The Chapel - Rediscovering God Changes Everything.

Greetings, and thanks for your question.

Actually, we have been in the end times since Jesus ascended into heaven and the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples at Pentecost. Each generation since then has been able to look at the cultural and spiritual landscape of their time and point to signs that they believed provided evidence that the end was near and that Jesus was coming soon. Consider, for example, the Black Death of the 14^th century that some have estimated wiped out over half the population of Europe. I imagine that may have ignited some serious end time speculation. Also, throughout history, one historical figure after another has been identified as the Anti-Christ, including Nero, the Pope, and Adolph Hitler. Today, some even suspect him to be Barak Obama!

In the previous generation, end time speculation swirled around the possibility of nuclear war and the silent spring. Today, there is a great deal of end time energy invested in the revival of Islam and its adversarial position relative to the West in general and the nation of Israel in particular. Because information now travels so quickly, we are more aware of international tensions and tragedies such as hurricanes and earthquakes that 100 years ago only a few people would have even known about at all. This creates a bit of an illusion that Matthew 24 is on the brink of fulfillment. But we need to be careful.

The only thing we can be sure of from Scripture is that Christ’s return is always imminent and that it will be sudden and unexpected by those who are not prepared. He will appear when he is least expected, not most expected, and no one knows when his appearance will be except the Father (Matthew 24:36-39). There have been wars and rumors of wars and calamitous upheavals of nature throughout history, and we need to be cautious about claiming too inflexibly that our particular generation is the one. We simply need to always be ready. This is the spirit of Jesus’ parables in Matthew 25.

As to the timing of the rapture, again, we need to hold to our particular view of this event loosely. Personally, I believe that the evidence of Scripture points toward a post-tribulation rapture, but I certainly could be wrong about this, and that’s ok. I can be wrong about this and still spend eternity with Jesus. There are reliable sources that address this issue if you care to get into it more deeply. Check out the following book at Amazon: Three Views on the Rapture: Pretribulation, Prewrath, or Posttribulation by Blaising, Moo, and Gundry.

All three positions may be argued from Scripture, and so we need to be careful about dogmatism in this area, and be willing to offer grace to those who disagree with us. This is not to say that this issue is theologically unimportant, but we need to put it in perspective compared to other doctrines which are more at the core of what it means to be a Christ-follower. What is of most importance is not being right about our view of the rapture, but, as C. S. Lewis so saliently put it, that we are at our posts when the inspection comes.

Blessings,

Arnie Gentile

mychristianapologetics.com