As we all know, RaptureReady.com is a very unique website. Its theme is its title – Rapture Ready. How many people in the world are focused on the rapture, or better yet, how many born-again Christians are focused on the rapture now or ever have been? I’m afraid the number may be far lower than we realize, and why is that? It’s everything from I don’t know what the rapture is, to I am sick of hearing about it and nothing happens, to the Bible says no one knows the day or hour of Jesus’ coming.
But is that true? Day and hour are very timeframe specific. How about we throw in the second He comes? The Bible tells us that, as the bride of Christ, we are to be watching and waiting for His return just like a Jewish bride watches and waits for her groom to return to take her back to his place he’s prepared for her. We’ve been watching and waiting for around 2,000 years. No wonder so many people are not interested now, but the good news is the Bible and Jesus Himself have narrowed down those 2,000 years to a much smaller timeframe – a generation.
For us believers who love the Lord and love end-time Bible prophecy and who are truly watching, waiting, and praying for His soon return, we are interested in two main things: when does the rapture occur in relation to the tribulation, and how close in time to the rapture does the Bible seem to indicate?
I think most of us who watch this website are pre-tribulation in our rapture view. There is much proof in the Bible to support this, but my favorite is this: 1 Thes 5:9 “For God hath not appointed us to wrath but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ.” Jesus took God’s wrath for our sins upon Himself at the cross, and we are forevermore protected from God’s wrath.
There is one thing that most people do not even look at when it comes to God pouring out His wrath. He “always” puts His righteous in a “safe place” to protect them from His wrath. Three great examples of this are God putting Noah and his family in a safe place (ark) seven days before He poured out His wrath with a global flood that destroyed everything. In Sodom and Gomorrah, God put Lot and his family in a safe place outside of town before He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. With Moses, God put His Jewish people in a safe place behind blood-stained doors to protect them from His 10th plague wrath He was pouring out on Egypt.
Do you notice anything interesting about all of this? Someone always TELLS God’s righteous it’s time to get in a “safe place” because God’s wrath is about to fall. With Noah, it was God Himself. With Lot, it was an angel. With the Jewish people in Egypt, it was Moses. Also, these three examples of God putting His righteous in a safe place involve just a small group of people – two families and the Jewish people in Egypt, and they occur in the Old Testament.
What about the New Testament? God’s wrath always involves death when He pours it out. Has He poured out His wrath yet in the New Testament? Not yet. We do know that the seven-year tribulation period is a horrendous time of God’s wrath poured out in which half the population of our planet – 3.5 billion people, will die during those seven years. The church is God’s righteous on earth in this New Testament church age.
Who is going to “tell us” to go and get in a safe place now because God’s wrath is soon to be poured out? And since God’s wrath is poured out on the whole planet and God’s righteous fill the whole planet, where can a safe place be that will protect us from His wrath?
The answer is obviously only one place – heaven, and Jesus coming for His church bride to be with Him in heaven is the safest place “out” of this world that we can ever be. Jesus is our SAFE PLACE to protect us from God’s wrath.
God, an angel, and Moses “told” God’s righteous in the Old Testament when and where the safe place was to protect them from God’s wrath. Jesus, in the New Testament, “tells” His church righteous when and where it’s time to be ready for entering our heavenly safe place.
In Matt 24, Jesus tells us that the generation that sees the fig tree (Israel) come back to life would be the generation that would see His coming and the end of the age. For the past 2,000 years, those who were astute enough to recognize that Israel is the fig tree, which is verified several times in the Bible, would have known that Jesus will not come back until Israel once again is a nation that’s come back alive and in existence again. That happened on May 14, 1948.
So Jesus is “telling us” which generation to begin watching for His return in order to be in a safe place before God pours out His wrath on our planet.
The next question is, how long is a generation?
Well, God did not leave us in the dark on this question. Psalm 90:10 says a generation is 70 years, up to 80 years with strength. With hindsight, we know that the 70-year generation ended in 2018 following Israel’s rebirth in 1948, and the tribulation did not start seven years prior in 2011. We are now looking at the 80-year generation with strength, which ends in 2028. Seven years prior is 2021. So am I saying the rapture and the tribulation period MUST happen this year? By NO MEANS am I saying that because, obviously, only God knows the exact day and hour. BUT we here at RaptureReady.com are indeed watching, waiting, and praying for Jesus’ soon return for His bride “because” of Bible knowledge and all the signs that are occurring on an almost daily basis.
So, did Jesus also “tell us” anything else about when it is time to get ready to go to our safe place “inside” this generation?
Most of us know about the signs Jesus tells us to watch for in Matt 24 called “birth pains,” which are wars and rumors of wars and natural disasters such as earthquakes. And we see many others as well – tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanoes erupting, fires, floods, tornados, plagues, etc. Yes, we’ve always had these signs, but birth pains mean all of these signs start increasing in frequency and intensity as the birth draws near.
When it comes to wars and rumors of wars, China just threatened to nuke Japan if they interfere with China’s plans for Taiwan. And with us supposedly protecting Taiwan, nukes is a very scary word right now for obvious reasons.
We are still in a worldwide plague pandemic, and 2 Tim 3:1-9 describes exactly the culture the whole world is in today like never before. The division in our own country today is off the charts. Everything is like a pressure cooker with the top spinning faster and faster, saying it’s time.
So what is the bottom line?
The title of this article is “Excitement Time Perhaps,” with a question mark. What is it we want to be excited about? Obviously, about the possible soon-coming rapture. For many, the excitement was either never there, or it has waned over the past two or three decades because of people making rapture predictions that have all been wrong. It’s like the boy crying wolf. People got tired of hearing him cry wolf, but guess what – the boy was “right.” The wolf came, and the people were not ready. There was no wolfready.com for them to examine. The rapture will be the MOST exciting time and event for believers this world has ever seen. The world will NEVER be the same following the rapture, especially in light of the tribulation that will follow it, and then Jesus’ 2nd coming for his 1,000-year millennial reign on earth.
My hope is this article will cause many of us to get a little more excited about the possible soon-coming of us entering our safe place in heaven to be with Jesus and to be protected from God’s wrath poured out on earth for seven years.
Maranatha, Lord Jesus!
David Cogburn