The Rapture & Left Behind
Is the rapture going to strike without warning? Will you be left behind? Will the rapture happen suddenly? When will the rapture happen and people be left behind? Is the rapture going to be one of the most astonishing events to ever occur? What does the bible say about being left behind and the rapture. Is the rapture and being left behind biblical? Would God rapture away people and have others left behind? Is the rapture and being left behind of God or a deception? If the rapture and being left behind excite you read on. If the rapture and being left behind frighten you read on.
Have you heard of Left Behind? It’s a New York Times best-selling novel, an incredibly popular series, and now a multi-million dollar movie about the disappearance of Christians worldwide (an event called the Rapture), a chaotic seven-year period of Tribulation, and the rise of an evil Antichrist who takes over the world.
Left Behind: The Movie is designed to lead people to accept Jesus Christ today so they will not be left behind after the Rapture and thus be forced to face the Antichrist during the Tribulation.
A Brief Overview of Prophetic Issues raised by the Left Behind Novels
The Teaching of Left Behind
1) The Rapture, when the Church is “caught up” (1 Thessalonians 4:17), does not take place at the visible Second Coming of Jesus Christ, but seven years before it.
2) Those who miss the Rapture will have a second chance to be saved during a "seven year period of Tribulation."
3) The true Church of today will escape the Tribulation and will not have to face the Antichrist and the Mark of the Beast.
3 Logical Alternatives
1) The Rapture, when the Church is “caught up” (1 Thessalonians 4:17), does take place at the visible Second Coming of Jesus Christ at the end of world.
2) Those who are not ready for this catching up of true believers at the Second Coming of Jesus will have no second chances to be saved.
3) The Church of today will go through Earth's final period of Tribulation and therefore must overcome the Antichrist and the Mark of the Beast in order to be ready for Christ’s Second Coming.
The
Left Behind Deception
Seeks to Prove from the Bible and History:
1) The Bible does not really teach "vanishing Christians." Rather, just as Jesus Christ was literally "taken up" in full view of His disciples (Acts 1:9), so will true believers be literally "caught up" at the loud, visible, and glorious Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Read carefully 1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17.
2) There will be no second chances for those who miss this event. Paul clearly said those who are not "caught up" shall "not escape" (1 Thessalonians 5:3).
3) The majority of Protestant scholars (Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Reformed, etc.) from the 1500's to the early 1900's applied the Bible's antichrist prophecies about the "little horn" (Daniel 7:8) and the "beast" (Revelation 13:1) to the historical "falling away" (2 Thessalonians 2:3), activity, and worldwide influence of the Roman Catholic Church
4) The Left Behind idea of a single, devil-indwelt, Antichrist "bad guy" who appears only during a future end-time period of Tribulation actually originated during the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation of the 1500s, with the Jesuits. The definite purpose of this doctrine was to turn the eyes of Christians away from seeing the Church of Rome in the fulfilment of prophecy. This doctrine entered British Protestantism during the early 1800's through the influence of Dr. Samuel Maitland (1792-1866), Edward Irving (1792-1834), John Harvey Newman (1801-1890), and John Nelson Darby (1800-1882). In the early 1900's it was largely transferred to America through the footnotes of Cyris Scofield's (1843-1941) incredibly popular Scofield Reference Bible. The Moody Bible Institute, Dallas Theological Seminary, John Walvoord, Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impe, John Hagee, Peter and Paul Lalonde, etc. have sincerely and yet mistakenly contributed to this massive misunderstanding.
5) The entire concept of a "seven year period of Tribulation" is based upon a misinterpretation of Daniel 9:27. For hundreds of years Protestant scholars - including the notable commentaries of Matthew Henry, British Methodist Adam Clarke, and Jamieson, Faussett & Brown - applied the "one week" or seven year period of Daniel 9:27 to Jesus Christ, not the Antichrist, declaring that Jesus Himself "confirmed the covenant" (see Romans 15:8; Matthew 26:28; Galatians 3:17). It was Christ's great sacrifice on the cross which ultimately "caused the sacrifice ... to cease" (Daniel 9:27).
Amazingly, one of the first scholars to apply Daniel 9:27 away from Jesus Christ to a future Antichrist was the brilliant Spanish Jesuit Franscisco Ribera (1537-1591) whose calculated goal was to counter the then current Protestant application of the Bible's antichrist prophecies to the Vatican. “Ribera’s primary apparatus was the seventy weeks. He taught that Daniel’s 70th week was still in the future.…It was as though God put a giant rubber band on this Messianic time measure. Does this supposition sound familiar? This is exactly the scenario used by Hal Lindsey and a multitude of other current prophecy teachers” (Robert Caringola, Seventy Weeks: The Historical Alternative, Abundant Life Ministries Reformed Press. 1991. p. 35).
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