The next end-times event
Pastor Dale Morgan
Posted: November 11, 2006
/Greg Laurie/
One night, as my wife, Cathe, and I were lying in bed talking, she said,
"Isn't it wonderful that one day we could be taken to meet the Lord in
the Rapture of the church? Wouldn't it be exciting if it happened in our
lifetime? Can you imagine? We would be lying here in bed, maybe talking,
maybe sleeping, and all of a sudden, we are right there in the presence
of God."
As she described this, being the prankster that I am, I thought it would
be funny to secretly slip out of bed. So I quietly crept down on the
floor without her knowing. "Wouldn't it be great, Greg?" Cathe
continued. "Greg?" She reached over to my side of the bed ... but I
wasn't there. "Greg!" she screamed. "GREG!"
Meanwhile, I was lying on the floor convulsed with laughter. But the
real Rapture will not be a laughing matter. It could happen at any
moment, when we least expect it.
In my last article, I asked whether we are really living in the Last
Days as Jesus described them to His disciples, and I showed how we are
regularly experiencing the "labor pains" of what is yet to come. As we
watch these things happen in our world, as we sense these labor pains
getting closer and closer together, we understand that the coming of
Jesus Christ is near.
But what is the next event on God's prophetic calendar? Is it
Armageddon, the rise of the Antichrist, or something else?
It seems to me that the next event on the prophetic calendar is the
Rapture of the church. However, if you try to look up the word "rapture"
in the Bible, you won't find it. Unless you have a Latin translation,
that is. The phrase "caught up," is the Latin word rapturus, which means
"to be caught up." A more literal definition is "to be snatched up."
Believers will be taken to meet the Lord in the air.
The apostle Paul described this event in his letter to the Christians at
Thessalonica:
For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the
voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in
Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught
up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And
thus we shall always be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).
But Paul wasn't the only one to speak of the Rapture. Jesus mentioned it
in Matthew 24, where He said, "Then two men will be in the field: one
will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding at the
mill: one will be taken and the other left. Watch therefore, for you do
not know what hour your Lord is coming" (vv. 40-42). Jesus also spoke of
it in John 14, where He said, "In My Father's house are many mansions;
if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for
you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and
receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also" (vv. 2-3).
We also find a reference to the Rapture in 1 John 2:28 and 3:3: "Abide
in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed
before Him at His coming. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it
has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is
revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."
Home in an instant
Returning for a moment to Paul's description of the Rapture in 1
Thessalonians 4, note that verse 17 says that Christians who are living
at the time of the Rapture "shall be caught up together with them [the
dead in Christ] in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air." The word
"meet" in this verse carries the idea of meeting a royal person or a
person of great importance. When the Lord calls us to Himself, we will
meet the ultimate royalty, the King of kings and the Lord of lords.
We see from these verses about the Rapture that Christians will be
received into the presence of God instantaneously. According to 1
Corinthians 15:51-52, "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be
changed – in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible,
and we shall be changed." Note that this verse doesn't say "in the blink
of an eye," but rather "in the twinkling of an eye." A blink is fast –
so fast that most of the time you don't even notice it when you blink –
but the time it takes for an eye to twinkle is even faster.
There might be some who think they will have time to decide whether to
believe when the Rapture happens. But no one can decide that fast.
Anyone who has waited until the last minute will be left behind, and
they will have to go through a horrible time coming on the earth known
as the "Great Tribulation." However, if you have put your faith in Jesus
Christ, you have the hope that you will be taken before the Tribulation
period comes. The Bible says, "For God did not appoint us to wrath, but
to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Thessalonians
5:9) In the flash of a second, every living Christian on earth will
suddenly and instantaneously be gone. So, you might go to bed one night
and wake up in heaven.