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

The Rapture as Popular End-Times Teaching

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 wheat field. 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.

Matthew 24 as the Text for Rethinking the Rapture

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 indeterminate 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 gonna 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.

Tribulation 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 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 the way 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 scripture is 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 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 refer 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 AD 70. Amos 5 Malachi 3 and 4 as we have shown those passages are all talking about the downfall of Judah after Messiah comes.

Jesus Knows How to Tell Time

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 dis be. 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 going to be spared on the ark with his family and.

Then we have the unrighteous wicked generation of people who are going to 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 in 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 is going to 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 1450 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 1450 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 going to 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. We know that eschatology is a difficult topic and many people are confused about these passages. I hope you'll share these episodes so that other people will have courage clarity and joy.

God bless you.