Where is This “Coming” He Promised?

2 Peter 3:4

So, I get up at 5:34 am on Sunday May 22, and…I’m still here. Judgment Day once again has been postponed. I am one of the ones that does believe there will be a rapture of the church before the official “Second Coming.” However, before I even attempt to get into this, I want you to know, this is not vital to your salvation. Salvation comes by receiving Christ, and that is that. I sometimes feel like the ONLY person that is totally cool with Him doing whatever He wants in these last days however He wants to do it. If He wants to take me, fine, if He wants to leave me, fine. Either way, He has promised to never leave me or forsake me (Hebrews 13:5). You can find some of the best preachers on the planet to support literally anything you want to believe about the unfolding of end time events. Whatever you believe, just make sure you know why you believe it and aren’t just taking some other “smart” preacher’s word for it. Read the scriptures for yourself, then decide. Here is why I believe there will be a rapture of the church.

First, I believe in the rapture because of Enoch. I know that when most people get to Genesis chapter 5, they start skimming. However, if you will read it closely, you will read about a bunch of people that lived a bunch of years…then died. However, in verse 21 the words are different. There is a dude named Enoch that didn’t “die,” but all of a sudden “was not, for God took him.” All of this is apparently because “Enoch walked with God.” Simply put, Enoch daily walked in obedience to God. Hebrew 11:5 expands on it a little more: “By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death. He could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.” Now, this is just me personally, but if we did not have a chance for the same thing to happen to us…I don’t think God would have put that in the Bible.

Secondly, I’m going to use the ever so now famous Matthew 24:36…”But of that day and hour, no man knows.” A few verses later in verse 42, we have a warning about that day and hour: “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.” Then, in verse 44 it says to “be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour that you do not expect Him.” The Bible is clear that there is a suddenness and unexpectedness that surrounds His coming. I hope everyone can at least agree on that! Here is where the problem lies (with me anyway), if “no man knows,” and it is “sudden and unexpected,” how come John in the book of Revelation gave us a way to count it down? If people are able to see that the Antichrist is setting himself up in the holy temple and making himself God, the countdown is on. Revelation 12:6 just goes ahead and gives you the number of days…1,260 (which is 3 ½ years) I just think that is weird that God would tell us that it is unexpected and sudden, then turn around and give us a way to count it so that anybody could if they wanted to. I think God clearly differentiates between a Rapture of the church and His official Second Coming. Once again…that’s just me and what I get from reading the Word for myself.

Lastly, and this is my favorite reason, real deal Christians are the “light of the world,” and “the salt of the Earth.” But, what if the Earth loses it’s saltiness? (Derived from Matthew 5:13-14) People don’t understand this, but it is Christians…real Christians, that preserve this Earth. Could you seriously imagine this World without true, Godly Christians? The world thinks that if they could just get rid of us “narrow minded,” “hypocritical,” “intolerant” Christians that the world would be a better place. Well, one day, I believe that God will give them exactly what they want. He will remove those that really love Him, and the world will find that unrestrained sin is not all that it is cracked up to be.

Now, if you made it this far in the devotional…once again, these are my opinions and my interpretations. I don’t have any formal schooling, don’t know Greek and Hebrew, I am just an ordinary dude serving an extraordinary God. I am totally cool with being wrong. People would do well to remember that the first time Jesus came, EVERYBODY thought He would come as a lion to rule the World…but He came as a sacrificial lamb. God gets to do what God wants to do!

I do want to throw one more thing at you. On Saturday, May 21^st, when the world was supposed to be ending, I got the privilege of being a “street corner” preacher. A group of churches go out into the street and give the homeless and much less fortunate people the Word of God, then something to eat. When I stepped up to preach, God was on me like never before…if I counted right 15 people got saved and made things right with Him. This tells me that there are still ridiculous amounts of people that simply need to be told that sin separates us from God, but He made a way through His Son that we might be saved.

Which should concern us more? The fact that He is coming again? Or, the fact that people aren’t ready if He does?

I choose to focus on the latter. I choose to be a living Bible that people can read. I choose to focus on other people knowing Him instead of myself being “saved from the coming destruction.“ If I am busy about the business of the King and bringing others to repentance and the saving knowledge of Him, the former will take care of itself in His time!

Charles Spurgeon said “if you do not care that there are lost people who need to be saved, you are NOT saved yourself!”

Later

Adam