SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/28/2015
10:39 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
Rapture Questions and Answers
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Revelation
19:11-21
Message of the
verses: I mentioned at the
conclusion of our last SD which was done on Saturday Sept. 26, 2015 that we were
going to look at the different ways that people view when the Rapture of the
church will take place. This is
important because as we are now studying the actual second coming of Jesus
Christ to planet earth we need to know the differences between the two events. First of all I want to say that I have always
believed that the Rapture of the Church will take place before the Tribulation
period, although it is not known exactly how long after the Rapture that the
Tribulation period will begin. Remember
that we wrote that the Tribulation period begins when the Antichrist signs a
mutual defense pact with the nation of Israel for seven years and this is seen
in the ninth chapter of the book of Daniel, something we have looked at before
in our study of Revelation and also in our study of Daniel that was done a
couple of years ago. As mentioned there
are other views on this subject as to when the Rapture will take place. John F. Walvoord wrote a book entitled “The Rapture Question” many
years ago, and has since updated it as there are even more views as to when it
will take place. This book gives many of
the views of when the Rapture will take place and if further study is wanted to
be done this is a good tool to use.
The Second Coming of Jesus Christ to planet earth and the
Rapture are two different events. John
chapter fourteen and verse three says “"If I go and prepare a place for
you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you
may be also.” This verse speaks of the
Rapture along with 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 “13 But we do not want you to be
uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve
as do the rest who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose
again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. 15
For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and
remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen
asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the
voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will
rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with
them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with
the Lord. 18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.” This also speaks of the Rapture and it was
last year that I studied both letters that Paul wrote to the Thessalonians that
this was covered in more detail. The
date of that SD was on July 5, 2014 if anyone cares to look at that.
One of the distinctions that make these two events
different is that the Lord Jesus Christ will come from heaven to the air above
the earth, and I am told that it will not be too high above the earth as we are
told that He is in the clouds so not really too high above the earth. The second coming will see Christ come to
planet earth and land on the Mount of Olives, the exact place where He left to
go to heaven. Zechariah 14:4 says “In that day His feet will stand on the Mount
of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in its
middle from east to west by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain
will move toward the north and the other half toward the south.” I learned many years ago that this site
around the Mount of Olives has a very large fault under it as they were looking
for oil in this area and found this fault.
It is waiting for the foot of Jesus.
The view that many believers hold as to when the Rapture
takes place is called the Pretribulational Rapture, meaning that there will
indeed be a Tribulation and that the Rapture will take place before the return
of Christ at the end of the Tribulation.
Other views are the Posttribulational view meaning that both the Rapture
and the Second Coming come at the same time.
John MacArthur quotes Thomas R. Edgar which we will also quote for this
SD.
“What can be the purpose for keeping a remnant alive
through the tribulation so that some of the church survive and then take them
out of their situation and make them the same as those who did not
survive? Why keep them for this? [The}
explanation that they provide an escort for Jesus does not hold up. Raptured living saints will be exactly the
same as resurrected dead saints. Why
cannot the dead believers fulfill this purpose?
Why w=keep a remnant alive [through the Tribulation], then rapture them
and accomplish no more than by letting them die? There is no purpose or accomplishment in
[such] a rapture.
“With all the saints of all the ages past and the armies
[of angels] in heaven available as escorts and the fact that [raptured] saints
provide no different escort than if they had been killed, why permit the church
to suffer immensely, most believers [to] be killed, and spare a few for a
rapture which has no apparent purpose, immediately before the [Tribulation]
periods ends?...Is this the promise? You
will suffer, be killed, but I will keep a few alive, and take them out just
before the good times come. Such
reasoning, of course, calls for some explanation fo the apparent lack of
purpose for a Posttribulational rapture of any sort.
“We can note the following:
(1)
An unusual,
portentous, one-time event such as the rapture must have a specific
purpose. God has purposes for His
actions. This purpose must be on that
can be accomplished only by such an unusual event as a rapture of living
saints.
(2)
This purpose
must agree with God’s general principles of operation.
(3)
There is little
or no apparent reason to rapture believers when the Lord returns and just prior
to setting up the long-awaited kingdom with all of its joyful prospects.
(4)
There is good
reason to deliver all who are already believers from the tribulation, where
they would be special targets of persecution.
(5)
To deliver from
a period of universal trial and physical destruction such as the tribulation
requires a removal from the earth by death or rapture. Death is not appropriate as a promise in Rev.
3:10.
(6)
Deliverance
from the tribulation before it starts agrees with God previous dealings with
Noah and Lot and is directly stated as a principle of God’s action toward
believers in 2 Pet. 2:9.”
I
would like to give another reason why the rapture will not take place at the
same time as the Second coming and that is the promise of a Millennial kingdom
that is mentioned in chapter 20 of Revelation and is promised to the Jews in
many places of the Old Testament. Now if
the Rapture and the Second coming took place at the same time there would be no
mortals left to populate the Millennial kingdom for all believes would then
have glorified bodies and could not have children. Another reason is that in Matthew chapter 25
we read of Christ separating the sheep and the goats when He returns to planet
earth and if all the sheep were raptured then the only thing left would be the
goats.
I
am not going to go into any other views of when the Rapture will take place,
but one of the reasons, among many that I believe in a Pretribulational Rapture
is found in the ninth chapter of the book of Daniel, something that I have
already mentioned. In the last portion
of this great chapter we see Daniel given a period of time that certain things
must take place. It begins with a
specific event and then ends with another event with seven years left on this
what I would like to call a big stop watch.
This stop watch has 490 years on it and begins in Nehemiah chapter two
and 483 years later to the very day Jesus Christ rides into Jerusalem on a
donkey and says the following to the crowd “41 When He approached Jerusalem, He
saw the city and wept over it, 42
saying, "If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace!
But now they have been hidden from your eyes (Luke 19:41-42).” This day was 173,880 days after the event
that took place in Nehemiah chapter two.
We see that there are seven years left on this stop watch, the very
seven years that God will once again deal with the Jews during the Tribulation
Period, and so this is another reason that I see as the church being gone from
the scene when the Tribulation period is going on. Jesus told the believers in the church of Philadelphia
“’Because you have kept the word of My perseverance, I also will keep you from
the hour of testing, that hour which is about to come upon the whole world, to
test those who dwell on the earth.”
With
this we conclude the introduction to the second coming of Jesus Christ and will
in our next SD look at the verses in Revelation 19 that tell about it.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I am thankful as
the return of Christ continues to draw near that His promise shows me that I
will not be going through the Tribulation Period.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Be ready to tell others of this great truth
and how they can be a part of it.
Answer to our last Bible
question: “Jesus” (Matthew 14:31).
Today’s Bible
question: “During the time of Hezekiah
what country fought against Judah?”
Answer in our next SD.
9/28/2015 11:46 AM
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