Eternal life resides in Jesus and in Him alone. No one else! This is true now and will also be the case after Jesus removes His true church from the earth.
In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
What do people need the most? The answer remains the same as it’s always been: A clear understanding of the Gospel. By this I mean that people need Jesus, not the one that so many today create in their mind but but the One revealed on the pages of Scripture.
Jesus is coming for His saints, for us, before the start of this awful period in human history.
In the points below, I review the previous signposts that have led to our destination. I believe that combined they provide a solid scriptural foundation for placing the rapture before the start of the day of the Lord.
This brings us to our next signpost on the path to establishing a biblical basis for the pretribulation rapture: church history. The purpose of this signpost is not to justify our belief in the pretribulation rapture on the basis of history nor is it to convince those who reject it on this faulty basis.
Rather, my intent is to provide those who already believe in the rapture with evidence of a belief in it from church history.
Premillennialists regard the book of Revelation as future prophecy, the very thing it claims to be (22:18). As we have acknowledged from the beginning of this series, a discussion of where to place the rapture only makes sense within premillennialism, which maintains beliefs in a literal tribulation and a thousand year reign of Jesus on earth before the millennium.
This brings us to our next signpost on our way to establishing a biblical basis for a pretribulation rapture: Absence. The book of Revelation excludes the church from judgments of the tribulation.
When Jesus comes for His church, will He leave any true believer behind on the earth to endure the horrors of the tribulation?
Some say yes. They claim Jesus will only catch up believers who are watching for His appearing or those walking with Him at the time. In other words, the Lord will leave behind saints lacking in some way.
This teaching contradicts both the Gospel and God’s Word.
As we saw in our last signpost, the false report informing the Thessalonians that the day of the Lord had already begun put these new believers in a state of severe panic (see signpost #6). In response,
This brings us to the next word on our signposts: “Restrainer.” Why is this word so significant? A key event at the start of the tribulation, the revealing of the antichrist, cannot happen until God removes the Restrainer who is currently holding back his unveiling to the world.
No, you have not taken a wrong turn on our journey toward establishing a biblical basis for the pretribulation rapture. The word “panic,” our next signpost, confirms that the Thessalonian saints expected the Lord to come for them before the start of the day of the Lord,
First, let’s back up a bit and set the stage for Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians. With the ink scarcely dry on the parchment of the apostle’s first letter to them, false teachers forged a message to these new believers telling them the day of the Lord had already begun.
A news story about a burglar in Rochelle Park, New Jersey recently caught my attention. In the process of robbing a home, the thief woke up the couple who lived there. Not wanting the owners to catch him, the robber climbed out a window and fled from the scene of the crime.
Sticking with his escape plan, he ran down the street and quickly hopped into the backseat of a car. Unfortunately for him, he soon discovered he had gotten into a police car, which made his ensuing arrest rather easy.
In 1 Thessalonians 5;2, Paul compares the arrival of the day of the Lord to the surprise of discovering a intruder in one’s home. He likely had a more competent thief in mind than the bungling burglar in New Jersey.
My wife and I walked into the restaurant with high expectations. Someone had told us this was the best place in the area for Italian food. Maybe it was an off night, but we left unsatisfied with what we ordered that evening. As I look back, I wonder if our anticipation of a really great Italian dinner contributed to our disappointment.
Expectations have a powerful influence on us. The wrong ones, such as what we will see with Paul’s new converts in Thessalonica, can lead to much disappointment and even grief.
The next signpost pointing to the occurrence of the rapture before the tribulation simply says “unique.” For pretribulationism to be biblical, the rapture and second coming cannot be the same event. If they are identical, we obviously cannot separate them by seven years or so.
If premillennialism is true, and it absolutely is, then then the following differences between the rapture and second coming passages argue strongly for regarding them as separate and unique events.
My fingers raced to the book of Habakkuk early this morning.
Why would I seek the wisdom of an ancient prophet to ease my troubled mind? His opening complaint, written 2,650 years ago, captures the cry of my heart.
I so often cry out to the Lord to stop the senseless murder of children as well as the killing of those precious little ones who survive the horrific evil of abortion.
Why do we believe that the rapture will happen before the tribulation? There are a number of signposts in Scripture that point us in the direction of which I will write about in the coming weeks. I will start with premillennialism.
Premillennialism is the belief in the thousand year reign of Jesus before the eternal state (see Rev. 20:1-10). Those who hold to this position believe in a literal seven year tribulation after which Jesus returns to earth to setup His kingdom and rule over the nations from Jerusalem.
A GEICO commercial from last year portrays a spy fleeing from armed men on a roof as well as from a black helicopter approaching him from the air. His phone rings as his adversaries appear ready to capture him or perhaps kill him. Thinking the call is from those coming to rescue him he answers the phone shouting, “Where are you?”
We then see his mom relaxing by a pool as she calmly talks to him about his dad’s battle with squirrels in the attic. As she continues talking to her exasperated son the narrator interjects, “If you’re a mom, you call at the worst time. It’s what you do.”
The New Testament cries out with a similar message echoing the words of the narrator in the GEICO commercial, “As followers of Jesus we live in eager anticipation of his soon appearing. It’s what we do.”
Is the rapture unique or just another way of describing the second coming?
Pastors, teachers, and Christian writers have differing opinions on this. One assistant pastor at a Bible-believing church once told me he did not believe in the rapture. Along with such denials, many today assert that the book of Revelation is mostly allegory or past history, which necessitates that the rapture and second coming be the same event.
When I look at Scripture, I see two unique events separated by a period of time. The New Testament teaches Jesus will appear to take believers back to His Father’s house in heaven.
I was terrified! I had wondered away from my parents and now I could not see them. For a brief moment, I wondered if they had left me behind. Maybe my parents thought I was with my older sister. Maybe each thought I was with the other. Where were they? I had looked away just for just a moment and now I did not see them!
The unfamiliar surroundings made the situation more frightful.We were visiting my sister in Southern California and after spending the day sightseeing we went to Chinatown for supper and shopping, where I became distracted looking at toys and lost sight of my parents.
Though only a small child at the time, I remember the sight of a large old farmhouse with a peculiar small room on top of it with windows on all sides. The farmer told my dad that the previous owner of the homestead had the lookout post built on the pinnacle of the roof so he could watch for the return of the Lord.
While we admire this man’s confidence in Jesus’ promise to return for us, is this really what Jesus meant by watching for His appearing? Although our English word for “watch” fits such passive behavior as looking out a window, the word in the original implies much more than that.
What does Jesus tell us to do in light of His imminent return? What do His instructions tell us about our expectation of His appearing?
We live in the last days of human history as we know it before the start of the tribulation.
We do not know the day or the hour when Jesus will come for His church or when day God’s fierce wrath will begin. The prophetic signs we see all around us, however, tell us these things are getting ever so close.
I shared this list a couple months ago through my newsletter. As events continue to point toward the soon return of Jesus, I decided to update the list and make it available to more who may be interested. I have also changed the order a bit.
Most of us have seen it at some point in our lives. The daytime sky becomes dark ahead of an approaching strong storm; the blackness of the clouds makes it seem like night outside our window as our smartphones buzz with weather warnings. This happened outside my window as I was writing this post.
In Jesus’ day, people did not have our technology to warn of approaching storms. Instead, they learned to recognize signs in the sky that told them what to expect.
Scripture tells us the last days will marked by those who mock our hope in Jesus’ imminent return. The apostle Peter reveals that in the last days scoffers will appear ridiculing such hope with this question, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation” (2 Pet. 3:3-4).
How can we recognize these modern day scoffers? Below I list five ways they make themselves known:
You and many others who have chosen to read this commentary are likely in agreement. We find ourselves at a time in which the future is indeed murky. The very fact makes it a time of uneasiness–of profound uncertainty.
With so many existential threats (factors portending possible, even probable, future disruption for our lives), many look to the 2020 presidential election with a shadow of oppressiveness clouding their thoughts.
