42. Rethinking the Rapture (End-Times Series Part 22)

Welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 42 rethinking the rapture

At the zenith of my choral career circa the late 1990s I was chosen to perform a solo in front of my entire private

Christian high school Apparently the talent pool was a bit low that year either way

I was given the unenviable task of alerting all of the would -be tears sewn into the

Christian school Wheatfield to repent or face their eschatological doom

With a Brady Bunch like quiver ready to spring upon my underdeveloped teenage baritone vocal cords

I crooned out the following warning to my classmates There's no time to change your mind the

Sun has come and you've been left be I Yeah, it was just like that If you're blanking on the reference then take a moment to go to the blog.

I've included the link for the Dispensational cringe worthy video not of me, but of the actual original song and then come back to the article proper

Section 1 the Wonka Vader in the sky When it comes to eschatology the most common view that's bumbling around pulpits and popular

Christian literature these days Asserts that at some point in the in determinate future

Believers are going to be whisked away from the world in a secret rapture Christians will apparently vaporize right before our very eyes

Leaping invisibly into the heavens leaving clothing dentures and all plastical surgical additions piled neatly in the floor

Below where they just stood Planes will fall out of the sky Unmanned cars are gonna careen over the cliffs and all of the world is gonna be thrown into the kind of panic induced insanity that only a

Cavalier Antichrist could rectify Which as you have probably heard will jumpstart a seven -year tribulation that will all end in Armageddon now

That kind of murky reasoning once seemed rational to me That is until I left the eschatological bog of Biggie Eva publishing swamps and started reading the

Bible for myself It's amazing How such a simple action can clear up so much confusion like who would have thunk it

Well with that today, I want us to explore what the Bible says not what we've been taught about the rapture

I want to explore what the Bible says about the rapture in Matthew chapter 24 is What Jesus describing

God's heavenly dispensational Wonka Vader that is meant to zap all of us out of here before the world gets really crazy or Have we misunderstood what

Jesus and the scriptures are saying about these things and Maybe it's time for us to adopt a better view with that.

Let us begin section 2 a brief disclaimer Now as I've mentioned before Jesus is going to return at the very end of human history

The dead in Christ will rise the living in the dead will be judged Some will be thrown into the lake of fire where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth

Some are going to enter into the eternal kingdom of Christ in the new heavens in the new earth And they're gonna live there with him forever.

All of that is true. And all of that is still in our future but What we have shown over the last several weeks in this series is that many of the popular?

Eschatological fantasies that are that are peddled as gospel today will not happen In the future because they've already happened in the past Now for instance over the last several weeks and you can go to the blog for these different articles

We've written on the rise of false Messiah wars and rumors of wars earthquakes and famines tribulations signs of the times the abomination of desolation the great tribulation the second coming we did three articles on that one and All of those we've determined through good study of the

Bible that they've already happened Those things happen in the first century in the first 40 tumultuous years that the church

Existed and they're already complete Now if you're caught up on the series, then you'll understand what

I'm talking about and we're gonna move on today now to examine Matthew 24 36 through 41 and That and we're gonna be arguing that it does not refer to a pre -trib mid -trib or post -tribulational rapture but instead is

More evidence of the exact same thing. Jesus has already been saying He's been describing events that were going to come upon the

Jews of the first century and they were gonna come in cataclysmic ways and he's said those things in multiple different genres of literature and he's repeated himself for Emphasis and if you've been following long along this will be very easy to follow

But if you're not caught up, I'm sure this post is gonna be interesting to you Maybe you clicked it because the title seemed fascinating and I feel sure that you're gonna get something out of it

I feel sure that that as you read it, you will see wow I never thought about it in that way but if you'd like to catch up on the series and if you'd like to take a fuller deeper dive if you want to take the red pill and Dive down the eschatological rabbit hole then all of the articles are on our website and all of the broadcast episodes are on Apple Spotify and Everywhere, you can find prod or a podcast episode.

So I encourage you to go check those out. There's a wealth of information We've already done 20 episodes so far on this topic

There is much more that could be said, but we're just scratching the surface. So I commend that to you

Here's what the text for today says But of that day and hour

No one knows not even the angels of heaven nor the Son but the Father alone for the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking marrying and given in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark and they did not understand

Until the flood came and took them all away. So will the coming of the Son of Man be Then there will be two men in the field one will be taken and one will be left

Two women will be grinding at the mill one will be taken and one will be left Matthew 24 36 through 41 section 3 a

Past day is in view Now while many believe this section of scriptures referring to a future rapture of a righteous church the context of Matthew 24

Actually makes it abundantly clear that Jesus is referring to events that have already happened Already happened in the past to the unrighteous nation of Judah We know this for at least three reasons

First the context bears it out Jesus in this in Matthew 24 has been answering the disciples questions about when the temple was going to be destroyed

What will be the sign that all of these things are about to happen and how will that factor into the end of the

Jewish? Age of Redemption, that's Matthew 24 1 through 3 from verse 3 onward

Jesus is giving an unbroken answer to their question He's describing events that are going to soon take place in their lifetime and he doesn't deviate from that objective at all

There's not a single moment in verses 1 through 35 Where Jesus jarringly shifts his audience away to the distant future to somehow wax proleptically

He stays on task and so should we that's the first thing the context bears this out that this is a past -event

Second Jesus has a mere two verse earlier said this This generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

That's Matthew 24 34 This tells us that Jesus unequivocally believed that Everything in the prophecy that he is giving in Matthew 24 would occur within a single 40 year generation

That alone should end the debate right there because Jesus said it Jesus believed in and the question is do we believe

Jesus or not? Are we gonna be the intelligent ones who put ourself up against Jesus and say no no

No, I think Jesus was wrong here Or are we gonna try to manipulate Jesus and make him say something that he's not actually saying important questions

The third evidence is whenever Jesus uses the word day in this chapter He's not referring to an indeterminate day sometime in an undisclosed future

Instead he's actually referring to a well -defined day known as the day of the Lord Which makes its biblical appearance first in the

Old Testament prophetic writings now according to the prophets the day of the Lord Was a special day.

It was a day when God uniquely brought his covenantal fury against his enemies

According to Jesus that day of the Lord had come in full when

Judah Rejected the reign of God through his son see Matthew 23 35 through 36 now this undoubtedly

Served as the chiefest of all betrayals when Jew when the Jews turned their back on Christ And it pitted them as mortal enemies against their

God if you remember they said we have no king but Caesar which is far worse Than them choosing

Saul to be their king in The Old Testament they wanted a king like all the others now

They were rejecting God as their king God in the flesh as their king the true son of David as their king

And they had become mortal enemies of God for so doing This is why Jesus alludes to and he quotes from and he appeals to the very same

Prophets in the Old Testament who referred to the day of the Lord that awesome and terrible day of judgment because that day

Was going to afflict that very generation that he was speaking to you can go to Joel 1 and Joel 2 which are both about the destruction of Jerusalem in 80 70

Amos 5 Malachi 3 and 4 as we have shown those passages are all talking about the downfall of Judah after Messiah comes section 4

Jesus knew how to tell time Now in addition to what we've spoken about the word day

We cannot fall into the same Isagetical category as the old earthers here if you know what

I'm talking about the people who believe that Just because science says that the world is millions millions of years old

So we must as Christians in order to be credible in society believe that the world is millions and billions of years old

So in so doing we need to make sure that we find a convenient place to add a bunch of time to the word day

And oftentimes it's after day one Well, we can't make the same mistake We can't make day mean non day and we certainly can't substitute large quantities of time into non -existing

Gaps just in order to make our theories and our theology fit more into our worldview

Jesus is using the word day in a very specific way and he's not using it to refer to large epochs of time

He was telling his disciples that he willingly limited himself in his human nature

He willingly veiled his divinity. He didn't put it aside He veiled it so that he would not know the day or the hour of his return

Now think about the language of that the day or the hour He's not saying guys.

I have no idea when I'm coming back what he's saying is I'm not gonna tell you if it's gonna be on a

Wednesday or a Tuesday and I'm not gonna be sharing whether my returns gonna happen just after breakfast or if it's gonna be in the early evening

That's what day and hour means day and hour do not mean 2 ,000 years or I have absolutely no idea when

I'm gonna come back. Remember it was Jesus who who did not say That I don't know what century or millennium that I'm gonna be returning in because he did know that he absolutely

Knew what century he was gonna be returning in and I can narrow it down to even a smaller period of time

He knew what 75 year window he was gonna return in. He knew what 70 or 65 or even 50?

Let's go there. He knew what 40 year window of time. He was gonna come return in How do I know that because he told them in Matthew 24 34?

He said all of these things are gonna happen to this generation and by generation. He doesn't mean

Any kind of thing that you could possibly imagine he means a single human generation, which in the

Bible is 40 years Let us not introduce unnecessary and arbitrary confusion to these things where Jesus has made them irrevocably clear section 5

Jesus was not a disbee That's right. You heard me, right? Jesus did not teach a left -behind

Rapture. He did not promote the teleportational escape of the righteous to heaven while the

Rick while the wicked remained back home in suffering and The passages that we are looking at prove that to the uttermost

Jesus was not an advocate of Dispensational eschatology. How do we know that?

Well follow Jesus's argument in verse 37. Jesus gives us the paradigm He says as it was in the days of Noah So it will be at the coming of the

Son of Man Notice that Jesus is giving us a controlling Hermeneutic for the metaphor what

I mean is he's telling us exactly how to interpret this metaphor It's gonna be like the days of Noah He is not saying what

I'm about to tell you will be the exact Opposite of what happened in the days of Noah or it's gonna be like some other biblical characters days

No, he's saying that will be just like the days of Noah. So let us continue now

We know how to interpret the metaphor We now have the key the hermeneutical key for understanding what

Jesus is saying about the rapture Quote unquote event in Matthew 24 is that it's gonna be just like the days of Noah.

Let's continue in Verse 38 Jesus gives us the setting and the characters for his metaphor

He says for in the days of for in the days before the flood

People were eating and drinking they were marrying and giving in marriage up until the day that Noah entered the ark

Now here we have in the setting of Jesus's metaphor two kinds of characters we have the righteous

Noah who's gonna be spared on the ark with his family and Then we have the unrighteous wicked generation of people who are gonna be destroyed in the flood of God's wrath if That seems very easy to follow then you're understanding

Jesus well, so let's move forward verse 39 Jesus sets the hook. He says and they knew nothing about what would happen until the blood came and took them all away

That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man So Jesus says there's gonna be three things that are gonna happen at the coming of the

Son of Man It's gonna be just like the days of Noah There's gonna be wicked people and there's gonna be righteous people and then some are gonna be swept away and some are going to be

Saved and they're going to know nothing about it until the moment that it happens Now, let's ask ourself the question here in the days of Noah Because that's the the controlling hermeneutic for the narrative in the days of Noah who were the ones who were taken away

Was it the righteous that were taken away in the days of Noah or was it the wicked?

That were taken away the ones that were swept up into the fury of the flood.

It's clear, right? Is it not? The ones who were taken away in the days of Noah were the wicked

Not the righteous. So what Jesus is saying is is that there's gonna be an event that's happening in Jerusalem That's gonna be just like the days of Noah where the unrighteous were swept away

So Jesus is therefore saying that the wicked are going to be brought to judgment it's not going to be the righteous caught up to heaven as a reward for their obedience or as an escape from the

Consequences that's not what it's saying It's saying that the wicked of that generation are going to be swept away

They're the ones that are going to be taken they're the ones that are going to be quote -unquote raptured

Now let us seal the deal here verses 40 and 41 The metaphor is applied to Jesus's generation.

He takes now all of this Noahic imagery and he makes his point Abundantly clear even though there's so much confusion on the matter today

He says two men will be in the field one will be taken and one will be left

Two women will be grinding with a hand mill one will be taken and the other will be left

Well according to the dispensational way of thinking there's gonna be two men in the field when

Jesus returns the wicked one It's gonna be left standing there as the righteous one is sort of tractor beamed up to heaven

But wouldn't that be the exact opposite of what happened in the days of Noah? Since Jesus said that his metaphor was gonna follow the rules of the

Noahic Flood Then wouldn't it be that the sweeping away what happened to the wicked dare I say the rapture event that would take away the wicked and leave the righteous ones behind But isn't the very premise of left behind that the wicked will be the ones left behind but yet Isn't it ironic that in Noah's day?

It was the righteous ones who were left behind to repopulate the world Very interesting.

This simply will not work in the dispensational schema It does not work in the way that Jesus is answering his disciples it does not follow good hermeneutics

It just simply doesn't work It makes nonsense of of what Jesus is saying to even possibly get from this passage that Christians are going to be vaporized in front of reprobate crowds

Instead of the wicked being punished by God now, Jesus is not being coy or complicated

He's just simply saying just as it was in the days of Noah The wicked and adulterous generation are gonna be punished by the fury of God's wrath their crime the

Jews crime They rejected their covenant God They killed God's one and only

Son Like the people in Noah's day. They heard the preacher of righteousness Jesus came preaching

Repent for the kingdom of God is here and they harden their hearts against their God and now judgment was raining down on their heads

They're gonna be swept away in the torrent of his fury Section 6 the funny thing about definitions is they matter

Finally we need to understand what the words taken and left behind or left mean before we can close out our time today in Our text the word taken does not mean a helicopter ride to heaven for the righteous.

Although that sounds like fun The word here actually means the opposite when

Jesus says that some will be quote -unquote taken He is not talking about what will happen to believers in an end time rapture

He is using a word that often refers to criminals being taken into custody

For instance, I want you to look at how this word is used just a couple chapters later in the Gospel of Matthew This is what the word taken refers to Then the soldiers of the governor that's

Pilate took Jesus They took Jesus into the praetorium and gathered the whole

Roman cohort around him They stripped him and they put a scarlet robe on him and after twisting together a crown of thorns

They put it on his head and a reed in his right hand and they knelt down before him and mocked him

Saying hail king of the Jews Matthew 27 27 through 29 When Jesus was treated like a criminal by the

Jews and was taken By the Romans he was not raptured out of the earth and into heaven.

That's not what the word means He was placed into custody and punished brutally by the

Roman lictors That is the same kind of taking that was awaiting the

Jews in the 40 year period that we're talking about here When Rome invaded and burned

Jerusalem to the ground when one man is taken He's not taken to heaven.

He's taken into custody for brutal judgment now we also have to look at the word left because Just like the word taken our dispensational brothers have actually imported the exact opposite definition into this term

It does not mean that there's going to be someone left Behind the wicked presumably who are wondering how their their friend just Disappeared and all of his clothing is left piled up in the ground right in front of his feet.

That's wrong again The word that is being translated as left in this passage usually means to leave to depart or to flee

It doesn't mean to be left behind which is a sort of passive action. It means that you are the one who is actively leaving

Running away. You're the one who is fleeing. That's the kind of active action that it's talking about You're not passively left behind you're fleeing

Now notice how mark uses the same exact verb in a in a context where I think this will make much more sense in Mark 14 50 through 52

Peter tells us this and they that's Jesus his disciples all Left him and they fled

So they were the ones who left him he was the one who was standing there left behind and they're the ones who left him by fleeing a

Young man was following him wearing nothing but a linen a linen sheet over his body and they seized him But he pulled free of the linen sheet and he escaped naked mark 14 50 through 52 in This passage we have a gaggle of temple security guards that are coming to arrest

Jesus They took him into custody and the disciples left by fleeing for their lives

That is what these two words actually mean. So now with that let's put all of our thoughts together

When Jesus says that some are going to be taken he is saying that some will be arrested

They will be taken into custody They will be beaten and killed when the day of the Lord's wrath

Arrives and that day happened just like Jesus predicted when a single generation within a single generation when the

Romans came into the city and they murdered raped and pillaged the Jews and they took the remaining survivors into custody and Then though some fled the scene and got away.

That's undoubtedly what Jesus is talking about At no point in this paragraph is Jesus speaking about a dispensational rapture

He has employed the dialogical genre in verses 3 through 28 to talk about the downfall of Jerusalem He's utilized the apocalyptic genre in verses 29 through 31 to talk about the downfall of Jerusalem he's exercised the genre parables in verses 32 through 35 to talk about the downfall of Jerusalem and now surprisingly enough in verses 36 through 41

He's appealing to a historical narrative to illustrate that the judgment is coming on upon Jerusalem If nothing else

Jesus is repeating his point Incessantly so that you and I don't fall into the same errors as the dispensationalist

Conclusion Jesus is going to return one day to judge the living and the dead

He will separate the sheep from the goats at the exact same time He will divide the wheat from the tares without a large gap in period in time

He's gonna put the wheat into his heavenly barns and he's going to curse the chaff to be blown into the fires of hell

All of these things will happen at the very end of human history without dispensationalism's go -go gadget rapture

As you've seen from this passage, this is not a sweeping away of the righteous When Jesus came in judgment, it was a day of reckoning for Judah who abandoned fidelity to their covenant

God It was a day when Jesus would bring an end to the Jewish age and he would launch his kingdom upon the world

To go and conquer it for him My friends that mission continues to this day

Instead of worrying when a secret rapture is gonna happen set your affections upon Christ Give your efforts to building his kingdom and extend his reign wherever your foot strikes this ground

Remember his kingdom is advancing His kingdom will not be stopped by the world the flesh or the devil the gates of hell will not prevail against the kingdom of God so March Keep on building

Keep on advancing never retreating and remember That God is in control and That God will bring all things in history to an orderly end where he gets the glory.

Amen and amen Thank you so much for subscribing to the broadcast

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