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.