Rapture Ready -- Not Rapture Ridiculous

Rapture Ready – Not Rapture Ridiculous

By Terry James

A flood of e-messages has slowed to a trickle, but still they come. We who hold to a pre-trib rapture are, in the view of these e-mailers, the ruination of the planet. Although we’ve been over these troubled waters on a number of occasions, I feel it cathartic to revisit the accusations, with as honest an approach as possible.

The e-mail messages generally begin with something like: “You people vote for George W. Bush, and you are for everything I am against. You, like a bunch of idiots, believe that since you will soon be gone from the earth, you will leave it plundered and wrecked for those of us who will be left behind to pick up your messes.” That’s not an exact quotation, but it certainly captures the spirit of the collective thought within the hundreds of e-mails received on the subject since the presidential election of 2004.

The most troubling aspect of this flood of accusations is that as many of them come from those who claim they are Christians as from those who make no such pretense. The caustically proclaimed parting words within these messages usually include something like: “I welcome the rapture so you, and morons like you, will be gone.”

This commentary is not to heap words of scorn on those many e-mailers who seem to hate our guts (if you will pardon the harsh, though accurate, expression). We have answered the accusers before. This piece is to take a hard look at those of us, the accused, with the thought toward examining ourselves to determine whether there is truth within the accusations.

It must be admitted that many “positive” e-mail messages state something like: “I’ll be so glad to get out of this terrible place”—or, something equivalent, when referring to Christ’s calling His Church home. Just today I ate lunch with a friend as close as any of my family members. He is a strong prophecy student and an author on Bible prophecy. He said: "I’m just listening for the call, and looking up,” or something to that effect. His remark was in reference to his desire to be relieved of some earthly problems he is having at present.

An actual member of my family said recently, “I’ll be glad for the rapture, so they (the evil people of the world) will get the judgment they are asking for.”

We must ask in our self-examination: What is our true view of the rapture in relationship to our lives as Christians while we are still here? Does our primary motivation for being "rapture ready" involve exiting the planet so we can be free from debt, from sickness, from problems involving personal relationships? Do we want to see evil people and systems get what’s coming to them? Do we just want to leave the “mess” behind for others to “clean up”—the pie-in-the-sky thing of which we are often accused?

The reminder is sometimes thrown in our faces that Christians have in the past sold or given away all their earthly possessions and gone to hilltops, mountain tops, or roof tops, wrapped in sheets or something other, to await the rapture. Those weird actions of the past do seem to make legitimate the ridicule—or at least some of the ridicule—cast upon those of us who believe in the rapture as escape from the time of God’s wrath.

Our attitude, as God’s children, is all-important to the heavenly Father. To name the name of Christ is to desire to be Christ-like. Did not Jesus pray in that tender, beautiful prayer to His Father in John chapter 17 that we be one with Him, as He is one with His Father? In light of that prayer for us by the One, alone, who provided the redemptive act that saved us from God’s wrath to come, what should be our attitude in the matter of being "rapture ready"?

One thing sure—we are to be "rapture ready," but not "rapture ridiculous."

Any person who is truly a born-again child of God anticipating the rapture, and who has the attitude that he or she doesn’t care about our environment or in living as a good citizen, should earnestly check his or her Christian credentials. Jesus himself created this magnificent habitat. God said that it was “very good,” much like we might step back and look at a project dear to our hearts when finished in a pleasing fashion, and say to ourselves, “that is very good.” We are to care deeply about this earth upon which we have been placed. But, of course, we are not to worship it.

Any person who wants the rapture to occur so God’s judgment can fall upon the wicked should also take stock. Jesus died for everyone, not just for those who have since come into God’s family through His shed blood on Calvary’s cross. He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. The Apostle Peter said, under divine inspiration of the Word—Jesus Christ: “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9).

(Brief memo to those of us who have come to know the Lord: “Thank God for that love, else where would you and I be, had God not exercised such divine patience?")

What, then, must be our attitude in order to be "rapture ready"—not "rapture ridiculous"?

One Bible instruction about how to live before the world while we look for Jesus calling us home is found in scriptural passages from Titus:

“In all things shewing thyself a pattern of good works: in doctrine shewing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, Sound speech, that cannot be condemned; that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you. Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things; not answering again; Not purloining, but shewing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world” (Titus 2:7-12).

Only after these all-important instructions for how we must conduct life as Christians are we given the comforting Word from our Heavenly Father:

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works” (Titus 2:13-14).

Here the well-worn bromide comes into the end-time picture: “We must not be so heavenly-minded that we are of no earthly good.”

I’m convinced that part of the truth found in Matthew 24:44 has a meaning in addition to simply that the world, even Christians, will be apathetic, and not looking for the sudden catching up of the saints when Jesus comes for His Church. “Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 24: 44). When the Christian is "rapture ready"—not "rapture ridiculous," he or she is so busy doing God’s work on earth that the rapture will come like it is when we look up from total absorption in work we love doing and realize that all that time has passed, and it’s time to go home.