Transcription
The rapture will not happen how you think. Have you ever been told the rapture will be secret? What if the Bible tells us a different story? Have you ever been told that Jesus will just quietly snatch away Christians while the world will be keep on going? Maybe your idea of end times comes more from the Left Behind movies and your favorite popular TV preacher or YouTube preacher than actual Bible. What if the scripture actually tells us a different story? One that rapture and the second coming of Jesus are actually the same event, and it will be loud, visible, and glorious. We're actually going to examine the verses today and get ready. Buckle up. Your world is about to change. I remember when mine was flipped upside down when I started to look at these scriptures from a different lens than the one that I simply picked up from a TV preacher or a movie.
So, first of all, let's start from the beginning. What is rapture? Now, the word rapture does not actually appear in our Bible, but the concept does. In 1 Thessalonians 4:17, it says, "Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord." Now, unless somebody puts into your mind already a format or a frame by which you look at that we will be caught up, we will go to heaven, be there while the world is going to go through hell, you know, you'll be reading the scripture and you will assume that. But if you're starting from scratch, you'll read the scripture; this is not the conclusion that you will arrive at.
Now, in 1 Corinthians 15:51 and 52, Paul says, "Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep." Now, that's a New Testament word for dying. "But we shall all be changed in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet." So, it's going to get really loud. The trumpet will sound. Now, if you've ever seen fireworks like a trumpet, God's trumpet is going to be very, very loud. "And the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." I want you to notice something, because you're going to come back to this, where there is going to be a trumpet. Not all of us are going to die. Some people are being raised who were Christians. And then we're quickly being changed in a twinkling of an eye. When there's a loud trumpet that will sound, I want you to notice Paul calls it a mystery, not a secret. It will be sudden, but it's not going to be hidden.
Now, parousia is a Greek word for coming or arrival. It's often used to describe royal visits of the glorious return of a king. Interestingly, it is used 17 times in the New Testament for Jesus's return. For example, Matthew 24:3, "And what will be the sign of your coming?" And I'm putting it in parenthesis, parousia. Matthew 24:27, "For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so will also be the coming, parousia, of the Son of Man." 1 Thessalonians 4:15, "For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming, parousia, until not the rapture where most of us think is the rapture and then there is the coming. No, we'll be alive until the coming, parousia, of the Lord." And we can go on and on.
So, let me give you a cultural context of the word parousia. In the ancient world, when the king approached the city, the citizens would go out to meet him and escort him with celebration inside of the city. That's the picture scripture gives us of Jesus's coming. It's not Jesus taking us away, but it's us going up to meet him and returning with him together. Not leaving the earth with him and him coming once and then coming or like coming half of the way and then coming a second time like fully. That, that's not what the scripture teaches. Jesus is coming, and we will be gathered to him. The parousia is citizens will go out of the city, meet their royal king who just had a victory, and escort together with him back into the city. So that's what's going to happen. A rapture is not coming and going. It's the royal arrival that brings about a permanence, not escapism.
So, are the rapture and the second coming of Jesus the same? Is it the same event? People sometimes ask me, "Do you believe in the rapture?" 100%. I believe that the rapture of the church and the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ are the same event. 2 Thessalonians chapter 2:1, "Now, brethren, concerning the coming, parousia, of our Lord Jesus Christ, and watch this, and our gathering together to him." I want you to notice that these two things happen together, not seven years apart. We will also see the similar thing. 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, "This we say to you by the word of the Lord." I already mentioned this verse, "that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, again, the trumpet, the sound, loud, with the voice of an archangel, with the trumpet of God." So you see the similar thing. There will be a shout, there will be a trumpet, there will be a voice. "The dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up." Now I want you to notice this. Jesus is coming. Loud announcement. Then those who are dead in Christ get risen first. So we will come back to that in just a moment where in Revelation it talks about resurrection of people who refuse to take the mark of the beast. And the scripture says that is the first resurrection, where these people will rise. So in here, we see the same, same thing. Those who are dead in Christ will arise. We who are alive get quickly changed and will meet the Lord in the air in his coming, coming parousia. Okay, I want you to notice there's no secrecy here. It's loud. It's public. It's triumphant. The similar thing we see in the book of Revelation 20:4-6.
Now, this is the scripture that I would say is what changed my perspective. I grew up believing that the rapture of the church is going to happen before the bad boy Antichrist will come, and we, because we're so special, are going to go to heaven, and everybody else is going to be all on this earth. We will be there for the marriage supper of the Lamb, and then we'll come back with Jesus, and then some Christians who some people will become Christians during the Great Tribulation and they'll be killed by the Antichrist. Um, but the rest of the good Christians will be in heaven already. There's a problem with that, and this is the problem. The Bible is the problem with that view. And I'm going to read to you a scripture that made me start to question that. And I believe that if you open this scripture and you have an open mind, it's clear. This is as clear as it gets. There is no other scripture, I personally think, that is as clear as this one when it comes to that. That throws the whole rapture before the second coming of Jesus, um, and there's a gap of seven years out of the water. Revelation 20:4-6, let's read it together. "Then they saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who have been beheaded for their witness to Jesus, for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received the mark on their foreheads or their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years." So, context. Now, for those of you who think that, well, this is referring to those who got saved during the Tribulation, uh, not so fast. We see judgments. We see people who got beheaded for the witness of Jesus, the word of their testimony. They didn't worship the beast. They lived. They got resurrected, and they reigned with Christ for a thousand years.
"But the rest of the dead did not live again until a thousand years were finished." So these were people who don't know Jesus. They will be resurrected at the second resurrection and face judgment. And the Bible says this is the first resurrection, referring to the people who refuse to take the mark of the beast, who lived to reign with Christ. Now, either the Bible is wrong, or most of the American Christians are wrong when it comes to this particular thing. The first resurrection is not the one that happens before the first resurrection. The first resurrection is the first resurrection. And the scripture says in the next verse, "Blessed and holy is he who takes part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, and they shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with him for a thousand years." So the Bible is very clear. The first resurrection are people who believe in Jesus. The second resurrection are people who will face the judgment and go to hell. The first resurrection happens after people also have denied, um, the request and the demand of the Antichrist, and they were beheaded for that. Then I have a question. If you get raptured, and the Bible is very clear, the dead will be raised. We will be changed. Meet the Lord in the air. That's a resurrection. First one, right? But the Bible says the first one is not before the Tribulation. It is after the Tribulation. So what resurrection happens before the first one? Which, which one is that? Zero resurrection. No, the Bible is very clear that the first resurrection where all the believers will be raised will be after the Tribulation. Which means there is no resurrection taking place during a rapture, that secret seven years before the coming of Christ. It's just not in the Bible. The rapture of the church, the resurrection of the saints, and the coming of Christ is one event.
Matthew 24:29-31, it says, "Immediately after tribulation," and I'm paraphrasing this, "the Son of Man will appear in the heaven. He will send his angels with a great sound." Again, do you see the sound, the trumpet? This is not a secret thing where everybody just vanishes. This is loud, clear, triumphant. "And Jesus will gather his elect." We will be gathered to the Lord and meet the Lord in the air. Jesus returns after Tribulation, not before it. So there is no biblical evidence that Jesus comes partially in some secret rapture and then he comes fully later. This idea came from a recent theology, not from the apostles, not from the New Testament, and not from the early church.
So, let's dive in a little bit more into why the secret pre-tribulation rapture is really a false hope and how it lacks biblical foundation. It's not found in the early church teachings, and it actually distorts the simple, glorious hope of Jesus's visible return. Where did this start? It started in the 1980s. This doctrine of secret pre-tribulation rapture was first widely introduced in the 1930s by a man named John Nelson Darby. He was a leader at the Brethren movement. Prior to this, there is really not clear evidence that this teaching existed in the church as a two-phase coming of Messiah Jesus. One secret and one visible. The early church believed in one return of the Lord at the end of age when he would raise the dead, judge the world, establish his kingdom. Even one respected theologian and a church historian, George Ladd, said the idea of the pre-tribulation rapture is not found in any strand of historic Christian theology. It was unknown to the early church fathers, and it is not found in the Reformation or post-Reformation period. But it's interesting that even you watching this video, some of you are very offended right now because you're like, "I can't believe this. He's wrong. He's a heretic." But hang in there. Let's examine the scriptures. Let's examine the history.
Pre-tribulation secret rapture is not found in the Bible's plain teaching. There's no verse in the scripture that clearly teaches a secret or a pre-tribulation rapture. In fact, the New Testament consistently presents the return of Jesus as one public, visible, and final event. Let's look at some of these scriptures. 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3, "Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him, again, we're gathering. He's coming. We ask you not to be soon shaken in your mind or troubled, neither by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Let no one deceive you by any means, for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin, Antichrist, is revealed, the son of perdition." So Paul ties our gathering to Christ, the rapture, together with the visible return of Jesus. And it says it won't happen until the Antichrist is revealed and there's a great falling away. So what begins to happen is when you view the secret pre-tribulation rapture, you are dividing Jesus's return into two returns: the secret one for his church, and then the visible one for everybody else. But the scripture never splits Jesus's return into two separate events. Instead, Paul constantly speaks of one parousia, which is a Greek word for arrival and coming. And this word is repeatedly used to describe the return of Jesus, our gathering, him coming. There's going to be a shout. There's going to be a trumpet. And there's going to be resurrection. The scripture says in Matthew 24:27 that Jesus's return will be like lightning. Everyone will see.
Now, some of you may say, "What about?" Let's address the "what about." What about the fact that the church is not mentioned in the book of Revelation after chapter 3? One of the most common arguments for pre-tribulation rapture is the word church is not mentioned after Revelation 3, and then the chapters that describe the Great Tribulation. So some argue that because the church is not mentioned, the church is removed. This is an argument from silence. It misunderstands Revelation's symbolic and prophetic structure. It is true the church does not appear, but saints do. What makes the church saints? Revelation 13:7 says, "It was given to the beast power to make war against the saints and to overcome them." Saints in there are not tribulation converts, but they are believers living throughout the Tribulation. Because the same terminology, saints, is used throughout the New Testament to refer to Christians.
What about, you may say, that God will always take us away from tribulation? The common justification for the secret pre-trib rapture is the idea God would never let his people suffer through the Tribulation. And it's interesting who mainly embraces that idea are Western Christians, people in Europe and America who have not been persecuted. And the only persecution they've experienced is their Instagram got shut down or they got censored on social media. So, it's easy to believe that, especially we love comfort, and I understand that. I get that. I hope that would be true. But it's not biblically consistent. The scripture consistently shows that God doesn't always remove his people from trials. He often preserves them through them. Let's look at the biblical record. Noah was preserved during the flood. God didn't rapture Noah away. He gave Noah instructions. And remind you, may I remind you, God poured out his wrath on the world by flooding the world. But he gave Noah instructions how to build the ark and protected him through the flood, not from the existence of it. Lot was relocated, but he wasn't raptured. Lot wasn't removed from the planet, but he was relocated to safety just before the judgment fell. It was a local escape, not a heavenly removal. Israel in Egypt stayed during the plagues. We see for all the 10 plagues they were there. But then there came a point where God distinguished them from the Egyptians. And so the pattern here is preservation within judgment, not exception from it. Rahab was protected while being in the midst of Jericho. God didn't take Rahab out. She was there in Jericho. He protected her within. Three Hebrew boys were protected in the fire, not from the fire. So you see this thing is there is a deliverance that happens through perseverance, not through this preemptive escape. So this idea that just because you're God's child, God will automatically always remove you from every trial, tribulation, that's just not real. It's not in the Bible.
Now, I know you may be thinking, but Vlad, tribulation is a time that God is pouring out his wrath. And we, the Bible says, have been saved from God's wrath. The challenge with that idea, though, is this: that we need to distinguish between tribulation and the fullness of God's wrath. Tribulation is really Satan's wrath against saints. Revelation 13:7, it says, "It was granted to him, the beast, to make war against the saints and to overcome them." So there was a wrath of Satan, wrath of ungodly world that wants to fight against Christians, persecute them, hurt them, and kill them. And Jesus said in John 16:33, "In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world." Tribulation is the pressure and persecution that believers will endure, especially in the end times under Satan's attack, not God's judgment.
Now, God's wrath, His final judgment will be poured out. Revelation 15:1, it says, "Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels having seven last plagues, for in them the wrath of God is complete." 1 Thessalonians 1:10 says, "And to wait for his Son from heaven, who delivers us from the wrath to come." God's wrath comes after the Tribulation in the final judgment. Believers will not suffer that one. We were saved from that wrath, eternal separation from God. But we are called to endure tribulation. These two are not the same. Now, to some degree, we are all experiencing some measure of God's wrath and judgment on this earth: death, sickness. So we are experiencing some measure of God's wrath right now. So when the Bible says we're saved from the wrath to come, it does not mean Christians don't get sick. It doesn't mean Christians don't have funerals. It does not mean Christians don't suffer on this earth, which really are just the consequences of sin with God when God brought the judgment on this earth. We're still experiencing that. What it says when it says that we're saved from the wrath of God to come is that we will be eternally not judged by God, but we will be with God, and we will not spend all of our eternity. We will not spend any time away from the Lord. We will be with him. But it does not mean that we are not under certain small measure of the judgment of God that rests on this earth on our bodies, in our life that we live here on this earth.
Now, there are some scriptures that have been misinterpreted as a proof text for pre-trip rapture. Let's examine a few of them. One of them is the marriage supper of the Lamb. And people love to use the Jewish wedding to say this is the picture. Please understand, you cannot draw your doctrine from analogies, shadows, and types. What many people do is they do this: they start with this conclusion, rapture will happen before Tribulation, and then they try to fit all these types, shadows to fit that idea, and the scriptures that don't make sense and don't support it, they throw it away. We start with the scripture first. What the Bible says is clear, and then we go from there. We don't start with shadows, types, and Old Testament Jewish ideas. Okay.
But even with this whole thing with marriage supper of the Lamb, do you know that the Bible is very clear that it will happen after the Tribulation? For example, Revelation 19:7, it says, "Let us be glad and rejoice." Now, Tribulation is during the Revelation chapters before the 19th chapter. The Bible says, "For the marriage of the Lamb has come. His wife has made herself ready." This occurs after Christ appears in glory to defeat the beast in Revelation 11 through 21. The church is not in heaven eating while the world suffers. This supper is a victory celebration following Christ's visible return.
Now, raptures that happened in the Bible were three. Elijah was taken up before many witnesses. Jesus ascended visibly. The two witnesses were resurrected publicly in Revelation 11:11-12. None of these examples were secret or hidden. Raptures in scripture are public events, and so will the return of Jesus be.
You may say, "What about Luke 11:35-37?" Let's read that. "Two women will be grinding together. The one will be taken and the other one left." And they answered and said to him, "Where, Lord?" And he said to them, "Where the body is, there the eagles will be gathered together." Now, Jesus's answer suggests that one will be taken in judgment, not raptured. This idea is judgment. Why? Because eagles gathering around a corpse is not a heavenly glory. It's a judgment and death. So Jesus giving us the image of what this is going to be, this idea one is going to be taken in judgment, not raptured.
You may say, "What about Revelation 3:10 where it says, 'Because you have kept my command to persevere, I will keep you from the hour of trial'?" The Greek word here, kept from, means protected within, not physically removed. God promises preservation, not escape. Just like in Exodus, God can protect his people in the middle of the trial. The real blessed hope, the true hope of the believer is not escape. It's faithful endurance and glorious resurrection of Jesus's coming. The scripture says in Titus chapter 2:13, "Looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ." See, Paul doesn't describe our great hope as a secret escape. He doesn't say we're looking forward to get secretly raptured. It doesn't describe a two-stage hope, only one glorious appearing, a visible return of Jesus Christ.
The secret pre-trip rapture is a recent invention. It is not supported by the early church history. And as you hopefully seen by now, it's clearly not supported by the Bible because the Bible makes it very clear: Jesus's return will be one. There will be one resurrection of the dead for Christians. There will be one gathering of the saints, one loud, visible, triumphant arrival of our King. Instead of anchoring your hope in escape, let's anchor our faith in faithfulness to Jesus no matter what comes, trusting He will return as He promised, once in glory for all to see.
The problem with pre-trip secret rapture is this: If you believe you won't even be here for the mark of the beast, you can be misled to take it. Why? Because in your worldview, you're not even supposed to be here during that time. Temptation will not even be your option. So, you can easily take the mark of the beast because you're thinking, "That's not the mark of the beast. Why? Because I'm not going to be here for that." And you can actually be deceived. It does lead to disengagement from the mission. It has a poor theology of suffering, and it creates lack of preparedness. So if you believe you'll escape, you may fall if you remain. Don't prepare for escape. Prepare to endure. Jesus is coming to set things right. We will be with Him forever. He will defeat Satan, demons, the beast, and set everything right. And Revelation ends with Maranatha, "Come, Lord Jesus."
Thank you for watching this video. I hope that you were challenged, and I hope that it brought some clarity or made you go and look in the Bible again. I remember when that happened to me when I was on a vacation with my wife some time ago, and I started to examine these scriptures in the light of the framework of Jesus's return. And I stumbled upon the same thing that you're stumbling in right now. And they brought clarity and hope. This doesn't cause me to be afraid. I'm not afraid of persecution. I'm not afraid of trials and tribulation because we're soldiers in Jesus's army. We're not snowflakes. We're not spineless. Jesus told us tribulation will come. And He said He'll never leave us. He will guide us, protect us right in the middle of it. And even if the time comes and we need to give our life for Jesus, it is what it is. Jesus gave His life for us. It will be a joy. We will all die anyway to give our life for Him.
Let me know in the comments your thoughts, and please be nice. I know some of you might not agree with me, and watching this video just made you maybe perhaps a little bit more angry. We can disagree, but let me know in the comments what your thoughts are. If this video changed how you see rapture, let me know in the comments as well. God bless you. Until next time.
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