Eternal life resides in Jesus and in Him alone. No one else! This is true now and will also be the case after Jesus removes His true church from the earth.
In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
What do people need the most? The answer remains the same as it’s always been: A clear understanding of the Gospel. By this I mean that people need Jesus, not the one that so many today create in their mind but but the One revealed on the pages of Scripture.
Today, allegorical interpretations of biblical prophecy are again driving the church away from the purity of the Gospel and in effect cancelling the “blessed hope” of Titus 2:13.
But one thing is certain: no one can cancel our blessed hope! Jesus will appear someday to take us home before God judges the Christ-rejecting world.
You may wonder why I am again writing in defense of the pretribulation Rapture, the belief that Jesus will come for His church before the start of the seven-year tribulation. I am doing so because we live in a time when many inside and outside the church ridicule our hope in Jesus’ imminent appearing.
How do we answer those who mock the hope we hold so dear?
In this two-part series, I will answer twelve questions that confirm our belief that the New Testament indeed teaches a pretribulation Rapture.
The purpose of this two-part series on the pretribulation Rapture is to reassure fellow believers that the New Testament indeed places the Lord’s appearing for us before the start of the seven-year tribulation.
We live in a day when deception reigns all around us and fear characterizes most people in our world. The media and Big Tech censor truth as never before in America making it very difficult to discover the reality behind the fake news that confronts us every day.
Covenant premillennialists believe Jesus fulfilled all of the Old Testament during His first coming; this includes all of God’s covenants with the nation of Israel including the promise of the Land, which the Lord says is an “everlasting covenant” (Psalm 105:8-11).
Their claim to be premillennial obscures their denial of a literal thousand-year reign of Jesus over the nations of the world.
The Lord of the Rings is allegory; Jesus’ future return to earth is reality. In Tolkien’s symbolic tale of the Second Coming, King Aragorn defeats the forces of the demonic Sauron that are attacking Isengard. In biblical prophecy, Jesus will triumph over the forces that Satan will someday gather to destroy Jerusalem.
Ezekiel tells us that God’s future outpouring of blessings on the Jewish people has nothing to do with their goodness. In His own words, the Lord says that He will act “for the sake of my holy name” and to “vindicate the holiness of my great name.”
In other words, the Lord’s keeping of His promise to restore a kingdom to Israel vindicates His holiness.
The events of 2020 have caused some dear saints to think that the tribulation has already started. Others may be wondering about the certainty of the pretribulation rapture as they watch violence, lawlessness, and violence overshadow our world.
My purpose in writing is to encourage believers to remain watchful as our world becomes a dark and foreboding place. Despite what we see, we can know Jesus is coming for us before the start of the seven-year tribulation.
What is happening to our great nation? What do the riots signify? Why do we see such violence on our streets with innocent people attacked and in many instances killed? Why the tremendous increase in violence?
What if all that we are seeing points what the Bible tells us will be a world government during the time of the tribulation?
Why am I writing about preterism? It’s my passion to warn believers about false teachings related to future things and as such preterism requires our full attention because it distorts our Gospel hope.
Because of the widespread acceptance and popularity of preterism, it’s necessary to address key perils wrapped up in its false teaching.
Much of what we are seeing in 2020 represents a concerted effort by elite globalists to prepare people in the United States and world to accept the authority of the coming New World Order (NWO). Although President Trump remains solidly against the submission of the United States to it, the radical left has succeeded in convincing many Americans of its necessity.
My heart ached this past Monday morning as I read about the chaos and lawlessness near the White House. I felt both anger and fear as I saw pictures of violence and deadly attacks on law enforcement in cities throughout the United States.
It was not until I read several Psalms and through about Jesus’ promises return that my heart began to settle down and my focus began to change from the rioters to my hope in Jesus.
It’s perhaps the fastest growing view of end-times prophecy in the church today, but it deviates greatly from what the Bible teaches about our future. The movement often referred to as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) relies more on experience and extra-biblical revelations than it does on the words of Scripture.
Besides NAR, some identify some identify this movement as Dominionism, Third Wave, Latter Rain, Kingdom Now, and Charismatic Renewal.
The noise was almost deafening. Up to that point, the Iowa crowd had been rather quiet as it looked like the Indiana football team was about to score another touchdown and seal their victory. The mood in the stadium changed suddenly when the Indiana quarterback lost control of the ball and an Iowa player, Tyler Sash, grabbed the ball and ran it eighty-six yards for a touchdown.
By the time he reached the goal line, all seventy-thousand Iowa fans were standing and cheering ecstatically.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, I have felt a wide range of emotions. At times anger has surged inside me as I have watched news accounts of many elected officials attempting to take advantage of the crisis for personal or political advantage.
The words of Psalm 46:10 have been my frequent place of refuge the many emotions stirring inside me; they have often restored peace and brought greatly needed reassurance to my soul. Like many of you.
Are you crazy!? I realize some of you might think so after reading my title. How can I be so sure of something so hotly debated within the church? Most Christians either say we cannot know anything for sure about the Lord’s return or they dismiss the rapture altogether.
In spite of all the dissension today, I know Jesus is coming for all His saints, for us, before the start of the tribulation.
While Scripture alone must be our sole source for faith and practice, the study of church history does serve a couple useful purposes. First, it helps us understand the historical background for what we believe. And second, it refutes those who use church history against what we believe. This last point is especially true in the realm of future things.
The scoffers of our day love to tell us that no one believed like we do until the late nineteenth century.
This brings us to our next signpost on the path to establishing a biblical basis for the pretribulation rapture: church history. The purpose of this signpost is not to justify our belief in the pretribulation rapture on the basis of history nor is it to convince those who reject it on this faulty basis.
Rather, my intent is to provide those who already believe in the rapture with evidence of a belief in it from church history.
As we saw in our last signpost, the false report informing the Thessalonians that the day of the Lord had already begun put these new believers in a state of severe panic (see signpost #6). In response,
This brings us to the next word on our signposts: “Restrainer.” Why is this word so significant? A key event at the start of the tribulation, the revealing of the antichrist, cannot happen until God removes the Restrainer who is currently holding back his unveiling to the world.
