“I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock.  Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them” (Acts 20:29-30).

It didn’t take long for Paul’s warning to the elders of the Church in Ephesus to come true. Within the lifetimes of the original apostles false teachers had invaded the Church and were spewing their doctrines around wherever they went.

Paul called such people false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. He said they are servants of Satan whose end will be what their actions deserve (2 Cor. 11:13-15).

John said they have the spirit of anti-Christ. He said, “They went out from us but they didn’t really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us they would have remained with us, but their going showed that none of them belonged to us” (1 John 2:19). In other words they may attend a church but they are not part of the Church.

And, as we saw in a previous study, Jude said,

These people are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead. They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever (Jude 12-13).

Peter was the most aggressive in his condemnation of the false teachers. Here are some excerpts from 2 Peter 2, a chapter devoted entirely and exclusively to false teachers.

But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping (2 Peter 2:1-3).

He said it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness then to have known it and then turned their backs on the sacred command that was passed onto them (2 Peter 2:21).

And the Lord said even though they will claim to have prophesied in His name, and in His name driven out demons and performed many miracles, He will deny them entry into the kingdom saying, “I never knew you. Away from me you evil doers” (Matt. 7:22-23).

You would think with the advent of the written word, all this false teaching would have stopped, because believers could check what they were hearing against what the Bible says to see if they were being told the truth or not. But the reality is that even in countries where the Bible is readily available most believers simply don’t take the time to read and understand it. A great majority seems to be content with having someone else read it for them and then tell them what it says. These believers have always been fair game for the false teachers.

Even today, when information abounds, average Christians know very little about what the Bible really says. Many are more familiar with what false teachers tell them it says than what they know from their own study.

Keeping The Wolves At Bay
What’s the remedy for this, you might ask? How do we avoid being deceived by these savage wolves? The answer comes in just one word, wisdom.

James 1:5-8 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.”

It’s sad that so many believers who do read the Bible don’t ask the Lord for the wisdom to understand. But even among those who do ask not everyone receives it. This is because deep down most people have doubts about whether the Bible is the actual Word of God. They see conflicts between Biblical descriptions of certain events and what they have come to believe about these events from other sources. They are caught between the claims of an infallible God and the opinions of fallible man.

According to James, this makes them double-minded. He said they shouldn’t expect anything from the Lord. The only ones who ask for and receive wisdom are those who believe wholeheartedly that God is all that He claims to be, has done all that He claims to have done, and will do all that He has promised to do.

The Bible is a supernatural document that can only be understood by those who have been given supernatural ability (1 Cor. 2:14), but all true believers have access to this ability. It comes from the Holy Spirit who is sealed within us (Ephes. 1:13-14). Faith is the key that unlocks this ability because it takes faith to put aside our human understanding and accept God at his word. As you increase in faith, you will increase in understanding His Word, and as you increase in understanding His Word, you will increase in faith. It’s a never ending cycle.

A Great Blessing
I count it as one of the great blessings of my life that when I finally responded to the Lord’s call I was at a point where everything else I had depended on for strength had failed me. It seemed like the gods of money, self determination, and materialism that had once been the mainstay of my life were now working against me. The life I had constructed for myself was based on human tradition and the basic principles of this world. When it suddenly came crashing down around me I was reduced to the humiliating position of being a tenant in one of the apartment buildings I had previously owned. My home and all my earthly possessions were gone. The Lord was showing me that the gods I had been worshiping had proven themselves untrustworthy.

Now please understand that through all this I had thought of myself as a Christian. I was a regular church goer, a sunday school teacher, chairman of the building fund committee and one of my congregation’s leaders, a ruling elder. But since I didn’t have a personal relationship with the Lord I was a Christian in name only, a church goer whose real gods were the things of this world.

The great blessing I gained from the experience of losing everything was that I no longer retained any faith in the wisdom of this world. I had no further interest in trying to reconcile the wisdom of the world with the wisdom of God, but considered them to be irreconcilable. God said, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate” (1 Cor. 1:19). For me that was already happening.

I strongly felt the need to learn more about God’s word. Since I was going to trust Him with both my earthly life and my eternal life it seemed logical to learn all I could about Him. This was especially true since by the time I would know from actual experience whether He was trustworthy to save me from my sins it would be too late. I would already be dead.

In what I now believe was the Lord’s doing, a friend convinced me to listen to a set of cassette tapes on Bible prophecy. It covered prophecies that have been fulfilled in the past as well as those that are still in our future. By the time I had finished I was convinced that the Bible contains an unbroken string of prophecies that were spoken and then fulfilled by God stretching back to the beginning of time. I knew that could only be accomplished by someone who stands outside of time and therefore knows the end from the beginning, an ability God claims for Himself. In Isaiah 46:10 He said;

“I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times what is still to come.”

It made sense to me that if God fulfilled all those prophecies in the past then certainly He will fulfill the future ones too. After all, fulfilling prophecies is the way He proves to us that He is who He claims to be. In Isaiah 42:8-9 He proclaimed;

“I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols. See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you.”

Therefore I determined that I would accept His word for things even when it ran contrary to what I’d been taught in school or what I’d come to believe through my experience. No matter what the outcome of my life, when I stood before Him I wanted to be able to say, “I took you at your word.”

These decisions, which I believe were inspired by God, have helped me greatly in my search for wisdom because they follow the instructions James gave us to believe and not doubt. You see, the Bible doesn’t contain any multiple choice answers to the Great Questions of mankind. For example, it only offers one explanation for the creation. It only gives us one way to be saved, and one way to be certain we’ll remain so. There’s only one version of the end times contained within its pages. After a person has decided to accept God’s word as it’s written, the Bible becomes a lot easier to understand because there’s only one truth and that truth is revealed consistently throughout. Understanding that makes identifying false teachers simple, just like Paul said it would be in Acts 17:11.

The Fear Of The Lord Is The Beginning Of Wisdom(Proverbs 9:10)
When used in reference to God, the Hebrew word translated fear means respect, reverence, piety. When we learn to approach God’s word with respect, reverence and piety, believing that it consists entirely of a message straight from the Creator of the Universe to us, and is therefore not something to be treated casually, we’ll start to acquire its wisdom. The ability to teach the Bible is a gift from God (Romans 12:6-8), Some have it and some don’t. But the wisdom to understand it is something He makes available to all. He asks only that we believe and do not doubt.

As I said at the beginning, most Christians are content to let others do the reading and tell them what it says. Complaining that the Bible is too difficult to read they completely ignore the fact that they’ve been given a supernatural ability to help them comprehend it, and if they just ask they can have it in abundance.

When we approach God with respect and reverence, not doubting but seeking only to understand, He will grant us His wisdom and we will understand His word like never before. It’s the strongest defense there is against false teaching and the only thing that will keep the savage wolves at bay.

Those who ignore the study of end times prophecy are fond of quoting this famous line which appears in various forms in Matt. 24:36, Matt. 24:42,44, Matt. 24:50 and Matt 25:13 as their justification.  But earlier in the same passage, the Lord had admonished all who would read His words of prophecy to understand them (Matt 24:15) and elsewhere the Apostle Paul wrote that the events leading up to the end of the age should not take believers by surprise (1 Thes 5:4) implying that we should have done enough homework to see them coming.

Since the Bible cannot contradict itself, these passages must have been aimed at different audiences. And sure enough, a closer look reveals that to be the case. InMatt. 24:36, Matt. 24:42,44, Matt. 24:50 and Matt 25:13 the Lord was only speaking to people remaining on Earth at His Second Coming, while in Matt.24:15 he was issuing a warning to those who would be living in Israel early in Daniel’s 70th Week. We know this because He mentioned a Temple which doesn’t exist yet. Of course in 1 Thes 5:4 Paul was addressing the Church.

What Paul was saying is that while we won’t know the exact timing of things, we should understand the sequence of events leading up to the Day of the Lord. And perhaps no event in the sequence is more important than the Rapture of the Church, especially as it relates to the Great Tribulation.

That being the case, it seems to me that the first thing we should do in trying to understand all this is to clarify two things. One is the purpose of the Great Tribulation, and the other is the nature of the Church.

The Purpose of the Great Tribulation
The phrase Great Tribulation makes reference to a defined period of time, not a general condition. While the Lord warned the disciples that tribulation (trouble) would be characteristic of life in this world (John 16:33), He clearly identified the Great Tribulation as having a specific beginning and end.  It will begin when the abomination that causes desolation predicted by Daniel is erected in the Temple (in the middle of the last 7 years of history) and will end just prior to the Lord’s return, three and one half years later (Daniel 9:24-27, Matt. 24:15-21).

Daniel’s prophecy is pointedly Jewish in its perspective and so is the Great Tribulation. Until the Lord coined its New Testament name in Matt 24:21 it was referred to as the Time of Jacob’s Trouble in the Old Testament,  and the Old Testament is where its purpose is explained.

In Jeremiah 30:1-11 the event is foretold and in the last verse its purpose is explained. “Though I completely destroy all the nations among which I scatter you, I will not completely destroy you. I will discipline you but only with justice; I will not let you go entirely unpunished.”  The idea is that Israel has to be purified to receive their coming King, and the nations who rejected the King and persecuted His people must be destroyed.

The timing of the passage is also made clear. It will take place after Israel is re-gathered in the land, and will result in David becoming their King again (Jere. 30:8-10). There have been two re-gatherings since the passage was written, but the first, beginning in 535 BC, didn’t result in David becoming their King. In fact they have had no legitimate King at all since about 600 BC. Neither were all the nations completely destroyed then.

The second re-gathering began after World War 2 and continues to this day. Though the population of Israel keeps growing, so do the Jewish populations of all the nations to which the Jews have been scattered. In fact there are about as many Jews outside of Israel as there are in the land. All that will change when the Lord calls all His people to return to their Promised Land following His victory in the Battle of Ezekiel 38-39 (see Ezekiel 39:28). Because of this amazing victory the Jewish people will restore their national covenant with God, build a Temple in which to worship Him, and Daniel’s missing 70th week will begin.

So the purpose of the Great Tribulation is twofold; discipline (purify) the people of Israel so they’ll be prepared for the coming Messiah, and completely destroy the nations to which they had been scattered.

The Nature of the Church
According to Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, the Church is nothing less than a new race of mankind, coming from among both Jews and Gentiles but sharing a destiny with neither. (Ephe. 2:15-16) The problem had always been that God could not dwell in the midst of His creation.  The sins of the people eventually drove Him away.  At the cross, He reconciled all things to himself, things in heaven and on earth (Col 1:19-20). This meant that He can now be at peace with His creation for the first time since the Fall of Man. He accomplished this by paying the price for all the sin of mankind. Now, for anyone who would accept it, a full pardon for behavior past, present and future is available, free for the asking (Matt. 7:7-8).

Accepting this pardon qualifies any person, young or old, Jew or Gentile, good or bad to become a new creation (2 Cor 5:17). And it permits God to look upon this person as if he or she is without sin altogether; and in fact as if he or she had never sinned to begin with. It also required the division of mankind into three groups: Jew, Gentile and Church. (1 Cor. 10:32)

It’s critical that we understand God’s perspective. To Him the Church is without sin, holy and blameless, and has been since the cross (Ephes. 5:25-27). Whatever sins we as individuals have committed (or will commit) have been forgiven and forgotten. It’s as if they never happened (Ephe 1:4-8). At the cross, the Church became as pure and holy as God Himself (2 Cor 5:21), so finally God has a people with whom He can live in peace.

What’s the Point?
First, not needing purification, no purpose is served by the Church enduring the Great Tribulation. Second, the focus of the Great Tribulation is Israel and God’s focus seems to be either Israel or the Church, never both. (This was explained by James in Acts 15:12-18.) If you take the view that the Battle of Ezekiel 38-39occurs before Daniel’s 70th Week begins, and realize that one outcome of that battle is that Israel turns back to God, (Eze 39:28-29) then you know the Church’s days on earth are numbered.

Then there are passages of Scripture that indicate the Church won’t be present for any of the end times judgments. Look at these examples:

In Romans 5:9 and 1 Thes 1:10  Paul promised that the Church will be rescued from God’s wrath.  The Greek preposition translated “from” in both these verses means “from the time, place or any relation to the event. “  Jesus Himself confirmed this in Rev. 3:10.  Speaking through the Church in Philadelphia, He said,  “Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth.”   1 Thes. 5:9 says the Church was not appointed to suffer wrath, and with the seal judgments of Rev. 6 His wrath will have begun. Therefore the rapture of the Church will have to precede Rev. 6.

Also, the 2nd letter to the Thessalonians only makes sense if Paul had taught them the pre-trib rapture view. A careful reading shows that they had received a forgery claiming the Day of the Lord had come (2 Thes. 2:2) .  If Paul had taught a post-trib view their response would have been something like, “The next 7 years will be very difficult, but then the Kingdom will come.” Instead it was alarm, such as they would feel upon learning they had missed the Rapture.  And if they had missed the rapture, that would mean they weren’t saved.  That would certainly be cause for alarm.

Other Hints of a Pre-Trib Rapture
The period of the Great Tribulation is the most thoroughly documented from a time standpoint of any Biblical event. From various verses it’s described as 3 and 1/2 years, or 42 months, or 1260 days long. These are all equivalent times. It begins the day the anti-Christ stands in the Temple in Jerusalem and proclaims himself to be God and it ends 1260 days later.  How do you have a “secret rapture” at the end of the Great Tribulation when any knowledgeable believer will be able to mark the day of its end on his calendar?

The Sheep and Goat Judgment of Matt 25:31-46 clearly portrays events following the Second Coming as the Lord establishes His Kingdom on Earth. The sheep are symbolic of believers and the goats of non-believers. The judgment concerns people who have survived the Great Tribulation. Sheep go into the Kingdom (Matt. 25:34) and goats go into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41). There couldn’t be any sheep on Earth for this judgment if all believers had just been raptured,  but if the Church will be raptured before the end times judgments begin, then there will be at least 7 years for a new crop of believers to be born again.  Some of them will survive the Great Tribulation to become the sheep of the Sheep and Goat judgment.

In Summary
There are sound theological reasons why God keeps the exact timing of the Rapture secret. But He has given us plenty of evidence as to its general timing to prevent us from being taken by surprise at the end of the Age.  A recent panel of prophecy experts agreed that the most important sign that the end is near is not that any specific Biblical sign is evident, but that all the signs the Lord told us to look for are in some stage of fulfillment.

A bus stop only draws a crowd as the time for the bus to arrive draws near. Then people come to watch for the bus, expecting it to arrive, and wait for it, because they know its arrival is near. Having given us several signs of His return the Lord instructs us to watch, expecting Him to arrive, and wait for Him, knowing that His arrival is near.  And since His arrival is near, the rapture is even nearer.