THE COMING MESSIAH

      I believe it is now time to focus on the central theme of this book, the Day of the Lord and the return of Jesus Christ. What we have seen up to this point is an unveiling of earth shattering events and a fulfillment of all the prophesied signs concerning the coming of Christ. The supremacy of an evil trinity is now manifested upon this earth with a horrifying onslaught of the saints. Once ‘proclaimed’ Christians are now following the world and are betraying and turning in family members. I can picture in these last days all the saints who have been martyred for their faith, crying out to God to avenge their death (see Rev 6:9-10). I can see the Christians in prison camps being beaten and tortured to death. I can picture the blasphemies toward God and the disgrace of His name. And finally I can picture the Father, His patience at an end with this evil world, giving out a resounding shout,  "That's it ... I've had enough!!  Son, they're all yours!"

     What manifests at this point in time is mentioned in at least eleven specific places in scripture, and several inferred places. For brevity's sake, however, I think reading four of these passages will get the message across quite well:

      A celestial cataclysm now is released upon our universe. There are too many places in scripture directly stating that the sun and the moon will be darkened for this to be taken symbolically. The heavens are going to be shaken and the lights are going out! This is the precursive sign of the coming of the Son of Man. The nations will be in total perplexity and shock when, as written in Revelation, the stars fall from the heavens and the sky rolls up like a scroll. They will look at each other in amazement and faint from fear. As Isaiah and Zechariah put it:

       I believe it will be at this crisis that the world will realize there really is a God and He's not happy! From this point on there will no longer be any persecutions taking place, no buying and selling of commodities, no daily routine of any kind, only the cries of men for the rocks to fall on them and hide them from an angry God. The sky will be opened up and what will be revealed is our Lord Jesus coming upon the clouds. It is at this time that He will give the command shout and the trumpet of God will be blown and the angels will be instructed to gather His chosen ones from the four corners of the earth. Matthew gives a graphic chronology of this event:

      The one-world system is now at a close. The tribulation, or persecution, of those days has been terminated because of the elect's sake and the judgment of the nations is about to commence. But as we see in the above passage, before the earth is judged the chosen must be gathered together. It's as simple as Jesus' analogy of the days of Noah and Lot. “The righteous are removed - those remaining are judged”. Verses 29-31 above tell us that this gathering will be performed by angels, that it will be after the tribulation, and that it will be after the sun and the moon grow dark. Well, if this version of the end times is correct then the elect who survive the Great Persecution will witness, along with the nations, the sovereign dimming of the universal lights and the spectacular coming of the Son of Man in the clouds. (Talk about a grand entrance!) The chronology of Matthew is precise, and according to these verses the rapture of the Church, after the sun and moon darken, is the culminating event just prior to judgment being poured out upon the earth. The gospel of Luke describes this chain of events with inspiring optimism. I’m sure many of you have heard quoted the last section of Luke 21:28, where it says to “... look up, and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.”  But let’s look at the entire verse (which I rarely find ever being fully quoted). The entire verse of 28 says,”Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.”  Well, after reading the first part of the verse, the first question to ask yourself is, "What things?” What does it mean by “these things?’  We need to read the entire section above to find out what Jesus was trying to tell us.  

      Those of us who are left on the earth and are survivors of the Great Persecution can be comforted by this fact. After being hunted down and forced to survive in wilderness and desolate places, very soon we shall be able to lift up our heads and see our redemption drawing near as the Son of Man appears in the clouds to rapture His Church.

       For those readers who are not familiar with the term rapture, or are not sure if they should believe in such a thing, a brief background of this term might be in order at this time. The word Rapture is derived from Latin, and, although this word doesn't appear in scripture, it definitely draws its meaning from scripture. The term is used in Churches today to signify when Jesus will remove all the Christians off the face of the earth. But let's ask the simple question, “What is the purpose behind the rapture?” This is a very basic and pertinent question to ask. Why is Jesus collecting His people? Contrary to the ideas of many Christians the single, primary reason for the return of Jesus is not to rapture the Church. We believers are not the focal point for the objective of the Day of the Lord. I believe the Lord's plan does include the rescue of the Church, and all believers in Christ will be raptured at the Lord's coming, but the rapture is simply a necessary 'gathering' in order for Jesus to carry out judgment upon the world. (I actually prefer the term "The Gathering" over the term rapture. By saying just 'rapture' implies a leaving out of the resurrection.) I think some people have made the Second Coming a little too confusing when Jesus simplified it quite well. Remember, He said the coming of the Son of Man will be like in the days of Noah and Lot. He has to take His chosen ones out of the danger zone before destruction comes upon the wicked. And remember, on the day that Lot was sent out God rained destruction upon Sodom and Gomorrah. (He didn't have to wait between 3 1/2 - 7 years before destroying the unrighteous.) Below are some verses dealing with what I would call the Rapture of the Church and what it means to be raptured:

        In 1 Thessalonians 4 above Paul gives us a description of what will happen when “we...shall be caught up together”. This phrase in Greek is one word, 'harpagesometha', and the Greek root word, harpadzo, carries the meaning of being yanked away, grabbed, or caught up quickly. Fundamental churches of today refer to this being caught up as the Rapture. As mentioned above, I Corinthians 15 is a vivid illustration of our being transformed and seized away in the twinkling of an eye (raptured) following the coming of Jesus and the resurrection of the believers who have died in Christ. This rapture is almost simultaneous with the first resurrection (the resurrection of the saints who have died in Christ) and is carried out by the Lord's angels. The dead in Christ are resurrected into their glorified bodies, just as our Lord was, and those who are raptured are immediately transformed into their new bodies. Contrary to popular views, however, this event is not going to be “silent and secret”. There is a concept among many Christians today, probably due to watching certain end times movies, that believers everywhere will be secretly raptured and the world will not discover their absence until they are missed. This implies that when Jesus gathers His church He doesn't want any unbeliever to know that He is taking His bride.  What I read, from the above verses however, is that the Lord will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the resounding trumpet of God. This is a complete antithesis of the ‘silent and secret’ rapture theory. Speaking of trumpets, there are too many places in scripture that tell us this blowing of the trumpet, which I believe is the same one mentioned above in I Thessalonians 4 and Matthew 24, will be an audible trumpet and it will be blown along with the shout of a command. As we read below:

      These verses above, as well as the ones mentioned earlier, do not give the impression that this trumpet, signaling the resurrection and gathering of the saints, is inaudible. Rather, this trumpet is a signal that the Day of the Lord has arrived and all people will hear it; the elect, the remnant of Israel, and the wicked. We read in the above verses that when the trumpet is sounded all the inhabitants of the land will tremble because the Day of the Lord is at hand. Proponents of a silent rapture view, however, say that the rapture is secret and that no one will hear the trumpet except those being taken up. Thus the world will not tremble because it will be oblivious to any sign that the end of the world is here, or that an act of God was just performed. Some of the pretrib advocates even go so far as to create a ‘double rapture’ theory, to explain those who are taken up (The Gathering Together).  In Matthew 24:31 and Mark 13:27 it states that the angels will 'gather together' the elect from the farthest parts of earth to the farthest parts of heaven. Well, according to pretrib views, if the Christians are already gone and the Jewish remnants remain on the earth during the retribution period (see Revelation 7:3-8), then who are these ‘elect’ the angels are gathering together? Someone here is being gathered from the earth. (They probably say it's the tribulation saints...thus a ‘double rapture’ theory)

     For now let me leave one last thought on this subject. Remember, according to Paul's version of the rapture, I Corinthians 15 states we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet (no more trumpets blow after this). Therefore, the trumpet mentioned in I Corinthians 15 has to be the same one as in I Thessalonians 4 and Matthew 24, all of which signal the return of Jesus and the rapture of the Church.

      Now I would like to move on to what happens on this earth after the rapture of the Church.

To next chapter - After the Transformation

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