Terry James Archives

Book review by Terry James

While recently attending the Prophecy Watchers Conference in Colorado Springs, at which he and I were speakers, my friend Lee Brainard and I discussed his book. I’ve since looked at it in depth and concluded that it is one of the best treatments of the pretrib Rapture I’ve read.

Most Christians today don’t have a solid foundation in the Bible’s teaching on the subject, even if they attend churches that professedly believe in it. They haven’t been systematically taught the various arguments that can be made for a pretribulation Rapture. When they do wade into the debate regarding the event’s timing, they’re likely to hear more assertions, cliches, and sound bites than well-framed arguments. This lack of foundation leaves them susceptible to preachers with strong personalities and well-framed erroneous arguments. Hence, as we have painfully witnessed, multitudes have embraced the pre-wrath and post-Tribulation Rapture in the past couple of decades.

This book is designed to help remedy this lack of foundation. In fewer than 120 pages, the author has presented ten distinct arguments for the pretribulation Rapture in compact form. Distilled a little further, their essence can be presented in the following six points–the gist of which Lee presents here in brief.

The economy argument. God returns to Israel during the tribulation, and the evident economy during the tribulation is the Mosaic economy. Therefore, the church cannot be on earth during the seventieth week. God cannot have two honored economies or two honored temples at the same time.

The timeline argument. We see the representatives of the church in heaven in the fourth and fifth chapters of Revelation prior to the opening of the first seal (the antichrist) in the sixth chapter. Therefore, the church is not on earth during the tribulation. We also see other timeline indicators which present a rapture prior to the second coming. For instance, the rapture is presented as the morning star of the day of the Lord, while the second coming is presented as the sunrise of the day of the Lord.

The distinction between the rapture and the second coming. There are numerous distinctions between the rapture and the second coming. For instance, the church is taken to heaven at the rapture, while she descends from heaven with the Lord at the second coming. Other distinctions include: the saints taken vs. the saints left, the bride vs. the guests, and the apantesis vs. the parousia.

The relative normality argument. The coming of the Son of man will be like an unexpected thief in the night and will catch the world unaware and unwatching. This does not fit the second coming. The whole world knows it is coming, and they prepare for it, even gathering the armies of the world at the right time and place—Armageddon. But the rapture fits the thief-in-the-night scenario perfectly. The world will be going about their normal business, oblivious to the dawning of the day of the Lord on the horizon, and they will be shocked out of their obliviousness by the vanishing of the church and the first wave of judgments.

The deliverance from wrath argument. The church, as the body and bride of Christ, cannot see the wrath of God that will be poured out on earth at the end of the age. This time of wrath is synonymous with the tribulation. Evidence is provided that the word tribulation is used for the wrath of God, and the concept of wrath is used for Israel in the tribulation.

The nature argument. The seals differ from the normal course of troubles during this age both qualitatively and quantitatively. The seals mark the Lord’s return to theocratic government from the providential government that has prevailed throughout the church age. The seals are vastly worse in degree than anything that mankind has experienced during the course of this age. The fourth seal alone brings twenty times the death toll of World War II. The first seal, the rise and reign of the antichrist, is expressly identified as the day of the Lord (the dawning of it) in 2 Thessalonians 2. It is a great delusion sent upon mankind as a judgment for their unbelief of the light they were already given. It is retributive judgment, albeit mingled with grace.

Taken together, these arguments present a rock-solid case for a rapture prior to the tribulation (that is, prior to the seventieth week). The church must be removed before the first seal is opened and the antichrist is revealed. The church must be removed before the Lord returns to dealing with national Israel during the seventieth week. The church must be removed before the world is bombarded with the seal visitations, which vastly outstrip anything mankind has experienced in the church age. As we read in Revelation 3:10, according to my paraphrase, “Because you have patiently suffered with me in the church age, I will remove you from the planet before the tribulation, which shall come upon the entire planet, to try those whose focus is only earthly.”

For believers who are Rapture ready, this is indeed an exciting volume to consider while we eagerly await that shout from Heaven’s clouds of Glory: “Come up here!” (Revelation 4:1).

Ten Potent Proofs for the Pretribulation Rapture

Author: Lee Brainard

Publisher: Soothkeep Press

ISBN: 979-8-9873081-3-4

To order:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D7TLWN81

[Authors note: Due to my need to concentrate on other matters as I prepare for speaking at the Colorado Springs Prophecy Watchers Conference, my commentaries this week will be selections I’ve written in the recent past. This segment appeared in Jonathan Brentner’s and my recent book “HEREAFTER: It’s Far Better Than You Imagine.”]

Life in the Millennium :: By Terry James

New world order architects today claim to want to make life on Planet Earth much better than mankind has thus far managed to construct. The slogan for those who preach they want to create the equivalent of Utopia is “Build Back Better!” They give this construction project the name The Great Reset.

In making their grandiose plans, they make the same deliberate, monumental mistake the antediluvians made. It is the same egregious error Nimrod and his minions made in their construction catastrophe on the plains of Shinar when they built the Tower intended to reach to Heaven.

These earlier one-world would-be masters of Planet Earth, like their father Lucifer, determined to usurp the Throne of God. They desired to be like the most high –to take the place of the Creator. They fell for Satan’s lie that they could be as God.

The writer of Ecclesiastes was certainly on the mark with the line: “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). The present-day globalist elite, like those earlier rebels, are infected by the reprobate mind forewarned by the Apostle Paul.

“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient” (Romans 1:28).

Their insane drive, through their sin-infected upside-down thinking, will eventuate in God judging their rebellious wickedness. He will, like in destroying the antediluvian world order and in decimating the Tower of Babel construction, completely erase the final effort to build a world order in the image of mankind. Daniel chapter 2 tells of the great stone from Heaven that will strike this final, evil world order, with the winds of God’s Eternal Kingdom sweeping away all vestiges of fallen man’s rebellion. That great stone is the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of all kings.

We are witnessing today the build-up toward implementation of the final form of worldwide wickedness the globalist elite are planning. For a time, their efforts will seem to be successful. As a matter of fact, those efforts are obviously making tremendous strides at the moment of this writing.

The effort seems led at this moment in time by the minions of the World Economic Forum (WEF). However, this anti-God organization is but the nucleus –the center of a rapidly expanding range of concentric circles spreading the devil’s doctrine of Building Back Babel Better.

If we only consider all of the above we’ve mentioned here, we have every reason to sense being plunged into the deepest abyss of depression. There would seem no hope whatsoever for being able to climb out of that abyss of Ephesians 6:12 evil.

But, as the renowned broadcaster Paul Harvey used to tell us, this isn’t the end of the matter. Here is the rest of the story.

Just as the powers and principalities of Ephesians 6:12 are about to reestablish their long-sought Tower of Babel, creating – especially through a transformed worldwide economy (monetary system), Satan’s desired one-world order – God will say, “Enough!” We believe that exclamation by the God of Heaven is forecast in the following words of the Lord Jesus.

“Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed” (Luke 17:28-30).

The Lord Jesus will remove God’s children from Earth, just as He removed Lot (whom He saw as just –that is, righteous – because of Lot’s belief for Salvation) from the wicked city of Sodom.

Here is how that removal will happen according to God’s Holy Word.

“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. Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thes 4:16-18).

With all believers of the Church Age (Age of Grace) removed to safety, as promised according to Revelation 3:10, God’s dealing in judgment and wrath with the anti-God neo-Babel builders will begin. That dealing will eventuate in Heavenly Action, as described by the Prophet Daniel’s foretelling while interpreting Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.

“Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth” (Daniel 2:31-35).

This prophecy says that God will forever do away with the Babylonian system of earth’s rebels –a system that was, since antiquity, fomented, instigated and put into effect by the master architect of all rebellion against the Almighty.

Again… here is the rest of the story. And it is a Glorious story to be sure!

The Lord Jesus Christ, the King of all kings, is that stone of Daniel’s prophecy. He will descend to strike that rebellious system and cause it to crumble, as given here.

“And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God” (Revelation 19:11-15).

We pick up this Return of King Jesus, who will smite that Babylonian system and cause it to crumble and blow away in the winds of eternity. The Prophet Zechariah describes it:

“Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south” (Zech 14:3-4).

At that moment, the topography of Jerusalem, and of the entire world, will change. Earth will begin transforming into the pristine world that was Planet Earth before the fall in Eden’s Garden.

Mount Moriah, the Temple Mount, will lift high into the sky to overlook the earth, and King Jesus will proceed down through the great valley just created. He will ascend the mountain to take up residence in the gloriously constructed Holy Temple where the third temple, desecrated by Antichrist, had previously set during Daniel’s seventieth week (the Tribulation).

And this is where you will commute to and from each and every moment of the Millennial Kingdom – the one-thousand-year Reign of the King of kings and Lord of lords.

As supernatural beings, having become so at the Rapture, you will be with King Jesus, or have access to Him, at every moment of the thousand years He Reigns. Not only will you be priests, prophets, and kings over all the earth, but you will, as a child of God, have the same inheritance that belongs to Jesus Himself. Everything that is His, God, our Father, gives to us now upon becoming His child. We then come fully into that indescribably magnificent inheritance in the Hereafter – the time which begins upon cessation of physical life of the believer, or at the moment when Jesus shouts, “Come up here!” (Revelation 4: 1-2).

God’s Great Plan was to have a family that would love Him unconditionally, just as He Loves unconditionally. We are and will be that family that will be the joy of our Heavenly Father throughout Eternity.

Imagine… No. you nor I can’t even begin to imagine in our finite minds what it means to be considered the same as the Father’s only begotten Son in terms of Eternity, or even for a second of time. We accept it by simple faith in the Father’s promises, and that is what makes us accepted in the beloved – the Holy, Eternal family of the Heavenly Father.

That’s what it means to be as one with the Heavenly Father and with His Beloved Son Jesus. Jesus‘ words about our Heavenly family relationship to His Father in the moments before His dying for the sins of the world confirm absolutely our co-equal status in God’s family.

Hallelujah!

“That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me” (John 17:21-25).

This Oneness we who are in Christ now enjoy for all eternity means we have great, God-Commissioned responsibility. While we are in this human flesh, we are, of course, directed to go forth and witness the Gospel to the whole world, making disciples of all people and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But that is only the beginning of that great responsibility.

Our Commission during the thousand years of the Millennial Kingdom will be beyond anything we can fully grasp at the present moment while having only finite thinking capability.

By the time we follow the Lord Jesus to Planet Earth, accompanying Him while He returns as God has promised to Planet Earth, we will each have gone before the BEMA (Judgment Seat of Christ).

Each child of God will stand before that Holy Bench of Judgment for rewards and crowns earned during life while on Earth. There will be no condemnation –no judgment for sin. All sin was paid for through Christ’s Sacrifice on the Cross. Jesus paid it all for our sins, past, present, and future. Each of us will, however, be rewarded with different levels of attainment, depending on the faithfulness we have demonstrated in using properly the gifts and talents we were given for living life on Earth. Depending on how we honored the Lord’s desires for how we lived our lives will determine the level of responsibilities we will be given for ruling and reigning with Jesus during the Millennial Kingdom.

There will be no competitors, no envies, no jealousies in all this Hereafter activity. We will have the Minds of Christ – that is, our thinking will be like our Blessed Lord and Savior’s thinking. All we will be concerned with is doing His Holy Will. Our goals and desires will be precisely the same as His goals and desires. Our love will be not for ourselves, but for our Brothers, Sisters, and especially for our Big Brother Jesus –the King of all kings.

Here is scriptural Truth our friend Daymond Duck researched and writes that frames what we will do during the Millennial Kingdom and throughout the HEREAFTER forever.

1) Worship (Revelation 4:9-10).

2) Keep the Feast of Tabernacles (Zech. 14:16-19).

3) Visit Jerusalem to learn (Isa. 2:2-3; I Corinthians 13:11-12).

4) Fellowship (Revelation 19:9).

5) Serve Jesus (Psa. 72:11; Revelation 22:3).

6) Judge fallen angels (I Corinthians 6:3).

7) Reign on the earth (Luke 19:11-27; Rev. 5:10; II Tim. 2:12).

These things will be more than enough to keep us busy. – Daymond Duck, Prophecy Plus Ministries