see Luke chapter 14). An early Rapture cannot account for the following passage that predicts a massive influx of souls into the kingdom.
After
this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one
could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing
before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white
robes and were holding palm branches in their hands…. Then one of the
elders asked me, "These in white robes-who are they, and where did
they come from?" I answered, "Sir, you know." And he
said, "These are they who have come out of the great tribulation;
they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the
Lamb. Rev 7,9-14 NIV
This
passage is a description of those who were Raptured, not of the
remnant who were left behind, and it says that they came from the Great
Tribulation. These are tribulation saints. Do you remember the story of Samson,
whose strength was in proportion to the length of his hair? In Old
Testament times, people attributed greatness with the number of people
they killed, but in New Testament times the Church attributes greatness
to the number of people that get saved. Thinking about it in this
way makes the story of Samson an analogy for the endtime revival. As the
story goes, the enemies of Samson recruited Delilah to tease the truth
from him regarding the source of his strength so they could bind him
with fetters, and he finally gave into her seductions and revealed his
secret to her, after which she cut off his hair while he was asleep, and
the guards who were waiting outside quickly bound him and hauled him to
the king’s dungeon. However, Samson’s enemies didn’t notice that
over time his hair started to grow long again, and he was starting to
regain his strength, but instead of immediately destroying his enemies,
Samson waited for their biggest annual feast, which they celebrated in
the town cathedral, and when they displayed him as their showpiece,
tying him between two pillars, he used his growing strength to pull down
the pillars that held him, and the whole building fell on everyone,
killing them all, including Samson. In this way he killed more people in
his death than throughout his whole life (Judges 16-30). This is the way
it will be with the Church in the last days. More people will be saved
during the time of the end than throughout all of Church history.
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This
throng of people described in Rev 7,9-14 is more than a remnant; it
is the entire Church at the end of the age. There is convincing evidence pinpointing the
scheduled sequence of the Rapture between the trumpets and the bowls of
God’s wrath, in that the Bible explicitly says that the Last Trumpet signals
the Rapture. In contrast, pre-trib rapture theorists expect it to occur before the
Seals of Satan’s wrath. They
support their view mostly on the premise that the Church is never
mentioned again after Revelation chapter three, but this is false; and
even if it were true, it wouldn't prove anything. Those who predict an early Rapture
are at risk of abandoning their faith
from frustration and discouragement, because they didn't prepare their
heart to go through the tribulation. Falling away from the faith is the
most common consequence of false doctrine; we should avoid it like the
plague. When His
disciples asked Him to elaborate on His scenario of endtimes, Jesus'
first and foremost advice was, “See to it that no one misleads you”
(Mat 24-4 NASB). The apostle Paul had the same advice:
Now we
request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and our gathering together to Him [the Rapture], that you may
not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a
spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the
day of the Lord has come. Let no one in any way deceive you, for it [the
day of the Lord] will not come unless the apostasy comes first,
and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who
opposes and exalts himself above every so-called God or object of
worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying
himself as being God. Do you remember that while I was with you I was
telling you these things? And you know what restrains him now, so that
in his time, he may be revealed. For the mystery of lawlessness is
already at work; only he who now restrains him will do so
until he is taken out of the way. And then that lawless
one will be revealed, whom the Lord will slay with the breath of his
mouth and bring to and end by the appearance of his coming. (2The
2,1-8; NASB; emphasis added)
Some define the
apostasy as the appearing of Satan in the flesh, and others define it as the
Church falling away of the faith; still others attribute “the Day of the Lord” to mean God's fiery judgment.
In fact,
these all refer to the same time period. Pre-trib
advocates use 2The 2,1-8 as a cornerstone of their theology, sealing
their early Rapture beliefs in solid rock, so they think. However, we
should notice that Paul used the phrases "gathering together to Him" and
"Day of the
Lord" in the same context, even within the same sentence, indicating
they are synonymous. They ignore Paul alluding to the antichrist
entering the temple as an event that occurs before the Rapture, proving
that the Church will be here to see the antichrist come to power and
experience the Seals of Satan’s wrath (Revelation chapter six).
Therefore, since the Bible states that our gathering
together to Him clearly refers to the Rapture, and that it comes after the
man of lawlessness is revealed, then why do pre-trib believers still lean on
this passage to support their early Rapture doctrine?
Scripture
clarifies that the Day
of the Lord involves a time of punishment and terror, and it is
also equated with the Great Endtime Revival. It says, “And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will
prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see
visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my
Spirit in those days” (Joel 2-28,29). This is the revival; then he
continues in Joel 2,30-32, “I will show wonders in the heavens and on
the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned
to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and
dreadful day of the LORD. And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD
will be saved.” According to Joel, we can’t have the Day of the Lord
without a Great Endtime Revival, so the Church will certainly be here to see
the moon turn blood red, which epitomizes the last days. Rev 6,12-14
also speaks of this, “I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was
a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat
hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to
earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind.
The sky receded like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island
was removed from its place.” Some say that the sixth Seal marks the
Day of the Lord/Rapture, but 1Cor 15-52 says it will occur at the Last
Trumpet.
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The
key that unlocks the knowledge of the Seals, the Trumpets and the Bowls
is to understand how they pertain to the Day of the Lord and what they
are intended to accomplish. The Seals pertain to Satan’s wrath against
mankind and especially against the Church. The Trumpets will follow the
Seals as a microcosm of the Bowls, as punishment for martyring the saints. It will affect one third of the earth, meaning
there will be ample space to hide the Church from His Trumpet judgments against the unbelieving world for rejecting
Christ presented to them through signs, wonders and miracles
during the Great Endtime Revival. When the world refuses to repent after
the Trumpets, the bowls will ensue, which will blanket the earth in a
bloodbath with no place to hide the saints, thus the reason for the
Rapture.
Second
Thessalonians chapter two never indicates the identity of the person
described as “he,” when it says, “he who now restrains him will do
so until he is taken out of the way.” The NASB is very meticulous in its use of the word
“he”; whenever it is referring to God, "He" is always
capitalized, but
the word “he” is not capitalized in this passage. Admittedly, that
doesn’t prove much. It could have been a typo, or maybe even a
passive interpretation by the translators, but neither does it support the
pre-tribulation argument. Pre-trib believers assume that “he” is
referring to the Holy Spirit restraining the antichrist from coming to
power, which makes good sense, but is it true? No, the sequence is
wrong! Paul said the man of lawlessness must come first, but pre-trib advocates insist that the Rapture
comes first.
Pre-trib
advocates also say when “he”, the Holy Spirit, is taken out of the
way, “then that lawless one will be revealed…” Of course they say
that “taken out of the way” refers to the Rapture, so
according to them the Holy Spirit is taken from the world. All pre-trib advocates
know that Jesus would never
leave us or forsake us, according to Heb 13-5 and Mat 28-20, and they
also know that no one can be saved without the Holy Spirit (Jn 14,16-21;
Jn 15,1-11), yet they have the Holy Spirit leaving the world and letting
God’s people fend for themselves, who are "left behind".
Most Pre-trib advocates also allow for an endtime
revival, but they think it will occur after the Rapture. In other
words, after the Holy Spirit leaves the world with the Church, they
expect a revival. How can you have people getting saved without the Holy
Spirit? Perhaps they believe this because their own salvation has
nothing to do with the Holy Spirit. They say that the Holy Spirit
will return after the Rapture, but there is no Scriptural support for any of these claims.
To
attribute the word “he” to the Holy Spirit doesn’t work, because
God would never remove the Holy Spirit, especially not while people are
being saved. Therefore, the question remains, who is “he?” It would
actually be better to ascribe “he” to the dragon (Satan), though
it may not seem immediately intuitive until you bring in other verses to
show the correlation. The apostle Paul called Satan the “prince of the
power of the air” in Eph 2-2, suggesting that he spiritually resides
above mankind in authority and power in his ability to influence
humanity on a subconscious level. This enables him to see the big
picture as god of this world (John 14-30; 2Cor 4-4). The Bible says that
in the last days Satan will lose his lofty position through a spiritual
battle that will ensue between the angels of God and Satan’s minions,
the fate of which will be in the prayers of the Church. Jesus defeated
Satan on a spiritual level at the cross; now it will become an angelic
battle to destroy Satan in the world, powered by the prayers of the
saints with the souls of humanity hanging in the balance.
And
there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the
dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong
enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled
down-that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the
whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with
him… When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he
pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. The woman was
given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place
prepared for her in the desert, where she would be taken care of for a
time, times and half a time, out of the serpent's reach. Rev
12,7-9,13,14 NIV
Then he
[an angel] continued, "Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first
day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself
before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to
them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days.
Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was
detained there with the king of Persia. Now I have come to explain to
you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision
concerns a time yet to come." Dan 10,12-14 NIV
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This
statement about Satan being “hurled to the earth, and his angels with
him” is the same as being “taken out of the way” (2The 2-7). The passages above depict a spiritual battle that transpires beyond
our human perception. Revelation chapter 12 describes the original battle
in heaven long before man was created, but it is mentioned in
context with the last days, bringing across the point that a mirror
image of evicting Satan from heaven will once again occur; only this
time he will be removed from the heavens surrounding the earth, symbolic
of social consciousness. The concept of being thrown to the earth is
that of being extricated from the spirit realm, suggesting that the
moment Satan is expelled, he will be forced to take on human flesh. This suggests that Satan doesn’t
really want to possess the antichrist, and since it
is far more effective to rule the world as Satan, the dragon prefers to
remain in the spirit, until this option is taken from him by God’s
angelic supremacy. There are certain risks of exposure and limitations
associated with possessing human flesh. Demons need to remain in the
underworld, hidden from view to be truly effective, suggesting that when
Satan possesses the antichrist, it is a sign that he is on the run! There is one
more verse in the book of Daniel that dovetails with the subject of
Satan being pushed in a corner, evicted from the spirit realm and forced to possess the
antichrist.
The
first was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle. I watched until
its wings were torn off and it was lifted from the ground so that it
stood on two feet like a man, and the heart of a man was given to it.
Dan 7-4 NIV
This
lion in Daniel’s dream represents Satan’s antichrist, which had the
wings of an eagle, enabling him to hold his office as prince of the
power of the air. Then his wings were torn from him during the angelic
fray and given to the saints, who became the princess of the power
of the air, after gaining access to the spirit realm through prayer,
implying that they wielded tremendous influence during the great endtime
revival through
their message of faith in Jesus Christ and the hope of eternal life.
*
* *
* *
*
Looking closely at Second Thessalonians chapter two, we saw that
it not
only did a lousy job of proving a Pre-Tribulation Rapture; it actually
proved that it will happen
closer to the end of the tribulation. The bowls of God’s judgment are
thus not part of the tribulation, for the Tribulation inherently
involves the saints. This means the bowls are poured on the earth after
the Rapture and are therefore technically not part of the
tribulation. Moreover, there are other verses that more succinctly place
the Rapture at the end of the trumpets, thus before the bowls.
According
to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are
left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who
have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven,
with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the
trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that,
we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them
in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the
Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words”
1The 4,15-18 NIV.
1
Thessalonians chapter 4 is by far the most specific passage in the Bible
about the Rapture. As previously mentioned, a shout from an angel or
from the Lord Himself is tantamount to a trumpet blast. First
Thessalonians chapter four says that the Rapture will occur after the
dead are raised, which happens after a trumpet blast, but which one?
I
declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be
changed- in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we
will be changed. (1Cor 15,50-53 NIV emphasis added)
So,
the First Resurrection/Rapture will occur at the last trumpet. That's
not too hard to understand; in fact, some say that it is too easy, in
that Jesus warned that no one knows the day nor the hour. However,
although we know that the Rapture occurs at the Last Trumpet, we still
don't know the day or the hour.
Chapter
List
All we have to do now is
find in Revelation where it speaks
of the seventh and last trumpet and look for evidence of a Rapture. If
there is a verse in the Bible that speaks about the resurrection of
the dead in conjunction with the Last Trumpet, we would be well on our
way to understanding God’s plan for the Church in the last days. There
happens to
be a passage that fits this description regarding the Two Witnesses who
were killed and then raised from the dead just prior to the Last
Trumpet, suggesting that these Two Witnesses were not the only
ones to be resurrected at that time, but were first fruits of the First
Resurrection (Rev 14-4). The Two Witnesses will lead the Church in
victory over death, rising first in the presence of their enemies,
preceding the Rapture of the saints. Before examining the passage below there is another verse that sheds light on the
fact that the Rapture occurs shortly after the seventh trumpet. Rev 10-7
states, “But in the days when the seventh angel is about to sound his
trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he announced
to his servants the prophets” NIV. The mystery of God is the Church in
the world (Eph 3,3-7 & 1Tim 3-9). Therefore, Rev 10-7 alludes
to the miracle of the Church finishing its purpose in the world and
consequently being Raptured. The following passage proves it.
But
after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them,
and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them. Then
they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, "Come up
here." And they went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies
looked on. At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth
of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the
earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God
of heaven. The second woe has passed [trumpet judgments]; the third woe
[the bowls] is coming soon. The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and
there were loud voices in heaven, which said: "The kingdom of the
world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will
reign for ever and ever." Rev 11,11-15 NIV
Within
five verses all three key elements of the Rapture were mentioned: (1) There was
a shout saying, “Come up here” (Jn 5-28,29). (2) The Two Witnesses
were raised from the dead denoting the First Resurrection. (3) The Last
Trumpet sounded and there were loud voices proclaiming the beginning of
God’s eternal reign, implying that everyone was present and
accounted-for in the kingdom of God, thus depicting the Rapture.
1Corinthians
15 is both more specific and more general in its details about the Rapture
than 1The 4,13-18. It is specific in that it specifies the Last
Trumpet, indicating that there is more than one, which should open
our mind to understand that Paul was referring to Revelation’s seven
trumpets. However, it is general in that it doesn’t say
how long after the dead are raised that the Rapture occurs, but
then, neither does 1Thessalonians 4, which merely promises it will occur
“After that.” Jesus described the moment in this way, “No one
knows the day, nor the hour” (Mat 24-36), suggesting that we will know
the year and possibly even the month, meaning that the time of the
Rapture will become more obvious the closer we get to it.
Based
on the above verses, the events of the Rapture will unfold according to
the following sequence:
1)
The two witnesses will rise from the dead in the presence of their
enemies (Rev 11,7-17)
2)
The last trumpet will sound (1Cor 15,50-56)
3)
The dead in Christ will be raised imperishable and ascend to heaven
following the Two Witnesses (1The 4,15-18)
4)
The Rapture of the Church will occur. (Mat 24,29-31)
Listen
to Jesus’ own words about the sequence of endtime events, involving
the Rapture.
But
immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened
and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the
sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of
the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the
earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds
of the sky with power and great glory. And he will send forth His angels
with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the
four winds, from one end of the sky to the other. (Mat 24,29-31
NASB)
Chapter
List
These
verses clearly speak of the Rapture, and look when Jesus said it would
happen, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days.” It
sounded
like our Master just said the Rapture would occur after the tribulation.
In fact, that’s exactly what He said. Unfortunately, we have to put on
the breaks here, because pre-tribers say these verses are
not referring to the Rapture at all, but to a time after that when Jesus
comes to establish His millennial kingdom on the earth. They defend
their view with other translations of the Bible that use the word
“heaven” in place of “sky” in the phrase, “…from one end of
heaven to the other” KJV. They say that this passage is referring to
Jesus collecting His saints from actual heaven and
bringing them to the earth to set up His millennial kingdom. The
question we need to ask ourselves is who interpreted this passage and
who simply read it for what it says? Solid advice to
interpreting the Bible is: don’t! The more we jam Scripture into our pet doctrines, the more
we stray from the truth.
There
will be many earthquakes in the last days, but there will be two major ones to fulfill
endtime prophecy: one at the end of the seals and one at the end of the bowls.
What, then, happens at the end of the Trumpets? This period is the most
mysterious time of all endtime prophecy, in that the Bible is
intentionally silent about what happens then, why? God knew that people
would invent the Pre-Tribulation Rapture hoax to avoid feeling the need
to prepare for endtimes, and the Lord's attitude about that is if they
don't want to prepare to meet Him, then He will let them concoct
theology that excuses them from the Lord's table (Lk 14,16-24).
The earthquake at the end of
the seals promises to rock the mountains, while the earthquake at the
end of the bowls promises to remove them altogether and fill all the
valleys in preparation of the Millennium, so something happens at the
end of the Trumpets that is of midrange severity, fitting the pattern of escalating judgments,
but what? A great asteroid will hit the earth (about six miles in
diameter), triggering the earthquake
that occurs at the end of the Bowls
acting as God’s grand finale. Jesus
said that the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, an ash
plume. Jesus promised to come on the clouds, but He did specify what
kind of clouds. The ash plume of a volcano moves very
slowly, taking possibly months to wrap around the earth, whereas the ash
plume of an asteroid could easily circle the globe in a matter of hours,
because of the extreme energy behind it.
It is fun to imagine Jesus coming for His bride on white, puffy clouds,
but He was more likely referring to the dark, foreboding kind in keeping
with the mood of the day. God has hidden behind such clouds in the
past, namely on Mount Sinai after Israel's exile from Egypt.
On the
morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick
cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the
camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with
God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered
with smoke, because the LORD descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed
up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled
violently, and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder. Then
Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him. Ex 19,16-19 NIV
This
is an account of God introducing Himself to the children of Israel even
with a trumpet blast. It also had earthquakes, and smoke capable of
blocking out the sun, turning the moon blood red, which is by far the
most common description of the last days throughout the Old and New
Testaments (Isa 13-10; Isa 24-23; Ezek 32-7; Joel 2-10; Joel 2,28-32;
Joel 3,14-17; Mat 24,29-31; Mark 13,24-27; Luke 21,25-28; Acts 2,16-21;
Rev 8-12). For this to be mentioned so many times throughout Scripture,
in each case having the context of endtime prophecy, makes this ash plum
the unquestionable “sign of the Son of Man [that] will appear in the
sky” (Mat 24-30). An asteroid that strikes the earth so violently
that it wraps an ash plume around the earth accounts for many if not all
the judgments of the bowls that happen after this event. So, when we
hear a heavenly trumpet sound, and see a giant asteroid dashing across
the sky and a massive ash plume enveloping the horizon, we can know for
certain that the moment has come to finally meet the One who loved us
and gave His life for us. Little did Israel know that when God
introduced Himself for the first time to His people on the top of Mount
Sinai, it stood as a poignant analogy of the second coming of Christ,
only instead of hiding from His chosen people behind a cloud of smoke as
on Mount Sinai so that the children of Israel could not see His face, He
will invite His people behind the veil that hides His glory
from the world.
Chapter
List
In
summary, God is keeping the Church here for a few good reasons. First,
He is using His people to do battle with the dragon (Satan) to prove
that good triumphs over evil, even dressed in the weakness of sinful flesh. Second, He is keeping the Church here as an act of mercy, giving the
world time and opportunity to repent for those who
have not taken the Mark of the Beast. The Two Witnesses
raised up the 144,000 Jews, and the gentiles will have ended their
millennial religious schisms and finally repented of their
disobedience and united around the ministry of the 144,000 Jews to
become part of the Great Endtime Revival. The two witnesses have sent
plagues on the earth in response to the world’s unbelief, and after they
were killed, God raised them from the dead and ascended to heaven before
the eyes of all the world, which will witness the First Resurrection of the dead in
Christ, rising from their tombs. They have
seen entire books of the Bible coming to pass; still they will not repent.
The bowls of God judgment will prove His measuring rod to be very
severe.
There
is a definite sequence of endtime events: Global economic collapse >
Persecution > Revival > Mark of the Beast > Rapture. The Mark of the
Beast will have an inadvertent side-affect of
purging the Church of false brethren, who would not dare associate with
the very people the antichrist has targeted for extermination. These are
the ones who know that receiving the mark will condemn their souls to
hell, but don’t want a genuine relationship with Christ either. They
are the five foolish virgins. They refused to take the Mark of the
Beast; that is what made them virgins, but they also refused a
relationship with Christ; that is what made them foolish (Mat 25,1-13).
God will require every member of His body to have a relationship with
Him, expressed as God's seal on their foreheads (Rev 7-3), as a means of surviving
the Great Tribulation, which is what the five foolish virgins lacked. They will leave
the true believers in search of oil for their lamps, instead will find the dragon, who is
searching for
stragglers wandering from God. Jesus prophesied in the
parable of the Ten Virgins that half the
contemporary Church (the five foolish virgins) will be "left
behind".
According
to the parable of the Ten Virgins, ironically and sadly,
the majority of the foolish virgins will be Pre-Tribulation Rapture advocates, by evidence of how little oil they brought with
them, as a measuring their prediction of Christ’s return. They will be awakened
by the shout of their Master’s voice, realizing only then that their
relationship with Christ was reduced to a mere flicker with no oil in
reserve to keep the flame burning. Innocent as it may seem, can it be any clearer that the
Pre-Tribulation Rapture doctrine is heresy? As the antichrist comes to power and
millions of Christians are martyred, a large segment of
the contemporary Church claiming to believe in Jesus will walk away
form the faith. It says that both the wise and the foolish were
spiritually asleep, so what separates the wise from the foolish? They were asleep to the lateness of the hour, for the end
of the age had come upon them without warning as God's voice rustled them
from their slumber, for He is coming to receive only those whose lamps
are lit.
Chapter
List
James
R. Wuthrich
www.jeansbiblestudy.com
The 7th Trumpet
Mystery of Iniquity
4 Reasons We Don't Believe in a
Pre-Tribulation Rapture
We Will be Radiant and Ready, Not Raptured and Removed
How can we defend Earth against asteroids?
For
further study on the Post-tribulation Rapture see commentary on this
website:
Mat
24,29-31
1Cor
15,50-58
1The
4,13-18
Rev
11,11-15
Review
other websites with similar Post-Tribulation Rapture views
COM
