`Prophecy Update: The Rapture of the Church June 25, 2020
It is my heart’s desire to encourage you this week. As the world is experiencing upheaval, Christians have a sure hope. As we engage the world, sharing our faith, occupying until He comes, faith needs to triumph over despair. The LORD gave me Psalm 27:1 to plead before Him during this time of crises.
“The LORD is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The LORD is the defense of my life, whom shall I dread?”
Fearing a virus or the riots or people who are tearing our nation apart, is unbecoming for born- again Christians. God wants us to ask ourselves two very important questions: Whom shall I fear? Whom shall I dread? Jesus commanded us to fear not! The natural thing to do is to be afraid.
The Spirit-filled response is to plead the strength and promises of God and act in faith. Acting in faith is action; action neutralizes fear. In light of this truth, I want to talk about the rapture of the church. The design and intent of the rapture teaching causes Christians to comfort one another. We find this truth in 1Thessalonians 4:13-18,
“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. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. 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. 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. 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. Therefore comfort one another with these words.”
The promise of God is that one day Jesus will descend from heaven and we will meet Him in the air to be with Him forever. This comforting message is for all believers. Imagine the trumpet sounding and your body transformed instantly, supernaturally. The experience of flying through the air to meet Jesus and all of those who died in Christ will solve every problem that you currently endure.
Why is it called the rapture? The term ‘caught up’ comes from the Greek word ‘harpadzo.’ This word means ‘to seize” or “carry off by force’. When the Bible was translated into Latin, the Latin translation used the word ‘rapiemor’ to describe ‘harpadzo’. We get the English words ‘rapt’ and ‘rapture’ from the Latin word ‘rapio’. ‘Rapiemor’ is the past participle of ‘rapio’ and describes the way God will take us to Himself. First Corinthians 15:51, “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed.”
Who will be resurrected at the time of the rapture? The text states that ‘those fallen asleep in Jesus’ are those who are raised first. The ones who have fallen asleep (died) in Jesus are the church, the body of Christ, also called the bride of Christ. The church was put in the game by Jesus to carry out the Great Commission and spread the good news of the Gospel. When the church finishes the job, God will remove the church and put the nation of Israel back in the game. When those who are alive experience being forcefully changed, translated into their new bodies, the final seven-year tribulation period can proceed.
The pattern looks like this:
- God removes His people before the tribulation
- He calls people to live through the tribulation
- Those left behind are judged by God.
The flood of Genesis 5-8 fits this same pattern:
- God raptured Enoch
- Then eight people went through the tribulation of God flooding the whole world
- God judged those left behind. The rest of the living perished.
This first judgment fits the pattern of Revelation. Enoch was the first one raptured (Genesis 5:24, Hebrews 11:5). Hebrews 11:5 describes this to us:
“By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; AND HE WAS NOT FOUND BECAUSE GOD TOOK HIM UP; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.”
Enoch did not see death because God supernaturally translated him from earth to heaven. He was the first, but there was a second. Elijah, likewise, was raptured in 2 Kings 2:11. Elijah had the privilege of being picked up by a flaming chariot with flaming horses. The words used by God to describe the rapture ‘went up by a whirlwind to heaven’ is the Hebrew word ‘ca`ar’ and means a storm. It is interesting that both 1Thessalonians 4 and 2Kings 2 describe the event with violent terms! Supernaturally, God will do a phenomenal work, which only He can do!
Phillip also experienced a rapture in Acts 8:39:
“When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; and the eunuch no longer saw him, but went on his way rejoicing.”
Phillip was forcefully removed, disappeared, and strangely found himself in another city. God used the strength of His power to remove Phillip and put him where He needed him!
John experienced a rapture when he found himself taken to heaven in Revelation 4:1:
“After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things.”
There are two things alike comparing Rev.4:1 with 1 Thess.4:13-18: the sound of a trumpet and the going up. This is a picture of the rapture because John and the church find themselves in heaven. Revelation 4:5 describes what John sees:
“Out from the throne come flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder. And there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.”
Notice how John sees seven lamps. The seven lamps are the seven churches of Revelation 2-3! Where is the church? In heaven!
Why does God remove the church before the tribulation? This is the most important part of the rapture. God removes the church because of Israel. To understand the rapture of the church, one must understand the importance of Israel. God is using the tribulation period to confront Israel over Jesus the Messiah. God says that this is the time of Jacob’s trouble. (Jeremiah 30:7) It is clear in Daniel 12:1 that God is warning and preparing His people Israel for the tribulation:
“Now at that time Michael, the great prince who stands guard over the sons of your people, will arise. And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time; and at that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued.”
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!’” Matthew 23:37-39
This passage agrees with all of the prophets. A time will come when God will confront Israel over receiving the Messiah. Jesus is teaching that Israel will be set aside until the end times. When Israel becomes a nation, God will initiate a process of awakening in His people that will lead to the Messiah. Here are some verses about that:
“I will go away and return to My place Until they acknowledge their guilt and seek My face; In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.” Hosea 5:15
“I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.” Zechariah 12:10
In both of these verses, it is clear that Messiah Jesus is the one whom they are talking about. Jesus left them in 32 AD and He will not come back until they earnestly seek Him. Two witnesses, Elijah and Moses will be preaching to the Jews at the temple in Jerusalem (Revelation 11:1-12). God will save 144,000 Jews from the 12 tribes to preach and lead a multitude of people back to the Lord. In the midst of the tribulation, God will open the eyes of the blind and redeem Israel. They will see Jesus and look on Him who they pierced. It will be a day of mourning over their messiah Jesus, the son of Abraham, the son of David! All of the promises yet fulfilled concerning Israel, and there are substantial amounts of verses that are still unfulfilled, will be fulfilled during the tribulation period.
- Daniel 9:24-27 records the most important prophecy regarding the history of Israel. There are 490 years (70×7) found in verse 24.
- The 490 years breaks down into three divisions:
- 49 years (‘seven sevens’) verse 25.
- 434 years (62×7) verses 25-26.
- Seven years (“one `seven’) verse 27.
What happens during the 49 years? Ezra and others go back to Israel to rebuild Jerusalem. The time spans from the Persian Artaxerxes’ decree to rebuild Jerusalem (ca. 445 B.C.; Neh. 2:1-8), to the Messiah’s last week on earth, April 6th 32AD. This date is according to the calculations from the book: The Coming Prince by Sir Robert Anderson. Here is an amazing quote from the book:
“The statement of St. Luke is explicit and unequivocal, that our Lord’s public ministry began in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar. It is equally clear that it began shortly before the Passover, The date of it can thus be fixed as between August A.D. 28 and April A.D. 29. The Passover of the crucifixion therefore was in A.D. 32, when Christ was betrayed on the night of the Paschal Supper, and put to death on the day of the Paschal Feast. If then the foregoing conclusions be well founded. we should expect to find that the period intervening between the edict of Artaxerxes and the Passion was 483 prophetic years. And accuracy as absolute as the nature of the case permits is no more than men are here entitled to demand. There can be no loose reckoning in a Divine chronology; and if God has; deigned to mark on human calendars the fulfillment of His purposes as foretold in prophecy, the strictest: scrutiny shall fail to detect miscalculation or mistake.” The examination of the prophecy shows that God is very accurate to the time of the first coming of our Lord. God is accurate and the book makes this claim:
“The Julian date of that 10th Nisan was Sunday the 6th April, A.D. 32. What then was the length of the period intervening between the issuing of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem and the public advent of “Messiah the Prince,” – between the 14th March, B.C. 445, and the 6th April, A.D. 32? THE INTERVAL CONTAINED EXACTLY AND TO THE VERY DAY 173, 880 DAYS, OR SEVEN TIMES SIXTY-NINE PROPHETIC YEARS OF 360 DAYS, the first sixty-nine weeks of Gabriel’s prophecy.”
The last seven years of the prophecy is described for us in 2Thess.2:1-12 and Revelation 6-19. Before the antichrist rises, the church will leave in the rapture of the church. While in heaven, the church will be preparing for the return with Jesus. It includes the judgment of believers for how they served the Lord in this life. It includes the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. It also includes coming back with Jesus to set up the kingdom of God on the earth. We have a lot to look forward too!! As our nation experiences more and more darkness, Christians shine brighter and brighter. Let us shine brightly every day! www.joemaggelet.com
