Rapture Q&A - Part 2

Is there a parallel between the Jewish marriage tradition and the rapture of the church?

For the answer to that question and more, stay tuned. I believe that the number one thing that will cause America to almost dissolve is the rapture of the church. I don't need the clapping. I want to be out of here. First, I want a new body because this tent is not for me.

I want a building and I want to be in the presence of the Lord whenever He comes to take us and meet with us in the clouds. Until then, we are up for an unbelievable ride on a roller coaster, emotional roller coaster, physical roller coaster. It's going to be amazing. But remember, remember, remember, Jesus is coming soon. Welcome to Discern in the Times. It is great to be with you once again this week.

My name is Brian Thomas. And as you heard in that opening clip from Amir Tsarfati, we are looking to the rapture of the church. That is where we find hope, joy and comfort in this chaos that we see going on in our world today. So we began last week a two part series, which we will conclude this week concerning questions related to the rapture.

I'm being joined today by co-host Dr. Bruce Logan, who I will bring in shortly. But before I do, I need to remind you that your eternal state is far more important than your current state. If you've already received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, but maybe there are challenges in life.

Maybe things have not played out the way you had hoped for or dreamed of. I want to encourage you to not lose hope because the best is yet to come, because you are promised to spend eternity in a perfect kingdom with our great Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So don't get discouraged.

Do not be dismayed. But for those of you out there who have never received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, I encourage you to do so, because if you leave this side of life without having received him, you will spend eternity in the lake of fire separated from God. So will you please give your heart to Jesus Christ on today?

All right. So again, we're looking at questions concerning the rapture of the church, which is found in First Thessalonians, chapter number four, in which the apostle Paul speaks of how we will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. But before I get to our first question for this week, I want to bring in my co-host, Dr. Bruce Logan. And Doc, I know you like me and like Amir Tsarfati, you are looking forward to the rapture of the church as well. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And then I love that clip that you played by Amir, because he said something in that clip that I don't know how much the listeners really paid attention to, but it's something that I've been saying for years. And that is that, you know, one of the things that's going to be associated with the rapture and the tribulation is going to be the coming of the Antichrist and a one-world government system. And here's the thing that this is really, really important.

And I think Amir really touched on it. That in order for the one, because let me rephrase it, because of the fact that America is the greatest economic power and a military power on Earth, in order for a one-world governmental system to come into full fruition worldwide, it can't happen while America is still the most powerful economic and military power on the world. So something will have to happen in the future that's going to bring America down to the point that will open the door for the coming one-world leader.

And we saw during COVID how the world, citizens around the world, capitulated to various government mandates in terms of closing facilities, closing public meetings and masking and six feet and all the different mandates that the government, you know, the vaccines and so forth. But when you fast forward to the rapture, there is I don't believe that there is any event that could ever happen in the world that would be that would be much more of a worldwide cataclysmic event than the rapture of the church. And I don't there's nothing that can really bring America down. There's no foreign enemy.

They can attack America, for an example, because they would be basically, you know, deciding to mutually destroy themselves. And so that that's going to happen with America is situated between two oceans. And so militarily, America can't be attacked out from the outside by foreign foreign governments. And our economy is is the strongest, even though we have recession and things that we're going through economically.

Our our country is still yet the most prosperous economically there is in the world. So there is no way that the one world government could actually come to come into power. We have a president now currently, for an example, that has gotten us out of the WHO, the World Economic Forum. And and so, you know, that that has to change in order to open the door for one world leader to step in.

And that there is nothing that anybody can imagine or anybody that I've ever heard discussed. So what could possibly happen to bring in a one world leader? There's nothing that can make that happen more significantly, more quickly than millions of people disappearing all of a sudden from from the world. That's going to that's going to crash stock markets from all over the world. And it's just going to be chaos on a scale that nobody can ever possibly comprehend. And I believe that that will impact America when with Christians from all over the country and around the world, all of a sudden vanish. And then the one world of demonic Antichrist spirit will have full reign. Yeah, we are definitely looking forward to the rapture, and I hope and pray that that is the thing that takes place. That causes America to weaken is the rapture of the church. So we're going to begin this week.

The first question, which ties into where we left off last week, we left off last week talking about imminency. So the first question we have for this week is, is there a parallel between the Jewish wedding tradition, the Jewish marriage tradition and the rapture of the church? What we find is that there is symbolism between the pre tribulation of rapture, marriage supper and the Jewish wedding tradition. And let me be specific when I say Jewish wedding tradition, specifically the Galilean tradition of the days in which Jesus Christ was on the earth at his first coming. The marriage supper is spoken of in the Book of Revelation, chapter number 19, verse nine. It says, then he said to me, right. Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the lamb.

And he said to me, these are the true sayings of God. So just as we have earthly marriage between a man and a woman, we will have a spiritual marriage between Christ and the church. There are many passages throughout the scripture that correlate that a marriage between a man and a woman symbolizes the union with us as believers with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And that is why Satan attacks earthly marriages in the way that he does, because of what they represent.

And we have to understand how to fight those attacks from Satan, because Satan obviously does not want us to be joined with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Earthly marriages represent that union. The marriage supper is a celebration of the marriage of the church to Jesus Christ, just like we have earthly wedding receptions. You go to the wedding after it.

What do we do? We get together, we eat and we sing and dance and you celebrate. And that is what is going to happen with the marriage supper that Revelation chapter 19 speaks of. Now, let me outline the Galilean wedding tradition for anyone that is not familiar with it. In this tradition, when a man would find a woman who he was interested in marrying, he, as the bridegroom, would present a cup of wine to her. Now, the woman would have the option to either accept it or reject it. She would accept it by showing her sign of accepting it would be she would drink from the wine. Just like today, when we in our tradition, our culture, we present a ring to the woman. And if she accepts the marriage, she accepts the ring. If she accepts the proposal, she takes the ring. So in this Galilean tradition, again, he would present her with a cup of wine.

The woman would accept it by drinking. The bridegroom would then return where to his father's house to prepare what was known as a Koopa. It was in addition to his father's house. So he would go there and he would work on this room to prepare for his bride, which would soon be there and living with him. Now, the groom's father would be the one to tell the groom to go and get the bride. But the key thing about it, it was only when his father determined it was time. The bridegroom had no say in it. He could not decide, OK, now it's good to go.

I'm ready to go get her. No, it was his father that said, OK, when it was ready. Now go get your bride. So they would then return after he went to get his bride. They will return to their wedding chamber where they were sealed for seven days. That is the time in which they would drink with his bride once again. He would drink with his bride once again.

They would exit after seven days to a large celebration. Now, that is the Galilean wedding tradition in the book of John, chapter 14, verses one through four. It reads, I go and prepare a place for you and I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am there you may be also. That is very key because this cannot be fulfilled with the post tribulation or rapture view. Jesus said, I'm going to come come back and I'm going to take you to where I am. Where is Jesus? He is at the father's house.

He went back to heaven. And remember, when Jesus was on earth at his first coming before he went to the cross at the last supper, he drank with the disciples and he said he will not do so again until he drinks with them in his father's house. So that is really just a quick, concise summary of the Jewish Galilean wedding tradition and how it relates to the rapture of the church. I could easily spend an hour talking about all the parallels. But as you said last week, that Jesus often spoke in ways in which the people of that culture would understand things that they could relate to. And so when he was speaking these words, their minds naturally went right to the Jewish wedding tradition. And so he was making that parallel. And I think when we see that, that is strong evidence that the rapture taking place before the tribulation, having that imminency and we as the church, just like the bride in the wedding tradition, we have to be prepared at all times because we don't know when Jesus is coming back for us. Amen.

Yes, that's that's a very, very good parallel and example of excuse me, just how the marriage and the natural the Jewish marriage wedding and the natural parallels God's marriage to the church. And and, you know, there's nothing I can really add to that. But I think you pretty much, you know, knock that out of the park. That was just a great explanation.

Hopefully the the the listeners will really, really grasp hold to your things that you described and relate that to events that are happening in the world because we're getting close to that time. Amen. Amen. All right. So what's what do you have next question? So the next question is, oh, and this is a really good one.

Does the thousand year reign of Christ start after the rapture? Now, that's a very good question, because in that could be viewed as a trick question. But but the answer is yes and no.

And I'm hopefully I've kind of tickled a few ears by by putting it out like that. Yeah. But but it's going to occur. Obviously, the thousand year millennial reign will occur after the rapture. But we're not talking immediately after the rapture. We're talking about after the seven year tribulation. So you could the argument could be made that the thousand year millennial reign of Christ will begin seven years after the rapture of the church.

Now, I'm just that's just kind of the big picture overview, but to kind of like simplify it even more. It's important to remember that the rapture and the second coming are two completely different events. I've heard some Bible prophecy teachers referred referred to it this way. It's it's one advent that's advent, A-D-V-E-N-T, but that's going to consist of two events. And those two events are the rapture and the second coming of Christ. And of course, we've already talked about the rapture, where believers from around the world will be instantaneously caught up to meet the Lord in the air and then return to to the to heaven with and to be with the Lord. But the second coming is seven years later, when those that are caught up to meet the Lord in the air return physically and visibly to the earth to to number one, fight against the Antichrist at the Battle of Armageddon, and then for Christ to set up his thousand year millennial kingdom. Now, the event in in for the second coming, we've talked about the rapture, so I won't rehash that. But the second coming occurs, like I said, seven years later, and it is described in Revelation Chapter 19. And in Revelation Chapter 19, the apostle John was given a panoramic vision of the events in heaven just prior to the second coming. And then he was also given a panoramic glimpse into the events that describe the actual second coming itself. So, for example, in in verse one, and this is how we know that it's seven years later in verse one in Chapter 19, it opens by saying. And after these things, I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, so that's very descriptive right there. He said, first of all, he began by saying after these things.

So if you're a student Bible student, you should ask yourself after what things? After the things of the tribulation period, this was described in the previous chapters. And they said, I've heard a great voice of much people in heaven.

Where are they? They're in heaven and they're praising the Lord. Hallelujah. The salvation and glory and honor and power unto the Lord our God. And then in verses seven through ten describes the marriage supper of the lamb that you so eloquently described in in the when you when you broke down the previous question, it described because we're still in heaven after the rapture. But then beginning in verse 11 through 16, John follows on, can conclude that vision with the actual physical second coming of Christ, where he will physically visibly return to the earth.

And I just want to read it just a few verses real quick. You know how how John described what he saw in and in verse 11. And we're we're in Revelation Chapter 19.

And this is after the marriage supper of the lamb, by the way. And he said, And I saw heaven open and behold, a white horse. And he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True.

And in righteousness, he does judge and make war. His eyes were a flame of fire and his head were of many crowns. And he had a name written that no man could name but he himself.

And he was called, I'm sorry, clothed with a vesture dipped in blood. And his name is called the word of God. So we all know that that's Jesus Christ returning and the armies which were in heaven followed him upon the white horses. And that, of course, those armies with them are those believers, those of us who will be caught up in the rapture seven years prior to this and who who have enjoyed the marriage supper of the lamb with our Lord. We will return with him on white horses to fight against the Antichrist at the Battle of Armageddon against the armies which were in heaven, followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goes a sharp sword that with that with it should smite the nations.

And he shall rule them with a rod of iron. And he treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And remember, we talked earlier about the difference between the judgment of God and the wrath of God. So that's another verse that indicates that.

But then finally, the close John closes this part out in Chapter 20, where he then describes the as the as the question recommended. He began to describe for the first time in Chapter 20, these thousand year reign of Christ. And in Chapter 20, beginning in verse two, and he laid hold of the dragon that the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. Verse three says and cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal upon him that he should deceive the nations. No more to the thousand years should be fulfilled.

And after that, he must be loosed again for a little season. And then it says, and I saw thrones and they set upon him and judgment was given to unto him. And I saw the souls of them which were beheaded for the witness of Jesus and for the word of God and which had not worshiped the beast, neither his image, neither had received a mark upon his forehead or in their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. But the rest of the dead live not again until the thousand years were finished. And this is the first resurrection. So, again, this is a description of and then also the timeline between the rapture and the second coming. So, again, the answer to the question, will the tribulation, will the thousand year millennial reign happen after the rapture? And again, the answer is yes and no, but but but yes, after but but not immediately after it will be seven years afterwards. All right.

All right. So our next question is, what or who is the restrainer? Now, the apostle Paul spoke of the removal of a restraining force before antichrist is revealed. That is in Second Thessalonians chapter number two, verses four through eight. I believe this restrainer is the Holy Spirit. I've heard some out there argue that it is Michael the Archangel.

But I think when you look at the totality of the scripture that it is referring to the Holy Spirit that is indwelling the believer, the church. Once removed, evil forces are going to be allowed free reign on the earth. And it's mind boggling because we look at all the evil today. Every day you turn on the local news and there is somebody who has been shot.

You know, it's a daily thing. We don't even give it a second thought anymore. The amount of evil that we see, people are wanting to abort babies all the way up until the point of birth. That is the kind of evil that we already see in the world. But it is going to get so much worse during the seven year tribulation. But we, as the believers in Jesus Christ, we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us.

And so evil cannot run but but so rampant while we are present on the earth. It's sort of like when you look at cars on the on a parking lot where there are speed bumps. And what happens? A car has to slow down to get over a speed bump. If not, you're going to do a lot of damage to your vehicle. But once those speed bumps are removed, a car can accelerate to high rates of speed. And it's the same way when it comes to the Holy Spirit that is indwelling the Christian. We are keeping evil from accelerating to to so high a speed. But once removed, it is going to accelerate during the tribulation. I also want to point out that God often spared his wrath upon cities and nations due to the presence of the righteous. An example of this is found in the account of Sodom and Gomorrah when God delayed until Lot and his family were removed. And I think God withholds his wrath from the world today for the sake of the Christian.

But again, once the restraining force, we with the Holy Spirit is taken out, then evil is going to run rampant. So that brings us to our last question in the series. And this is a doozy. I wish we had an hour to talk about it. But we only got about three minutes. But we're going to see if you can get it in in a three minute segment. That's like what they call Mission Impossible. I'm going to try to just do the best we can and we'll probably have to come back and revisit this one. But does the 70 weeks prophecy point to the rapture?

The answer is no, not directly. And the reason why we say that is because the rapture is referred to by the apostle Paul as a mystery. Now, which this essentially means and what Paul was saying that why he was referred to it as a mystery is because it was something that had not been.

Or that God had not previously revealed, but revealed for the first time to the apostle Paul or gave him this revelation. So it was referred to as a mystery, which means that the 70 week prophecy could not have contained any information about the rapture because, quote unquote, it was a mystery. Now, to be more specific, the 70 week prophecy is recorded in the Book of Daniel, Chapter 9, verses 24 through 27, and it refers to and this is the extreme abbreviated version or abbreviated explanation. It refers to a 490 year time span that began at the signing of the decree by Cyrus the Great that allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem from Babylonian exile in order to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. And it was from that time from the signing of the decree to the crucifixion of Christ, where it says Messiah shall be cut off. Now, the time between the signing up now, first of all, it was a 490 year period.

I want to make sure I reiterate that because it was 70 weeks. Seventy times seven is 490 years to the crucifixion of Christ. Now, when Christ was crucified, it was almost 483. It was in fact, it was precisely 483 years prior or after the signing of the decree by Cyrus. Now, so I thought you said 490 years.

Well, if you take 483 from 490, that leaves seven years. So there are still seven years remaining that has to be ticked off in God's prophetic time clock in order for the 490 year prophecy of Daniel, Chapter 9, in order to be fully fulfilled. And that last seven years, and here's the mystery part, that last seven years, God's prophetic time clock that will click off that last seven years will be the rapture of the church. And after the rapture of the church, that last seven years of Daniel's prophecy will be clicked off. So you could argue and say that it's indirectly alluded to because there's still seven years remaining, which is going to be continued at the rapture of the church. But specifically, that's not exactly what Daniel 9 or the 70 week prophecy is referring to. Now, we don't know when, again, this is very important, we don't know when that final seven years is going to click off because we don't know when the rapture will occur because Jesus said himself that no man knows the time nor the hour. So in fact, it was interesting because Jesus himself didn't even know the time nor the hour when he was ministering here on earth. So when you hear, on a side note, when you hear people trying to give dates and the rapture is going to occur in such and such a day and time, just dismiss that just automatically.

Just run and go the other way, turn the radio off or whatever medium that you're listening to because that's a false teaching. But again, so no, the 70 week prophecy does not directly point to the rapture, but the rapture will be the beginning of the final seven years of that 70 week prophecy given in Daniel 9. All right, well, that is going to wrap it up for the series. I just want to close things out by saying there are those who oppose the pre-tribulational rapture view and one of the arguments they'll make is that it's too new, that it was not taught by the early church. I don't think that is true, but the thing is, even if it was true, we got to remember that the scripture teaches that man is going to gain more understanding of prophecies as we get closer to the end of the age. We find that in Daniel 9 and Jeremiah 23, and I once held a post-tribulational rapture view, but I changed after studying the Bible. Not studying John Nelson Darby or Ellen G. White, as a lot of people out there will argue for those of us who hold the pre-tribulational rapture view. But the thing about it is, I want to stress, I can't stress enough, that regardless of which view you hold concerning the rapture, folks, don't let it cause a division because we are all on the same team. We are all part of the body of Christ. And the thing that troubles me is that I see a lot of people that get so worked up, they have arguments, they divide, they sever relationships, all because of different views of the rapture. Do not let Satan cause division among us because Malachi 2 10 says, have we not all one father hath not one God created us. So no one can say with 100% certainty when the rapture will occur.

But I do believe based on as we look at scripture that the strongest case is made for the pre-tribulational rapture view. My advice, be prepared for all scenarios, regardless, we all have to leave here and step into eternity one way or another, so be ready at all times. So that is going to wrap it up for this week. Doc, always great speaking with you and to our listening audience, thank you for tuning in. Please come back and join us next time as we continue to discern the times by viewing life through the lens of the Bible. Until then, remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Bless God's great nation of Israel until the only wise God be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen. Thank you for tuning in to deserting the times. Please come back and join us next week as we continue to encourage you to view current events through the lens of the Bible. Until next time, remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Bless God's great nation of Israel and seek first the kingdom of God.