Capture the Rapture: The Ultimate Good News

The Lord is coming for us.

He's not sending an angel. Jesus Christ himself is coming to take us to the Father's house. So if you and I want the comfort when we lose loved ones, whether it's our children, our mom and dad, brothers and sisters, friends, whatever the case might be, we can never have the comfort that God intends for us to have unless we embrace the truth of the rapture. Welcome to Understanding the Times Radio with Jan Markell. Radio for the Remnant, brought to you by Olive Tree Ministries. Today, Jan and her guest, Pastor Mark Henry, talk about the best news in the Bible. Jesus Christ will soon return in what is known as the rapture of the church. The Bible calls this the blessed hope. We want to impart that hope to you today.

Here is today's programming. Sometimes people will say, well, the rapture, I'm not going to believe in the rapture because it's just about escapism. You guys just want out of the wrath that's to come. Let me just ask you a question. If you knew the wrath of a gang was coming to your neighborhood, wouldn't you try and avoid that situation?

Of course you would. And so when people say things like, people who believe in the rapture, they're just trying to escape the wrath. You know what? If Jesus promises he's going to keep us from the wrath, I'm going to embrace that with great joy. And if Jesus said you're going to have to endure this, this hardship, this affliction, this martyrdom, then that would be our lot.

We'd have to trust in the sovereignty of God. But God in his grace has a different program for the church. We are going to be the ones in heaven during those seven years with Christ anticipating his return and coming back with him. So glad you can join me for the hour, and we're going to discuss a topic that is a favorite of my audience, and that would be the imminent rapture of the church. The most frequent email that we get is asking about a church that will at least address this topic and related issues occasionally anyway.

Churches used to be on almost every corner that would address these issues, and that's changed certainly in the last 30 years or so. So the rapture is the ultimate message of hope, and that's why the Bible calls it our blessed hope in Titus 2 13. Paul instructs believers to wait for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. And the teaching of the rapture as a comfort to the church, quite frankly, it is under attack.

Popular authors and teachers and bloggers have effectively turned many Christians away from a belief at all in the rapture, or they have changed the biblical timing of the rapture and suggested that the church has to go through the ordeal of the tribulation. I have a special guest in studio with me today. You've heard Pastor Mark Henry previously on air with me, and actually I saw online a teaching he gave quite recently.

It was called Capture the Rapture. Well, I was immediately intrigued by the title and I listened to the teaching. And so, Pastor Mark Henry, welcome back into the studio as we talk about this topic. Jan, it's good to be with you again.

Thanks for having me. And Pastor Mark Henry is head of Revived Church in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, which is a northwest suburb of Minneapolis. For those who are familiar with the area, it was formerly Brooklyn Park Evangelical Free Church. Mark, I want to get right to some of the controversy going on, and I've already referred to it in my opening. And that's the terrible marginalization of the topic that we're going to cover for about an hour today. And you even said in one of your messages that as a new Christian, you were wondering why the churches were minimizing the topic.

And that's got to be some decades ago. Why do you think they're minimizing, they're compromising, or they're completely shutting out the topic? My observation, Jan, is number one, pastors haven't been trained in Daniel and Revelation. The average pastor today goes to Bible College Seminary. They take survey classes of the Old Testament or New Testament, but very few Bible colleges and seminaries anymore actually study verse by verse Daniel and Revelation.

And if you don't do that, you don't know what you don't know. I think the second element is that pastors are looking at megachurch leaders, and what are they talking about? There's usually about seven major things they talk about—leadership, family, finances. There's just a handful of things that they talk about, and they kind of cycle through.

They come up with great titles, but they don't focus on this subject. Quite honestly, they don't teach through the Bible. And when you don't teach through the Bible, you're not going to pick up on all of these elements.

Interesting. Any thought on why then the seminaries, other than a few, we've got Dallas Seminary still teaching this, probably Masters Seminary in California. What's with the mindset in the seminary that we don't make this front and center? I think there's a departure in the sense of the authority of the Bible in most Bible colleges and seminaries. They start out great, and I could give you names and examples.

It's probably not a good place for us to do that. But if you look at a Bible college, they start, they're devoted to the Bible, they're teaching the Scriptures. But what happens? You see this creep, and we see the same creep in churches as well. But this creep happens of a high view of the Scriptures, high view of God, high view of Jesus, high view of the book of Revelation, for example, and Daniel. But that diminishes over time.

They start to go after these other programs, like medicine. And some of them are good subjects, but they move away. Bible departments tend to decrease as a result. I think that's just how it works, and that's why new Bible colleges need to be created, new seminaries need to be created.

Go back to the Bible. And I made reference in my Open that we've got teachers, authors, bloggers, and more that are challenging our interest in eschatology. They're challenging the Blessed Hope, literally, they're challenging the Rapture. They're certainly challenging the timing of the Rapture. They're scolding, they're lecturing, or some of them are just writing books and saying, as Michael Brown has done, Hey, I'm not afraid of the Antichrist. And that's the title of his book, which I think is terrible foolishness. But nonetheless, this is the new boldness towards those of us who believe in a solid pre-tribulation dispensational theology.

I want to play a clip because I'm just referencing people who are mocking, scoffing. Who's going to challenge you, Mark? This is Joel Richardson. I actually know Joel.

He loves the Lord. I'm not trying to make an attack on Joel, but he's going to come strongly against what you and I believe. To say that the world is in a state of shock this morning would be to understate the situation. Suddenly and without warning, literally thousands, perhaps millions of people just disappeared. What if the end of the world really isn't as so many have portrayed it? What if the church is not raptured to heaven before the great tribulation, as many are teaching?

People from all over this planet simply vanished. What if the church has been left ill-prepared to face the Antichrist and the mark of the beast? What if Tim LaHayes claimed that if the pre-tribulation rapture is false, then the blessed hope will become the blasted hope actually comes true for millions of pre-tribulationists? What if millions who have been led astray by the pre-trib teaching become part of the great falling away that Jesus warned would take place at that time? Left behind or led astray, examining the origins of the secret pre-tribulation rapture features vital end-time insights from prophecy teachers Joe Schimmel, Jacob Prash, and Joel Richardson. The issue of the pre-tribulational versus post-tribulational rapture is one of the premier pastoral issues of our day. If you're a pastor that's not preparing your people to face potentially the Antichrist and the great tribulation in this hour, simply because your denomination teaches it or whatever, personally I think you're failing in your role as a shepherd and a pastor. Pastor Mark Henry, you just got scolded. What is your response to what Joel just said? I'm not looking to meet the Antichrist.

I'm looking to meet Jesus. The imminent return of Jesus Christ is repeated over and over and over in the scriptures. Early church fathers believed it.

Why? Because it was in the Bible. You and I should be following the Bible.

This is the problem. People want to read history rather than the Bible. They want to read other books and not the Bible. We got to get back to the Bible.

We are looking for the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. I think other theologies, the fact that some don't want to take these issues literally has hurt them. Amillennialism, not taking lots of things literally. You and I take almost everything literally, which is why we believe what we believe in pre-tribulation dispensationalism.

Absolutely. There was a great theologian. I say great theologian. He's a man of God, but he was an Amillennialist. He wrote a seminary book that's been used for years and years and years.

His name is Berkhof, and I remember reading his section attacking premillennialists and pre-tribulational view. One of the things that stuck out in my mind as he was lecturing on that is that dispensationalists take prophecy in a literal fashion. A literal historical grammatical interpretation is not just of the subject for soteriology or the practice for soteriology, but for all the doctrines of the Bible.

And he actually attacks us for that. But that's the way language works. You should be taking it in a literal historical grammatical fashion. Now, obviously, there's going to be hyperbolic language that's used at different times. Obviously, there's going to be similes that are used, but the text shows that.

So you don't have to be looking for it. You don't have to distort it. It's clear. That's what language does.

It communicates something. I have another article in front of me, and we're not going to take the time to read it, but it's titled, Fear Mongering Can Be a Great Money Spinner. It's written by an Australian pastor and it is kind of in the same tone. And let me just read a couple of paragraphs. And he says, I've watched Revelation being mishandled for decades. The author says I had my first encounter with Christianity in the late 70s. Hal Lindsey's book, The Late Great Planet Earth, was all the rage the planets would align in 1982, starting the Great Tribulation, which Hal never said, by the way. Cataclysmic events would unfold upon the earth and Jesus would return probably in 1988. Oh, and the pope was the Antichrist because he had 666 written under his cap. I kid you not, someone told me this in all seriousness and I believed them. He goes on to say none of it was true. None of it happened. Just like all the other predictions over the centuries from mishandling Revelation.

My hunch is here he means mishandling is taking it literally. Then he says contrast that to an interpretation of Revelation, which results in nothing but fear of the Antichrist and a one world government, fear of the mark of the beast, fear of the Great Tribulation. Well, I could go on fear of a sneaky rapture where you could be left behind. I would hope that some are enough afraid of the Antichrist that they choose to get saved so they don't have to go through the Great Tribulation and face the mark of the beast. But I'm troubled, Mark, by the tone of this article, which was in a respected publication and it's mocking the whole left behind experience, which is something that is almost sacred.

The fact that the church is not left behind. I read that article, Jan, and Rob, my heart breaks as I read it because quite honestly, he misses the point of pre-tribulational premillennialism and that is this. We are not to be afraid of the Antichrist. We are not to be afraid of the wrath that is to come. Jesus specifically says in John 14, which is a rapture passage, let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me and my Father's house or many dwelling places. I go to prepare a place for you.

I will come again, receive you to myself that where I am, there you may be also. It's the exact opposite. Not only that, his article attacks the book of Revelation. In the very start of the article, he talks about the book of Revelation is accepted canically, reluctantly, questioning whether or not it should be in the Bible. And later on in the article, he flips it and says, well, it's part of the Bible and should be used for worship because there's all these wonderful things in it.

Well, you can't have it both ways. The book of Revelation points us to Jesus Christ. It's the revelation of Jesus Christ, the glorified Christ. You're listening to Understanding the Times Radio. I'm Jan Mark-Kilm. And I'm spending the hour looking at some Bible prophecy, eschatology, as it's called, with Pastor Mark Henry in studio with me. Mark Pastors Revive Church in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. That's the northwest suburb of Minneapolis. Best way to reach you, Mark, would be through your website.

Why don't you give that? MarkHenryMinistries.com is one way you can reach us or Revive Church, Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. Let me hit a couple more topics here. I talked on air, this would have been a couple of weeks ago, to the producer of the new film America and the Israel Effects by Stephen Briggs. And Stephen was in studio with me. And early evangelicals had a major role in awakening the evangelical church to the rebirth of Israel. And the soon returning Messiah would have been John Nelson Darby, William Blackstone, D.L.

Moody, Cyrus Schofield. Stephen Briggs addressed all of these gentlemen, and they furthered Restorationism or the return of the Jews to their homeland. And back then, that would have been 1830 into roughly 100 years from that time, few would even believe in the restoration of Israel, even though the Bible said it had to happen. But that is so key to what we believe is two things. The Jews are going to come back to their homeland, and that is going to spark a lot of the end time phenomenon that we're watching right now. And then Jesus Christ returns in the clouds.

First, Second Coming is seven years later. But the wonderful work of some of these early pioneers, so many of them, even John Nelson Darby. Yeah, Jan, the significant part of that is those gentlemen actually believe in a literal, historical, grammatical interpretation of the scriptures, because the scriptures had been spiritualized. Well, the church is spiritual Israel. We fulfill all of the promises of Israel. Therefore, the Jews don't have to go back to the land.

And so my friends who are all male or post male, even today, when I say, hey, let's go to Israel, let's talk about Israel, what God's doing there. They don't even recognize that God has any plan in the future for them, because they've spiritualized the church to replace Israel. And all the promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have been supernaturally spiritualized within the church.

I remember debating a pastor who was a post millennialist not long ago. And I asked him, I said, here's the promise. Abraham is going to have the land. Isaac is going to have the land and their descendants. And it says in Acts chapter seven that Abraham did not receive one square foot. So either God lies or God has to raise him up.

There has to be a millennial kingdom. And I remember him just folding his hands with an irritated voice saying, Mark, Mark, you don't understand the scripture. The church has more land around the earth. That's just a spiritual connotation. And it totally misses the point of the Abrahamic covenant. Well, that's a sad day when the church comes to that. The church is probably in Laodicea right now, other than someone they're holding to truth.

Another article I saw, and that would be a LifeWay research project. LifeWay came up with the fact that the vast majority of pastors see signs of the end times in current events. Almost nine in 10 pastors see some current event matching what Jesus said would occur shortly before he returns to earth. And it goes on to outline what some of those things are. We don't necessarily have to get into the issue, but at least three in the four pastors agree that Jesus was referring to current events, including the rise, again, false prophets, false teaching, love of many believers, growing cold, Middle East conflict. So we see all of this blossoming right before our very eyes.

And yet I'm going back to how we opened the program a few minutes ago. Very few pulpits will talk about it. Even though the survey shows the pastors believe it, apparently they feel it will scare people. I don't know.

Maybe you know. Some people are saying, I don't want to scare people, but the reality is we should be scared of God's wrath. Remember Jonah went and delivered a message?

Forty days and God's going to judge the world. There's a certain element where fear is a good thing. In fact, it says the fear of the Lord is a beginning of wisdom. So there is an element when you read Daniel or Revelation or other minor prophets or major prophets where the wrath of God is coming. The day of the Lord is filled with wrath.

But here's the good news. When you trust in Jesus Christ, you're a child of God. You're his child. He has a program of grace for you to experience.

And that's why you need to trust Jesus Christ as your Savior today. I want to play one more clip because here we have Dr. Ed Hindson, dear friend of mine. Ed's been in ministry forever. He's still going so strong.

It's amazing. And he's going to talk about the prophetic clock, folks. It's ticking. Let's talk to Christ followers out there, because it is, Paul talked about in Romans, a groaning planet, agonizing world that we live in. This, we read the scriptures, we learn of a blessed hope of seeing Jesus. We sing about heaven. We sing about that wonderful worship and read the Bible about that wonderful eternity we're going to be spending. But there is a prophetic calendar moving, a prophetic clock ticking.

What is your challenge? What is our responsibility as Christ followers before the church's rapture, which could occur at any moment? Well, I'd say first of all, read the Bible. Get your idea about the coming of Christ right out of scripture itself. You don't read the Bible through the newspaper.

You read the newspaper through the Bible. So if you understand what the Bible says about the future, then you can look at the news and say, oh wow, it looks like the stage is being set. We don't want to run ahead of God and set a timetable.

That's in the Father's plan. But we also want to be alert to the fact that Israel is back in the promised land. The Bible said they would return and they did after nearly 1900 years.

That's never happened before in history. That the Middle East would be in crisis in the end times, and it is. That there'd be a global economy that could potentially be controlled by one individual. And that there would be weapons of mass destruction that might bring about the kind of things predicted in the book of Revelation, and they already exist. Those things get my attention to say the clock is ticking, we have a date with destiny, but we also have a job to do in the meantime to reach the world for the cause of Christ while there's still hope, while there's still time. Mark Henry, in your 30 plus years of being a pastor, have you ever seen a time where it would seem like one world phenomenon is happening after another? That it would seem that Jesus is saying, pay attention because I'm coming soon. And so many things that are happening are of biblical significance. Have you seen it anything like today?

No, of course not. And you know what's amazing, Jan, is those who are genuine followers of Jesus are saying to me all the time, Mark, the world's coming apart. This is like what we're finding in scripture. But what here's amazing to me is that unsaved people for the first time in my 33 years of being a pastor are saying to me, and they whisper it to me because they're kind of like embarrassed.

They don't want their friends. I was recently in a room filled with people and this young lady, she was maybe 27 years old. She leaned over because she knew as a pastor we'd been talking, she leans over and whispers in my ear, is the world coming apart? Is this like in the Bible?

And I had a great opportunity to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with her. Yes, the world is coming apart. Globalism, we've never seen anything like this. Never have we had a global pandemic, global control.

Doesn't matter if it's in Europe, Asia, Middle East, North America, South America. This is the unfolding of scripture. It's so obvious to me. I'm going back now to your message, capture the rapture again. I believe you might even have given this for Pastor Tom Hughes, good friend to both of us. And folks, you can find it on YouTube or MarkHenryMinistries.com, capture the rapture. So as I was watching it, Mark, and I took some notes here, I want to address just a couple of bullet points because you addressed half a dozen results of why the rapture is important. And you said, number one, when it's understood, it gives us peace.

We're going to go back and talk about a couple of these. Number two, it's going to give us more courage. Number three, it gives us zeal.

To be zealous for God gives us a sense of anticipation. You said number four, it gives us joy and grace. You said it gives us direction. You said it sets us free from the cares of the day. If I can add a PS, it certainly gives us hope in a hopeless world. That's why it's called the blessed hope.

So let's go back to the beginning here. When you capture the rapture, it gives all of these things we just outlined. It gives us courage, zealous for God, gives us joy and grace. And what do you mean it gives us direction? Jan, what I was trying to do is give seven illustrations of passages that reference the rapture.

And some of them are more focused on the immanency, some of them are more focused on the mechanics. But the passage in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, starting in verse 50, it talks about a mystery. Now, as you know, there's four major attacks against pre-tribulationalism. One is it's mystical, another one it's escapism, another one it's modernism. And the fourth one is it's insignificant.

And my point is it's not insignificant. Paul says, I do not want you to be uninformed about this mystery. And he says we shall all be changed in the twinkling of an eye. And so there's this resurrection and rapture, just like we see in 1 Thessalonians.

But at the end of each of these passages is an action point. And the action point in 1 Corinthians 15, 58 is, Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. So this gives me direction, it gives me courage because the rapture is going to happen, because Jesus is going to come back any second. Be about my Father's business, be about the Savior's business. There is direction for my life and there's direction for your life.

Why? Because Jesus is coming. Obviously, it gives us some hope.

It's called the blessed hope in Titus. And I think a lot of people are literally feeling, maybe not hopeless, but they're despairing. They're losing a job they've had forever and ever because of some of the mandates coming down now.

There's great division, there's division in the family these days because of some of the things going on in Washington. People, I hear from them daily, they're so discouraged. They may be having trouble finding a good church that's preaching the truth from the pulpit instead of social justice, instead of the woke activity that's going on in our churches today. So here we have a message that's all hope when we capture the rapture. We're only capturing hope.

When we open the program talking about it, most churches don't want to go. Do they not want to give their people hope? The problem is we're looking for hope in all the wrong places. We're looking for hope in our job, we're looking for hope in these relationships, we're looking for hope in our culture, we're looking for hope in Washington.

Friends, there's no hope coming from Washington. Hope is coming from heaven. His name is Jesus. Jesus is the hope of God. He is the peace of God.

He is the wisdom of God, the scripture says. That's why the rapture is important. What I would suggest to you is when we neglect this concept of the imminent return of Jesus Christ, we lose the hope that we should be having. Yeah, I lost my job, but you know what? I've got a place in heaven and Jesus is coming for me. I may die sometime this week or sometime this year of COVID or something else, but I do know this, that Jesus has a place for me. There is hope in that.

Absolutely. Now, the tribulation is called in the Bible at the time of Jacob's trouble. This gets a little bit here into timing of the rapture. Obviously, Jacob is not the church. Jacob is Israel. So the tribulation is not intended to refine the church. It's intended to refine Israel because it's called the time of Jacob's trouble. So I think this is one indication here of the importance of a pre-tribulation rapture. Again, time of Jacob's trouble. We're not Jacob.

Absolutely, and that's the point of taking a literal historical grammatical interpretation. If you look in Daniel chapter 9, the Antichrist shows up, he makes a covenant with Israel and the holy city. What's the holy city? Jerusalem. What's the people?

Well, the people are Israel. That's not the church. If you spiritualize that and make that the church, you have to distort a whole series of scriptures throughout the Bible.

Jacob's trouble is another example of that. As you look through the book of Revelation, there's actually two major things that are happening. One is the wrath of God coming upon the world, and the second is God purifying Israel. So then Zechariah 14, when Jesus shows up, they see him whom they pierced, and it says all of Israel who's alive at that point will turn their eyes to the Messiah and believe in Jesus. And I love the passage out of Revelation 3.10.

I use it as often as I can because you have kept my word of perseverance. I will also keep you from the hour of testing, that hour which is about to come upon the whole world, to test those who live on the earth. How would you define that verse, Mark?

I know how I define it. I want to hear your interpretation. That's obviously a rapture-related passage.

You've got a number of elements taking place. Yes. These people were suffering. The hope that he was given to them was this. There's this time of wrath that's coming upon the earth. Notice it says specifically upon the earth. Notice it talks about the people of the earth.

Again, that's the focus there. Not specifically Israel in that passage. Later on, other passages will describe that. But there it is, the wrath of God coming upon the earth. You and I are the recipients of grace. Now, God didn't have to work out the program that way, but he did.

We are living in the times of the Gentiles, not the time of Jacob's troubles. Mark, there's several things we're going to hit in part two of my program. Folks, I also want to make you aware of an upcoming event. Revived Church and Olive Tree Ministries have been putting together some special evenings.

We've had two of them, one in August and one in October, and they are live streamed to the whole world. We're going to talk to you about that when we get back. Also, Mark, I want to ask you, what would be some of the things that have stood out to you in the year 2021? We're coming to a racing conclusion of this incredible year. The last two years really have been incredibly, well, I think significant, trying, even somewhat of a disaster to some people. Again, they've lost so much because of a global pandemic. And I want to ask you, what in the current event world have you been keeping your eyes on that you didn't think you might see in your lifetime?

But we've seen it here in the last year or two. I've got a short list in front of me. So we'll do that, folks, as soon as we get back.

Let me quickly add this. We've got phonies on YouTube impersonating Olive Tree Ministries. Would you just delete them, please? Don't watch the videos, because they're making fun of our ministry and me, and we're trying to get these people taken down. And quite frankly, YouTube doesn't seem to care a whole lot. So just ignore the phony YouTubes, which it's not produced by Olive Tree Ministries.

Back in just a couple of minutes. We hope you'll stay in touch with us online through OliveTreeViews.org. That's OliveTreeViews.org. You can call us Central Time at 763-559-4444. That's 763-559-4444. Write us through the mail at Olive Tree Ministries and Jan Markell, Post Office Box 1452, April Grove, Minnesota, 55311. That's Box 1452, April Grove, Minnesota, 55311.

All gifts are tax deductible. In an age of fake news and false teaching, thank you for trusting Understanding the Times Radio. As another year is winding down, we just want to thank you for your strong support of this radio outreach.

Now in its 21st year, we began our syndication in 2004, and are now airing on almost 900 radio stations across North America and around the world electronically. Every day we hear from new listeners and new followers of this ministry. They write or call about the renewed zeal to spread the gospel in light of the fact that Jesus Christ could return to call His church home perhaps today. We are in challenging times and troubling times, but the Bible outlined all the things to come for last day's believers. We hope you will take advantage of all this ministry offers from our cutting-edge products, newsletters, radio programs, live streaming conferences, daily headlines, and other articles.

We are committed to helping you better understand the times, be watchmen on the wall, and remain hopeful as we await His return. Jesus wins. I actually wanted to break out and start saying victory in Jesus, because as you read the book of Revelation, it starts with the revelation of the glory of the resurrected, ascended Christ, and it ends with Him in chapter 20 coming in the clouds, riding His white horse, victorious over all of the nations. It's win, win, win. And you know, a book is at its best at the end.

How does the book end? That's where it's at. Jesus wins. We want you to capture the hope of the rapture of the church. It is a central theme of this ministry.

It offers wonderful hope amidst the dark news of the day. We know you can't always be by a radio, so catch Understanding the Times Radio at your convenience online. Watch the video version of the program or listen to the audio at OliveTreeViews.org. Then to complete archives on YouTube, on Rumble, on Light Source, and on his channel Christian TV. Now here's the conclusion of today's program. Because of the rapture, because of the resurrection, because of this reunion that we're going to have and be with the Lord, it says, therefore, notice again the action points, therefore encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing. So we're supposed to encourage, we're supposed to strengthen the hands of one another in these last days with the truth, with the reality that Jesus is coming for His church.

Never have the courage that we need to make it through these days without it. Welcome back and I'm spending the hour with a familiar voice, Pastor Mark Henry. He pastors Revived Church in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.

It's a northwest suburb of Minneapolis. Mark, I think you've been at Revived now about four and a half years? Six years. No, no way. Yeah. Time flies. Okay, and you've survived six winters then. That's the toughest part of Minnesota right there. I totally agree.

My whole life I couldn't agree more. So we've been talking for the first half hour because I saw a message by Pastor Mark online, Capture the Rapture. I'm kind of in ministry a little bit anyway with Mark. I know he loves the prophetic word and prophetic teaching and we do it a little bit. Every other month at his church we'd say something in just a minute about that.

So I saw Capture the Rapture online, watched it. It was given for Pastor Tom Hughes, a good friend to both he and I. And Mark, what possessed you to speak about capturing the rapture? Because Jan, it's one of the key elements for us to find courage. So we don't lose our mind and the insanity of this day. Jesus said, let not your heart be troubled.

And that's what I'm finding. All my friends are troubled and we've got to go back. Jesus is coming. He's prepared a place for us.

Don't be troubled. And you can find that message on YouTube or you can find it at MarkHenryMinistries.com. Mark, we got an event coming up, Understanding the Times. We put on an event in August featuring Michelle Bachman. And in October we put on an event with Pastor Billy Crone. And coming up Thursday night, December the 9th, here just a few days away at your church, Revived Church. No tickets necessary, folks.

You just show up. We're going to be featuring Evelyn Hines. She portrays Corrie Ten Boom. Folks, if you want maximum inspiration, you just featured in your church here, The Hiding Place. There was a powerful evening to watch. It was a 1975 movie of Corrie Ten Boom. And we were discussing off air here how many Christians today could go through, what Corrie and Betsy went through back in, it was about 1943 or 44.

And you said that grace comes in the crisis moments. Boy, it did for them. Jen, that Hiding Place, my mom took me to see it when I was eight years old. It radically transformed my life. I was seeing people there and they're required to have papers as they travel.

And there's different designations on their papers. You start thinking, wow, we're seeing some of these things being revived in the days in which we're living in. There's one element of the Hiding Place where it's anti-Semitism and how God ends up using these Christians in a difficult moment to rescue Jewish people and how they're sharing Jesus with them and honoring Jesus through that. That's an important lesson for us. But the second thing for me was the reason we showed it and the reason we're doing this event on December 9th and doing the Corrie Ten Boom thing is we need to learn from Christians who have gone through really difficult times with government oppression, with government taking away jobs, taking away property, threatening us in various ways, throwing people in jail, putting them in camps. How do you survive that as a Christian?

The grace of God and God gave them grace and, friends, God will give us grace for anything we face. So we're going to live stream this event. Again, Evelyn Hines is going to be portraying Corrie Ten Boom that evening. I'm going to have a few words to say. Pastor Mark is going to have a few words to say. What is the role of Israel in prophecy? How can we be discerning the times by looking back?

She does an incredible impersonation of Corrie Ten Boom. This is going to be live streamed at markhenryministries.com, correct? That's correct, Jan, and people can join us live or they can watch it afterwards. It'll be up forever and ever. Again, it's a Thursday, December the 9th at 7 p.m. Central Time. markhenryministries.com or it'll be on my website.

It'll be on Mark's website when it's edited. One way or another, we encourage you to tap into this. It'll be inspirational.

It'll be historical. As Mark just said, we are seeing some shades of tyranny rising around the world as we speak. Many governments around the world are overreaching, I think overacting, and we're seeing demonstrations going on. Two dozen nations around the world as we speak. Anyway, it was an impactful night watching the film at your church, The Hiding Place, and it took me back to my youth. That movie came out in 1975, and I just was impacted that I think very few Christians can go through what some people have to go through today for the cause of the Lord. People are losing jobs here in the U.S.

I was just contacted yesterday by a lady. She's had a job for 20-some-odd years, and she's going to be terminated. But it's just not here. It's around the world right now. It's, again, that global impact. I just heard from a missionary, Austria, the first of the year, I think it's February 1st, that everyone's going to be required to have certain medical procedures done, and if they don't, there's a $4,000 fine that each person's going to face.

So not only do you lose your job between now and then, now you're going to be fined. In Australia, there are some quarantine camps, stopping short of saying concentration camps, but quarantine camps going up, people being taken to them. So folks can not see Germany, repeat itself.

History can always repeat itself if we don't stop them. There are some verses, Mark, that we need to talk about, just because they say it all. It talks about the rapture, 1 Thessalonians 4.

There may be some people listening. What are you two talking about, this rapture? It's biblical. 1 Thessalonians 4. 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. Those you loved, folks, are going to go before you. 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 Thessalonians 4, 16 through 18. Mark, there were actually several people in the Bible who were raptured.

Talk to us about it. And that's such an important verse because it promises Jesus's coming for His church. And three things are going to happen there. One is a resurrection. Those who have passed away in Christ, they're resurrected. Then we have a rapture, and then we have a reunion. Those who have been resurrected, raptured. There's a great reunion with Christ, and it says thus we shall always be with the Lord. So let's define rapture just really quick, and then let's give you a couple illustrations of it. The word rapture, harpazo, is defined this way by William Mounts, who's a famous Greek scholar. It says, describing God's activity in physical and miraculous transforming people from one place to another. So it's about God capturing someone, moving them, and depending on the context, they might be in heaven or some other place. Jan, I always like to point people to the illustration of Enoch in the Old Testament.

If you read in Genesis chapter 5, it gives a list of descendants of Adam and Eve. And it says this person lived so long and they died. This person lived so long and they died. And then it comes to Enoch, and it says this man walked with God, and it says God took him. And then in Hebrews chapter 11 verse 5, it describes the fact there that God took him.

And it says he did not see death. Now, Enoch is a contemporary with Noah. And so God raptured him.

God removed him before the time of the flood. God blessed him. That's an illustration in the Old Testament. Another one would be Elijah. He's a prophet of God. He's walking with God. Elijah is with him. And it says the two of them are walking in 2 Kings 2, and it says the Lord was about to take him up. And as you continue to read down, verse 11 describes them two walking together, and all of a sudden this fiery chariot shows up and some fiery horses, and then the two of them are split apart, and it says Elijah went up by a whirlwind, and Elisha saw him no more. He was raptured. He was removed.

And what's fascinating, in 2 16, when Elisha goes back and tells the other younger prophets there, they say, let's get 50 young strong men. We'll go out and look for them. And he's going, no, there's no need to do it. But they shame him into saying, go ahead and go look for them. But it says they never see him again. God took him to heaven. It's used of Philip in Acts chapter 8. It says that he went out and was preaching, and as you recall, the Ethiopian eunuch is reading from Isaiah 53, and he hears him reading, and he says, do you understand what you're reading about?

And he says, no. And so he gets in the chariot, and he shares Jesus with him, that Jesus is the suffering servant who dies on the cross, pays for our sins, raises from the dead, and the eunuch believes in him. He trusts Jesus, and he sees the water and says, what's keeping me from being baptized? And it's this amazing story of this African man believing in Jesus, being baptized. And it says, as they came up out of the water, in verse 39, Acts 8 39, the spirit of the Lord snatched Harpazo, same Greek word used in First Thessalonians, snatched Philip away. And it says that the eunuch never saw him again.

Again, these are some illustrations. Paul was caught up, mentions that twice in Second Corinthians chapter 12. But Jan, one of my favorites is found in the book of Revelation. Revelation chapter 11 describes the two prophets that God raises up during the time of the tribulation. And for 1260 days, these two men are untouchable. They're enemies. They destroy. They call down fire from heaven. That says they send plagues upon the earth.

And finally, God removes his hand of protection, and Satan kills them. And it says there's parties in Jerusalem. There's parties around the world that nations are watching.

People from every tribe, tongue, and nation are watching. And they're all celebrating these two guys are dead. And they're dead for three and a half days. And then it says these words, that the breath of life came from God into them, and they stood on their feet. And it says that the world freaks out. And then it says these words, there was a loud voice from heaven saying, come up here. And this is yet to happen.

This is going to happen. So this removing God takes these two prophets from them. These are all illustrations of what God is going to do with us in the church age.

I love this little clip here of Dr. David Jeremiah. And he concludes by saying, I know how it ends. We win. And he says, I can live every day with confidence because of the very things we're talking about for this hour, folks. You say that the overarching truth of Revelation is that the Christian's victory in Christ is absolute certainty.

Absolutely. So unpack absolute certainty in a world that doesn't believe in absolutes too much these days. Well, you know what? If they don't believe in the Bible, they're really not going to understand anything that you and I are talking about.

But here's the deal. The book of Revelation begins and it's sort of chaotic in the middle of it. And then at the end, you see the Lord Jesus Christ coming back from heaven. And the Bible discusses it and describes it.

It's my favorite chapter in the whole book. He rides out on a white horse and he's got all his holy ones with him and the angels. And he takes control of this earth. All of the armies of the earth by that time have discovered he's their common enemy. So they all come after him as if they're going to take God out, you know. And the Bible says with the breath of his mouth, he defeats them. I remember early on when I began to study that section of scripture, people asked me, why are the Christians all dressed in white? That doesn't sound like warfare or garments. And it finally dawned on me, they don't do anything except watch.

They don't fight at all. Jesus does it all. And the Bible says that he puts them down.

He destroys the rebellious and then sets up his kingdom on this earth. And I guess really if you extrapolate the whole timeline from Revelation 1 to the end, what I like to say to people is, and this is the question I get asked more than any other, Dr. Jeremiah, where is all this going, talking about what's happening in the Middle East and all that. And I love to just say to them, I know where it's going. I know how it ends. I know we win. I know that it's beyond any question. And because of that, I can live every day with confidence, even though I know that I'm seeing some of the early birth pangs of the revelation, of tribulation time.

I don't have to be concerned about that because God is in control. You're listening to Understanding the Times Radio. I'm Jan Markell. That was the voice of Dr. David Jeremiah. Just a little two-minute clip that I loved. We know how it all ends.

We win. And I have in studio with me, Pastor Mark Henry. He pastors Revived Church in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, northwest suburb of Minneapolis. Pastor Mark, we did not give the address to your church because we've got the event coming up on December 9th.

And look at the last one with Billy Crone. I think we had four or five states represented. So give us the address of your church. 7849 West Broadway, Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. One more time.

7849 West Broadway, Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. And if you've got questions, call the church because they can help you out. Doors are going to open, I'm sure, 6 p.m. and then the program is going to go from about 7 to 9 p.m. Do you have any comment on the little clip of David Jeremiah? Amen and amen. Jesus wins. I actually wanted to break out and start saying victory in Jesus. Because as you read the book of Revelation, it starts with the revelation of the glory of the resurrected, ascended Christ. And it ends with him in chapter 20 coming in the clouds, riding his white horse, victorious over all of the nations. And then, of course, you've got the great white throne judgment. You've got him throwing Satan in the lake of fire.

I mean, it's win, win, win. And you know, a book is at its best at the end. How does the book end?

That's where it's at. Jesus wins. Another verse that talks about what we've been talking about. 1 Corinthians 15, 51.

Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. Mark, it couldn't be any clearer, yet I know there are many who would say, this is likely the second coming, not the rapture. To me, it is so clear these are two very distinct happenings in the Bible. Yeah, when people start to spiritualize the Bible and trying to make it fit the things that they understand, often what happens, Jan, is the blurring between the rapture and the second coming. So there's about 2,000 passages on the second coming. As you read through the New Testament, there's 20 passages or so that talk about the rapture.

And actually, we're attacked because of that. It's like, well, there's not very many verses on that. Well, it's a mystery we're told in the Old Testament. In fact, the verse that you just read, 1 Corinthians 15, says, I don't want you to be ignorant about this mystery. The Greek word that is used there is used 28 times. The church was a mystery.

In Colossians 1, verse 26 and 27, it says, Christ in you, the hope of glory. This was a mystery that isn't told in the Old Testament. The fact that there was going to be a time of the Gentiles as it is described in the New Testament, it was a mystery.

So it's not surprising that the rapture of the church is a mystery when the church itself was a mystery. I kind of gave a tease back in part one of our programming. I wanted to ask you what you might see playing out in our current events on a daily basis. And my goodness, some of these activities that have, I think, some biblical significance just revving up, intensifying on a daily basis.

I came up with three or four items I've watched really the last two years, 2020 and 2021. And I think society has been changed and probably forever in the last two years. And obviously the pandemic has a huge impact on that. And then how the nations are dealing with the pandemic from lockdowns and forcing businesses to close and again, the rush to globalism.

So here's just a couple of things I noticed that I want your input. I have noticed in the last two years a greater rush to globalism, the one world system, the one world government, and for that matter, the one world religion and the one world economy who are constantly hearing that cashless is on the horizon. Number two, I would have to say, Mark, would be government overreach that has spurred on the rush to globalism and rush to the cashless system. Number three, and we're seeing it heartbreaking on a daily basis, the rise of lawlessness. Stores looted things like this. People helpless to stop the lawlessness, just standing by, watching the chaos. Those three things hit me particularly hard as I was pondering today's programming. What has caught your attention, particularly in the last year?

All three of those are significant, Jan, and I mean, you can go on and on and illustrate them and you've been doing that on the air. But the thing personally that catches me when I first trusted Jesus, I was reading through the scriptures and I'm like, where is America? Because I love America. Where is America in Bible history? And America isn't there. And it's like, how in the world could this be?

America is the greatest nation in all of history. And then you think about the economy. We had a number of businesses growing up and so we've always been entrepreneur sort of family.

And so we're always building businesses and the economy and those sorts of things. And I'm like, how would the strongest country in the world be neutralized? How could our economy be destroyed? That's impossible. It's like, can the Bible be true? In fact, I almost questioned the Bible back in the 80s.

Could it be true? Because it's just, America's too great. And we are watching right before our eyes a whole population that's ready to give up on America for globalism.

It's like, what are you thinking? And then as you think about specifically for me as I watch the economy and the things that Washington has put into place, for example, the mandates and not paying rents, that's the end of private property. People don't understand the implications of that. The way you build wealth as an individual historically is you own property. That's one of the key characteristics that the Greeks came up with citizenship.

It was you could own property as a citizen and pass it on to your children. That's how you accumulate wealth. That's how you build a country.

That's how you prosper. And we're seeing the destruction of the dollar and inflation. And we are getting pushed because of inflation to a global currency. It's incomprehensible, but it's happening right before our eyes.

I think another one for me is AI. And as you look at the book of Revelation, as I read through it, it's like, how in the world could they track everything? Well, now because of AI, literally it's possible to track everybody. In fact, right now in Romania, when you go to the store, you have to give a code when you go in.

There's an app that every owner has in that store, that restaurant, and you've got to check in and you give your code there, and they're literally tracking every single movement of every single individual in that country. And we're there technologically, globally. And this has never happened in history. Another one that sticks out to me is this idea of cloning and the infusion of human and animals. You read the book of Revelation, and he's like, there's really strange things described there. And you try and wrap your mind around them, and you just think about the possibilities. Again, when those events take place, the folks that are living there will have the grace to understand them with greater clarity than we do. That's true. That's true for the book of Daniel. We understand traveling a whole lot better than Daniel did, and he referenced, they'll travel to and fro throughout the whole earth.

So when we read the book of Revelation, we see some of these things. It's like we're seeing through a glass dimly, but they're going to see it a lot clearer. I'm changing direction just a little bit here based on a headline I have in front of me.

I thought I'd run it by you. The headline is, could the Biden administration be moving to remove religious liberty protections? A leaked document thinks so.

Let me read one paragraph. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma said that a leaked memo from the Department of Health and Human Services, spearheaded by Department of Health and Human Services, Secretary Xavier Becerra, reveals the Biden administration's plan to undo religious liberty protections and disregard Americans' First Amendment rights. It goes on to suggest, because it's a lengthy article, that they're going to strongly come against Christianity, all denominations. Catholicism down through evangelical Christianity, and yet we have the Pope, a month or so ago, calling Mr. Biden a good Catholic, and yet it sounds like the Biden administration has plans to really come against the Church. Let's leave it at that, because it would be all denominations come against the Church. Now, I have talked with you privately.

I've talked with other pastors privately. The concerns include the removal of 501c3 status, some other things related to that being yanked, housing allowances, et cetera, donations no longer tax-deductible. You're concerned that it's just a matter of time before vaccine passports are necessary to get into church for church attendance. So how do you react to an article like this? I've only read one paragraph out of many, but I'm giving some illustrations of where I think this is going, and I find it extremely troubling, but at the same time, seven days a week, you are managing a church, and it sounds like the government could really come heavy-handed against the Church.

Jan, the government's becoming heavy-handed towards the Church the last two years. This isn't new. In fact, when this came out, people were sending it to me, and I'm reading the article and going, hey, the last two years we've been told you can go to the store. You can go to the bar.

You can go to the liquor store, but you can't go to church. It's not surprising. This is kind of like old news. Now, there's going to be new levels to it.

Yes, and I think it's the new levels that concern me. Yeah, and back in October, when we were with Billy Crone at our last event, I shared with everyone, anticipating the Church is going to be required to look at everyone's vaccination card before they can enter the Church. Well, October 31st, there's a group of Methodist churches up in the northwest part of the United States.

They put out a video. In fact, I'll probably end up sharing it maybe at our next conference, but they shared in order to follow the recommendations, in order to keep everybody safe, we are going to require that everyone show their passports before they come in or their documentation, their vaccination cards, whatever the case might be, before they come in, and it's required for everyone that is able to be vaccinated. That means from five years old and up, we'll have to be vaccinated and show their ID, verifying that before they can come to church. So churches are already buying into this idea, and once that starts to cascade, then what we're going to do is we're going to be looked at as the holdout, the strange ones. Why are you opposed to this?

These folks have already bought in. It's coming. A big one for me is the hate speech. Right. I think you should talk about that for a minute, and we have at least two, three minutes, because I don't know that the average listener even knows what you're talking about, but it is so important that they understand. Yeah, I got this document, and I was looking down through it, and everyone's talking about 501c3 and vaccination passports to get into church.

That's all coming, I would suggest to you, but the big one is this. How we interface with the Bible. So coming down the pike is this idea that if pastors are reading from the Bible and there's any hate speech, in other words, here's an example. Right now there's a lot of lawyers who are suggesting that it's hate speech when a pastor says a man can't have a baby. Well, that's not hate speech.

That's science. And when people today say follow the science and then they don't even know the difference between men and women, we've got problems. And so we've already seen this in other countries.

I've been approached to pastor churches in the past in other countries. And one of the things that always comes up, what's your view of the Bible, sexuality, morality, ethics? And I would just read to them what the Bible says, and they said, well, you can't come here because that would be viewed as hate speech. And then we would have all these consequences. This, my friends, is right at the doorstep here in America. How much time do we have?

What do you think? You know, but by the grace of God, these things would already be in place. And I think it's the grace of God that's actually given us space and time to even process the implications of this and also to build courage. Jan, as you remember back when we had the closures of the churches and here in the state of Minnesota, our governor was saying, you know, we're not going to let churches meet.

And if you sing and meet, you're going to kill everybody. In fact, our elders, we had prayed and we were trying to decide what to do. And we had set a date and we said, you know, if we're going to follow Jesus, whatever the implications are regarding these closures. And we were emotionally, spiritually seeking the Lord because these are not easy decisions.

No one wants to be rebellious. Christians are to be humble, gracious, law-abiding citizens. And when the government overreaches and requires me to violate my conscience so that I can't read this verse or that verse or I can't assemble in Jesus' name, there's going to have to be moral courage where we decide to follow Jesus. Christians have done it in the past. We've got to do it in the present.

I think it's only the grace of God that these things haven't befallen us and I wouldn't be surprised if in the next six months or the next year it would come about. That's the best way to contact you, Pastor Mark. Markhenryministries.com is one way you can reach us or Revive Church, Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. Thank you for coming in today. I appreciate it so much and for inspiring us to capture the rapture. That's the purpose of this hour. Jan, thanks for having me.

And I just want to say this. If you haven't trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, you need to because Jesus is coming and you do not want to experience His wrath. You want to experience His grace. God has prepared a place for those who believe in Him.

You know, I'm going out of the program, folks, because we are living in a world that is quickly running out of hope. And that is why the message of this hour has been in part to embrace the blessed hope. Known as the rapture of the church, we believe it is imminent or any minute.

It is the ultimate in good news. It is the Lord Himself that is coming for us. God's not sending an angel for us.

He's not sending, as someone said, Air Force One. Jesus is coming down from heaven where He sits at the right hand of the Father right now. He's coming for you and for all those who believe or who have ever believed in times past. The rapture means we will be together. It's great to be with God, and there is no other greater delight than to be in the presence of the Lord. I want to thank you for listening, and we will talk to you again next week.

We'll sing forever, bowing for you. Contact us through our website, olivetreeviews.org. That's olivetreeviews.org. Call us Central Time at 763-559-4444. That's 763-559-4444. We get our mail when you write to Olive Tree Ministries and Jan Markell, Box 1452, Maple Grove, Minnesota, 55311. That's Box 1452, Maple Grove, Minnesota, 55311.

All gifts are tax deductible. It's a privilege and a challenge to be born for such a time as this. Just remember that we have a front row seat to the last act as we watch everything fall into place. I say I, in praise and honor and glory, lead unto your name.