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I believe in
the historical/grammatical approach to Scripture, utilizing the traditional
tools of interpreting text and honoring the original meaning intended to the
best of my abilities. It is my sincere belief that context is the sovereign of hermeneutics. The truth of Scripture always
trumps experience, not the other way around. As long as we are not violating
the truth of Scripture, there is wiggle room for an application that honors the
truth.
As far as
interpretation is concerned, there is a primary meaning of any given text;
there may be one or more applications possible. Many prophecies are
historically completed. Obviously, all prophecies are historical, but some remain
to be completed, for instance, the rapture of the Church, the seven-year
tribulation period, and the millennial reign of Christ on earth and anything
orbiting around them.
Anyway, imagine
that you missed the rapture; you believed in God but you had never put your
trust in Christ until after all the believers had completely disappeared from
the earth. At the very nanosecond of the rapture, there is not a single soul remaining
on earth who has the Holy Spirit living within their heart. It is now a world
made up exclusively of unbelievers.
In the process, you become a true believer. All of the Bibles in existence before the rapture
are still to be found anywhere there was a known believer living at some
residence, not to mention all the Gideons in hotels, institutions, etc. You
grab one secretly before they are all removed, telling no one of your
activities of reading, studying, meditating, and applying the truths of
Scripture. You are soaking up the Word like a sponge. You want to go to heaven
when you die; your very survival is in question with the rod-of-iron rule of
the anti-Christ. That title alone is not reassuring; things are not going to go
well for people coming to the real Christ in the troubling days ahead (cf. Rev
6:9-11; 20:4).
When you come
to one of those verses pertaining to His coming, do you think you will say,
that doesn’t apply to me because it is referring to the rapture? Do you decide
to set those rapture-referring passages aside and only focus on verses
pertaining to the Second Coming after the seven-year tribulation period? There
are principles of Scripture that can be applied to both the rapture and the
second coming.
No, you are not
looking for Christ to appear at any given moment because it has already taken
place, and you know there will take seven years of survival before He comes back.
If some man publicly steps up on the stage of history and claims to all the world that he is the Christ, you know that He is not the real Christ for the body
of believers in Christ is gone and went to heaven with Him at the Rapture, and
there will be at least seven grueling years of unprecedented trouble on earth
before the real Messiah returns to rule during His reign on the earth for one
thousand years from Jerusalem. You will know that the image of that man
claiming to be the Messiah is inhabited by Satan himself!
It is the same
kind of reasoning as to why the Church today doesn’t concern itself with the
mark of the beast which is one of the earmarks of the tribulation period. We
are not presently looking for Christ to come to reign on the earth from
Jerusalem, but we do expect for Him to call us up to glory at any given moment.
And should we die before that takes place, well, to be absent from the body is
to be present with the Lord (2 Cor 5:8).
Recall John
saying,
1 Jn 3:2
Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we
shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we
shall see Him as He is.
1Jn 3:3 And everyone
who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
This passage taps
into the truth that God is holy and to the command to be holy as He is holy.
Though this passage is referring to the rapture, it can be applied to the
Second Coming as far as the expectation of spiritual purity for believers
living in the tribulation period. As a tribulation saint, it would be incorrect
to assume this verse is not applicable though it was originally referring to
the rapture of the Church.
It may be
helpful for you to understand in our talk about the rapture that there are only
two advents. With the first coming, Jesus came through the womb; in the second
coming, He will be riding on a white horse to rule during His reign on the
earth for one thousand years from Jerusalem. The commonality between the two
Advents is that Christ was/will be on
the earth.
In contrast to
the two advents, the return of Jesus Christ for His Church is like a
parenthesis between the two; in the rapture, Jesus only returns as far as our breathable
atmosphere, and the dead and the living in
Christ are caught up
together … in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and we all
(believers who had died and those who are living at the time of the rapture) return
with Jesus to Glory (1 Thes 4:16-17). Hallelujah!
With the rapture
of the Church, the anti-Christ is allowed to make his move for global
domination, and what ensues will be a time of trouble unparalleled in human
history for the inhabitants of the earth; that is a definite understatement. We
will accompany Jesus during the Second Advent, but we can rest assured that when
we return with Him, we will not be the same person we were when we lived on
earth in sinful bodies. We will be changed, glorified, and absolutely free from the
physical and spiritual debilitations of sin forever (cf. 1 Cor 15:51-52; Php
3:21)! Amen! Amen!
Not knowing the
day or hour of the rapture of the Church gives us an added incentive for being
holy as He is holy so as not to be ashamed of His coming (1 Jn 2:28; 3:2-3). As
my former pastor once said, “If we knew the day and hour of Christ’s return, we
would sin ourselves stupid” (Dr. Alan Lockerman 3.10.13)!
Allow me to
clarify something concerning the rapture of the saints. There are absolutely no
signs to be revealed or prophecies to be fulfilled for the rapture of the
Church to take place; it is the next eschatological (end time) event in human
history. Since this is an imminent event, no one can speculate on the precise hour,
day, month, season, or year. The word “soon” is not descriptive nor fitting in
describing the Rapture. “He is coming soon” is misleading by diminishing the
meaning of imminent. It is best to truncate that statement and say, “He is coming!”
The Second
Coming will not happen until after the end of the Tribulation Period. At what
day or hour Christ returns after the time of Jacob’s Trouble is over, no one
knows.
Paul looked for
His imminent return in his day, not for signs or fulfilling prophecy (Rom
13:11; 1 Cor 6:14; 10:11; 16:22; Php 3:20-21; 1 Tim 6:14; Titus 2:13). If Paul
died in ca. 64 A.D., then 2064 will make 2,000 years since his death. This
means that we are nearly 2,000 years closer to the Second Coming of Christ, with
the Rapture of the Church and the seven years of tribulation on the earth
preceding that event. Before thinking that the rapture will not take place in our
lifetime, consider this.
One of the most
pivotal eschatological signs in modern history is the nation of Israel coming
into existence on 5.14.1948. This is really exciting and significant news for
nothing needs fulfillment prior to the rapture, and there must be a nation of
Israel in existence during the tribulation period. After the conclusion of that
seven-year period, Christ returns to rule during His reign on the earth for one
thousand years from Jerusalem. <><
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