Unhelpful teaching – part 1 of 2

Very shortly after I became a Christian I went to the Middle East to work for nearly 5 years. Whilst there I made friends with quite a number of other believers, some from the U.K. and some from the States. We spent much time listening to cassette teaching tapes (it was the 80’s!) and discussing what we were hearing. It was a valuable and precious time. However, one subject seemed to come up fairly often and that was the subject of the last days, the return of Jesus and final judgement. There were a few folks who seemed rather expert in all this. They could explain everything and to help make it clear they had books and charts. A couple of guys had a special edition of the Bible that emphasised how all this stuff worked. There was so much detail, and so much to take in. It all looked so intriguing and I’m sorry to say, I was impressed by it all without thinking it through or going back to the scriptures.

The basic facts were biblical enough – at the end of the age there will be unprecedented times of hardship and trouble (generally agreed to be 7 years according to Bible prophecies, and described as a time of tribulation, or The Tribulation). Jesus will return for His Bride the Church. There will be a judgement of the wicked, Satan will be defeated once and for all, there will be a new heaven and a new earth and from then on all will be well. The problem with what I was hearing from my friends with the charts and the expertise was that they had “all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”. (If that phrase is new to you watch this clip: https://youtu.be/uMPEUcVyJsc )

The way they had the sequence of events was that at the point where things were about to get bad on earth (the Tribulation), Jesus would return and snatch the Church away to safety and then at some point later He would return with the Church to establish His unchallenged rule forever.

When I returned to live in the U.K., the “Left Behind” series of books which were based round this proposed sequence of events became very popular. .The series explored the scenario of what happened after Jesus snatched all the believers from earth leaving the world in chaos. Aeroplanes fall out of the sky, multiple disasters occur; there are riots and shortages as millions have just vanished leaving the rest to suffer. There was a whole series of books as well as a film. Churches used this approach as a tool for evangelism – particularly aimed at young people. ‘Make sure you’re not left behind’ was the message which was basically an attempt to scare people into the Kingdom.

By this time, I had done a lot more reading and study, but I hadn’t come to a firm decision. The options appeared to be 1) Jesus snatches us away before difficulties start (too good to be true) or 2) Jesus doesn’t remove the Church and we live through everything the same as everyone else (challenging) or 3) Jesus returns half way through the time of trouble, grabs the church and then pops back at the end to wind everything up (complicated).

I came to the conclusion that it was probably so far off in time that there was nothing here to lose sleep about, and that the bigger danger was of indulging in endless arguments about arcane detail instead of getting on with the real job of extending the kingdom and reaching the lost.

Between those days and the present there have always been people who claimed that the return of Jesus was imminent – based on wars or rumours of wars, or a natural disaster. But those things have been with us from time immemorial so on their own they are not conclusive proof.

In the very recent past though, it definitely feels as if there has been some shifts in various aspects of human life, and that when you add them all together it is possible to see a (satanic) pattern emerging. The undermining of sex, sexual behaviour and sex as a determinant of difference (male/female) accelerates, to the point where a man can call himself a woman and therefore has to be treated as if he was a woman.To call this out risks charges of being transphobic. Over the past couple of years there has been a remarkable increase in the curtailment of free speech and even thought. The demonic is normalised in entertainment as is cruelty and violence. The violence to the unborn continues. The BMJ recently published a paper which argued for “after birth abortion” if bringing up the child would be “an intolerable burden” for the mother. This is already legal in Holland in the case of severe disability. It argued that a newborn baby was not morally a person and so could be killed. I could go on, and so could you, in listing the ways in which our world has got darker. It is entirely possible that we are closer to the end of the age than perhaps we might have thought just a few years ago. Many in the church have come to that conclusion. There is also a growing amount of prophetic in this vein, although we need to weigh all prophecy and be absolutely sure that it accords with scripture. Just because there are a number of prophecies though, proves nothing – see 1Kings 22.

Against this backdrop, a growing number of believers are ‘understanding the times’ and yet misreading scripture. I am talking of those whose understanding of the last days is that Jesus will come and snatch them away imminently before things get any darker – the doctrine concerning the ‘rapture’ of the church The logical conclusion, therefore, is to hunker down and hold on. ‘Any day, or any month now we’re checking out’. This is unhelpful teaching.

This could be our last big opportunity for a major world wide harvest, a time to get our house in order and mobilise and reach the lost. Instead, some believers are already mentally packing their bags to leave.

I said some were misreading things. Here’s why.

The doctrine of the snatching away of the Church, the rapture as it is known, is relatively new. It originated in the 1820’s. A young Scottish girl by the name of MacDonald had a vision in a meeting in Glasgow in which she saw the Church being removed from earth before the time of tribulation. A Minister called Rev Darby was there and believed that this was from God. He later travelled to America and became friends with D L Moody the world famous evangelist. Moody believed this new teaching too, and made it famous through his international ministry. Novels, charts and pamphlets were published and in 1920’s the Scofield Reference Bible was published with headings and notes to support this new theology. Eventually, about 100 years after this whole thing started, the Dallas Theological Institute was founded in the 1920’s with the purpose of shoring up this belief with some biblical basis. This teaching became popular in some parts of the Church, but has always been a minority point of view.

There are two major texts used to support the notion that the Church (you and me) will escape tribulation. Matthew 24 v 36 to 41, and 1 Thessalonians 4 v 13 to 18.

In Matthew, Jesus talks about the end time and He likens it to the time of Noah’s flood. Those who follow Darby’s teaching come to the verse which says “two men will be in a field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding corn; one will be taken and the other left” and they say that this is about believers being snatched away to be safe with Jesus. Context as always is everything. Jesus says the last days will be the same as in the time of Noah. People will be eating, drinking and marrying totally unaware of what is coming. In Noah’s time those who were taken away were the evil ones – swept away by the flood. Noah and his family were the ones who were left behind to repopulate the earth. This passage is not a picture of the rapture of the Church.

The other key passage used to support Darby’s teaching is in 1 Thessalonians 4. . It talks about the order of events at the end. Jesus will come down from heaven. Believers who have already died will rise from the dead. Next, they and all those believers who are alive at that time will be caught up together “to meet the Lord in the air”.

The Greek word here for ‘to meet’ had a particular application – and the readers would have understood this. The word referred to the occasion when the Emperor would come to visit a city. Watchmen on the city walls would see him approach in the distance. They would alert the city. People would get ready to welcome him. His appointed representatives in the city would go outside the city to meet the Emperor. They weren’t going to go outside and camp with the Emperor, or live with him in the fields outside the city. They went out specifically to welcome him and accompany him into the city as part of the welcome parade. The picture is of Jesus returning, all the believers caught up to join Him and welcome Him, and then immediately returning with Him as part of His victory parade. The “air” is literally the atmosphere. Jesus is not going to take the Church to live with Him on the clouds, and neither is He going to take us away to heaven – just as the Emperor was not planning to take the inhabitants of the city back to Rome.

This is not a rescue of a beleaguered little Church. This is the victorious Church, that endured to the end accompanying her Lord and Saviour as He makes His triumphant return to the earth on The Last Day.

Admittedly this passage in the Bible is not clear at first sight. At that point a little closer investigation is required, to reveal its true meaning. The meaning is not about us being rescued from difficulty; it’s about us, “having stood firm to the end” (Matthew 4 v 13) being saved and counted worthy of being in Jesus’ victory parade on that day.

Jesus said that in this world we would have trouble, that we would be persecuted and that some would be killed for their faith. He said that we would be hated and betrayed even by our fellow believers and members of our own families. Revelation 14 v 12 tells us that we will need patient endurance and that we will need to remain faithful to Jesus. There is no talk of a rescue plan to shield this generation from things that many of our forbears have suffered and many present day Christians are suffering now.

Why is all this important? Why is this more than just a technical argument about a few verses. I believe that if we settle back into the false comfort that the teaching of a removal of the Church before the time of tribulation comes, we will be poorly equipped to withstand what is coming one day. Jesus said that men’s hearts will fail them because of fear in those days. We don’t want to be in those people.

Corrie ten Boom said this : “In China, the Christians were told [in the days before Mao and the Cultural Revolution] ‘Don’t worry, before the tribulation comes you will be raptured’. Then came a terrible persecution. Millions of Christians were tortured to death.”

The Chinese church had been taught this doctrine by American evangelists. Subsequently, a Bishop in the Chinese Church commented, “We have failed. We should have made the people strong for persecution rather than telling them Jesus would come first. Tell the people how to be strong in times of persecution, how to stand when tribulation comes – to stand and not faint”.

At the moment there are believers who are sleepwalking into the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity that the Church has ever had. The enemy is laughing. In these days it is time to learn how to be strong, and how to trust God in all circumstances. It is also time to learn how to listen to the promptings of Holy Spirit and how to respond to Him. That is probably one of the most valuable things we can do. It is time to be prepared.