Thank you for your post
Zelma. It was like a breath of fresh air in the midst of thick
smog. The bottom line is that God is in control regardless of all things
happening in the world in addition to our estimations of the rapture. To
reiterate what you said, I believe it is a certainty that most of us born
again Christians have forgotten two vital things: “We are strangers
and aliens passing thru a strange land” and “we are being sifted for
our return to Heaven.” The Lord is not slack in His promises.
Just as Jesus said, He will come. All the telltale signs He and Paul
mentioned are all around us now. What true Christian doesn’t
believe that our time (rapture season) has come? Yet, why isn’t that
enough? We now know the hour, but few it seems are turning their
focus toward Christ.
On Rosh Hashanah, the day that
many (including myself) actually believed the rapture would happen, what were
the predominate posts on this forum? They were postings relative to
Obama, McCain, the “700 billion dollar bail out,” the world’s financial
crises, marshal law, the democratic cover-up, world banks, tumbling stocks and
many other sorts of “worldly” affairs. Hardly anyone posted anything
about being with our Lord in heaven. Hardly anyone posted anything about
Jesus’ arrival and the glory of His appearing to His saints. In fact,
collectively, Jesus was hardly mentioned at all. We saw a snapshot of
thoughts if you will, on the very day of our expectations of Jesus’ arrival to
rapture the church. If anyone were to take a survey, I don’t think it
would be outlandish to say that the majority of thoughts presented that day
were not necessarily relative to Christ and Holiness, but the affairs of this
world. If a survey were taken across the spectrum of born again
Christians throughout the world, perhaps the results would have been no
different.
I am not trying to be judgmental
here, but am only observing. I don’t understand what I see. When
will Christians become willing to detach themselves from this world? I
pray that we do understand that it is a God given “requirement”
(Romans 12:12; 2 Corinthians 6:14-17; Colossians 2:20-23). We
know that He is coming “any day now” and I do mean this literally, “ANY
DAY NOW.” What more evidence does anyone need? Do we
believe that God has automatically slated us to be raptured just because we
have figured out the time frame of His return? Do we actually believe
that being watchful and prayerful is only relative to our excitement
concerning the possible dates of His arrival and preoccupation with worldly
affairs? Is there anyone actually “intimate” with God these days?
Is there anyone actually in love with Him? Is there anyone in love with
the fact that He is calling His children Home to be with
Him forever?” Is there anyone sincerely seeking Him and
dying unto their flesh because of Him? Do we honestly think it is a
blessed thing that the Lord should come and find our hearts consumed with this
world instead of Him or the idea that it is perfectly okay to have our hearts
set upon both?
The Word says that in the
twinkling of an eye, we would all be changed (1 Corinthians
15:52). The world is full of sin, which God does not behold.
Once changed (glorified in Him) would we even have memory of this place?
Would we behold sin in the face of our Savior? If our focus is not on
Jesus now how could our focus be upon Him the moment He comes? Will it
be then that we will dispense with all our worldly affairs and turn to
Him? Will it be possible to do this within a “twinkling” of an
eye? Paul instructed us to be watchful and sober (1 Thessalonians
5:6), for we are of the light and not darkness. Jesus also warned
that if we do not watch He would come like a thief (Revelation
3:3). I believe that very few are actually watching. The
majority are saying that they are watching and are even excited, but they are
not actually watching at all. They are only mesmerized by the affairs of
this world. They are still asleep. True watchers see from the
perspective of their hearts. Filled with the Holy Spirit, they
“discern” that Jesus is coming. It’s not something they hear
about from the news and thus believe. They don’t estimate that Jesus is
coming because of a looming war or political situation. They “know” it
in their spirit well before such worldly things are even spoken or brought to
light. Such worldly events only confirm what the watcher has already
known. Jesus is warning us to “wake-up.”
Jesus told us to watch and
pray. I don’t believe for a moment that He meant that we were to consume
ourselves with the affairs of the world. He said, “Follow
me and let the dead bury their dead” (Matthew 8:22).
Following Jesus is to follow God who is not of this world. Letting the
dead bury their dead means let those belonging to the world handle the things
of the world, for all of it is dead because the world lacks Christ. The
signs He gave us were to serve as exactly that, “signs” pointing toward His
return. It seems that the people have made the signs and world events,
which everyone is viewing, more important than the rapture itself. I
woke up this morning with this thought: what if the Lord decided to tarry
until He was convinced that His people actually wanted Him to come, not for
their own selfish reasons, but because they truly loved and yearned to be with
Him. What if the Lord decided to tarry until we could convince Him that
our desire for Him was as great as our need to breathe air? If the Lord
decided to tarry for such a reason, I wonder how long it would take before
He’d be convinced. How long would it take us to convey to Him how
serious we actually are about Him? Thank God, He is not waiting on us,
but doing things according to His own plan.
Then of course, and once again,
are the scoffers. Most believed that Jesus was coming in June of
2008. It didn’t happen. Then people believed August 8, 2008 and it
didn’t happen. Then it seemed that mostly everyone believed that Jesus
would show up on Rosh Hashanah. Again, it didn’t happen and now they are
ready to bail. The 1st week of October hasn’t even passed and
already in their hearts, they wonder whether they should skip the idea of a
rapture or tribulation all together. Have you ever stopped to think
about what Noah must have experienced? Here was a man who was
spiritually dead, who believed God at His word and built an ark as God had
commanded him. He tried to tell the people what was coming. He
sounded the warning of the pending flood for 120 years. Imagine what he
must have looked like to the people after the first week of working on the
ark. Imagine what he must have looked like after say a couple of
months. Surely, by the 5th year no one probably even paid
that much attention to him anymore. By the 20th year, his
reputation was perhaps totally destroyed. By this time, not only did the
people ignore him, but also no doubt thought of him as a fruitcake.
Imagine the Lord instructing you to build an ark in a desert region where
people had not even seen rain before. Would they even understand the
concept of a flood?
The people derided Noah probably
even more so after he finished the ark. Still, they would not listen and
every one of them perished. The point is that Noah believed God.
He never backed down from what the Lord told Him. He never allowed his
own ideas to corrupt what God had said. Nowhere does the Bible indicate
that Noah concerned himself with figuring out the exact day. In fact,
Noah never even bothered asking God when the flood would come. He simply
believed that it would. At His appointed time, the Lord gave him a 7-day
heads up. Attempting to figure out the “day” of the rapture is not a
sin, but we error greatly in the eyes of God when our predictions take
precedence over the meaning of the rapture itself and our obligations to
Christ as the day approaches. Nowhere does the Bible indicate that Noah
became involved in the matters of the world. Despite the world, his
expectation was that God would send a flood to destroy all life on earth
because the Lord told him this. Because of his expectation, Noah focused
on three things: his relationship with God, building the ark as God commanded,
and preaching God’s message of salvation to those who were on their way to
destruction.
I doubt it if Noah knew the exact
time of the flood until the Lord told him to enter the ark, yet he warned the
people for 120 years. On the other hand, say for the sake of
argument, that he did know the exact time the flood would come; still he got
busy as the Lord commanded for an event that was not going to happen for yet a
hundred plus years.
Jesus told us to watch and
pray. In this final hour, He has laid out in simple fashion every sign,
every indication that His return for us is right at the door, yet what are we
doing? Where is our focus? How can it be that we are Spirit-filled
Christians and yet we seem so blasé about His return? His return seems
to be more about our calculated dates according to signs and worldly affairs
as opposed to our seeking His face in repentance, and fervently crying out in
prayer for the saving of lost souls as we race against the nearness of His
return. Billions of people are going to die. Billions will go to
hell and will be confined forever in the lake of fire. Yet, most
Christians are fixated upon things having nothing to do with Christ whatsoever
or the lost souls, which Jesus happens to love as much as He does each of us.
Instead of asking for guidance in what we should be doing in this final
hour, many are enthralled in figuring out the day of His arrival. They
even debate and argue about it. They are immersed in the political arena
of who’s who and what’s what, yet within perhaps only days billions who do not
know God will die. Politics will be no more. Have we forgotten
about what the Word says about the coming leader? What are politics in
the wake of a world war that devastates the earth? People wake up!
God is not a man that He should lie (Numbers 23:19). The people
in this country and around the world are looking down the barrel of a shotgun
called “tribulation.” The moment it begins, the only thing that will
matter is where they will spend eternity. If we just believed that Jesus could
come on Rosh Hashanah concerning the times, then is the nearness of the
tribulation actually sinking in? Come on, it doesn’t take a rocket
scientist to figure this out. I am proving point blank that many
Christians are still catching ZZZ’s. Wake up! People are getting
bent on what the world is doing. They are getting bent on what
government is doing, but they should understand that Jesus is about to throw a
giant monkey wrench in everybody’s plans. He is going to interrupt
everything. His rapture of the church will change the entire course of
the world as “man” sees it.
Christians today are
“Spirit-filled,” but for most, you would never know it. So caught up in
their own ideas or other’s that when their forecasted rapture event does not
occur, they immediately cast their confidence in Christ to the ground.
They want to lash out at the messengers, but the fault and responsibility is
really their own because “they” neglected to establish a relationship with
Christ themselves. Had they done such, they would have kept the patience
of His Word regardless of the actual day of His return to rapture the
church.
Regardless of Jesus coming today
or by the end of this month or even next spring, anyone having within him the
Holy Spirit can discern the times without even picking up a newspaper or
watching the news. That person knows without doubt that Jesus is coming
and very soon, thus he prepares as Jesus said. He sobers up, as Paul
said. I think many of us are missing the point, folks. Our
rejoicing should be constant. Our confidence should be in what God said,
not in what we have been able to figure out. Concerning the actual day
of His return, not a one of us has been correct yet. Maybe God is trying
to tell us to leave it alone. Maybe He is trying to help us get our
priorities straight. Maybe the most important thing He wants to get
across to us concerns our preparedness. How can we honestly be prepared
for His arrival if He is not even in the picture?
“Behold, I come quickly: hold
that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown” (Revelation
3:11).
“He that hath an ear, let him
hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches” (Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 29;
3:6, 13, 22).
Even so, come Lord
Jesus!
Your brother in Christ
forever,
Rick Wynn