“LEFT BEHIND” ─ some will be; the important question is when? The multivolume series Left Behind, written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, has appeared on the New York Times best seller list and was featured on the cover of Time magazine. That people in the world should take such an interest in the last days and in the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ is very encouraging; and for that I am grateful to the Lord. Among the Church, however, as wise stewards of the mysteries of God, certain important questions need to be asked; primarily, is LaHaye’s and Jenkins’ time line of end-time events accurate? We know that some are going to be “left behind,” according to Matthew 24:40-41; but the important question is, when. LaHaye and Jenkins have based their books on the theory that seven years before the glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ, faithful Christians will be raptured—translated, caught up to heaven. This understanding has been known as the “Pre-Tribulation Rapture.” Legitimate concerns about the Pre-Tribulation Rapture are that it rests upon questionable biblical interpretation and, historically, it found its way into the evangelical mainstream only in the mid 1800’s. Millions of godly, evangelical believers, for almost 1800 years did not believe in a pre-tribulation rapture – among these, men of apostolic stature such as John and Charles Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, Matthew Henry, John Knox, John Hus, William Carey, John Calvin, Isaac Newton, George Whitfield, A.B. Simpson, George Mueller (who is reported to have stated, “if you can show me a trumpet after the last [1 Corinthians 15:52] and a resurrection before the first [Revelation 20:4-5], then I can believe this new doctrine”), and John Newton, Jonathan Edwards, John Wycliffe, John Bunyan, and many others. And as far as the post-apostolic, early Church fathers go – they apparently did not believe in a pre-tribulation rapture either! They write – “Then shall the race of men come into the fire of proving trial and many be made to stumble and fall. But those who remain established in their faith shall be saved under the very curse” (Didache; 16:5). “Happy ye who endure the great tribulation that is coming on…” (Hermas; chapter II, Vision II). Irenaeus (disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of John the Beloved) comments in his Against Heresies (5.25.3) concerning the reign of the antichrist, that “this tyranny shall last, during which the saints shall be put to flight….” And Augustine, commenting on Daniel 7:21, states, “He who reads this passage even half asleep cannot fail to see that the kingdom of antichrist shall fiercely, though for a short time, assail the Church.” Gerhard Pfandi, Ph.D., Associate director of the Biblical Research Institute, in an excellent article, “The Rapture – Why It Cannot Occur before the Second Coming,” traces some of the roots of the pre-tribulation rapture teaching: The roots of this theory may be traced back to the time of the Counter-Reformation. The Protestant reformers in the sixteenth century identified the papacy as the antichrist of prophecy. [“I believe the pope is the masked and incarnate devil, because he is the antichrist,” Luther stated. The Reformers were therefore apparently not pre-tribulaltionists.] Several Jesuit scholars undertook the task of defending the papacy against these attacks, among these Cardinal Bellarmine (1542-1621), head of the Jesuit College in Rome…and the Spanish Jesuit, Francisco Ribera (1537-1591) who projected the antichrist prophecies…to a future antichrist who would appear in the time of the end and continue in power for three and a half years… Ribera’s futurism laid the foundation for dispensationalism…. John Nelson (J.N.) Darby (1800-1882) is usually regarded as the father of dispensationalism…. Darby developed an elaborate philosophy in which he divided history into eight eras or dispensations, ‘each of which contained a different order by which God worked out His redemptive plan.’ Furthermore, Darby asserted that Christ’s coming would occur in two stages. The first, an invisible ‘secret rapture’ of the believers, would end the great ‘parenthesis’ or Church age which began when the Jews rejected Christ. Following the rapture, the Old Testament prophecies concerning Israel would be literally fulfilled, leading to the great tribulation, which would end with the second coming of Christ in glory… The doctrine of the pre-tribulation rapture was disseminated around the world, primarily through Darby’s Brethren Movement [and men such as Arno Gabelein, Harry Ironside, James Gray, etc.] and the Scofield Reference Bible [for untold multitudes became pretribulationists as a result of Scofield’s notes, which, because attached to his reference Bible, became highly authoritative in the minds of many.] In the twentieth century the theory was taught in schools like Moody Bible Institute and Dallas Theological Seminary. Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth and many books of a similar nature further propagated the secret rapture theory. (Adapted from Ministry, September 2001.) Other scholars also cite the 1820’s Irvingite charismatic visionary, Margaret MacDonald, as another of the sources of modern day pre-tribulationism. BUT WHAT DID JESUS AND THE APOSTLES TEACH? Jesus’ final teaching on His Second Coming, given on the slopes of the Mount of Olives, and recorded in Matthew 24 and 25, Mark 13, and Luke 21, is extremely clear. (And if anyone should know the times and seasons of His return, Jesus surely would!) In Matthew 24, there is no Second Coming and no rapture until “immediately after the tribulation of those days … [for] then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Matthew 24:29-31; Mark 12:24-27; Luke 21:25-28). Luke, in 21:36, gives one additional charge: “Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape [translated as “pass safely through,” in the L.B., margin, and in the N.E.B., and as “come safely through,” in J.B. Phillips] all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.” And so our Lord sought to prepare His disciples for His coming, and in the process told them exactly when He was coming – “after the tribulation of those days,” and how not to be caught unawares. Dispensationalism, which appears to rebuild the dividing wall between Israel and the Church (that very wall that Jesus died to destroy according to Ephesians 2:11-22), dismisses these words of Jesus in Matthew 24 as pertinent only “for the Jews” – but Jesus, in Matthew 28:19-20, when He commissioned His disciples to go into all the world and “make disciples of all nations…,” commissioned them to teach all these nations everything He had commanded them, and that included the truths of Matthew, chapter 24, concerning His return! WHAT WERE THE APOSTLES’ UNDERSTANDINGS? Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 places the rapture of the Church “at the last trumpet,” as does John in Revelation 11:15-18 — “The seventh angel sounded his trumpet [and this is the last one], and there were loud voices in heaven, which said: the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ and He will reign forever and ever… The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding Your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence Your Name, both small and great…” Obviously, all of this takes place at the end of the tribulation period, after the blowing of the seven trumpets of judgment. In Revelation 3:10, 11 Jesus had promised: “I will keep you from [which preposition is better translated “through”] the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test those who live on the earth.” (The Greek preposition used here according to the NIV footnote and the Living Bible footnote “can mean either ‘keep you from undergoing’ or ‘keep you through the hour of trial.’” The weight of the rest of New Testament teaching leans in favor of the translation: “keep you through the hour of trial.”) In the midst of the bowls of wrath, just before the final bowl, this word is given to John in Revelation 16:15, obviously for the saints: “Behold I come like a thief! Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his clothes with him, so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed.” In Revelation 20:4-6, the first resurrection is clearly described (and remember, there cannot be a resurrection seven years before the first resurrection, or the first resurrection would not be the first!). In this first resurrection are found “those who had been beheaded because of their testimony…for they had not worshipped the beast [the antichrist] or his image…”; so the rapture and the first resurrection apparently are at the end of the great tribulation, after the reign of the antichrist and not before! From the book of Revelation, an argument for a pre-tribulation rapture has been advanced by some, insofar as the word “church” per se was not used by John between chapters four and twenty-one; the reasoning being that the church is not present in the earth during these chapters. The facts are that these are highly symbolic chapters, abounding with figures of speech for both Jesus and His Church, and that the Church does appear in the symbolism of these chapters as the “saints,” the “kingdom of priests,” the “great multitude,” the “candlesticks,” the “firstfruits,” God’s “people,” the “bride,” the “armies of heaven,” the “new Jerusalem,” etc., even as Jesus Himself appears with numerous symbolic names also – the Lamb, the Lion, the Manchild, the Word of God, the Alpha and Omega, etc. (Besides, argument from silence do not make the best arguments. Shall we conclude that because God’s name was seemingly absent from the book of Esther that He was not present in the book of Esther? Quite to the contrary; God was very much present and active!) And the notion that the “saints” of Revelation 4-21 are “the Jews,” rather than the many-membered, Jewish-Gentile Body of Christ defies the revelation of God’s “one new man” (Ephesians 2:15) and undercuts Paul’s understanding of Israel’s re-inclusion into that “one new man” in these last days (note carefully Romans 11:17, 23-27, where restored Israel in the last days is not raised up as an entity separate from the Church but rather grafted back into that olive tree which the mainly Gentile Church had been already graciously grafted into by God). Once a serious student of Scripture understands the issue of Israel’s restoration to the Body of Christ in these last days, all the seeming arguments for both dispensationalism and the pre-tribulation rapture utterly fall apart. Paul, in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-8 also clearly taught that the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and the rapture (the gathering, or mustering) of the saints to Jesus cannot take place until the great apostasy has first happened and the man of sin (the antichrist) is first revealed (verse 3). Paul also taught that the Church will get “relief” from persecution and tribulation only “when [and not secretly seven years before] the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with His powerful angels to punish those who do not know God and do not obey the Gospel…” (2 Thessalonians 1:6-8) [Also, the understanding in this passage that the one who now holds the antichrist back is the Holy Spirit in the Church, is an unfounded theory. To seek to prove a pre-tribulation rapture on such a supposition is not sound exegesis. Though we are not told exactly who the “restraining one” is (it could be Michael the restraining archangel, as Daniel 10 teaches), but it is most certainly not the Holy Spirit in the Church, for if the Holy Spirit is caught up into heaven in the Church at the onset of the tribulation, who then will be poured out in power over all the earth during the tribulation?] One of the main concerns among pre-tribulationists is a valid biblical concern — that the Church will not endure the wrath of God in the closing days of time. And indeed it will not, for “God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:9). This salvation from wrath, however, does not come through a pre-tribulation rapture but, according to verse 8 in this very passage, through the saints putting on the armor of God, that they might stand “in the evil day” (see also Ephesians 6:3). Powerful examples are given to us in Holy Scripture of how God was thus able to keep His own in the hour of His outpoured wrath — for example, the children of Israel were preserved in the plagues that fell on Egypt. Many of those plagues are identical to the ones that will yet fall in the Great Tribulation — but God’s ancient people were safely “kept by the power of God” (see Exodus 8:22; 9:4-7; 9:25-26; 10:22; 12:12-13). And God’s promise is as true for us today as it was for them back then: “No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt” (Exodus 12:13). Further examples of God’s keeping power in the midst of great tribulation are Daniel’s being kept safely in the lion’s den and the three Hebrew sons kept safely in the fiery furnace. Indeed, these promises were valid for them and will be for us – “when you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” (Isaiah 43:2) Amen! BUT, EXACTLY WHY SHOULD WE BE HERE? The question, “Why should we be here?” has a most powerful answer. First of all, only a pampered, effete western Christianity can afford to believe in an end-time that is tribulation-free. The scores of millions who suffered tribulation, even unto death, under atheistic communism did not have that luxury! And should the saints suffer at the hands of godless men in these last days, it will only be out of love for our Lord Jesus that they will endure. But the real reason for being here – the real reason for our actually wanting to be here – is that these last days are ordained by God to be days of unparalleled outpouring of the Holy Spirit and days of unprecedented apostolic harvest among the nations. And, simply stated, God has promised to take care of us in these days if we will but give ourselves to carry out His purposes of world-wide apostolic evangelism! (And no, He has not relegated this harvest solely to those Jews who are left behind, but rather to His total Jewish-Gentile Bride, the Body of Messiah!) Just note the implications of these promises – “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people… The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Acts 2:17-21) What a harvest is implicit in that statement! “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ, who has been appointed before you – even Jesus. He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as He promised long ago through His holy prophets.” (Acts 3:19-21) Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved…” (Romans 11:25-26) What a harvest! “Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn [early] and spring [latter] rains. You, too, be patient and stand firm because the Lord’s coming is near.” (James 5:7-8) And as a result of this glorious outpouring, John could testify: “I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language… These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” (Revelation 7:9,14) Who would not want to participate in such a glorious happening? Scripturally, God’s plan for the climax of the ages is clear – an unparalleled end-time outpouring of His Holy Spirit, accompanied by an unprecedented harvest of souls, accompanied by the protection of His own from His falling wrath on the ungodly, and finally Jesus’ Second Coming. And Jesus’ return includes our mustering (our gathering) together to meet the Lord (literally, to “greet the Lord in the air,” 1 Thessalonians 4:17) and then, as His gathered and assembled army, to return with Him to reign over all the earth! (Revelation 19:14) And in that mustering or gathering together [which is the real purpose of the rapture], the unprepared will be “left behind” for judgment, but the prepared people of God will be wedded to our Lord Jesus Christ forever, in the glorious “marriage supper of the Lamb.” (Revelation 19:7, 9, 17) I can think of nothing more wonderful for us to give ourselves to than this great and wide purpose of God in these last days! Amen! —Charles P. Schmitt Immanuels Church
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 00:58:41 +0000
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