.....................................................................
The Timing Of The Rapture
The Importance of Knowing When
“The things that are
about to happen on this earth are so significant that the question of whether
we will be around to experience them is perhaps the most important aspect of all
the prophecies to understand.”
Now that the characteristics
of the Return of Christ and the rapture have been defined in the previous
sections, one may wonder why it is so necessary to understand these things.
Is arguing over one event of
the last days, namely the rapture, really that important?
Despite the abundant evidence
provided in the Bible as to when this event will occur, does it matter whether
a person still believes that the rapture will happen in a pre-trib or mid-trib
sense rather than post-trib?
As we will see, the
importance of knowing when this occurs actually can affect your faith and
destiny.
On the surface, it may seem trivial as to what a person believes
about this event. After all, your opinion on the timing of the
rapture is not something that makes or breaks your standing with God.
As long as we realize that
Christ is coming and that all who believe in him will be saved, it might at
first appear superfluous to be concerned with such a small detail like when the rapture
will occur.
However, this was not the attitude that Jesus or the prophets
had when they taught on this subject.
God obviously believed that
their words were worth writing down and preserving for all time.
If the timing of the rapture
was just a minor point in the chronology of the last days, then the Bible would
not have bothered to mention it at all — and certainly not in an elaborate
series of prophecies that intricately correlate and build upon each other so
beautifully.
The importance of knowing when the timing of our deliverance
will occur is primarily emphasized in the seriousness of the events prophesied
to happen in the last days.
The things that are about to
happen on this earth are so significant that the question of whether we will be
around to experience them is perhaps the most important aspect of all the
prophecies to understand.
If the rapture was predicted
to occur before the last seven years or Daniel’s Seventieth Week even got
underway, then we would not need to concern ourselves with any of the events of
the end.
End Times prophecy would just
be an interesting subject that proves the reality of God, but not one that has
any real application to Christians’ lives today.
On the other hand, if
Christians are prophesied to go through the entire 3.5 year reign of the
Antichrist as well as the subsequent 3.5 year tribulation period, then the
importance of understanding the sequence of events and preparing for them
suddenly becomes acute.
Jesus actually spoke in dire terms when he described the
reaction that Christians will have to the events of the end.
The consequences for his
people if they are not prepared for the arrival of the End Times could be
devastating.
After describing the initial
conditions of the Last Days, this is how the Lord himself went on to prophesy
of what will happen to his followers:
“Then shall they
deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you; and ye shall be hated of
all nations for my name’s sake.
“And then shall many
be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.
“And many false
prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.
“And because iniquity
shall abound, the love of many shall grow cold.
“But he that shall
endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” Matthew
24:9-13
The danger of not understanding the timing of the rapture is not
merely that people might be left ignorant of interesting prophecies, but that
they could easily become offended if
the Lord does not deliver them at the time they had expected (e.g., before any
of the bad things begin to happen).
If your confidence in the
future rests in an instantaneous escape via the rapture, then your faith may
soon be broken by the alarming reality of the Antichrist’s rise to power.
When the Evil One suddenly
comes on the scene, the falseness of the pre-trib rapture position will hit
home like a ton of bricks.
Jesus predicted that
Christians at the end will be so embittered by being left to experience the
Antichrist’s reign that they will betray one another just to survive — even to
the point of seeing their former brothers and sisters in the Lord being put to
death!
Some people will be so surprised and shocked that the Lord did
not deliver them from the persecutions of the final seven years that many of
them will actually turn their back on God and decide to follow Satan’s man.
Do not underestimate the
temptation to obtain the Mark of the Beast. This desire will be much greater
than most Christians can imagine, and many will be caught unprepared to survive
without being able to buy or sell.
Imagine this situation: take
the Mark and you can have food and shelter and the world will treat you well; refuse
the Mark and you will have nothing — no safety or security for as long as you
are in this world.
If you combine this
temptation with the natural aversion to persecution and hardship, it won’t be
so surprising to see many believers fall away.
The fact is, if you’re not
spiritually and physically prepared to resist the deception of the coming
one-world government, then you may easily fall prey to the desire for
short-term gain.
This
is exactly what the Lord warned about. Remember, in another instance Jesus
said, “whosoever will save his life shall
lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it” (Matt. 16:25).
Notice, Jesus also states in the verses quoted above that only
those believers who endure
to the end will be saved.
The end means exactly what it
says — in other words you can’t have anything come after it.
We know that the end of this
age will be marked by the coming of Christ, so only at that point will the Lord
rescue his people and avenge the unrighteous deaths of his martyrs.
As a consequence, only those
people who remain faithful to him, either to the point of their own deaths or
until the very end of the age, will be raptured and saved from the wrath of
God. This is exactly why Paul told Christians that they should be careful not
to be deceived concerning the timing of this event (2 Thessalonians
2:1-3).
Being a follower of Christ in the Last Days will be difficult
enough, even without having misinformation cloud true Biblical prophecy.
Those who teach anything
other than the plain truth of the Bible run the risk of leading many of God’s
people straight into a false hope, which will soon explode right in their
faces.
If Christians would simply
believe the simple teachings of Jesus and his prophets and heed their warnings
concerning the end of the age, then nothing could possibly take us by surprise.
The importance of knowing
when these events will occur is truly just as critical as knowing what will
occur.
Only with a complete
knowledge of what’s going to happen followed by a realization that all of us
may have to go through the coming time of trouble can we hope to overcome the
world and survive with our faith intact and guarantee our eternal destiny.
With
this mindset we must now take the prophecies serious enough to actually apply
them to our lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment