Comments on: Three Questions About a “Secret” Rapture

By: Carolyn

Carolyn — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:05:42 +0000

Imonk: Thank you so very much for the insightful discussion on the “secret” rapture and the Tim Lahaye series of fiction books. People are so lacking in Biblical knowledge that they don’t realize the Left Behind series is not Biblically based. Even though the series is indeed fiction, the books are placed with bibles and books of inspiration in our book stores. I grew up in a Missionary Baptist Church in Alabama and was 12 years old before the rapture doctrine arrived on the scene in our Sunday school lessons. The major and minor prophets, as well as the books of Matthew and Revelations, are clear about end-time events. For five years, I taught prophecy in a United Methodist church ….starting at age 25. God gives spiritual discernment to those who ask. Because of knowing end-time events, I am even stronger in the Lord. There is no fear. I count it all joy, daily, as I encounter and win personal Armageddons. The war is already won! Armageddon will be the reaping of satan and his followers. Rapture believers confuse the “binding of satan for the thousand years” and the “loosing of him for a little season”. They see him come out of that cage like a rabbid animal with only one thing in mind….to continue his furious hatred against the people of God because that is his nature..to kill, steal, and destroy. But….nothing happens….EXCEPT…God destroys him with fire…immediately. We keep living our choices in the here and now…as well as the consequences of those choices…and when He makes His universal visible appearance in the clouds…it is all over. There will be no opportunity for salvation afterwards (as a tree falls..so shall it remain). The irony about the rapture doctrine is that SBC and many others believe only the Jews will experience the seven-year tribulation. Hey, where are those ten lost tribes? I believe the descendants are all around us….abundantly so in the United States. My ancestors are from Ireland, Scotland, and Europe. Hey….Hey…Hey…I am also of Cherokee Indian descent. Abraham’s descendants are scattered all over the globe. Even for the gentiles.. scripture says that if we are of the faith of Abraham…we are Abraham. Either way….we’ll be here for the fireworks. Three years ago God allowed me to hear the audible voice of Elias…while wide awake..in the middle of the day. He said, “Behold, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make His path straight.” I can share with you the words I heard. But I cannot fully share with you the unspeakable wonders that my heart heard. I heard Elias’s love for Jesus. I heard the joy in his voice concerning the victorious return of the Lamb. I knew he was telling me to gather those who love His appearing. I understood that Elias remains the forerunner. I knew Elias came in the person of John the Baptist at Jesus’s first coming. But I had forgotten that Elias would be the forerunner before the second coming. In the NT in one place Jesus said Elias has come. In another place He said Elias shall come. Jesus had Isaiah to tell Israel that they had been given eyes so they could not see and ears so they could not hear…..until this day. Elias is shown in scripture to be one of the two witnesses preaching the gospel of the kingdom to those blind/deafened of Israel. Matthew 24th chapter says, “The gospel of the kingdom shall be preached as a witness to all nations…and then the end will come.” The
descendants of Abraham were used by God to fulfil His purposes. Just before Christ appears in the clouds… the blinded eyes will open, the deafened ears will hear and they will indeed experience Elias as the forerunner and will ultimately recognize the truth of the gospel of the kingdom, as preached by Messiah when He walked with us in flesh form. They will see the supernatural resurrection of the two witnesses and their ascension up into the clouds…just as their ancestors witnessed during the time of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. About two weeks after I experienced the voice of Elias, I was compelled by the Spirit to move apart for a fast. I had never fasted before. I closed myself in an upstairs bedroom, drank only water and never got hungary at all, and fellowshipped with Jesus for three days. I hadn’t set a time limit…that’s just how it turned out. My husband ran interference for me downstairs in the real “world.” On the last night of the fast, I asked Jesus to show me something that would blow my mind….something to unknown to me that I would know it could only be from Him. HE SHOWED ME 666. I’ve taken way too much time and space already. Time will not allow the awesome description of what He showed me. And I am even stronger for having seen the reason and reality of satan’s plans for the elect during the rule of the anti-christ. He knows his time is short. And he knows he will be destroyed. He can’t help himself. Satan is the opposite of Perfect Love. He is perfect hatred. He is perfect obsenity. He is the devourer. He and his two offsprings are the unholy trinity (666). The image of a man in the book of Daniel with the head gold, then the brass, then the silver, legs of iron, then the ten toes …..part iron and part miry clay…depicts the secular governments of the world..all the way to the Second Coming of Christ. WE ARE IN THE TEN-TOE POINT IN TIME. More crucial to know is that we are very near the “miry clay” portion of the ten toes. The miry clay represents the final “abomination that maketh desolate” or the rule of the anti-christ. Revelations says that God will put it in the hearts of the ten kings (ten toes) to give their authority to the anti-christ. It will happen!!! Are we ready???? We had better be!! Therein lies the importance of understanding the false doctrines related to the “secret” rapture. Rapture believers say “God wouldn’t put us through that. Israel will go through it because of disobedience.” Weeeelllll…I think actually what He said was something like this, “I removed the natural branches and grafted you in the vine in their place. Don’t be haughty..but fear. How much sooner would I yank you out and put them back in.” HMMM :blank stare:. I am so excited to know that there are so many other Christians who are recognizing and preparing for the Second Coming. In my area….we are a very small group. And we seem to already be in the time when “they won’t endure sound doctrine.” I retired from teaching after eighteen years because God pushed me to get to the “highways and hedges” and compel them…”and they will come.” Again, thank you so very, very, much for the discussion. God bless!

By: Realist

Realist — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 23:24:32 +0000

Putting Abraham on the myth pile is somewhat on topic since it would put a lot of other “conjecturing” like “rapturing” also on the myth pile but I see your point. Later !!

By: Ex_Umbris

Ex_Umbris — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 20:53:44 +0000

My apologies, Michael.

By: Michael Spencer

Michael Spencer — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 20:07:06 +0000

get on topic or go elsewhere
ms

By: Realist

Realist — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 19:53:34 +0000

As per Somerville, http://www.theosophical.org/theosophy/questmagazine/mayjune2000/exclusivism/, “John Hick, a noted British philosopher of religion, estimates that 95 percent of the people of the world owe their religious affiliation to an accident of birth. The faith of the vast majority of believers depends upon where they were born and when.”

I am slowly recovering from my accidental birth into a religion domineered too long by the elitist, white male AARPies.

See James Somerville’s, retired Philosophy Professor, Xavier University, other commentary at the above reference and at http://www.theosophical.org/theosophy/questmagazine/julyaugust2000/somerville/

Putting Abraham on the myth pile would go along way in converging religions.

By: Ex_Umbris

Ex_Umbris — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 18:20:57 +0000

Realist,

Putting aside the issues of ad hominem argumentation, historical accuracy, and contempt for the elderly and for males, a question: When you promised faithfulness to the teaching of the Church, were you unaware that many of the apostles, saints, and doctors of the Church were Europeans, male, or old?

By: Realist

Realist — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 16:38:13 +0000

Crossan’s legitimate mistakes, IMHO, were 1) writing The Birth of Christianity – the book is too long and not well written and 2) giving the +/- ratings for some of Jesus’s sayings and works in an attempt to appease conservative readers. From http://www.faithfutures.org/Jesus/Crossan2.rtf- “I use the sign ±. It means that the action or happening did not occur as an event at one moment in time or place (hence -) but that it represents a dramatic historicization of something which took place over a much longer period (hence +).” (IMO, dramatic historicization= additions/embellishments to raise Jesus’s activities to those of the deities of the Ceasars and the gods of the Greeks)

And “What the Church teaches”- i.e. what the elite, elderly, white males have been dictating as truth for the last 2,000 years in order to keep us “pew peasants” from knowing all the facts and to keep popes, bishops, kings, queens and dictators in power.

By: Ex_Umbris

Ex_Umbris — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 15:01:50 +0000

Not at all; rather, playing creature, and engaging in the Ignatian exercise of imagining myself “a great sinner, loaded with chains, going to appear before the supreme and eternal Judge” (s74). What shall I say? “Lord, I made the best judgment I could, given the information I had. I made a few legitimate mistakes.”

Of course, the whole point of the Exercises is that the Day of Judgment is now. Behold, now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation. The hour of our creation, of our redemption, of our death, united in the eternal Now; the same hour in which you and I and Fr. Crossan made our confirmation promises, sealed by the Holy Spirit, to believe what the Holy Church teaches.

Since you brought it up, what legitimate mistakes did you have in mind, in particular?

By: Realist

Realist — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 22:38:45 +0000

Ex Umbris,

Nice to see we are playing God today. Crossan et al made and are making the best judgements they can given the information they have. IMHO, God condemns no one for doing a good job or making a few legitimate mistakes.

By: Ex_Umbris

Ex_Umbris — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:21:50 +0000

O that we all might be so blessed as to someday, like Fr. Crossan, be able to stand before the awful majesty of Christ on the dread day of judgment and say, “Lord, you either love me or you hate me, but at least I did my homework for my attestation method of rating the various sayings and works of You as noted in the NT.”