partial rapture

The rapture is the next event on God’s prophecy schedule. It is an event unparalleled in all of history! We saw a picture of the rapture when God took Enoch alive, translated him instantly from earth to heaven. (Genesis 5:24, Hebrews 11:5). The rapture itself will be a joyous reunion of all the saints alive and dead, meeting our Lord in the air, to be with Him forevermore! It is the ultimate moment we all long for, look forward to. The glorious resurrection! The glorious meeting! When God gives a bride to His Son! At long last!

God has planned this prophetic moment, and the ones afterward, since before the foundation of the world. (Ephesians 1:4). The amazing thing, is that He has told us before the time! (Matthew 24:25, Amos 3:7, 1 Corinthians 15:51).

Prophecy matters very much to the Lord. Prophecy is a doctrine, it’s Eschatology (“Last Things“). The longest speech Jesus made was the Olivet Discourse, about last things. Every book of the New Testament except Philemon has last things in it! Last things matter to the Lord.

As for the rapture specifically, it is our hope and joy. It is the sweetest promise. It is the doctrine with which we encourage each other! (1 Thessalonians 4:18).

that the righteous will rise first in the morning of the resurrection, and before the living saints are changed, and are with Christ; that they will both be taken up together to meet him; and that they shall all be with him, and that for ever, and never part more; than which nothing can yield more true and solid comfort” (Gill’s Exposition)

Even more glorious, Jesus said we are not appointed to wrath and He will keep us from the our of trial that is to come upon the whole world! (Revelation 3:10).

Ans yet we have so many people mocking and scoffing at last things. (2 Peter 3:3; Jude 1:8). “Where is the promise of his coming?” they will mock. “How come He is taking so long?” they will scoff.

Satan has even put it to some people that there is no rapture at all. They claim it is a made-up event from the ravings of a demonically influenced Scottish girl named Margaret MacDonald and picked up by John Darby in the 1830s. Nonsense. But several times a week I receive emails apprising me of this “fact” and they deny the doctrine completely.

Others are influenced by satan’s notion that there will be a partial rapture. That God has selected some to go and some less faithful to stay so as to be polished by the Tribulation and be ready to meet Him later.

Worse, many Christians have fallen for the notion of a ‘post tribulation’ rapture. These people believe in the rapture, just not that it will occur before the Tribulation. The confuse the trumpets and twist some scriptures and throw in some personal martyr complexes for good measure. They believe that Jesus will hurl wrath at His bride and then bring us home.

But if the rapture will be post-Tribulation, Paul never needed to write the Thessalonians a second time to reassure them they had not missed the rapture because what seemed like the Tribulation had begun. 2 Thessalonians 2 would have been a different letter. Paul would have said, ‘yes it’s started, but hold on, you can make it with the help of the Spirit.’ But he didn’t.

But there is an even worse tribulation position than the denial, the partial, the post. It is the “Pan-Tribulation” position.

It is the position for some reason that irks me the most. You hear it sometimes from Christians, who, when discussing the rapture and last things, and the rapture’s timing, they say, “I’m a pan-tribulationist. Everything will work out in the end. HAR HAR HAR.” They think this is funny. They think this is clever. They even think this is pious.

It isn’t.

What they are in effect saying is, one-third of the bible doesn’t matter to them. Studying these things so as to encourage each other doesn’t matter to them. In casually dismissing these important doctrines, they are agreeing with satan to steal hope. They are being used by him to confuse the sheep. They are destroying an important witnessing tool for Christians. They are dampening urgency.

The Doctrine of Last Things and the Rapture Doctrine itself is not seen as an essential doctrine for salvation. It is seen as a “nonessential” for belief. But that doesn’t mean it’s not essential to know. It doesn’t mean it’s not essential to study. The rapture IS a very important doctrine.

The Rapture of church-age believers is a source of great encouragement and motivation to godly Christian service (1 Cor. 15:58). The Rapture is a very important doctrine. It helps to motivate the Lord’s people to stay awake spiritually and it helps to motivate the churches to stay busy in the work of preaching the gospel to lost souls before it is too late. (source)

Being a “pan tribber” was alien to Paul’s mindset. He had a very short time in Thessalonika and the first things he taught were the last things.

The Rapture Is an Important Doctrine
First, the rapture is an important doctrine. Many give the impression that the rapture is some kind of secondary doctrine that need not be given too much attention. We are often told that we should focus on the “big ticket” theological items such as the Virgin Birth, the Vicarious Atonement, the Trinity, Salvation by Faith Alone, and the Deity of Christ. Only after these doctrines are mastered should we then consider or contemplate the doctrine of the rapture. Along these same lines, many contend that the rapture is certainly not something that a new believer should give too much time or attention to. …Such thinking was foreign to the mindset of the Apostle Paul. Interestingly, the Thessalonians were new believers (1 Thess. 1:9). … The point in all of this is that although the Thessalonians were new believers, Paul never hid the doctrine of the rapture from them. On the contrary, he openly disclosed this teaching to them along with many other doctrines.

In his letter to the Thessalonians, before more fully developing the doctrine of the rapture in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Paul briefly mentioned this doctrine in 1 Thessalonians 1:10. Paul obviously believed that the rapture is a foundational doctrine because he mentioned it immediately after discussing other basic doctrines such as the Holy Spirit (1:5) and conversion (1:5, 9). He also mentions the rapture doctrine (4:13-18) just after and before discussing other basic Christian truths such as sanctification (4:3, 5:23) and the dimensions of man’s nature (5:23). Evidently, in Paul’s thinking, the rapture was just as important as these other truths and deserved the same level of treatment and understanding.

With so much of last things occupying up to a third of the bible, with each book of the NT except Philemon teaching us last things, with Jesus spending the most time of all telling the answer to the question what are the signs of the end, and with Paul delivering the rapture doctrine early and firmly to the new believers, WHO IS SOMEONE TO SAY “I’m a pan-tribber. It’ll all work out in the end” !

Shame, O, for shame!

when you ask them about the last things and how the story ends, they don’t have a clue. They say, “Well I don’t know if I’m a-mill, post-mill, pre-mill, pan-mill, whatever mill. I don’t…but I don’t think it’s really important.” That’s like saying, you know, that a book is written, the most important book that’s ever been written in the history of the world, the only book that truly reflects God’s purpose for humanity and you don’t care how it ends? Of course you care how it ends. (source)

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Further reading:

Why Some Reject the Pre-Tribulation rapture

Sermon series: The Rapture and the Day of the Lord

What About Children in the Rapture?

The Rapture defined and why it will happen

Wiki for The Leftovers:

The Leftovers is an upcoming American television drama fantasy series created by Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta set to air on HBO. It is based on Perrotta’s novel of the same name. The pilot was written by Lindelof and Perrotta, and directed by Peter Berg. The series stars Justin Theroux, Amy Brenneman, Christopher Eccleston, Liv Tyler, and Ann Dowd. It is scheduled to premiere on HBO on June 29, 2014.

Premise: The Leftovers takes place in the wake of a global “Rapture” and centers on the people who were not taken but were left behind in a suburban community.

An early review:

Clueless and Gloomy in Suburbia
‘The Leftovers,’ on HBO, a Tale of Mysterious Disappearances

If that was the Christian rapture, then some of the worst people were chosen for eternal salvation. On “The Leftovers,” a spooky new series starting on Sunday on HBO, about one person in 50 vanished on Oct. 14, without any discernible pattern: babies, lawyers, drunks, thieves, surgeons, murderers, grandmothers, bartenders, celebrities and even the pope are gone. Three years after 2 percent of the world’s population suddenly disappeared, lots of people believe it was an act of God, but nobody has any answers, especially not special commissions reporting to Congress. Some churches close, and new cults form

The question is, how soon will life imitate art? (except for the part about the pope, he’s not going anywhere)
Dystopia: a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding. Compare utopia.

Below is an excerpt from an interview with the writer of the new series. It is so interesting to see how the unsaved view us.

That novel had several evangelical characters, and while researching that unfamiliar world, he was constantly struck at how often the Rapture came up as a literal part of people’s faith. But Mr. Perrotta, whose earlier books include “Election” and “Little Children,” had no interest in engaging in easy satire of the Rapture and its adherents. He wanted to deal with those beliefs seriously. “One of the things that happened was, I started to think of the Rapture as an amazing metaphor for loss, and particularly sudden loss,” he said. But Mr. Perrotta’s Rapture came with a twist: What if it was random? What if it took a wrecking ball to one’s entire belief system?

Yes, sudden … in the twinkling of an eye. Literally.

And it will seem random. Just ask Lazarus and the Rich Man.

In the tv show about 140 million alive people go in the rapture, or about 2% of the world population. I’d say this is a reasonable estimate of how many will go. Of course, the dead shall rise, too.

This is another article about the show, Tom Perrotta explores mass grief in The Leftovers

What if millions of people around the world vanished — suddenly, for no apparent reason — in an event like the rapture foretold in Christian prophecy? That’s the premise of a new HBO series based on Tom Perrotta’s much-admired novel, The Leftovers.

That IS one aspect of the upcoming rapture, grief. There will be mass grief all over the world. However, the Holy Spirit’s restraining ministry will cease at the rapture, so as to allow sin to have its day. After a short while the world’s population won’t care that loved ones have disappeared. Either they will be too busy sinning so greatly, or they will be too busy trying to survive, or the ones who come to Christ will rejoice in knowing they will see their loved ones soon anyway.

One article I read about the show made the comment that there are many dystopian televisions shows on tv now. Dystopian is the opposite of utopian, where everything is perfect. Dystopian is a world where nothing is perfect, it is dark, gloomy, hopeless. In Isaiah 24, the passage titled “Judgment on the whole earth” we read;

In the streets they cry out for wine; all joy turns to gloom, all joyful sounds are banished from the earth. (Isaiah 24:11 NIV)

There is a simple reason for the flood of dystopian movies, television shows, books, and themed magazines. There is a reason for the hoarding/prepping, apocalypse cults, and doomsday pod sales. It has to do with hope.

This planet is carrying the biggest load of sin since the Flood, and the largest amount of sinful people. Apostasy is rampant, Jesus-rejection is a plague, and hatred of all things holy is reaching a time of nearly no equal. Anyone who does not have Christ has no hope. That’s a lot of hopeless people on the planet, promoting their hopeless worldview.

For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. (Psalm 71:5)

Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off. (Proverbs 23:18)

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. (John 10:10)

Those with hope in Jesus have life and they have it abundantly. Those without Christ have no hope and do not have life abundantly. They live under the Thief (who is satan) who kills and destroys. No wonder the unsaved’s worldview is so dark and dystopian. Further, because Hollywood is run by people with this hopeless worldview, it is no wonder that what flows from it are the pictures in the mind and the desires of their heart: dark, hopeless, joyless.

In this article from A.V. Club, see how cleverly satan has acknowledged the rapture, but has changed its presentation to a hopeless mystery and an “unknowable” riddle. To make us wonder if God really will take all the Christians, and casting doubt just as he did in the Garden (“Hath God said…?” Genesis 3:1). Yet we know in the bible that the mystery has been revealed! 1 Corinthians 15:51 declares it.

The Leftovers is bleak, brutal, brilliant television

Based on the novel by Tom Perrotta (who shares a co-creator credit with Lindelof and co-writes a couple of episodes), The Leftovers is some of the most desolate, despairing television on air. It’s also frequently brilliant, using the central hook of Perrotta’s book not as a pivot into genre fiction but as a pivot into something like a modern version of medieval mystery plays. But instead of God at the center of the story, there’s uncertainty, a Schrödinger’s cat the characters would desperately like to observe, if only they could force the box to open and provide them with answers.

In the series, as in Perrotta’s novel, an unexplained event causes 2 percent of the world’s population to disappear one crisp October day. It’s an event very like the Christian rapture, except there’s no rhyme or reason to those taken. It’s just as likely for sinners and innocents to be caught up. The series opens with a riveting depiction of that day, in which director Peter Berg, in one fluid camera movement, suggests the panic of a mother suddenly realizing her baby is no longer there, before leaping three years into the future, when both science and religion have essentially given up on trying to explain what happened, and others are hoping to move on with their lives.

And isn’t it clever of satan to ignore the reason for the rapture- God’s wrath. God will punish in wrath during the time after the rapture, yet no mention is ever made of this in the program. Satan introduces doctrines of devils while conveniently offering only half the story. (“You surely wont die!” Genesis 3:4).

Praise Jesus that He is so full of Light and Joy! We have eternal, ever-flowing hope! His mystery has been revealed! He is coming for all the Christians leaving none behind. He is our Father, or Shepherd, our hope.

I will not be watching The Leftovers. Even if I had a TV. Or cable. Why join with those who are in darkness to present such an unbliblical view of the great Hope we have within us? Why participate in one lost man’s academic – but not spiritual – exploration of the rapture? “For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14)

Serenidad: free wallpaper

We have the blessed Word delivered to us the saints, once for all (Jude 1:3). We have the authoritative visions from the prophets and from Jesus describing the hope to come, the heavenly city and all its perfections. We have the Kingdom within us to sustain us as a deposit of the guarantee. Cling to His word, rejoice in what is described in the bible regarding our future home. Utopia is man’s version of perfection, but the perfections seen in His word are so much more than than- they are God’s promises.

Category: partial rapture

Message to "Pan-Tribbers"

HBO’s new rapture television series "The Leftovers"