Views of the “rapture of the Church” vary enormously, from people not believing that it’s a Biblical event at all and who say it will never happen, to the insistance that all true believers will be whisked from the earth any day now, in order to save us all from suffering and from what’s to come upon the earth during the “Tribulation”.
If the latter is true, I wonder why the Lord has so failed those Christians in Nigeria, for example, who this very day are being butchered for their faith in large numbers by people of another faith, which for now we will not name. Why, I ask, has the Lord not raptured those poor souls to spare them the anquish and the pain which surely is no better than what will be endured by believers around during the Tribulation?
Passionate adherants to the “pre-Tribulation rapture” theory insist that if you don’t agree with their view of the rapture, you don’t believe in the rapture at all. I know what I’m talkiing about, because I was one of those ardent believers for twenty-eight years, until I began to open up my mind to the possiblity that I might be wrong.
I recently heard a very well known evangelist, while speaking about end-times events prophecied in the Bible, assuring his audience that they would not be subject to the terrors and the problems of the Tribulation, because God is going to snatch them out of the world before things get really bad. HIs Scriptural justification and inspiration was from 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, 13-18, and 2 Thessalonians. These are beautiful passages of Scripture, giving as Paul intended, encouragement to those who have lost someone dear. That, of course, includes all of us.
What the evangelist is missing is that Paul’s focus is encouragement. There’s no hint at all that the rapture Paul spoke of without using the term “rapture”, will come before the Tribulation or before any sort of suffering at all. The claim that it will happen before trouble, is only that-a claim, a hope, a theory-defended, if at all, by circular reasoning. The rapture is coming, therefore the rapture will come before the Tribulation.
I believe in the rapture. It will happen. But for millions…no, billions, it will come after death. For many of those, death has been caused by persecution, disease, plague, war and famine: the very things that pre-Tribulation proponents insist the rapture is to deliver us from. So what about all those millions: didn’t they matter to the Lord? Didn’t He want to spare them from suffering?
I have a much more pointed question for pre-Trib believers: If the Lord is planning to take us all to heaven with the Holy Spirit before the Tribulation, to spare us all from the sufferings of the Tribulation, what about all those believers who, according to John in Revelation, will be alive on the earth during the Tribulation? They are “saints who remain faithful to Jesus” despite the challenges. See my post link below to read the details and Scripture references.
Since there will be believers in Jesus Christ, saved by grace just as we are, during the Tribulation, we need to ask how they will live without the Holy Spirit? How will they deal with the enormous challenges if there is no Spirit to comfort, to guide, to strengthen, because He’s gone to heaven to have a party with all the true Chruch? More profoundly, how will those people even get saved, or come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ, if there is no Holy Spirit to convict, to draw, to woo, or to regenerate?
Chew on that one, pre-Tribulation proponents. And others of you, be just a little wary of teachers and evangelists, who otherwise may be very godly and even very Scriptural, but on some things may be completely and dangerously wrong. I say “dangerously” intentionally. Pre-Trib teachers insist that other views are discouraging. If we don’t believe in a pre-Tribultion rapture, they say, we will all sink into negativity and fear.
Okay, so what about those Christians in Nigeria, and in other countries, today being slaughtered for their faith? Where’s the encouragement for them? How can we be so myopic and selfish, planning for a first-world rapture, and have no consideration for what’s happening in the rest of the world now, every day? Aren’t we just sticking our heads in the sand of faulty interpretation, so that we don’t have to feel “negative” or discouraged? Isn’t that what people in Israel wanted Jeremiah to preach-positive thinking? But instead, the prophet wanted to tell and to face the truth of what was coming.
If, or rather when the time comes and Christians have to finally face up to the truth that the world around them is crumbling, and the rapture hasn’t happened after all, how will they feel then? Won’t they feel just a little bit “negative” and “discouraged”, having believed their facorite preachers who they trusted, speaking of a pre-Tribulation rapture, and who instead have been proved to be wrong? Won’t they wonder what else these preachers were wrong about?
If I’m wrong, I have nothing to lose, and I at least am more prepared for trouble and persecution and suffering than most pre-Tribulation adeherents in the West. But if the pre-Trib teacher is wrong, he’s responsible for the uncertainty, the confusion and the doubt that will result when he’s finally seen to be wrong.
Fuel for Faith 