you are not raptured out first?
- Now Think On This
by Steve Martin
I have something for you to think about, just in case it is true.
How would you live today if you believed you were going to leave this planet tomorrow? Would you sit in your comfy chair and wait out the next 24 hours? Would you run to the nearest movie and watch one more action thriller, or play the DVR and view the make-believe TV fairy tale?
Would you consider writing a letter to a loved one, advising them of things to be on the lookout for, so they wouldn’t possibly make the same mistakes you made while living? Would you care about those who didn’t know what you know?
What you do, or how you respond and act while living, certainly may depend on your perception of what has been written, or has been spoken, into your life. We typically do that which we believe, whether we realize it or not. That is the way it is.
If the enemy of our soul wanted to deceive us, and spread a well-conceived thought that we would escape most of the end of the age’s events because we were getting out before it all happened, how would we respond to what is daily happening? Our care level would be very low, for we would act upon the belief that we wouldn’t be here anyway to experience it, along with those unfortunate ones who will.
What if the words Jesus (Yeshua) spoke to His disciples, about the end of the age, would occur as simply as He said they would, and not be twisted by preachers and teachers centuries later, arriving at conclusions He didn’t actually say?
Let’s look at one passage of Scripture, and just read it for what Jesus does say.
“Yeshua put before them another parable. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while people were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, then went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads of grain, the weeds also appeared. The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?’
He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants asked him, ‘Then do you want us to go and pull them up?’
But he said, ‘No, because if you pull up the weeds, you might uproot some of the wheat at the same time. Let them both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest-time I will tell the reapers to collect the weeds first and tie them in bundles to be burned, but to gather the wheat into my barn.’” Matthew 13:24-30 CJB (Complete Jewish Bible)
If you read it as simply as I do, then you too just read, “collect the weeds first”, right? But I thought the “wheat” was gathered first, or so we all have been taught as happening first, as being the truth.
So if, as Yeshua said, the weeds are taken out of the field first, doesn’t that imply that the wheat would be harvested, or taken out, afterwards? Sounds like that to me, if I don’t try to twist it around another way.
Sure, this is just one passage. Granted many others have been, and still are, used to “prove” we are going to be “raptured” (a word not even in the Bible) before the tribulation at the harvest time.
Of course there are many pre-trib, mid-trib and post-trib theorists who have expounded on Scriptures in the Old and New Testaments, teaching what they believe is the way it will be. I tend to take Yeshua’s word simply at His word.
What if the devil wanted to use all this confusion to get believers to just sit by and wait for the world to go to hell, because the rapture will occur to take us out beforehand anyway? He would have a field day, now wouldn’t he?
But what if we just took Jesus at HIS word, and do as He spoke to do, with one of His last commands, to “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Matthew 28:19, NKJV
Should not we take a different approach, that rather than waiting for the escape button to be pushed from heaven, taking us out while the rest are “Left Behind”, that we aggressively go on the offensive, obey Yeshua’s command, and take the Gospel message of discipleship to all the nations, knowing He will be with us “even to the end of the age”?
I think so, and thus am acting on HIS word.
Now think on this,
Steve Martin
Founder
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Now Think On This #149 “What if…raputred” by Steve Martin
Date: In the year of our Lord 2014 (05.11.14) Sunday at 7:45am in Charlotte, NC.
All previous editions of Now Think On This can be found on this Blog, and on our newest website: Now Think On This
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