RAPTURE PROBLEMS
TEXT: Matthew 24:30-51
OPEN: How many of you watched or heard about the recent movie "Noah’s Ark" starring Jon Voight? The network that developed it spent a great deal of time promoting the credentials of the actors and writers. They built it up as one of the greatest TV film events of the year.
But after it aired, just about everyone else thought it was a disaster. I read about it in Major news magazines like Time & Newsweek. I heard about it from members of my Sunday School Class. A friend of mine that didn’t even attend church regular called to complain. Nobody seemed to like it.
What was it that upset so many about film?
Well, it was badly written, badly researched, and poorly acted.
But - more seriously for believers - there was the concern that the movie would influence people (who had no church background) misleading and confusing them.
We believers were UNEASY, because we were offended by the liberties taken and the potential damage that the movie could have had.
I. When I approach the topic of “the rapture” I feel that same kind of uneasiness.
I’m pleased that the focus on 2nd coming of Christ has intensified over past 40 years. All this talk about “the rapture” reminds us that Jesus is coming.
Christians have proudly displayed bumper stickers
· In case of rapture, this car will be unoccupied
· In case of rapture, someone please take the wheel
· In case of rapture, give my car to my brother-in-law
I’m gratified with the sense of urgency this has created. The need to set life right with God that has been created.
BUT there is much that bothers me in the discussion of the Rapture. There is too much bad theology that surrounds what many people presently understand about it.
To understand what’s lies behind the popular concept of the Rapture, it’s necessary to go back to book of Daniel, and the interpretation of its prophecies. These interpretations form the basis for much of what is taught today.
The prophecies of Daniel were written about 550 years before Christ. One of the most significant is found in Daniel 9:20-27
20 While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and making my request to the LORD my God for his holy hill--
21 while I was still in prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice.
22 He instructed me and said to me, "Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding.
23 As soon as you began to pray, an answer was given, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the message and understand the vision:
24 "Seventy ’sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy.
25 "Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ’sevens,’ and sixty-two ’sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.
26 After the sixty-two ’sevens,’ the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.
27 He will confirm a covenant with many for one ’seven.’ In the middle of the ’seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on a wing of the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him."
What the angel told Daniel was that this prophecy was to cover (vss 24) 70 weeks of years (which conservative scholars recognize as covering a period of 490 yrs).
In day of Daniel, Jerusalem was in ruins and the Jewish people were in exile in Babylon. Daniel’s prophecy was declaring that someone was going to decree that Jerusalem be rebuilt. The book of Ezra tells us that that someone was Artaxerxes in 457 BC. Furthermore, the prophecy decreed that after the 1st sixty nine (69) of those weeks - or 483 yrs. - the anointed one would arrive.
NOW if you start at 457 BC and add 483 yrs... you end up with the date of 27 A.D.. Who do you think began His ministry about 27 A.D.?
Jesus.
What do you think “Messiah” means?
"Anointed One."
Daniel’s prophecy is overwhelming because of its extreme accuracy. God pinned it down to the year! THAT’S A PHENOMENAL PROPHECY.
But here’s where the bad theology comes in: Many present day teachers of 2nd coming believe Jesus should have returned after the final 7 years of Daniel’s prophecy. BUT HE DIDN’T… so they think something must have gone wrong.
WHAT? They teach that something went wrong.
And that something “that went wrong” (they teach)was that the Jews rejected Jesus. AND this rejection was UNFORSEEN by God.
God hadn’t planned on this rejection so He… went to plan B (the introduction of the Gentile Church). He stopped the “prophetic clock,” and postponed the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy until the rapture would remove the Gentile Church so that Israel could step into its rightful place in God’s plan. (How else to explain that a period of over 2000 years between the first 69 weeks of Daniel’s prophecy and the final week than to describe as a stopping of the prophetic clock).
A couple of things bother me about this teaching.
* First it bothers me that people would teach that something could happen that would be unforeseen by God. Does that bother anybody else?
* Secondly, I’m troubled that they would teach (by inference) that God wouldn’t plan on the Gentiles being part of the plan.
* And 3rd it I’m extremely upset that anyone would consider that God somehow wouldn’t be omniscient enought to realize that only a portion of Jews in Jesus’ day would accept Jesus.
WHY DOES THAT BOTHER ME? Because of what is written in Romans 9:25-28
25 As he says in Hosea: "I will call them ’my people’ who are not my people; and I will call her ’my loved one’ who is not my loved one,"
26 and, "It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them, ’You are not my people,’ they will be called ’sons of the living God.’"
27 Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: "Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved.
28 For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality."
In other words, Paul tells us that the Gentiles were part of God’s plan from the very beginning. They were not (as Schofield taught) a parenthesis in God’s plan.
Gentiles were part of THE plan! The Bible tells us they were.
III. Another problem I have with present day “rapture” teaching is that it calls for 2nd and 3rd coming of Christ.
Or, as Jack Van Impe put it: “there will be 2 stages to Christ’s 2nd coming."
Oh really?
The way the Rapture is taught these days, it would have to be silent, secretive and unseen. Consider the general concept where two are in the field - and "poof" one disappears and the other wonders what in the world happened. Two are in a car, one disappears and the other struggles to control it as it careens out of control.
THEN 7 yrs. later – after the final week of Daniel’s prophecy - The REVEALING occurs when Jesus comes with all of His authority & power.
There’s a real problem with that teaching, and the problem is found in Matthew 24:30-31
30 "At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory.
31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
In other words, when Jesus comes to gather his elect - who’s going to see Him? Verse 30 tells me "all the nations of the earth… will see the Son of Man."
What’s He going to use to signal His angels? Verse 31 says it will be a "loud trumpet call."
2nd Coming teachers like Van Impe & Hal Lindsey and others, maintain this “rapture” will be quiet, and shockingly mysterious, leading to speculation by those who remain of “what happened?”
1 Thessalonians. 4:16-18 declares: "For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. & so we will be with the Lord forever."
DOESN’T SOUND REAL QUIET TO ME. It sounds noisy! Dramatic! Overwhelming! God’s intention will be to get our attention.
IV. In one of Jesus’ parables we’re given a description of this final scene.
In Matthew 13:24-30 and verses 36-43 we’re told the parable of the wheat and the tares.
As Jesus explains it, Satan’s goal is to sow weeds amongst God’s faithful crop. The angels inquire if they should remove the weeds and the Father tells them "no" because if they did that they’d root up some of the good crop with the bad. They’ll wait till the harvest then the separation will occur.
Now note: When the harvest begins… who is removed from the field 1st? Verse 40 tells us the tares will be removed first.
OH REALLY? But isn’t the normal teaching of the Rapture that the "good crop" will be taken out and leave the "weeds" behind? That’s not what this parable indicates.
But what about the words of Jesus found in Matthew 24
36 "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark;
39 and 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.
40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left.
41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.
42 "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.
Does this passage teach that the good are removed and the bad are left?
No.
There are a couple of factors present day Rapture teachers have overlooked in teaching this passage. First, Jesus tells us that when the flood came it "took them all away" (vs. 39). Who did the flood take away? The evil people, not the redeemed. The same term "took them away" is what Jesus used to describe those in the field and in the hand mill. Thus, if we are to be consistent our handling of Jesus’ teaching here, we’d have to conclude that He was proclaiming that the 1st rapture will of those who DO NOT BELONG to God. THEN, God will gather those who are His sons and daughters in Christ.
One man once observed that for Jesus to teach what many modern day Rapture preachers teach, He would have been better served to have used the example of Enoch or Elijah (They disappeared and were looked for but not found).
Instead, a strict teaching of the Noah illustration leaves us with a concept totally different than what is commonly held now.
Closing: What does Jesus teach us about His 2nd coming:
· He’s coming back
· His prime objective in coming back is to get us
· BUT when He comes it will be in judgment
· AND if you don’t belong to Him, you’ll have only yourself to blame.
Billy Graham was on Johnny Carson’s TONIGHT SHOW some years back. Carson speculated: "I suppose when Jesus comes again, we’ll probably… treat Him no better than when He came the 1st time."
Graham paused: “When Jesus came the 1st time, he came as a servant, in humility and ready to die for our sins. The next time He comes it will be with power and authority & in judgment it will be as the Great King of Heaven."
