The Rapture

A Hope and a Warning

Listen, I tell you a mystery. We will not all die. But we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound. The dead will rise imperishable. And we will transform. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.
The Apostle Paul – 1 Corinthians 15:51-53

The dead in Christ will rise first. A loud command from an archangel’s voice, and a trumpet call from God will summon them. Then we the living will join them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.
The Apostle Paul – 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17

Paul’s treatment of the Rapture emphasizes the joy and wonder of it. Raptured Christians will have avoided Death. According to Apostle Paul, they will instantaneously disappear from Earth and be caught up to Heaven. Their bodies will be instantly changed – from aging to timeless, flawed to perfect, mortal to immortal.

Jesus spoke of the Rapture a few years before Paul did. Remember, the Son of Man had the cross staring him in the face when he talked about this miracle. So he was more oriented towards the struggle, the guts of his mission, and not the glory of this future victory over Death. Instead of reveling in the Rapture, Jesus warned about its suddenness. About how people worldwide would be in “business as usual” mode, and caught completely off guard.

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. Right up to the day Noah entered the ark. They knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.
Jesus Christ – Matthew 24:37-42

Most important, by using the example of Noah and the Flood, Christ communicated that God’s judgment on the world would fall after the Rapture.

In the Gospel of Matthew chapter 24, speaking to His desciples, Jesus Christ predicted the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and its great Jewish Temple. This came true in AD 70, thirty-seven years after the Messiah’s death and resurrection. The Romans’ final conquest of Jerusalem was immediately followed by scattering of the Jews throughout the Empire. For 1,900 years, they became a people without a homeland.

As Matthew chapter 24 continues, Jesus jumps to prophecies about his own return to Earth at the End of The Age. The Apostles asked their Teacher when his return and the fulfillment of his end-times predictions would take place, and what signs to look for. Jesus chose not to answer in numbers, saying that no one but God the Father knew the day or the hour. But he did specify a sign. Using clever symbolism of a fig tree, he indirectly told them that the rebirth of Israel as a sovereign country, far in the future, would usher in the “season” of the End Times. See the Israel as the Fig Tree post in this blog.

Paul and Christ spoke about the same Rapture, but with different time frames. The Apostle knew that most early Christians expected the Messiah to return soon. So his treatment of the Rapture emphasized hope for persecuted early believers. But the Son of God knew that thousands of years would go by. So he focused on the Rapture as a warning sign that could not be ignored, to the unbelieving world he would return to.

Fast forward to our time, May 2021. As it turns out, the future that Christ spoke of in Matthew 24 is looking more and more like our world – early in the 21st century, two millennia after Jesus walked our Earth. We believers know we are in the season of the End Times because Fig Tree Israel was miraculously reborn in 1948. Now we are the ones with urgency to know when Christ’s End Times predictions will be fulfilled. The Teacher’s admonition that we can’t know the day or the hour still stands. But a closer look at Jesus’ words gives one further hint.

“Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”
Jesus Christ – Matthew 24:32-34

Matthew 24, verse 34 says that the generation that sees the Sign of the Fig Tree – Israel Reborn – will not pass away until “all these things (Jesus’ End Time predictions) have happened.”

If we take the word generation in its common modern usage – the time from birth to reproductive age for humans – a generation is twenty to twenty-five years. But a biblical definition of a human lifespan (70 to 80 years according to Moses in Psalm 90) can also be a generation. So the generation Christ spoke of could mean the lifetime of those alive when modern Israel was founded in 1948.

The date this SpiritWarWorld blog entry is posted, 14 May 2021, is Israel’s 73rd anniversary. Happy birthday Israel!

Seventy-three years is close to the biblical limit of a generation as a human lifespan. We may well be deep into the End Times, if they started in 1948 with the rebirth of Israel. The End Times Rapture could very well happen soon, within our lifetime. The younger you are, the more likely.