Note: This commentary—excerpted largely here—was presented in 2019. However, the massive evidence accumulating that God is about to say, “Enough of this wickedness,” convicted me to repost the heads-up to believers in Jesus Christ.
Rumors of war that threaten nuclear conflict in the areas surrounding Israel, and in fact, involving our own nation, are in the hourly news headlines. We’re told that economic collapse of the world’s financial systems is inevitable if global governance by would-be New World Order builders is not forthcoming. Sodom-like wickedness threatens to overthrow every semblance of morality, assaulting even young children in their satanic plans to reset planetary order in a direction opposite of God’s.
Technology that can provide controls by Antichrist is already here, with artificial intelligence beginning to intrude upon every facet of life. The snare of Revelation 4:1 might be triggered at any moment!
The Snare Is Set
Beware and be aware: God is about to disrupt humanity’s present and tragic trajectory.
Hal Lindsey, of The Late, Great, Planet Earth fame, called it “the great snatching up.” The mental picture is of one of those old Jungle Jim films starring Johnny Weissmuller in his post-Tarzan days.
A leopard or other big cat would be stalking through a thick jungle, and suddenly, it would be violently snatched up when it hit a tripping mechanism that caused a thick net to be released. After grabbing the enraged beast, the net would spring upward, keeping it trapped while it flailed mightily above the jungle floor.
Jungle Jim would then have captured a leopard for a zoo or to rid the area of a human eater. It was all very exciting for a boy of ten or so sitting in an air-conditioned movie theater munching popcorn back in those days.
Catching the beast, of course, required much preparation. Jungle Jim would order his assistants—usually natives of the area—to carefully place the net flat in a jungle pathway, then camouflage it. A sapling or thick branch was then bent to provide the tremendous spring the trap would need to capture and hold a 150-pound or more leopard.
With the big cat captured, the people would be safe from its prowling about and possibly attacking the most vulnerable inhabitants of the African countryside.
Hal Lindsey, of course, was talking about “the great snatching-up” in reverse, so to speak. In his biblically prophetic study presented in The Late, Great, Planet Earth, he was talking about the prophecy given by Jesus as recorded by the Apostle Luke:
“And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.
For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.
Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man” (Luke 21:34-36).
In this case, the viciousness of the beast world will be left on the earth, and the people to be protected will be snatched into the air to safety. Peter the apostle said this about the one who is even now on the ground surrounding us, looking to attack:
“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).
The Apostle Paul told in great detail about this snatching up. The prophecy most directly pertinent is the following:
“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).
Harpazo, as many know, is the Greek word used in Paul’s prophecy to express this being caught up. People who live to experience the Rapture and Christians who have died during the Church Age (Age of Grace) will be caught up or snatched up. It will happen in the twinkling of an eye (1 Corinthians 15:52).
This instantaneous event that removes God’s people from deadly conditions on earth, unlike ol’ Jungle Jim’s snare that leaves people on the ground safe from the leopard, takes no preparation by any humans. Jesus finished all preparation on the cross at Calvary when He said, “It is finished.”
All one must do to be removed in that moment is to believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, according to Romans 10:9-10.
While no preparation needs to be made beyond simply accepting that call to salvation, the snare is set; it will soon leave those who rebel against God to face the “roaring lion” described above.
In these commentaries over the years, we’ve gone over in depth all the signals Jesus and the prophets said would be in view at the time of this snare-like intervention into the affairs of rebellious earth-dwellers. Those indicators are literally everywhere we look, with Israel, the fig tree in prophetic symbolism, being the key sign.
Spiritually attuned believers can know when that end-times generation will appear at the very end of the age.
Again, we look at Scripture to see that the snare is now set that will catapult Christians to Heaven:
“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree, and all the trees; When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand. So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth” (Luke 21:28-35).