Click the image above to go to the article on the 70 Weeks Prophecy.
HOW CLOSE IS THE RAPTURE?
A very frequent question being asked by evangelical Christians today is this.How close are we to the Rapture?
This is an important question, not so much for us discovering some sense of the timing for the Rapture and the future 70th Week but, more importantly, for our heart response to God in all this.
And why should our heart be at issue here? Are we not just dealing with, "the facts"? We even want to know if it will be a Pre-Trib Rapture or a Post-Trib Rapture So is this not just a matter of sound Biblical interpretation based upon good Greek and Hebrew scholarship and clear logical reasoning? Well the answer to that question is "no". There is much more to Biblical interpretation than that. And that is why many Christians, even in spite of much Bible reading and listening to "the experts" still remain confused by End-Time Bible prophecy. Holy information is not just objective data for rationalistic minds to crunch and get answers. True and faithful End-Time information comes to us personally from our Lord Jesus Christ who is in Himself the Living Word of God the Bread of Heaven who by His inner working nourishes the soul. He is the Divine Download not only data but also of holy programs, holy agendas, and even holy operating systems if you will. God by His Holy Spirit brings in His discernment of spirits, His interpretation of dreams and symbolism, an appreciation of types and shadows, an ability to pick up the hidden nuances in poetic language and much more. YHVH-God is not just "data". Nor is He a "force" we can presume upon, play with, and control. God is not our "co-pilot". or some religious distillation of God that condenses out some impersonal legalistic "moral code of behavior" or "core values". God is not a motivational pumper-upper for human "self esteem" nor is He a phantom force for mind games of psycho-babble. Our Hellenized rationalistic Greco-Roman religious minds can become very proud and haughty in our secular humanism and also our religious humanism.
So the Holy Living Word of God is a PERSON.
And so also is His Holy Spirit.
So what is the point of sharing this point as we look into the Rapture and ask, "How close?"
Simply this.
Knowledge about the end-time does not come from the intellect.
It comes from a devotion to God.
John, the Apostle of (Agape, God) Love, and writer of the Book of Revelation, in exile on the Island of Patmos.CLICK to see the article. Art used by permission of Pat Marvenko Smith, copyright 1992. Visit her 'Revelation Illustrated' website. |
We can find answers to difficult questions in the Holy Scriptures this is true. But only when we align ourselves with God. The God of Israel came to us as Israel's promised Sacrifice Lamb. By His blood He redeemed us. His blood purchased our great salvation. But that was just the beginning. From salvation we come into a process of sanctification. By the inner workings of the indwelling Christ we are changed from the inside out. This happens as fast as we surrender our hearts to Him. Sometimes trials and tribulations help to make that inner devotion grow inside a person. This is how the saints are conformed unto His likeness.
So what becomes of us in all this sanctification? We grow up from children drinking milk to young men eating meat, and then to fathers. See 1John 2:12-14. And so we come to not only know and understand His will but take responsibility for the entire family of God. It also means that a relationship is established between ourselves and God. And like a bride waiting for her coming bridegroom the true Elect quietly come to a new resolve. And in this new devotion and commitment they begin to become His witnesses and His agents. This relationship goes beyond the usual commercial contract that a person chooses to make on a whim or break on the basis of a perceived offense. That shallow planting of the Seed so typical in the cheap commercial religion of today leads to a terrible an awful end. Christians in the "emerging church" are not being told about this. Shallow faith leads to tumbleweed Christians. Eventually when the winds of adversity come they are dried up by the roots and roll away like tumbleweed in the dust-bowl of dry dead religion. The seed sown upon the rocky ground, the hearts of selfish men, cannot, and does not last. This is what we read about in 2Thessalonians 2 where our Apostle Paul warns us about the coming great falling away. Even in the times of trial and tribulation God is calling us to "come up higher". He is wooing us into a blood covenant relationship with Him. Our willingness in our witness and in our testimony to Him is the key. This is the basis and the foundation of our understanding of Bible prophecy. The Holy Scriptures are very plain here.
"The testimony of Jesus IS the Spirit of prophecy". See Rev. 19:10How does God change us to be saints, those "set apart" or "consecrated" for His service?
Simply by our surrender to Him. Jesus tells us how it happens in this passage.
"15 “If you love Me, keep My commandments.As we see in the Scripture passage above God has promised to send us His Holy Spirit as our Helper. But only if we obey Him and follow Him and our heart is toward Him. If we are not offended at being called to be His witnesses then He will come alongside us as our own personal Comforter, Strengthener, Helper, and Guide. The Holy Spirit is a Person. He is personal to us as agents of the Kingdom of God. He will help us to understand what we are reading in the Bible about the end-time. This is God's Divine Intelligence Service.
16 And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—
17 the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him;
but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.
18 I will not leave you orphans; I WILL COME TO YOU." - John 14:15-18
The disciples asked Jesus why He spoke in veiled language and in addressed the crowds in parables.
Jesus replied that it was not for the crowds to understand the things of the Kingdom of God.
The Information of God was, and still is, for His disciples alone.
These are the Elect, the ones who know Him and follow Him, come what may.
So what does this mean for us as we ask about the timing of the Rapture, (actually the Resurrection-Rapture)? It simply means this. High grade Christians, those who love and obey God, will get high grade information. Low grade carnal Christians, those who still cherish their own self-centered agenda, will get low grade information. This is not an accident or a misfortune or something to be lamented. God planned it that way! He also said "Strait is the gate" and "narrow is the Way" and "few there be that find it".
A FUTURE 70TH WEEK
Our study on the 70 Weeks of Daniel indicates that the 69 sevens of Biblical years did indeed terminate on Palm Sunday, April 9th, Nisan 10 in the springtime of 32 A.D.. See http://endtimepilgrim.org/70wks8.htm
This leaves a future 70th Week. See http://endtimepilgrim.org/chart2.htm
This is a future seven years is the time God has "determined" or "cut out of time"
for dealings with all his covenant people from both houses of Israel.
It will involve the Gospel of grace, mercy, and salvation.
And it will involve the Gospel of the Kingdom.
So Christians are not just in "the Church".
They, along with saved Messianic Jews and saints from every nation, race, and tribe
make up the entire Commonwealth of Israel.
Gal 3:29 shows us that we who are saved and under the blood of Christ are highly privileged.
We have within us the promised Seed of Abraham.
"And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s Seed,We are a new creation in Christ and because of Christ, the indwelling Seed of Abraham. But that leads on to certain civic and political consequences. In Christ our Hebrew Messiah we enter a new sovereignty which takes us beyond our national sovereignty. We come into the service and the agency of the Kingdom of God. In Christ and this new sovereignty we receive a new passport. We are now citizens in the Commonwealth of Israel.
and heirs according to the promise." - Gal. 3:29
"11 Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh - who are called UncircumcisionThis dispenses with the dispensationalism that has us hypnotized by repetition like a chicken. Yes, we are hypnotized by repetition. Dispensational extremists have conditioned us into thinking that the Church and Israel are boxed up isolated entities and will forever remain that way. But nowhere in Bible does the Holy Spirit speak of two Elects. Nor does the God of Israel, the God of our Church/Congregation ever establish an apartheid policy partitioning His Chosen people, the Congregation of Israel. We know that in Christ, (Israel's promised Sacrifice Lamb), we are all part of His single undivided Chosen Elect.
by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands —
12 that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel
and strangers from the Covenants of Promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
See Ephesians 2:11-13
The first half of those 7 years will see a harlot rule the New World Order. See http://endtimepilgrim.org/harlot.htm The final 3.5 years will be the Great Tribulation, (See Dan. 12:7,) the reign of the AC (See Rev. 13:5), the final witness of the saints, (See Rev. 11:3-4), the trampling of Jerusalem (See Rev. 11:1-2), and the flight, confinement, and travail of the woman, Israel, which is all of God's covenant people. See Rev. 12:6 and 12:14 and
The flight and exile of the woman, God's covenant people during the regime of 666 ties in with < a href="bozexile.htm">Micah's prophecy of the end-time gathering of the entire company of Jacob. All of God's covenant people will be in on this one. It will be a camp meeting that makes all the previous camp meetings, revivals, and awakenings pale in comparison. And yes, this Jacob gathering very definitely includes us as Christians, even lawless wayward Gomer, in the comfortable Western Church.
Micah 2:12-13 (King James Version)Yes, as much as we would like to be tricky (like Jacob) and try to dodge and duck out of our responsibilities we as Christians, just like our Father Jacob, must wrestle with God on this matter. We simply cannot hide away forever from our vital and eternal connection to the God of Israel. Nor can we shirk our vital responsibility in the End-Time witness. And why not? Because the Seed of Abraham, even our Lord Jesus Christ, is within us!
12 I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee;
I will surely gather the remnant of Israel;
I will put them together as the sheep of Bozrah,
as the flock in the midst of their fold:
they shall make great noise by reason of the multitude of men.13 The Breaker is come up before them:
they have broken up, and have passed through the gate, and are gone out by it:
and their King shall pass before them, and the LORD on the head of them.
We too shall be in with the end-time gathering of Jacob.
We too shall be refined and renamed from Jacob, (shyster), to Israel, ("prince with God").
The God of Israel is drawing us on along the Paradise road,
Towards the Gates of Splendor.
The Holy One of Israel will be dealing with all of us in times to come. There will be an end-time gathering, an Assembly, a new Congregation/Church, even a "camp meeting" that will spill over into the Millennium of Messiah. This latter day gathering will occur during the Great Tribulation period. The 666 rejecters will be there. And many Jews and Christians among them. We might call this the Flight to Bozrah or the Bozrah Exile. But we need not fear. We shall not be forgotten. Nor shall we be doomed in the 70th Week as Pre-Trib Bible teachers keep telling us. At the end of the age the Breaker will come at the magnificent Bozrah deliverance. (See Micah 2:12-13)
SO WHERE ARE WE NOW?
So where are we now in the sequence of end-time events? The big question among evangelicals centers right down on "the Rapture". How close is the Rapture? Well there is that future 70th Week, the final seven years of this age. Pre-trib teaching has the Rapture taking out "the Church" before the 70th Week begins. But there is not one single scripture that can be offered up as proof for a Pre-Tribulation Rapture. This popular doctrine is being repeated over and over again to the point of hypnosis. But the special early departure of part of God's people is a self-conflicted fabrication crafted by men. It is a house of cards built on a thin wobbly construct of false suppositions. Preterists and Partial Preterists don't want to talk about the end-time witness either. These people are often Dominionists. And in their triumphalist dreams they would very much like to "make the future 70th Week "go away". But it is solidly proven by Holy Scripture and so it remains there as another stumbling block to them.So we are at least 7+ years away from the harpazo Resurrection-Rapture.
When might those begin? Most of us hope that they are a long way away. But those final seven years and the eventual Resurrection-Rapture could be as close as a nuclear war in the Middle East and an epic peace agreement that could follow such a war. A future global peace treaty will be brokered by a world leader. We know from Scripture that he will be a profane man who shuns the God of Israel and comes "in his own name". See John 5:43 as well as Daniel 7 and Revelation 13. He will cut a deal with Israel and the G-7 nations in exchange for a surrender of their national sovereignty. Bankrupted Western Nations could easily be coerced into a New World Order. Hiding in the wings the AC will permit an intermediary to come in to rule first. Later, half way through the final 7 years of this age he will take power and bring in his 666 economic system. So initially he will allow false religion to run the world, for a season, by some sort of harlot religious system. It will be an unholy alliance not unlike what we had in the medieval feudal era when the Church balanced power with the kings and occasionally even ruled even over kings. It will be a grand culmination of Dominion Theology, Reconstructionism, Ecumenism, and the Kingdom Now Movement. Dominionist carnal christians will think that they have arrived. But they willl be in for a rude awakening. See Revelation 17.
The peace deal after the Damascus destruction of Isaiah 17 is something much discussed right now. This war, not the big Gog War or the final Armageddon War might deliver up the prophesied seven year covenant the early peacemaking AC will make with Israel and the West. This sovereignty surrender of nations including Israel will bring down the flags of the nations. This is implicit in the covenant we see outlined in Daniel 9:27. World history will be changed dramatically, (until Messiah comes at the end of those seven years to set things straight).
War and peace are two sides of the same coin. The principle from history is this. Big wars are followed by big peace treaties. Those big peace agreements bring in big changes for the people involved. In this next big case the issues settled for a time will involve the whole world. The prophesied destruction of Damascus is in focus here. Hamas, Hezbollah, and other radical Islamicist agencies are holed up in that city. It is very close to the border of Israel and missile fly very fast. These green horse, green bandana, green flagged, warriors are now armed with sophisticated GPS guided missiles that can reach Tel Aviv and beyond. We can be sure that Israel has their finger on the trigger. Saints, these are dangerous times. Now is the time for all to seek the face of God. Do we know Him?
A war with Israel involving nukes would send the world into the streets overnight.
The mobs would be calling for world nuclear disarmament NOW! They would be screaming
"Someone DO something!!!!"
Enter the AC.
So why is this information important to us? Christians should not be the ones to be taken by surprise by all this. The people who will be particularly upset and "OBE", "overcome by events" will include many carnal Christians. These will include some very angry, dangerous, and radicalized people. Is this where we shall see many American Puritans lay down their guns and take up their cross to become Pilgrims? Because there is a significant difference between Pilgrim Christians and Puritan Christians. See this article.
Christian Pilgrims who know the One to whom they belong will not be among the raging heathen of Psalm 2. The saints will have been properly informed of these events ahead of time. Indeed, spiritual preparation is the key to the salvation and deliverance of many. That is why this article has been presented.
So what is the upshot of all this?
And what are we to do with this information?
Now is the time to settle our accounts with God. Now is the time to align our priorities with His priorities. Now is the time to study and share the Word of God abroad in overseas missions. Now is the time seek guidance and the fullness of His Holy Spirit. God bless all who are still reading these words. You are special to God. Most people are not concerned about God in their lives. Most Christians today think that Bible Prophecy is irrelevant, arcane, or too confusing to understand. They are not watching what is going on. Nor are they listening for the trumpets.
The Rapture, How close are we?
We are certainly closer to it than when we first believed.
We are probably closer to it than we think.
Godspeed to all the saints on the pilgrimage home.
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