I have read many articles on Rapture Ready and other websites in the past year or so. In addition to that, I have read many books about the end times, Rapture of the Church and Tribulation to come, including The Book. And, I must say that on the one hand, I am so amazed about being alive in these times to witness 2,000 & 2,500 year old prophecies coming to pass before our very eyes! And so excited, knowing that each time another prophecy is fulfilled I get closer and closer to being Raptured! That probably sounds weird or bizarre to some but I believe the Bible teaches that the count down clock to the end of days began ticking on May 14th, 1948 when Israel became a nation and that it teaches that the generation who sees that happen will not pass away. Wow! That’s us!
So many different things are happening so rapidly now and all at the same time that it’s just as the Bible said it would be in that it would be like ‘birth pains’. They started out very far apart and not very intense……….but now, every single day you read about or hear on the news or some website about an ever increasing number of earthquakes in usual and in unusual places, pestilence/diseases that are new and undiscovered and old ones rapidly spreading, famines and food shortages, strange weather patterns and strange ‘signs in the sky’, rampant homosexuality and immorality as in the days of Noah and Lot, apostasy and false teachings in the pulpit of even so called ‘evangelical’ churches, violence in the form of riots and murders in the streets across the world and abortion on demand and senseless murderous attacks from religious ‘haters’ and drug induced unbelievable acts of savagery against innocent people, economies collapsing or on the brink of collapse all over the world including the USA, wars and rumors of more wars with threats of weapons powerful and vicious enough to annihilate millions, constantly increasing talk and threat of coming one world government to include loss of most if not all human freedoms…….and so many more……I could go on but I’m sure you get the picture.
On the other hand though, I am so sad that we are so near the end because it’s amazing to me that in light of so much OBVIOUS evidence, there are still so many who choose to believe that good is evil and evil is good and choose to be willingly ignorant of the Savior’s offer of rescue from these evil days of God’s wrath ahead and coming soon to be faced by so many. Seriously now, if you just stop and think about it for a minute or two, (any more and you might go insane) just imagine the world in which those who are left behind a few days or weeks after the Rapture happens. Or even narrow it down to imagining the USA or just your own state or town.
Imagine………… BOOM!……’in the twinkling of an eye’ (read: too quick to measure)…..no more Christian people here…….not because they were ‘good’ in and of themselves, but because they were carrying around the Holy Spirit inside them and although still sinners, they were saved by Grace (read: believed in their hearts that Jesus was the Son of God, born of a virgin mother, lived a sinless life, willingly died to pay for their sins, that He rose from the dead and now sits at the right hand of His Father God, asked to be forgiven of their sins and accepted that free gift of Salvation – that is, payment in full for their sins so they could be saved from an eternal damnation and an eternal separation from God) and tried to live their lives and conduct themselves in a manner pleasing to God. In other words…just average Joe’s…… with changed hearts.
So a left behind person’s first thought upon realizing that so many people and coincidentally people who claimed to be Christians are now gone might be ‘Well, so what’s the bad news? Who needs those pesky self-righteous, bigoted, boring, judgmental, intolerant idiots around here anyway? Now that they’re gone we can party down without them around to make us feel guilty or stifle our fun!’ Now, here in my middle of the road, middle of the country, middle income, Bible belt town, this left behind person is most likely an average middle class, hard working, law abiding citizen who’s just trying to make ends meet and have some fun along the way of this ol’ life. They may tell a lie or two or cheat on taxes or even party a little too much once in a while, but for the most part, just an average American, citizen, adult, human. Not a ‘bad’ person, just an un-saved person. You know, just your average Joe. What Joe probably doesn’t realize just yet though is that absolutely NOTHING will EVER be average or normal again! Starting today. Because just as soon as all the other left behind folks realize what’s happened……..that is that millions of people across the world have disappeared into thin air, even if they don’t understand the truth of where the disappeared folks went, things are going to rapidly deteriorate to put it mildly! I think in the very beginning days and weeks while average Joe is beginning to realize that some people that he loved are now gone and entering into the grieving process as a result, he will grow depressed and so sad beyond belief that he’s not likely to feel much like partying and yucking it up. And besides, everyone else left behind with poor ol’ Joe will be in the same boat – people they love gone too (read: spouses, children, parents, siblings, neighbors and friends). Soon average Joe is also going to discover that people he didn’t even realize he depended on are also gone – either disappeared or died of accident or suicide. Like co-workers, people who used to work at the bank, maybe the mailman, people who work for the utility companies, doctors, nurses and hospital staff, people who own his favorite gas station, the friendly young stranger who used to work at the grocery store…………imagine. Not only is it sad to realize that many of these people are now gone from his life on this earth, but the chaos, confusion and interruption of services once common and taken for granted that will result.
Then there are those ‘not-average Joe’s’ left behind……..the bad, the worse and the worst ones among us……the ones we lock our doors against…..the ones we don’t want to meet in a dark parking lot……those gang member types who don’t seem to have any moral compass at all even now, so imagine the free-for-all atmosphere of the world their little brains are going to exist in when the restrainer is gone. These types are going to quickly realize all the opportunities for havoc that are now open to them with very little possible resistance. Talk about partying and yucking it up! They are going to be so excited and all a’tremble at just the idea of all the possibilities. I’m sure you can put two and two together and figure out what I’m hinting at if you just imagine this………how many left behind homes, left behind cars, left behind bank accounts……..and yes, left behind defenseless, grieving, scared, worried (read: vulnerable) young people, old people, single people………….will these evil ones consider ripe for the picking?
My goodness, my heart rate increases and my hands begin to shake just imagining it! The grief, the sadness, the fear, the panic, the anger, the violence………..NO, I don’t want to imagine any more. Instead I’ve got to try to get some other ‘average Joe’ to imagine it…….so they can decide to escape it instead of actually experiencing it!