A Rough Ramble through a Pre-Trib Rapture Argument

This is the first part of a three-part presentation by Jack Kelley of his logic defending the End Times scenario that begins with the Rapture of the Church.

Seven Things You Have To Know
There are seven pieces of information that are essential to understanding End Times Prophecy. These seven things are the building blocks for the strong foundation we want.

They are,
1) The Sequence of Major End Time Events,
2) The Destiny of the Three Components of Humanity,
3) The Purpose and Length of the Great Tribulation,
4) The Purpose of the Rapture,
5) The Conditions Surrounding the 2nd Coming,
6) The Purpose and Length of the Millennium, and
7) Eternity.

Once you’ve learned them, these seven things will help you avoid the mistakes that have thrown others off the track. Call it perspective or overview or whatever you want, this combination of facts will give you the ability to put all the prophetic verses in the Bible into their proper context. Let’s get started.

1) The Sequence Of Major End Times Events
First is knowing what happens and when. The study of prophecy gets really confusing if you don’t know the sequence in which major End Times events will occur. Actually their order is very logical, and once you learn it, you’ll wonder why you didn’t see it before. The best way to figure it out is to perform what the business world sometimes calls a back scheduling exercise. It involves going to the very end of a process and identifying the final outcome. Then you list all the things that have to happen to produce that outcome. Then you put them in reverse order, backing into the present. It’s simpler than it sounds, and much simpler in prophecy than in business because there are many fewer events to organize. We’ll list the major events first, then we’ll organize them.

Almost everyone knows about the 2nd Coming and Eternity, and many also have heard of the Rapture of the Church and the Great Tribulation. But there’s also the Millennial Kingdom, Daniel’s 70th Week, and the Battles of Ezekiel 38-39, Psalm 83 and Isaiah 17; a total of nine major events yet to come. Now let’s organize them, beginning with the final outcome and working back toward the beginning. As it is with most lists, the order in which some events will occur is obvious while others are less so, and at first some don’t seem to fit any place at all. We’ll order the obvious ones first.

What Are We Waiting For?
We all think of Eternity as the final outcome, and so starting at the end means we begin there. But the last major event described in any detail in the Bible is the Kingdom Age or Millennium. It’s the Lord’s 1000 year reign on Earth, which is distinguished from and precedes Eternity. The very last chapter of Revelation describes trees on either side of the River of Life bearing a different fruit every month. That means time still exists, and Eternity by definition is the absence of time. We’ll talk more about that later. For now let’s just say that Eternity can’t happen till the Millennium is over.

The Millennium obviously can’t begin till after the Second Coming, because that’s when the Lord returns to establish it. And according to Matt. 24:29-30 the Second Coming won’t happen till the end of the Great Tribulation. And that can’t happen till the anti-Christ stands in the Temple in Israel declaring himself to be God. (2 Thes. 2:4) That’s the event Jesus warned Israel to look for as the Great Tribulation’s opening salvo. He called it “The Abomination of Desolation” in Matt. 24:15-21. Daniel 9:27 indicates it will happen in the middle of the last seven year period, which scholars call Daniel’s 70th Week.

But the Abomination can’t happen until there’s a Temple. There hasn’t been a Temple in Israel since 70AD and there won’t be one until the Jews officially decide they need one. They won’t need one until God reinstates their Old Covenant relationship because the Temple’s only purpose is to worship Him according to Old Covenant requirements.

This will signal the beginning of Daniel’s 70th week. The 70th Week can’t begin until the Battle of Ezekiel 38-39 is won because God will use that battle to awaken Israel and reinstate His covenant with them. In Romans 11:25 Paul said Israel has been hardened in part until the full number of Gentiles has come in, a reference to the rapture of the Church, after which Israel will be saved. That means the rapture has to happen before the Battle of Ezekiel 38.

You Got That?
So far when we put the Sequence of Major Events in its proper order, it looks like this:

The Rapture of the Church,

The Battle of Ezekiel 38,

Daniel’s 70th week begins,

The Great Tribulation,

The 2nd Coming,

The Millennium,

Eternity.

To those who read Scripture as it’s written, only two of the events in this sequence are subject to debate as to timing. These are the Rapture of the Church and the Battle of Ezekiel 38, the first two on our list. They’re the ones I said are less obvious.

The problem with all of this is that all he's done is organize HIS OWN INTERPRETATION of those scriptures, that is, he's ASSUMING his own interpretation as fact, he isn't even suggesting that he's going to try to prove any of it, or that any of it applies at all to the end times period. It may be useful for helping someone understand what the pre-trib rapture is based on, and it does help get an overview of the scriptures that are usually taken to apply to the end times, but in itself such an arrangement isn't evidence for his interpretation.

So lets find out why they have to be where I’ve placed them in the sequence. Maintaining our back schedule mentality, we’ll begin with Ezekiel’s battle and work back to the Rapture.

“And I will set my glory among the nations, and all the nations shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid on them. The house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God, from that day forward.

Then they shall know that I am the LORD their God, because I sent them into exile among the nations and then assembled them into their own land. I will leave none of them remaining among the nations anymore. And I will not hide my face anymore from them, when I pour out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, declares the Lord GOD.” (Ezek 39:21-22, 28-29)

The Lord has declared in no uncertain terms that He’s going to use Ezekiel’s battle to spiritually awaken His people and call them to Israel from all over the world. This will result in the reinstatement of their Old Covenant relationship, reviving Daniel’s long dormant “70-Weeks” prophecy for its final seven years and requiring that a Temple be constructed. Without one there’s no way for them to keep His covenant.This was proven once before in history during the Babylonian captivity. When Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the 1st Temple, Israel ceased to exist. But as soon as Cyrus the Persian defeated Babylon and freed the Jews, they returned to Israel and began building a Temple before they did anything else. Without a Temple there’s no sacrifice for sin, and without that sacrifice, Jews cannot approach God.

However, to reinstate the Old Covenant system after Christ has come, who is the Perfect Once-for-all Sacrifice, is to commit blasphemy. It may be that the temple will be rebuilt - that's how the scripture reads to me too, and that sacrifices will be reinstated, but this casual way of talking about it as if it were just a different theology than Christianity, different but equal in some sense, is wrong. If these things happen they have to be regarded as Antichrist in themselves, in fact the perfect setting for the Antichrist to present himself in the temple.

Both the Old and New Testaments refer to a Temple in Israel at the End of the Age. The only reason for a Temple is to perform Old Covenant ordinances. But building one today would cause such an uproar that no one in his right mind would consider it.

Only a unified demand from the people of Israel accompanied by quiet acceptance from their Moslem neighbors would make the construction of a Temple even thinkable. Sound impossible? Ezekiel’s battle results in both a Jewish nation re-awakened to the presence of God in their national life and an utterly defeated Moslem attack force in no position to resist. The perfect conditions will finally exist to start building. For these reasons, Ezekiel’s battle has to take place on the threshold of Daniel’s 70th week. Now why does the Rapture of the Church have to precede Ezekiel’s battle?

Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. (Romans 11:25)

Reborn first in unbelief (Ezek. 37:8) the Bible tells us Israel will remain partially estranged from God until the gentile Church reaches its full complement (predetermined number) and arrives at its destination. (The Greek word translated “fullness” in Romans 11:25 was a nautical term often used to describe the full complement of crew and cargo necessary to accomplish a ship’s mission. The ship couldn’t sail till those requirements were met. The one translated “come in” means to arrive at a designated place.)

Then the veil will be pulled back as God reveals Himself to them again. As we saw above, He will use Ezekiel’s battle to begin this by renewing the Old Covenant with them, later transitioning Israel from the Old Covenant to the New toward the end of the Great Tribulation (Zech 12:10). Remember, if they didn’t go back to the Old covenant first, they wouldn’t need a Temple. He’s picking them up where they left off.

This is somewhat plausible, the problem is in the attitude that gives any sort of theological standing to the Old Testament sacrificial system.

After they finished speaking, James replied, “Brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written,

‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old.’ (Acts 15:13-18)

It was about 20 years after the cross. The controversy of the day was whether Gentiles had to become Jews before they could become Christians. And if not, what would become of Israel? In effect, the Lord’s brother James explained to the Apostles and others present at the Council of Jerusalem that Israel was being temporarily set aside while God focused on the Church. After He had taken this “people for His name” (Christians) from among the Gentiles he would return and rebuild His Temple. The Greek words translated taken means to carry something away or remove it from its place, so the passage implies that He would take the Church somewhere and then come back to rebuild the Temple, restore Israel, and give what’s left of mankind one final chance to seek Him.

These three Bible prophecies make it clear that as the End of the Age approaches, God will begin preparing Israel to be His once more. But He won’t be exclusively focused on them until He has finished building the Church and has taken us to our appointed place. And where is that? In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. (John 14:2-3) (He didn’t promise to come back to be with us here where we are, but to take us there, where He is.) After that He would see to Israel’s reawakening and the construction of their Temple.

Throughout Scripture, the Lord seems to be involved with either Israel or the Church, but never both at the same time. James bears this out in his pronouncement regarding the Church in Acts 15. All the leaders of the early church now knew that once God had accomplished His goals with the church, He would turn again to Israel, and that would signal the end of the Church Age.

There are two critical points to remember here. The first is that the Church didn’t end the Age of Law, but only interrupted it 7 years short of its scheduled completion. Those seven years, called the 70th Week of Daniel, have to be fulfilled to complete the Old Covenant.

THIS makes no sense. Christ completed the Old Covenant. If there are seven years left for the whole story to be completed it isn't the Law that will be completed.

It keeps coming to me on the fringes of my mind that the whole point of the last seven years is the fullness of evil, or of the "mystery of iniquity." There is nothing left of the plan of salvation to be fulfilled except the crowning fulfillment of Christ's return. The 70th week of Daniel is a time of great evil, the time of the Antichrist, the time of his short triumph followed by the time of God's vengeance before the Lord Jesus returns. Many of the events having to do with Israel that Kelley is discussing here could be part of that, but only as expressions of the final playing out of evil, not God's covenant.

And the second is that the Old and New covenants, as practiced in Israel and the Church, are theologically incompatible, and therefore the two can only be on Earth at the same time while Israel is out of covenant.

"Theologically incompatible? Todays's Talmud-based JUDAISM is incompatible with Christianity, but it's also incompatible with Old Testament religion! Again, the Old Testament was FULFILLED in the New. The "theological incompatibility" is merely the difference between the Type and the Reality. The Type was the rituals and ceremonies of Old Testament religion, foreshadowing the Reality, who is Christ, who has come. The Reality fulfills the Type, there is nothing left over.

I do agree that the 70th week of Daniel remains unfulfilled, but this idea that its purpose has to do with the Old Covenant remaining to be "completed" makes no sense. It IS complete, it was completed in CHRIST, Who was the subject of all of it from beginning to end, which is said in many ways in the New Testament.

For Israel to return to the Lord, the Church has to be gone.

This makes no sense either. Israel's return to the Lord would be in becoming part of the Church.

For this reason, the rebirth of Israel in 1948 and the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967 are seen as the most important signs of all that the End of the Age is upon us.

And I also see these events very important in relation to Biblical prophecy, perhaps even fulfillment of prophecies of restoration, but I can't see it as anything but a fulfillment of Jewish WRONG IDEAS about the whole meaning of their religion, like it's their fleshly misunderstandings that have yet to play out to their final completion. Their religion is in itself Antichrist. If many are to be saved in the last days they will be saved entirely OUT OF their false religion.

Also, there are two events we haven’t put into the sequence yet, and that’s because they aren’t easy to locate there. These are the battles of Psalm 83 and Isaiah 17. When Israel wins these two battles all their next door enemies will be defeated and they’ll enter into a brief period of peace that sets the stage for Ezekiel’s Battle (Ezekiel 38:11). They’re called battles instead of wars which means they’ll be of short duration and can happen within a fairly short span of time. They can come either before or after the Rapture but do have to happen before the Battle of Ezekiel 38 takes place.

The Sequence of Major Events is only the first of “Seven Things You Have To Know To Understand End Times Prophecy.” Next time we’ll cover The Destiny of the Three Components of Humanity, The Purpose and Length of the Great Tribulation, and The Purpose of the Rapture.

Well, I'm having my usual problems with the Rapture scenario here. It's certainly not that I think any other end times system is better than the Pretrib Rapture scenario, I don't, the Preterists and the Amillennialists are just too too wrong on awfully basic things. But the Pretrib Rapturists, while they may have some timing right, and some events in the right place, have something very very wrong in their Christian theology. Or something like that.

The Rapture and the State of Israel again Pt 1

The Rapture question has again caught my attention. Some time back I did some posts here on the subject and found myself moving closer to accepting the Rapture as a real possibility. For years I didn't have a solid position, though it had become more or less post-tribulation, that is, believing that the Rapture and the Second Coming are the same thing or at least occur at the same time. But I didn't hold that position with anything like a full commitment to it and other interpretations remained possible in my mind.

When I did the further investigations I've reported here it's not that I arrived at a solid Rapture position either, but I did move closer to it, simply by finding some of the arguments for it to be more scriptural than the opposition's arguments. But there have always remained questions in my mind no matter what position I'm entertaining at the moment.

Now I'm back to thinking about it again, not with any great enthusiasm because I still anticipate not being able to resolve it with any certainty. But I do have the thought that since I believe it COULD be a reality, whether I can commit to it completely isn't the important thing, what's important is what I leave behind for the people in my life if it does happen and some day I'm just suddenly gone. I think I owe it to them to give as much of an understanding of what happened as I'm able.

First Events Following the Rapture
Two things I'm very sure of are, one, that if there IS a rapture of the church terrible things are going to be happening on earth after that point, either right away or starting 3-1/2 years afterward, and, two, there is going to be a massive attempt at disinformation by evil powers to explain away what happened to the Church.

The most likely explanation of our disappearance anticipated by many these days is that we will have been whisked away by a gigantic UFO or many UFOs, to another location more suitable for our peculiarly "unevolved" mentality (and the expectation is that UFO's are going to become a common sight during those days). This, according to the inventers of the explanation, is simply for the practical reason that we just don't fit in the New Age utopia the UFO aliens are planning to construct on this planet. [Just to be clear, the aliens are not extra-terrestrials but evil spirits playing out this concocted scenario to deceive those who are deceivable.]

Those who are not deceived will come to recognize the truth about the Rapture as shown through the Bible and become followers of Christ, and will then go through a terrible tribulation at the hands of the Antichrist and his followers including the "aliens."

That much seems predictable if there is a Rapture, at least in general, since of course the specifics may turn out to be somewhat different. But for sure they'll need a phony explanation for the disappearance of the Christians, and any who recognize the truth will be persecuted.

The Real Reason for the Rapture if it does happen as described:
Why would the church be taken away just before all these things happen? The explanation that makes the most sense has to do with the Seventieth Week of Daniel and a resumption of God's dealings with Israel during that last seven years, picking up where He left off with the coming of Jesus. The Church is used to thinking that He didn't leave off at all, that Christ fulfilled the Old Testament and there is nothing left that needs doing. I have a lot of conflict about this myself. Christ certainly DID fulfill the Old Testament, all the prophecies, the whole point of the Old Testament. Why should there be any more then? Why should there be anything like a "resumption" of God's dealings with Israel? He's DEALT with Israel, the Church has inherited all the promises to Israel, it's a done deal.

Why should there be ANY ambivalence about any of this?

1) Well, for starters, the Biblical "Seventieth Week of Daniel" gives me pause. I'm completely convinced that there is yet this "week of years" left unfulfilled out of the "seventy weeks" given in Daniel 9:24-27, where the prophecy of the coming of Christ (completely fulfilled in the first 69 weeks) is mysteriously and ambiguously replaced by a prophecy of the Antichrist who is the subject of a covenant "confirmed" for "one week."

24 Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy. 25 Know therefore and understand, [that] from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince [shall be] seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. 26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof [shall be] with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. 27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make [it] desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

Many try to force this last week into the last events of Christ's life, who made a New Covenant with believers, but the timing is all wrong, way out of line with those events. We need an explanation why the Holy Spirit would split the prophecy of seventy weeks into a block of 69 weeks and another separate week, a reasonable explanation that accounts for both in terms we can recognize. But the 69 weeks were perfectly exactly fulfilled by a simple counting of the years from "the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem" to the coming of Christ, while the last week fits no count in the events of His life at all and just remains hanging there without an explanation. The ONLY reasonable interpretation of this fact is that it MUST be yet future.

2) Then there is also the historical fact that there is a State of Israel now present on the physical land given to ancient Israel by God, as of May 14, 1948. This is really a staggering fact. In the context of the history of the Church for the last two millennia while the land of Palestine languished as barely inhabited wilderness, this physical resumption of the State of Israel is an extremely bizarre reality that can't be ignored. To dismiss it as a mere coincidence that has nothing to do with the prophecies about the physical land is absurd. Many prophecies have more than one fulfillment (for instance, prophecies of the Antichrist have already had two fulfillments at least -- one in Antioches Epiphanes of the time of the Maccabees, and another in Nero -- yet are also to have a future fulfillment). It is a very real possibility that some of the prophecies God gave to ancient Israel about its future restoration could have a fulfillment BOTH in the Church AND in a physical Israel.

Of course the State of Israel is not a theocracy, it was not restored out of obedience to God but out of the Jewish need for a refuge in a hostile world, which became urgent with the rise of Nazism.

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More to come.

Tal Brooke's "Riders of the Cosmic Circuit:" the experience of "enlightenment"

The book, Riders of the Cosmic Circuit by Tal Brooke, was my subject two blog posts ago, but now I want to link to this review of it by Elliott Miller that interested me. It's particularly interesting to me because during the 70s I was surrounded by people who followed one or another of the gurus whose lives the book chronicles -- Sai Baba, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and Swami Muktananda -- among others he doesn't cover in the book, including Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who through the Beatles brought us "Transcendental Meditation." The country is now well-sprinkled with the teachings of these and other Eastern religious and occultic influences.

The practitioners of Eastern religions often speak of "enlightenment," which in differing forms is the goal of the practice of all of them, as a necessary insight into the meaning of life that can be gained through the specific disciplines of the religion. A release from the sufferings of this life is the goal of some of them but I may not understand this well enough myself to be characterizing it accurately.

Tal Brooke practiced in India with the Hindu guru Sai Baba and claims to know what the enlightenment experience entails and in this book apparently attempts to make it understandable to others, both Christians and unbelievers. Whether he accurately characterizes it or not is a question the reviewer raises, but it sounds like his analysis is worth pondering.

I'll just quote some of this review and then later probably some from the book:

... At the heart of the New Age movement is the phenomenon of mystical/occult experience, and, resulting from that, the quest for a permanent and com­plete state of mystical “Enlightenment.” Brooke presents case studies of three Indian “super gurus” who have probably been more widely regarded by New Agers as being enlightened than any other spiri­tual leaders of our time: the legendary Sai Baha [typo: should be "Baba"], the notorious Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and the recently deceased “power yogi,” Swami Muktananda.

Brooke provides interesting background concerning each of these “riders” spiritual odysseys. Culminating in what he terms the “Explosion” point, in which Enlightenment is achieved. He demonstrates that in each case the attainment of such a state required a deliberate annihilation of conscience and morality. Thus, by highlighting the evil that predictably concentrates in the most advanced cases of “Enlightenment,” Brooke brings into focus what New Age spirituality ultimately holds for the individ­ual as well as society.

Second, Brooke writes with the authority and insight of one who has been there, both externally and internally. Externally, in India during 1969-71 he served in the inner circle of Sai Baba — his most privi­leged Western disciple. Internally, he him­self had journeyed far on the mystical path, reaching the very threshold of Enlightenment (where he was continually kept back by encountering something “unbelievably sinister to my deepest feel­ing”).

A third quality which distinguishes Riders is that it is written for the unbeliever, in secular style, as few Christian books have been. Thus, its chief value lies in its utility as a book to give non-Christians who are on the mystical path. While most Christian books would alienate them, this one will most likely intrigue them.

The book also offers insight to Christian readers. A particularly provocative feature is its profound analysis of the Enlight­enment experience. The author probes deeply into its spiritual nature and poten­tial eschatological significance.