This brief survey  by Robert B. Yerby

1976 is out of print and public domain.

Republished here - 15 Sep 09.

The Once And  Future Israel

 by Robert B. Yerby is a companion prequel.

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UP UP AND AWAY

This is a printable copy

This is distributed non-commercially,

without charge, in its amended form.

Pronouns referring to deity capitalized.

CONTENTS

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 1

Faith of Our Fathers? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 2 

A Night With the Family. . . . . . .  . . . . .  Chapter 3

Seeking God's Perspective. . . . . . . . . . .  Chapter 4

Up, Up, and Away. . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . Chapter 5

Aftermath . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 6

Weighed and Found Wanting. . . . . . . . . . Chapter 7

His Banner Over Who?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Chapter 8

The Great Reign Robbery . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 9

Great Tribulation When? . . . . . . . . . . . .Chapter 10

The Olivet Prophecy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 11

Millennial Musings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 12

O Zion, Haste. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Chapter 13

INTRODUCTION

Change is the order of the day in our present world.

Some of it is good - but when it comes to Holy Scripture much is merely the reckless discarding of tested, tried and true beliefs in favor of radical, new and unproven ideas. And change can be particularly dangerous if it tampers unwisely with civil government, the family and the church, which are the basic institutions that have been ordained by our God. In the area of human government, for example, we are told that if we will just forget our past ideas about freedom and the rights and dignity of the individual we can move on to a new world of justice, equality and fraternity. If we will merely yield up our personal liberties, rights and property to the authoritarian central planners they will re-distribute them In a more satisfactory and productive manner, reserving to themselves, of course, the power to enforce that re-distribution through whatever means are necessary.

Now many of us [hopefully most of us] oppose that kind of tyrannical short-cut to the ideal society, and we bristle if legislators, educators, the news media, radical activists or others sneer at and suppress the old ways, the traditional and orthodox beliefs, and arrogantly exalt the brilliance of their newly discovered social panaceas. Likewise, we are incensed by those who ridicule and attempt to destroy the traditional family unit that has been honored by God as a mainstay of our great nation and who instead flaunt the libertine philosophies of their "new morality." Clearly, government and the family have been under heavy attack by such revisionists, but what about the church? Has it been immune from the recent tendency to discard the old ways and substitute new Ideas, or has the same phenomenon occurred there? The author believes, and this book will attempt to prove, that the church has been similarly victimized, and that there has been a concerted effort to suppress certain historical and traditional beliefs and to replace them with speculative theories of recent origin that deny Christians their present inheritance as the children of God.

Through a device that can only be described as fraud by fable, believers have been systematically robbed of the truth of the present reign and kingdom of Jesus Christ, and of the companion truth of their present reign with Him. They have been tricked into swapping present reality for future fantasy. They have given up legacies for legends. You have been a victim of what may be called the great reign robbery if you have been taught, and have accepted, the recent system of Bible interpretation that says no crown or throne, no kingdom or reign, no power or glory, were given to Christ at His first advent. You have been defrauded by fable if you have been taught that those honors will be bestowed upon the Lord only in a future 1,000-year earthly kingdom during which the governing code will be the ancient laws and ordinances given to Moses at Mount Sinai. You have lost a fortune in spiritual riches if you are unaware that you are now, today, in this life, reigning with the reigning Christ and that you, and not some unbeliever, are "the apple of His eye."

Today we see all around us a torrent of end-time literature glorifying and propagating certain recently contrived tales of tomorrow, but barely a trickle of words in behalf of the truths traditionally taught by the church until the fable tellers sprang up in the last century. This book is an attempt to offer the current generation of believers some orthodox and historical alternatives to the speculative end-time theories that currently dominate the Christian bookshelf. In particular, I hope that the love of truth manifested by the multitudes of young believers today will prompt them to weigh carefully the doctrinal alternatives explored in this book before casting their lot with the futurists. But I also believe that the shortcomings and, yes, dangers of the highly touted fables are serious enough to make believers of all ages want to reconsider some of the beliefs they may long have held in unquestioning esteem. We are not out to mine any new ore of truth but only to glean for nuggets of prior truth that may have been lost or misplaced. Unlike the fable spinners, we claim no new revelation. Like Nehemiah, all we desire to do is discover the sound building stones under the rubbish [Neh 4:2] and help put them back in their proper places.

I have attempted this book only because in this present day we are seeing a blurring of the once sharp division between the so-called clergy and the laity, and it has become permissible for a businessman, and former newspaper reporter, to turn his hand to writing on theological topics.

This is by no means an exhaustive, weighty and scholarly treatise, but merely a brief survey of alternative end-time beliefs designed to stimulate interested readers to undertake further study on their own. The reader will quickly perceive that mine is a poor, unimaginative effort compared with the dramatic flash and thunder of those skilled narrators of popular views. But at least no one will be able to say of me: "Ye have not gone up into the gaps, neither made up the hedge for the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord" [Ezek. 13:5]. The reader will also note that I nowhere criticize or attempt to analyze the motives of the proponents of the recent speculative theories. There I follow A. B. Simpson's simple rule: We are allowed to judge the actions of others, but not their motives. I hope to be judged in the same light by my readers.

 Chapter 1

FAITH OF OUR FATHERS? 

The doctrinal truths that God has been restoring to the church are, and should be, nothing more nor less than first-century, apostolic, New Testament teachings, designed to bring blessing, unity and maturity to the church and to make it a blessing to the world. But while it is eagerly gathering the good currency of restored first-century truth, the church must also be wary of taking in any counterfeit teachings that lack the apostolic stamp of authority. Believers have every reason to doubt, and every right to question, the truth and authenticity of any doctrine actively propagated in the church in our day, but not taught in the New Testament church of the first century. But, amazingly enough, one of the most actively propagated and publicized systems of belief of our day not only was not accepted and taught in the early church, but also is diametrically opposed to much apostolic teaching. Further, many of the proponents of these new beliefs bluntly admit the novelty and recent origin of their theories, but attempt to justify them on the grounds that their 19th and 20th century revelations have equal standing with the apostolic teachings.

The apostle Paul, the unchallenged authority on New Testament revelation, clearly foresaw this danger more than 1,900 years ago when he warned that "the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine but. . . . they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables" [2 Tim. 4:3,4]. The dictionary defines fables as "myths, legends, untruths, falsehoods, stories not founded on fact." Was Paul right? Is it possible that in some sphere of our Christian beliefs we have, knowingly or unknowingly, thrown out orthodox teachings that were faithfully adhered to up until modern times, and in their place substituted fables of recent origin? More specifically, is it possible that many of the things you and I have been taught about the unfolding events at the end of time are completely at variance with the teachings of the New Testament, and with the beliefs of Calvin, Knox, Luther, Zwingli and other great leaders of the Protestant Reformation, and with 18 centuries of many great Bible expositors and commentators?

For example, if you and I believe a system of Bible interpretation that teaches that God today is pursuing two different programs with two different people, and Paul contended vigorously that God has only one people, who is most likely wrong, the Apostle Paul or us? If you and I believe in a future 1,000-year reign of Jesus Christ from a throne in Jerusalem, and Martin Luther did not, who's wrong, Luther or us? If you and I believe that the church will be taken away from the earth for seven years, and that during its absence the world will be evangelized by 144,000 Jewish converts far more effectively than it has ever been evangelized by the church, and 18 centuries of great Bible expositors disagree with us, who's wrong? If you and I believe that the resurrection of the saved is separated by a thousand years or more from the resurrection of the unsaved, and 18 centuries of commentators disagree, who's wrong? And not only that, but why this difference in belief? Shouldn't we want to investigate and find out? Shouldn't we have enough curiosity and concern to try to figure out where Paul and Luther and the great reformers and expositors - or you and I - went wrong?

Orthodox Christianity historically has taught that God has always had one people that He has called out from the world and in whom His purposes for all eternity are being worked out.  Initially His people were the God-fearing Israelites [a natural people under Old Testament law knowing only repeated animal sacrifices for sin], but later, after Christ's death and resurrection, they were succeeded by the church [a spiritual people under New Testament grace knowing the one perfect sacrifice of God's Son].

In the last century and a half a contradictory teaching has emerged which insists that God has two people, and that although He began His dealings with His natural people, the Israelites of old, and is presently dealing with His spiritual people, the church, He will nevertheless one day [in the next and final "dispensation" of world history] resume His dealings with His natural people.

This idea violates at least two well-known scriptural principles. [1]. The Apostle Paul's teaching of "first the natural, then the spiritual" [1 Cor. 15:46] would have to be amended to read "first the natural, then the spiritual, then again the natural." [2]. The Old Testament says Israel was the wife of God [Jer. 3:14; 31:32], and the New Testament says the church is the bride of Christ [Rev.19:7]. Since our God is one God, is it reasonable to suppose that He is married to two different women?

The 19th century was a strange breeding ground for religious doctrines. In the decades before the Civil War the northeastern United States became the birthplace of the founders of three of the four major cults of modern times, Charles Russell of the Jehovah's Witnesses, Joseph Smith Jr. of the Mormons, and Mary Baker Eddy of Christian Science. During that same period, members of the fourth major cult banded together for the first time, in the same part of the United States, to form the American Unitarian Association. [We define a cult as any group of people with religious leanings who deny the deity of Christ, salvation by grace through faith in Christ, and the sole inerrant authority of the Bible.] What compelling force led to the creation and nurturing of those groups at that time is hard to explain.

Why the dark spiritual forces that energized their leaders chose one century in one nation to unveil those heresies we may never know, this side of eternity. We do know, however, that this same strange 19th century environment formed the soil in which the new Dispensationalist theories took root, and from which they sprang into bloom. The seeds were planted around 1830 by J. N. Darby and the young plants were carefully tended and nurtured by C. I. Scofield, the latter producing a manual of instructions which, in an unprecedented move, he printed right in the Bible. Scofield said "a dispensation is a period of time during which man is tested in respect to his obedience to some specific revelation of the will of God." [This is an assumption without Biblical proof and a definition without dictionary support.] His dispensations are the so-called ages of innocence, conscience, human government, promise, law, church, and kingdom. Bible expositors before Scofield saw no such fragmentation in God's creative work, but only a simple and beautiful unfolding of His divine purposes, first through Israel and since Pentecost through the church. Our God would appear to be, at the least, vacillating and uncertain if He had manifested His dealings in man's affairs in the changing and narrow ways envisioned by Scofield.

The truth is that the Old Testament man looked forward by 'faith' to the coming of Christ, and the New Testament man looks back by 'faith' to the same event. The gospel that was preached to Abraham [Gal. 3:8] is still preached in the 20th century. The 'seven-testings-of-man concept' is designed to lend at least an appearance of theological weight and authority to this system, but the dispensationalist seems to have little real interest in the first three periods. He is really after the final four periods because they give him a framework within which to pursue his theme. He feels they provide the justification he needs to pull apart the scriptures and decide how much [or rather how little he is willing] to allow the church to have as its own. In his determined effort to prove that God today is pursuing two distinct and different programs, one with earthly people in a system called Judaism, and another with heavenly people in another system called Christianity, the dispensationalist chops, twists, wrests and distorts the scriptures in order to keep the two groups separate. His "teaching" for the church today consists of a leap-frogging odyssey through the Bible, heavily laced with alibis, explanations, excuses, post-ponements, gaps and parentheses. He has nothing to contribute to our spiritual growth, not a bite of meat, and even the milk he wants us to sip is curdled and sour. Christianity has always taught that the whole Bible is yours, Christian, and that includes not only the front with Genesis, and back of the book called Revelation, but also the entire middle as well. [Both Jesus and the Apostles relied entirely on the Old Testament scriptures, the New Testament was written well after the ascension of Jesus Christ, some possibly after A. D. 70.] 

The dispensationalist says so much of the Bible is yet in the future that you wonder after a while whether anything much really happened in the past. For example, he says Christ came to offer an earthly kingdom to the Jews, but that they surprised God and thwarted His plans by refusing the offer, thereby forcing God to postpone His plans and agree to a new arrangement which resulted in the death of His Son. But, we are told, that original idea is still running around in God's mind, and one day in the future He's finally going to manage it. Oh, sure, for a couple of thousand years during this parenthesis" known as the church age or the age of grace God is passing the time with another group of people. But one day He will take them away and get back to dealing with His first love, "the apple of His eye." Then finally the world will see evangelism on a meaningful scale as "converted Jews of the Tribulation era" show how the church should have been doing it all along. Then finally Christ will have a kingdom and finally He will reign. To "prove" his theories the dispensationalist denies the prior fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies regarding the return of the Jews to the land, the re-building of the temple and the restoration of the law and its ritual sacrifices. These were fulfilled hundreds of years before Christ during and after the return from the Babylonian captivity, but in the dispensationalist's scheme this is ignored in favor of an imagined future fulfillment. Dispensationalists typically claim that they are the only ones who know and understand and appreciate Bible prophecy while in fact they exhibit a tragic lack of belief in prophetic fulfillment.

As will be shown in this book, Christianity has taught that the crucifixion was God's plan from before the beginning of the world. It was not an afterthought. Christianity has taught that the establishment of Christ's kingdom is a past, not a future, event. There is a final consummation of this kingdom still to come, but the kingdom itself was manifested at Calvary and the King has been reigning ever since. Christianity has taught that you, Christian, not some unbeliever, are 'the apple of God's eye' and that you are reigning now with Christ.

Temperatures rise and blood pressures boil when dispensationalist theories are criticized and attacked. Many voices urge silence in order to build and preserve unity. Well, I agree with the need for unity, but there is also a need for honesty and truth. We will have no true spiritual unity where false concepts are harbored which deprecate the accomplishments of Christ at His first advent, which belittle the church and its mission, and which stunt the growth of the individual believer.

If the Darby-Scofield beliefs now held by so many Christians are true and scriptural, surely they can stand the spotlight of investigation. There should be no doubt at all, however, about the fact of their recent origin, and this we can hear directly from some of the pioneers of that school of thought. In his excellent book, Biblical Studies in Final Things [Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Co., Nutley, N.J.] William E. Cox quotes some of the movement's early leaders. Let me hit you first with one of the real shockers, confirming what I said above, as Cox [page 181] quotes dispensationalist S.D. Gordon from his 1906 book, Quiet Talks About Jesus: "It can be said at once that His [Jesus Christ] dying was not God's own plan. It was conceived somewhere else and yielded to by God. God has a plan of atonement by which men who were willing could be saved from sin and its effect. That plan is given in the Old Hebrew code. . . . a man could bring some animal which he owned." How can such a statement be reconciled with the New Testament teachings that Jesus' crucifixion was "Him, [Jesus Christ] being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:" [Acts 2:23],  and that "it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins" [Heb. 10:4]? Scofield's interpretation of the last nine chapters of Ezekiel requires the restoration in a future Millennial Kingdom of the temple, animal sacrifices, the Levitical priesthood, the Sabbath, the Passover, circumcision, and all the laws and ordinances given to Moses at Mount Sinai.

Why, since Christ already has "offered one sacrifice for sins for ever" [Heb. 10:12], would the dispensationalist want to return to animal sacrifices in his proposed seventh and final age after the second coming of Christ? Such a program would be apostasy today, but we are told it is supposed to be prophetic fulfillment in the future. Cox [page 217] quotes Harry A. Ironside from his 1908 book, The Mysteries of God, as admitting that historically it was always believed that the church is prophesied in the Old Testament. The belief that the church is not foretold in the Old Testament was unknown "until brought to the fore through the writings and preaching of a distinguished ex-clergyman, Mr. J. N. Darby." [It is important to this school of thought to keep any hint of the church out of the Old Testament in order that key prophecies there can all be made to apply to national Israel.] Cox [page 196] quotes Scofield himself as making a similar admission in writing the introduction to Lewis S. Chafer's 1915 book, The Kingdom in History and Prophecy. He quotes Scofield as saying: "Protestant theology has very generally taught that all the kingdom promises, and even the great Davidic covenant itself, are to be fulfilled through the church." [The Davidic covenant will be discussed in a later chapter.] Cox [page 195] quotes Dr. John Walvoord of the Dallas Theological Seminary from an article in Bibliotheca Sacra [Jan.-Mar., 1951] as admitting that the belief in a 1,000-year reign of Christ from David's throne in Jerusalem strays far from the beliefs of the great Protestant Reformers such as Calvin, Luther, Zwingli and Knox. He quotes him thus: "Most if not all the leaders of the Protestant Reformation were Amillennial in their eschatology, following the teachings of Augustine." [Eschatology is the study of final things. Amillennial means Revelation 20 is speaking figuratively, not literally, when it refers to 1,000 years.] Although, as will be shown in this book, the Scofield fables are as foolish, false and damaging as they are unorthodox, they are propagated with an energy bordering on frenzy. Preying on the natural desire of Christians and others to know the future, they present with unblinking hesitation their incredibly detailed visions of the exact course of future events affecting the whole world. [Now a little curiosity is okay, Christian, but did the Lord tell you to snoop and pry or to watch and pray?] Through a flood of books and pamphlets their authors dominate the shelves of gospel book stores and with a tirade of words their narrators dominate the teaching on gospel radio stations. But where are the opposing voices? Where are those who should be standing for orthodoxy? Where are the alternatives to Darby-Scofield?

Well, mostly they are in the form of thick, hard-to-read books in dusty libraries or, even worse, in the form of unwritten books in somebody's head. But, with a few exceptions, they're not easily accessible in paperback form on the shelf of the average Christian book store. I ran across one of the exceptions recently, and I'm happy to say that, although its aim and purposes were different from those if this book, it was excellently done. I refer to Wilfred C. Meloon's book, We've Been Robbed [Logos International, Plainfield, N.J.]. Meloon wrote his book after 25 years as an Independent Baptist evangelist, pastor and missionary. A staunch opponent of "formalism, inclusivism, unholy alliances, modernism, liberalism and ecumenicity," Meloon was stirred to write his attack on Dispensationalism because, in keeping with its tendency to compartmentalize everything, it teaches that the church is now in its seventh and last stage, the Laodicean or "lukewarm" period [Rev. 3:14-22]. As a result the church is seen to be in its dotage and decline, and therefore it cannot be expected to be empowered and vitalized as was the church in the first century.

"After years of being a fundamentalist preacher," Meloon says [page 7], "I have arrived at the conclusion that the intricate system contrived about 150 years ago, popularized by John Darby's commentaries and the Scofield Reference Bible and perpetrated by a large number of "fundamentalists," has consistently robbed the church of much needed power, and has been used to justify the absence of the supernatural in our ministries." Meloon makes a number of observations that are pertinent to what I've been saying here. For example, he offers this on [page 19] from dispensationalist Charles Ryrie's 1965 book, Dispensationalism Today: "It is granted that as a system of theology Dispensationalism is recent in origin." Ryrie justifies this, in his own mind at least, by adding: "The fact that the church taught something in the first century does not make it true. And likewise, if the church did not teach something until the twentieth century it is not necessarily false." Meloon's rebuttal is as follows: "Think that one through, fundamentalists. . . . If we accept Ryrie's statement, then Dispensationalism is a far more effective tool for robbing the church than the modernist who conveniently clips passages out of the canon with his liberal scissors. The liberal is obvious; the dispensationalist is devious."

My inclination is to go with  the Apostles: Peter, Paul, James and John and their first-century teachings rather than with those who claim it is justifiable to replace first-century beliefs with contrary opinions that are recent in origin. Meloon also quotes [page 17] the great missionary, George Mueller: "My brother, I am a constant reader of my Bible, and I soon found out that what I was taught to believe did not always agree with what my Bible said. I came to see that I must either part company from John Darby, or from my precious Bible, and I chose to cling to my Bible and part from Mr. Darby." Books like Meloon's are encouraging, but they are altogether too rare in the great flood of current Christian literature. This lack has caused me to discard one of my life­long tenets, namely, that discretion is the better part of valor, and thrust this little volume into the perceived literary vacuum.

This book is an attempt to show some of the surprising ways in which the new and unorthodox doctrines based on dispensationalist theory deviate from historical Christian teachings and to prove that these recent theories and the futurist speculations they incorporate are both false and damaging. It is important to prove both charges for if these teachings are merely wrong, but do no harm, then perhaps our time is better devoted to other matters. If, however, these beliefs are false and also harmful, their error should be exposed, in view of their widespread and frequently unquestioning acceptance among Christians, particularly in America. Proving the falsity of these theories will take some little while, but summarizing their damaging nature and destructive implications can be accomplished in just three sentences:

1. They belittle the first coming of Christ and imply that in certain respects He failed and that, therefore, the Father's supreme will was not accomplished.

2. They imply that God has two different people and that one, the church, was an afterthought and is a net failure, and that the other, national Israel, will have a glorious ministry after the church is removed.

3. They pre-condition individual Christians to 'immaturity through a false promise of escape from tribulation, and to defeatism through the false claim that only at some future time will they and Christ finally have power and finally reign'.

At the same time that the proponents of these theories downgrade the first advent of Christ, the mission of the church, and the present victory of the believer, they simultaneously envision the exaltation of the 'dead fig tree of Old Testament Judaism' to a future role of glory and of national supremacy.

Let me impose on you and ask you a few questions.  How long were you a Christian before someone recommended to you a Scofield Reference Edition, or the latest paperback guide to an instant understanding of the book of Revelation? How long after that before you proudly did the same for another new Christian, or hoped-for Christian? Having initially grasped those beliefs, can you discuss them calmly with other believers who disagree with you? In the time you have been a Christian have you [like George Mueller] ever made any changes or adjustments in your end-time beliefs, or did you receive such perfect truth at the first moment that no revision has ever seemed necessary? Have you ever suspected the existence of other end-time beliefs? Do you believe other ideas on that subject could be even partially right and yours partially wrong? Do you feel your beliefs could be contrary to historical Christian teaching?

If your spiritual temperature rose more than 10 degrees during that grilling, you're in no condition to continue. Take two chapters of Proverbs and call me in the morning. Or at least lay this book down, read the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, and come back when you can love me again.

 Chapter 2

A NIGHT WITH THE FAMILY

And now, if we're all together again in some semblance of one accord, I want to tell a little story, in which I [the author plays the fool], for the purpose of illustrating some of the alternatives to the speculative theories of Scofield and his current adherents. The account of my efforts to straighten out my family regarding events at the end of time is very interesting. It all happened one evening when we were sitting around the living room, my wife, my four children and I. For some time I had been concerned about their unwillingness to devote the majority of their time to a study of end-time doctrines. - So I said:

"What do you think is going to happen at the end of time?" I casually asked one of my daughters.

"I think the Lord is coming back to earth to judge the quick and the dead, Daddy," she replied, barely looking up from her activities.

"Yes, yes," I replied impatiently, "but what about the details?"

"Well, the angels said Jesus would come again in the same manner in which He left, and since He went from earth to heaven at that time, I believe He's coming from heaven to earth this time."

"Oh, now I see where you're confused," I said, with a sigh of relief. "That's at His second coming. I'm referring to His 1 ½ coming."

"His what?" asked my wife!

"You know," I said, with a touch of irritation. "When He comes at the Secret Rapture. This book I'm reading says only the Christians know about that coming of the Lord. It's all in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 and 17."

"That 16th verse says He will come with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God," my wife said with a yawn. "How could an event that noisy be kept a secret?"

"It's because it all happens so fast," I protested. "This book quotes 1 Corinthians 15:52 which says it happens in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.

After that there's a seven-year period called the Great Tribulation when the people who are left on the earth have to go through all those horrible things in Revelation 6 through 19."

"I thought you said all those horrible things happen after the last trumpet, Daddy," my second daughter said. "That's right, that's right," I said excitedly.

"But seven more trumpets sound during those chapters in Revelation that you say take place after the last trumpet," she replied with a puzzled look.

"Okay," I said, "let's forget about the trumpets and whether it's a secret or not. That's probably too deep for you. Let me show you how the Rapture works. There are going to be two in a bed, or grinding together, or in the field, and the one will be taken and the other will be left. The one that's taken goes to be with the Lord and the other is left to go through the seven years."

 "I read about that in Luke 17:34 through 36," my wife said, "but a few verses before that it said it would be the same as when Noah entered the ark, and when Lot left Sodom."

 "That's it," I said. "Noah and Lot were taken out and the others remained."

"Yes, dear," she replied, "but if it's going to be like it was then, Luke says those that remained were all destroyed, not consigned to seven years of hardship"

"You have the same problem with 1 Thessalonians 4, Daddy," my third daughter said. "You said the taking away of the church is described in verses 16 and 17 but, as I recall, just a few verses later it says sudden destruction comes upon those who are left. And sudden destruction sounds a lot different to me than seven years of just suffering."

"I never could see where it says in which direction the believers go with the Lord after meeting Him in the air," my wife said. "To me it's always been the same as if an important person were coming to visit our city and the mayor and other officials met him at the airport to escort him downtown. It looks to me as if the Christians are meeting the Lord to escort Him back to earth."

A few moments of silence passed while I  re-grouped. Then I returned to the attack.

 "What about the four resurrections that are coming?" I said with a confident smile.

The five members of my family exchanged anxious glances at each other.

"Now get this," I said, leaning forward in my chair! "This is a very important doctrine. You've got to be right on the resurrections or you're nowhere. Now here's the way it's going to be, right out of the books I've read. First, when Christ comes for the church there is the resurrection of all the believers of history - right?"

They nodded in tentative agreement.

"Then, seven years later there's the resurrection of those new believers, who were somehow converted after the church and the Holy Spirit were gone, and who were killed during the Great Tribulation. You've got to get them out of the ground to enjoy the Millennium that follows - right?"

This time there were no nods of agreement, and I realized with some disappointment that it was getting too deep again for their shallow spiritual understanding. But I plunged on; they had to learn sound doctrine.

"Next is the third resurrection, this time of those mortals, believers, who die on earth during the Millennium. You've got to get them out of the ground to enjoy eternity, right?"

Again, only hopeless confusion was on their faces.

"And finally," I said in triumph, "the fourth resurrection is necessary to resurrect all the wicked of all time for their condemnation.."

I sat back to relish their enlightenment. I knew I had stuck to just what the books said, and that it would bear fruit.

"I think there are only two resurrections, Daddy," one of my daughters said cautiously. "First, the spiritual resurrection or new birth that makes us alive in Christ after being dead in sin, like it says in Romans 6:13 and the first five verses of Ephesians 2, and second, the general resurrection at the end of time when all the saved and unsaved who ever lived will be raised together at the same time."

"That's true, dear," my wife added. "John 5:24 through 29 speaks of one resurrection which even 1,900 years ago was a present one, when some of those who are spiritually dead hear the voice of the Son of God and receive eternal life, and then of another resurrection, sometime in the future, when all shall hear His voice and come forth, some to life and some to condemnation”"Yes, Daddy," another irritating voice said. "In John 11:24 Martha told Jesus she knew her brother would rise in the resurrection at the last day, but you said he would rise at the Rapture which you said takes place 1,007 years before the last day.""I knew you people wouldn't be able to understand these things!" I said with great agitation. "How can you refute the clear statements of all the books and commentaries I have read? Listen, when I became a Christian I believed what people told me and the books they gave me, and I wasn't argumentative like you are."

There was silence about the space of half a minute. Then my little boy apprehensively raised his hand and I graciously encouraged him to speak.

"Did you say there were mortals living on earth during the Millennium, sir?" he asked hesitantly.

"Yes, my boy," I said tenderly. "Let me tell you what the books say. At the start of the 1,000 years the unbelievers who survive the Great Tribulation are cast off the earth and the surviving believers inherit the Millennial Kingdom, and they live and prosper on a peaceful earth."

"And are they mortal people just like us, sir?"

"Yes, my boy," I said warmly, "just like us."

"But, Mom," he said, "didn't you tell me flesh and blood can't inherit the kingdom of God?"

"Yes, dear," she replied. "I Corinthians 15:50."

I gnashed my teeth, ignoring repeated warnings from my dentist, and resolved to start again from the beginning.

"Look," I said, after my breathing returned to normal, "let's get down to basics. You've got to understand that God has two people and you've got to keep them apart. That's why the church goes up in the Rapture, so that those scriptures that apply only to the Jews, like almost all of Revelation after Chapter 5, can work themselves out. God started out working with the Jews and His Son came to sit on old King David's throne in Jerusalem, but when the Jews surprised God by rejecting Jesus, God had to change His plans and allow Jesus to be crucified. Then God set up the church to fill in the gap between the first and second coming of Christ. At the second coming, Christ will finally sit on David’s throne.”"I don't understand about God having two different people," one of my stubborn daughters said. "There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek, it says in Romans 10:12."Another said, "There is no respect of persons with God, Romans 2:11."

The third added, "There is neither Jew nor Greek. . . . for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.". Galatians 3:28."

When no similar insolence was forthcoming from my son I turned my gaze on him. He had been thinking hard, and finally he turned to his mother and asked, "Mom, what was that about the wall being broken down?"

"That's Ephesians 2:14 through 16, dear," she said, smiling sweetly at him. "It tells how the Lord at Calvary broke down the former wall of partition between the Jew and the Gentile and made of the two one new man, one body."

"Well, isn't Dad wrong then?" my only son asked. "Well, he has studied a lot of books and charts, dear," she said. "The girls and I are only going by the Bible."

"Look," I said impatiently, "if you don't understand that, do you at least see that the Jews are God's special people, a peculiar treasure to Him?"

 "I know that in Exodus 19:5 and 6 the Lord told the Israelites that if they obeyed and kept His covenant they would be a peculiar treasure to Him, and a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation," my wife said.

"Yes, yes," I cut in, "that's it!"

"But I haven't finished, dear," she said. "I think they must have disobeyed and then God found a new people to replace them because Peter uses those same verses to describe everyone who has been converted to Christ."

"I never saw that," I snarled.

"It's in 1 Peter 2:9, dear," she said.

I gnashed my teeth some more, audibly this time. When the noise died down, one of my daughters said she thought the church had succeeded to the promises originally made to the Jews.

"Listen, kid," I snapped, "those promises were made to Abraham and his descendants through his son Isaac and through Isaac's son Israel."

"That's clear from Genesis 12:7 and 22:18, Daddy, but viewed in the light of the New Testament it seems that we-all who are Christ's through the new birth, are in fact the descendants of Abraham."

Thinking that I was rising from my chair to strike the child, my wife threw herself between us. When she saw that I only intended to pace the floor, she sat down again and asked her daughter to continue.

"Well, Mom, as you pointed out to us long ago, the third chapter of Galatians makes it all very clear. Verse 7 says they which are of faith are the children of Abraham.  Verse 16 explains that the seed of Abraham to whom the promises were made was Christ. Verse 27 says we who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. And therefore verse 29 says that if we are Christ's then we are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise."

"I can quote scripture, too!" I shouted. "How about, children, provoke not thy father to wrath! That's in there some place, too, you know!"

"That's Ephesians 6:4, dear," my wife said gently, "but you've got it backwards. It says, fathers, provoke not your children to wrath."

"Well, how can I help it?" I exploded. "She takes one isolated passage of scripture and uses it to tell me I'm an Israelite!"

"A spiritual Israelite, dear," my wife said, watching with compassion my spastic reactions across the living room floor. "But she didn't really take an isolated passage. That one was about Abraham, but you also mentioned Isaac and Israel. Well, Galatians 4:28 and 29 says that we who are born after the Spirit are, as Isaac was, the children of promise.

And Romans 9:6-8 makes the same point, saying they are Israel which are of Israel."

"Any more?"  I asked sarcastically.

"Well, yes," she replied. "Romans 2:28 and 29 says that a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew which is one inwardly and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit. Oh, and Philippians 3:3 says we, that is, all the saints in Christ Jesus, are the circumcision, who worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh."

"Well, if you're going to favor all those New Testament scriptures above the Old Testament you certainly won't reach the conclusions my books reach," I said, again striving for sarcasm. Somehow my remark didn't seem to make the point I intended so I hurried on.

"Can you at least see that Jesus came to set up a restored Jewish Kingdom, but that His rejection by the Jews made it necessary to postpone His kingdom for a couple thousand years?"

One of my daughters immediately said that John 6:15 shows that when Jesus saw that the people wanted to make Him a natural king He departed from them and went off to be alone in the mountains. Another said that if Jesus had sought such an earthly kingdom in Israel He would have been technically guilty of the accusation brought against Him by the high priest and rulers of the Jews, and His crucifixion would have been justified by law. The third added that Jesus Himself said, "My kingdom is not of this world" John 18:36.

My wife said my statement implied that Christ didn't complete the task that was given Him at His first coming while in fact John 4:34 and 17:4 quoted Jesus as saying that He came to do His Father's will and did it. "And Luke 24:25 through 27 says that the risen Lord told His disciples that the Old Testament prophets clearly foretold His suffering and crucifixion."

"Maybe," I said, "but what about His kingdom? At some point that has got to be set up and I don't see it yet."

"Oh, Daddy," one of my daughters said, "you know Luke 17:20 and 21 says the kingdom of God doesn't come with observation, or visual evidence, but the kingdom of God is within you. It's the Lord's rule in the hearts of His people."

"You can't see or enter it except by the new birth, it says in the third chapter of John," then another said.

"Yes, Daddy, we've already been translated or transferred into the kingdom of God's dear Son, according to Colossians 1:13," then the third added.

"And Romans 14:17 says the kingdom of God isn't physical things like meat and drink, but is actually righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost," my wife said "

A man's enemies are those of his own house!" I shouted, and then a brilliant thought occurred to me. "Look," I said, thumbing eagerly to Revelation 12:10, "here it shows exactly when the kingdom of God is going to be set up. Isn't that something that's going to happen at the start of the Millennium? See, it's in the next chapter after the seventh trumpet sounds."

My wife turned to my proof text and smiled as she read it to herself. Then she read it aloud: "Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ, for the accuser of our brethren is cast down."

A chorus of giggles and shrieks came from the children.

My wife shook her head at them tolerantly, and said, "What they're trying to say is that all of those things took place at Calvary more than 1,900 years ago. In John 12:31 Jesus predicted that at His crucifixion Satan would be cast out, and in Colossians 2:15 Paul confirms that through the cross Christ triumphed over all His enemies and made a show of them openly."

"Why wouldn't you think salvation and strength and the power of Christ came long ago, Daddy?" one of my youthful tormentors asked me. "We all know when salvation came, and we know where our strength comes from, and in Matthew 28:18 Jesus said all power, or authority, in heaven and earth had already been given to Him."

My young son twisted the knife. "If the other three have come, then I guess the kingdom has come, too, Dad."

"The kingdom couldn't have come yet," I raged, "because when it does come then finally we're going to reign with Christ."

Again the children laughed. "Daddy, we're already reigning with Him," one of them said. "Romans 5:17 says that we who have received abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ."

"That's true, dear," my wife said. "If you read Peter's speech on the day of Pentecost, particularly Acts 2:30 through 33, it seems clear that Peter felt that Christ's resurrection and ascension to the right hand of God fulfilled the promise that a descendant of David would occupy His throne."

"Let me see that," I grumbled, picking up my Scofield Edition. "God had sworn. . . . of the fruit of His loins. . . . would raise up Christ to sit on His throne. . . . He, seeing this before, spoke of the resurrection of Christ. . . . this Jesus hath God raised up . . . . by the right hand of God exalted. . ". As I scratched my head over those verses, my wife added: "And, of course, Ephesians 2:6 says God has already raised us up to sit with Christ in the heavenlies. So we're already reigning or should be over every difficult problem or situation or circumstance."

"You'd better talk to him about 1 Corinthians 15, too, Mom," one of the kids said.

"What!" I exclaimed, mopping my brow. "I've already covered that. I told you that verse 52 says all the dead believers will be resurrected to meet Christ in the air along with all the living believers."

"Yes, dear, we know," my wife said, "but the point is that verse 54 says that the resurrection described in verse 52 fulfills the saying of Isaiah 25:8 that death is swallowed up in victory."

"So what?" I thundered.

"Well, don't you see, dear? Verses 25 and 26 of chapter 15 say that Christ's present reign must continue until He has put all His enemies under His feet, and the last enemy to be destroyed will be death. So, since verse 54 says His last enemy will be destroyed when the saints are resurrected, that means His reign ends then. At that time He delivers the kingdom up to the Father [verse 24] and the Son Himself becomes subject unto God in order that God may be all in all [verse 28]. So if you're going to reign with Christ, you've got to reign with Him now."

"But if His reign ends at the time He comes for the church that would mean there would be no 1,000-year reign later on the earth," I said, with exasperation.

"That's true, dear," she replied.

 I excused myself from my oppressors and, determined to rebuke and admonish them scripturally. I took my Scofield Edition with its concordance into the next room. I found that Proverbs 19:13 took care of both my wife and my son ["A foolish son is the calamity of his father, and the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping"], but the only verse I could find about daughters was Proverbs 31 :29 ["Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all"]. Obviously that wouldn't do so, disappointed, I postponed my thoughts of revenge and returned to the living room.

"Look," I said as calmly as I could, "I believe most of your confusion occurred right at the beginning of our discussion. After explaining the Secret Rapture I should have told you about the Antichrist because during the seven years after the Rapture he's going to do some incredible things."

"No, he's not, dear," my wife said quietly.

"What do you mean?" I sputtered. "My books spell it all out. He will be a beast, and put marks on people, and they will have to worship him, and he'll execute people, and. . . . and . . . . and. ."  "Now just relax, dear," my wife said soothingly. "Some of the other ladies and I have looked into that situation and found out that the Antichrist won't be around to do anything after Christ comes for His church."

"You can't prove that!" I yelled, ---- but I feared she could.

"Well, dear," she said calmly, "one of the ladies had her new Interlinear Greek-English New Testament that shows each of the original Greek words and the English equivalent. The Greek word for the coming of the Lord for His church is “parousia” and that's the word used in 1 Thessalonians 4:15. Then in 2 Thessalonians 2:8 this same word is used for the coming of the Lord, and in that verse it says the Lord will destroy the Antichrist with the brightness of His “parousia”. So when the Lord comes for the church, He simultaneously destroys the Antichrist.""That's ridiculous," I said, but I was perspiring freely now. "Listen, if you don't believe anything I'm telling you, I suppose you tell me what you do believe. "We believe that Jesus Christ is coming again, all the way to earth," my wife said, "and that when He comes all the dead will be resurrected, and they and the living will be judged worthy either of an eternity in the presence of the Lord, or an eternity of punishment. Satan will be eternally punished. The kingdom will be turned over by Christ to God the Father, and there will be a new, or probably renewed, heaven and earth. Every person will be as close to the Lord throughout eternity as he or she is in this life."

"You mean that is it?" I said. --- "That's the whole thing?" "Basically, yes," she said.

"But if that's all there is to it," I said, "people wouldn't need all those books and charts to figure it out. Why, it's so simple that even a child could understand it."

"Precisely," said my wife.

"Exactly," chorused my daughters.

"I understand it," said my son.

 Later, our neighbors said the smoke from the pile of books and charts I burned in the back yard could be seen three blocks away.

  Chapter 3

SEEKING GOD'S PERSPECTIVE

The previous chapter illustrates the staggering scope and complexity of the task we assume when we attempt to investigate and understand events flowing forth from the eternal counsels of God. We find ourselves confused and in disagreement with one another regarding such subjects as the Secret Rapture, the Great Tribulation, the Millennium, the promises to Abraham and his descendants, the throne of David, the mystery of the Antichrist, and all the rest. Our problem is that in our eagerness to put these individual elements under our microscopes to dissect them, we fail to first get out our telescopes, and attempt to view the total panorama from God's perspective. You can take a single piece from a large jigsaw puzzle, and analyze it and ponder it the rest of your life without ever being able to describe from that piece alone what the entire puzzle looks like. So first we should try to understand what the completed picture looks like, and only then should we begin to study the individual pieces. And the completed picture is simply that of a cross, reflecting the eternal plan of God to send His Son to die for sinful man, to give His life that man might regain all that Adam lost, and more. For God the Father has eternally so loved His Son, and so loved His fellowship with His Son, that He has desired many more like them, all those "whom He did foreknow. . . to be conformed to the image of His Son" [Rom. 8:29]. It has also been eternally the Father's expectation "in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings" [Heb. 2:10]. Thus, the next thing on God's program after Jesus' earthly ministry of approximately three and a half years was His death, burial and resurrection, as the risen Christ Himself explained to His disciples [Luke. 24:25-27 and 44-48] and as Peter said on the day of Pentecost [Acts 2:23]. This is true notwithstanding the Scofield Reference Edition's claim in its note to Matthew 4:17 that "when Christ appeared to the Jewish people, the next thing, in the order of revelation as it then stood, should have been the setting up of the Davidic kingdom." Christ did, in fact, manifest His eternal kingdom more than 1,900 years ago, and if you don't believe it you probably have some difficulty explaining what kingdom you entered when you were born again [John. 3:5].

If we had the impossible task of trying to summarize God's eternal purposes, as far as the human race is concerned, we might come up with something like this: God has always desired a people who would be a special treasure to Him, a people with whom He could have the kind of relationship and fellowship that He enjoyed with His eternal Son before the foundations of the world, a people who, in their daily lives, would reflect the life that is in God and display God to those around them. Initially, His dealings toward that end were centered in the nation of Israel, but the prophets time and again thundered that if Israel did not obey, God would switch His dealings and purposes to another people. They didn't obey, so He did send His Son to purchase a new people.

A faithful remnant of the old nation of Israel remained true to God, but it is not far-fetched to say that at Calvary God's dealings were concentrated entirely on a remnant of one, the Lord Jesus [John. 16:32 and Mt. 26:31]. In Jesus the world for the first time had been able to see God in the flesh; people could look at that one man and say, "That is what God is like." And when Jesus was buried and rose again, it was the same as when a kernel of corn is planted and springs forth into new life, multiplying itself many times over. Through the death of one, many spring forth as the sons of God, and in them, in the corporate body composed of all born-again believers, in that "one new man" [Eph. 2:15] the people of the world again are supposed to see God and be blessed. People should look at us, as a corporate body, and be able to say what they said of Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, "That is what God is like!"

That, as some of us see it, is the challenge and the opportunity for the church today: to stand, steady in this mad, sin-sick world as everything around us is shaken, and to stand with confidence since we know that it's the Lord who is doing the shaking [Heb. 12:26,27]. As the violent, final events of history come to pass, as men's hearts fail them for fear, we should be looking up and lifting up our heads, for our redemption is drawing nigh [Luke. 21 :26-28]. And the people of the world should be looking at the church and saying, "That's what God is like!"

Now that is one vision of the church, and I will admit it thrills me. That's God's masterpiece, "the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places" [Eph. 3:9,10]. That is the church of Jesus Christ, "His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all," [Eph. 1 :23] standing strong in the Lord, in the power of His might, and in the whole armor of God, and confounding to the end the expectations of "the rulers of the darkness of this world and the spiritual wickedness in high places" [Eph. 6:10-13]. That is a vision of the church you can do some shouting about, and I believe that is the historical, orthodox vision. But some see another vision of the church, a shallow, shame-faced, apologetic vision; not a vision of the church militant arrayed in battle against her foes, but a vision of a fragmented, rag-tag band of losers, so pale, anemic and demoralized that they have to be evacuated before the battle is finished. Actually, we should not call it a vision at all. We should call it what it really is, a re-vision. No glory and might, no triumph or splendor attach to the church in this view; those attributes are all reserved to be lavished later upon national Israel, according to the futurist! Now everyone's entitled to choose his own vision, but I don't see how any Christian could hesitate even a moment before casting his vote for the former, that glorious church without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, holy and without blemish [Eph. 5:27].

But if you choose that vision please choose the whole vision and stick with it. Don't gradually remove one glorious distinction after another from the church which is the spiritual habitation of God [Eph. 2:22] and bestow those distinctions on a small spot in the Middle East which is the physical habitation of a nation with a bad record of unbelief in our Lord Jesus Christ. If we can agree that the bright vision I've described at least approximates God's perspective, then we have our view through the telescope. Now we can get out our microscopes to analyze some of the parts that make up the whole. We want to study each individual piece of the puzzle to make sure that it fits, to make sure that it came out of the box labeled ‘The Faith Once Delivered to the Saints’ and not out of the box labeled 'Fables and Revisions'. Make no mistake about it, the pieces of the Scofield puzzle don't form a glorious church; they just form a glorious national Israel. They don't form a cross; they just form a star of David.    As we examine these pieces we want to remember that we're dealing with some of the most controversial doctrinal building blocks that we have each put in place over the course of our Christian experience. If we argue over them on an emotional level, we will reap only bitterness. To study them objectively, we need a system of guidelines. One of the most obvious tests, of course, of any doctrine is its record of acceptability in the church down through the centuries. That is important, especially if our witnesses for or against a doctrine are the early church fathers, the Protestant Reformers and the great Bible expositors. But these are only men, some will argue, and so their witness is not the final and persuasive proof. We need further guidelines to corroborate the evidence of historical teaching. To meet that need, it is suggested that we study the major pieces of the puzzle to determine whether they meet the following criteria:

1. Do they glorify Christ and credit Him with fully accomplishing His Father's eternal will during His first advent? 2. Do they honor the church, "which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all" [Eph. 1 :23]?  3. Do they contribute to the spiritual growth of the many individual believers and help us to conform to the image of Christ?

If you agree that these are fair and useful tests, then I would go so far as to submit that any belief we may have that fails to measure up to them might be a candidate for the garbage can. If we have believed something that misplaces the glory that should go to Christ, something that dilutes the vision of the church and its mission, something that stunts the growth of the individual believer, we should seriously consider discarding that belief and replacing it with something that meets the above standards. Let's apply these three tests initially to what has come to be called the Rapture of the church, the meeting in the air of Christ and the believers. That event does not at all constitute the important doctrinal issue in our study. The key issue, the question of whether God has two separate people, will be studied in a later chapter, but the Rapture, or Secret Rapture as some prefer to call it, is for the dispensationalist the signal that God's clock is ready to start working again after nearly 2,000 years, and that it then will tick off the final seven, or 1,007 years of world history. Because that event is for that school of thought an important beginning, we are satisfied to start our study at that point.

 Chapter 4

UP, UP, AND AWAY

The return of the Lord Jesus Christ has always been the blessed hope of Christians and as an event in history it stands second only to His first coming. We know that after the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, God highly exalted Him and gave Him a name which is above every name [Phil. 2:9] and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places [Eph. 1:20] where He will remain until a day known only to God. The problem before us here is this: Will Christ leave heaven twice? Will He leave heaven one time to meet somewhere in earth's atmosphere, all the believers who ever lived and take them back to heaven with Him, and then seven years later leave heaven a second time to come all the way to earth? Or, instead of having two stages divided by seven years, is His coming a single event, non-stop from heaven to earth? If it is the former, if He comes to meet the Christians to take them all to heaven, it would be more appropriate for 1 Thessalonians 4:17 to say that the Lord meets the believers in the air (on their way to heaven) rather than saying that the believers meet the Lord. On the other hand, if the Lord leaves heaven but once and comes all the way to earth, then it makes sense to expect the eager saints of all ages to meet Him and escort Him the rest of the way. This was the customary courtesy paid to visiting dignitaries in Biblical times and is still our custom today the lesser go forth eagerly to meet and greet the greater. In exactly this manner the people of Jerusalem went out to meet Jesus and escort Him into the city before the last Passover [John. 12:12,13].

We want to apply our three tests to the two-stage concept of the Lord's return but first we want to tell another story. We think it's only fair to do this since the proponents of the futurist theories seem to have chosen the narrative or story-telling format as the preferred means of describing the things they say are going to happen in the future. We want to elaborate a bit on one of their favorite themes because we feel that they fail to carry their reasoning to a logical conclusion; they set an imaginary chain of events in motion, but then go off to pursue other matters without allowing those events to work themselves out. Let's assume for a moment that it has really happened and that all the Christians have disappeared. How many people would that be? Let's be conservative and say only one per cent of the nearly four billion people in the world.

That would be forty million missing Christians. If that's too many for you (0 ye of little faith!) take one-half of one per cent of the world's population, or twenty million. If you think that's still too high, take one-fourth of one per cent, or ten million. No matter which of these numbers we use, we're talking about a huge number of saved men, women and children. Somewhere between ten million and forty million people suddenly missing without a trace. People from every walk of life, from the greatest and most prominent to the least, most obscure: perhaps some presidents, prime ministers and royalty; some congressmen and members of the world's parliaments; some generals and admirals; famous movie stars and athletes; heads of giant corporations; some pastors of churches of every denomination; doctors, lawyers, judges, journalists, scientists, housewives, policemen, firemen, farmers, bankers, accountants, stockbrokers, insurance agents, realtors, authors, artists, teachers, factory workers and white collar workers, and children from every kind of school and college. The phenomenon would be worldwide, from Greenland's icy mountain to India's coral strand. People of every nation tongue, tribe and color would be missing. Of course, all those cars would have gone out of control on the highways as Christian drivers suddenly vanished. All those patients on the operating table would have died as Christian doctors and anesthetist that suddenly disappear. And many a Communist official would have a lot of explaining to do about the sudden "escape" of all those Christians from their cells, asylums and labor camps. In short, the mass disappearance of all born-again believers would assume such global proportions that it would be the major news event of modern history. Today large black headlines are generated by a fatal fire, airplane crash, hurricane, earthquake or other catastrophe that claims human lives. Newspapers around the world chronicle the death, or kidnapping, or disappearance of a single prominent person. Extra editions are rushed out to proclaim each new political uprising, revolution, hi-jacking or terrorist attack. These occurrences, shocking as they are, involve anywhere from one to perhaps tens of thousands of persons. But the story we're talking about here would involve the disappearance of many millions of people plus all the related damage.

The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima snuffed out more than 70,000 lives. Like the event we're looking at here, it happened in a fleeting moment of time. At one moment thousands of people were walking about, leading normal lives, doing ordinary things, and in the next instant they were destroyed. The headlines were black with the shock of it. But we're talking about a situation that would dwarf Hiroshima-more than 100 times as many people would be missing. This sudden evacuation of millions of people would cause a chain reaction of terror, lost lives and property that would affect countless numbers of the people remaining behind. How many unsaved relatives and friends of Christians would be left behind in a speeding car, plane, boat, train or subway? How many unsaved children would be safely at home but nevertheless orphaned; how many aging but unsaved parents would be left destitute? How much property damage would be done by all those out-of-control vehicles on land and sea and in the air? How about that charging bulldozer whose operator had suddenly disappeared? How about the giant ladles of molten steel with no one there any longer to control them, or that speeding ambulance or fire truck? What other damage would result from key people suddenly disappearing from jobs of a hundred different descriptions? Just a few elementary questions like the above serve as a way to emphasize the tremendous worldwide impact resulting from the disappearance of millions of Christians.

It is hard to imagine a single Christian whose disappearance wouldn't affect, in some way, his or her relatives and friends, or even total strangers. No single event in modern world history could compare with the disappearance in a moment's time of millions of people and the loss of life, property and security that would necessarily follow in its wake. Now we've said all that to say this: Those modern-day prophets who are predicting that all true Christians will suddenly leave the earth in this manner for a period of seven years almost without exception fail to follow to a logical conclusion the course of events that they are predicting. We have given a few of the logical consequences of such an evacuation in the paragraphs above, and we will pursue this logic to its inevitable end below. But what do the proponents of this theory tell us of the immediate aftermath of this mass evacuation? Only that those remaining on earth are puzzled by the disappearances and the resulting loss of lives and property, and that they try in vain to explain what has happened. Having said that, they leap ahead to describe various spectacular events that are supposed to occur later in the seven-year period that follows. But we want to explore right now in a little more detail the course of events that logically should follow in the minutes, days and weeks immediately after the strange disappearance of millions of people from the face of the earth.

From some point in the future we look back on what appeared at first to have been a very ordinary day in the affairs of men. Ted Book and his wife Alice were driving down the expressway when Ted, who was at the wheel, suddenly saw the car in front of them veer off the road. Incredibly, it seemed to Ted that no one, neither driver nor passengers, had been in the car as it left the highway. He turned to Alice to ask if she had seen anyone, but Alice was gone! A very shaken Ted Book pulled his car over to the side of the road. Gone? How could she be gone? He had just picked her up at work. He looked in the back seat but she wasn't there either. The doors of the car were still locked. Her seat belt was still buckled. Stunned and confused, he opened his door and stepped cautiously out of the car. Behind him he saw the wreckage of the car that had veered off the road. It had hit a tree. Far away he heard the faint sound of sirens. Ted scratched his head in confusion, walked around his car several times, looked under it, looked inside again, and then started to walk back up the highway in the direction from which they had just come. He reached the spot where the car had crashed, and saw that several other motorists had stopped to lend a hand. The car was demolished but no one could find the driver. Relieved that there were no injuries, Ted walked on. After going perhaps half a mile from his car, peering in all directions as he went, he stopped and began to re-trace his steps. By the time he arrived at the car he had begun to think that perhaps Alice had not been with him after all. Had he perhaps forgotten to pick her up? He was almost beginning to believe it when his eye caught sight of the bags of groceries that Alice had bought at the convenience store just before they got on the expressway. Frightened now, fighting back panic, Ted leaned heavily against the door of his car. A man stepped out of a car parked nearby and walked over to him. "Everything okay?" he asked. "I don't know. Nobody's been hurt. I mean we didn't have an accident or anything. But my wife's gone. She just disappeared out of the car while we were driving along. I've looked for her but I can't find her." "Yeah, there is something funny going on," the man said. "I just heard on the radio that weird things like that have suddenly happened everywhere. People missing. Cars crashing. It's crazy. I think you'd better report it to the police. Maybe they can help." Ted thought about it a moment, then decided he had no alternative. He thanked the man, got back in his car, started the engine and shakily steered back into the line of now slowly moving traffic. Further down the highway, just beyond an interchange, lights from a police car were flashing at a multiple-car accident. Ted could see that it was bad, involving cars in two of the three lanes, and he decided to get off at the interchange and telephone the police rather than interrupt the officer at the accident scene. At a pay phone nearby he attempted to dial the police. The line was busy. He dialed the operator. All police and emergency lines were swamped with calls, she told him; something strange was going on. Not knowing what else to do, Ted climbed back in his car and drove slowly home, taking the twisting country roads and avoiding the expressway. But even on that route strange things were happening. A crowd of people surrounded a truck that had climbed the front steps of a home and stopped on the porch. Further along, another group clustered around a car that had plunged down an embankment. Here he saw a stretcher being lifted into an ambulance. Arriving at his home, he rushed in and searched every room, hoping but not really believing that somehow Alice would be there waiting for him. The house was empty. He tried the police and other emergency numbers again but they were still busy. Briefly he turned on the television set but the outpouring of news about missing persons and accidents only depressed him more.

Desperate to talk to someone he finally thought of the pastor of the little church where Alice attended regularly but where Ted himself went only reluctantly and on rare occasions. The man bored Ted, but now he had no one else to turn to. He found the number next to the phone and dialed it. There was no answer. Then he thought of the pastor at the large church they used to attend before Alice changed to her smaller church. He dialed that number and almost immediately a woman answered. "No, Dr. Allison is not here now," she said. "This is Mrs. Allison. My husband just stepped out a moment ago. One of the members of our congregation was involved in an accident, the strangest thing you ever heard of, a car with no driver struck his car, and my husband has gone to the hospital to visit him. No, neither he nor I have any idea of what's been going on." Ted thanked her and hung up. For a while he paced the floor, then he slumped dejectedly into a chair; On, the table next to him he saw an open book, his wife’s Bible, with some verses underlined in red. They were in I Thessalonians, chapter 4, and they said, "For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." Suddenly he remembered how often Alice had told him that one day she was going to be "raptured away from the earth in the twinkling of an eye." "Ah, come on," he said to himself. "It can't be". But the more he thought about it, the more he began to believe that it could be. On the table where the Bible had been he saw the assortment of paperbacks and commentaries his wife had been constantly studying. He picked one up and began to page through it.

 Chapter 5

 AFTERMATH

At the moment in which Alice had disappeared Chad Nesser was sitting at his desk at the Clarion Newspapers, preparing for a long, dull evening typing up some routine news stories for the morning edition. As one of the younger reporters on the paper he had little access to the big stories, the ones the police reporter and the court reporter worked on. Chad did mainly boring updates of stories that had run in the afternoon edition and maybe, with luck, there would be some new angle to report on one of those stories. Today the afternoon paper had little news to update and Chad figured he would be very bored indeed until this night was over. He was wrong.  About that time the phones began to ring, and they rang until the switchboard was jammed with calls. People were telephoning from everywhere; it seemed, to report accidents and missing persons. The calls were routed to anyone who could take down the details, including the boy who usually just carried copy and went for coffee. And the situation wasn't helped any by the disappearance of one of their veteran reporters, a great guy that you could always depend on. The man had been sitting at his desk just a few minutes earlier, but he was gone now and an unfinished story was still in his typewriter. Some of the reports were bizarre. A local mortician that was an old friend of one reporter called to say that a corps' had disappeared from the funeral home, "like It had Just flown away." The Ferris wheel operator at a downtown amusement park had also disappeared and no one else knew how to get the people down from the wheel.

Chad took a call from someone at City Hospital who said he'd heard about an incredible thing that had just happened during an emergency appendectomy. "Let me guess," Chad said dryly. "The doctor disappeared."  "No, the patient disappeared," the caller said. But the news coming in from the around the world by teletype soon made most of the local news pale into insignificance. The world seemed to be spinning out of control. The number of people missing was mounting into the millions. Incredible accidents had taken thousands of lives. Many famous people had simply vanished. And on and on it went. From every part of the world the reports came, staggering in their variety and violence, and each one seeming more unbelievable than the one before. Chad wearily hung up on one caller and waited for the inevitable ring of the next call. It came immediately, and it was his Uncle Ted. "Chad, your Aunt Alice has disappeared!" Oh, boy, Chad thought, another one, and this one in the family. He'd have to try to comfort his uncle.  "That's terrible, Ted," he said, "I'm really shocked. listen, if there's anything I can do . . . ." "No, no, Chad," his uncle said, "I'm not so sure that it is so terrible. Alice might have been one of the lucky ones. I think she's gone to be with the Lord."  Wow, thought Chad, he's really taking it well. "That's a great way to look at it, Uncle Ted. We all have to die sometime."  "No, you don't understand, Chad. I don't think she died. I think she went to be with the Lord without dying. I think she met Him in the air with all those other people who are missing and they all went up to heaven together without ever dying." By then Chad was sure his uncle had cracked under the strain. Poor man! He knew Ted and Alice had had their problems but he also knew that Ted had loved his wife. "Tell me one thing, Chad," his uncle was saying. "Does anyone have an explanation for all the crazy things that have been happening?" "I haven't heard any yet, Ted, but there's got to be an answer.” "So what could it be, Chad? These things have been happening in every nation in the world, haven't they? Do you think a group of people caused them? Some kind of worldwide terrorist attack or something?" "Well, I don't know." "Well, I do, boy, and if you'll pay attention I'll give you the biggest story any reporter ever had. You'll have to work fast though because eventually a lot of other people are going to figure it out, too. And don't worry about Aunt Alice. She's in good hands." And then for nearly 15 minutes Ted talked and Chad took notes. Ted told him what he'd learned from Alice's books and charts, that explained what had happen. Ted do all the people who had disappeared and how their sudden departure had caused all the accidents and bizarre happenings. He backed it up with scriptures from Alice's Bible, and Chad carefully took them down. "What a story, Uncle Ted!" he said excitedly. "I might be the only reporter in the world at this moment who knows about this. We won't state it as fact, just as a very likely theory. I've got to get this typed up right away." "Now hang on a minute, Chad," his uncle said. "I've only given you half the story, the part that's in the past. The other half, maybe a lot more than half, in fact, has to do with the future." "What do you mean, the future?" "I mean exactly that. I can tell you when Christ is coming to earth, and some if the major events that are going to happen during the years until he does, and all about what it will be like in the next 1,000 years after that." "You're crazy, Ted! Nobody knows that." "I do. And you can, too. The whole world can. It's right there in those books. You can buy them in lots of bookstores. The whole thing's laid out in complete detail. Now do you want to hear it or do you want to wait till some other reporter finds out about this?" "I want to hear it, Ted," Chad said lamely, "but listen, I . . . " "No, you listen, Chad, while I talk. And, oh, yes, one other thing, for your own good. You remember how your Aunt Alice was always after me about repenting and giving  my heart to the Lord?" "I know," said Chad, "she went after me a few times, too." "Well, now that we know that it's all true, since the church really was taken away just like she said, I think we ought to take advantage of this second chance for salvation. I mean since we know it's real now, instead of having to take it on faith like Alice did, I think we ought to take advantage of it." "Boy, you're right, Ted, and I'm going to get right at it as soon as you finish telling me the rest of what those books say. We've got that much time yet, don't we?" "Oh, sure, Chad, there's really no hurry yet. We've still got seven years left, but the thing is, you want to get the matter settled in case you die or get killed before the next seven years pass." "Okay, Ted. What do you do? Repent and. . . . and. . . . things like that?" "Yeah, that's it. We say we're sorry for the bad things that we've done, believe the gospel, you know, and then we're in. Maybe just saying it like I am here is enough. It probably is." "Okay, Ted, now give me the rest of the information." "I'll do better than that," Ted said. "I'll bring all these paperbacks down to your office so you get it right."  Chad Nesser and the Clarion Newspapers didn't quite scoop the world because a lot of other people made the same discovery and phoned the radio and television networks before   the morning edition hit the streets. Still, Ted's timely tip gave Chad's paper the chance to present one of the most complete and detailed explanations of the big story. These were some of the Clarion's front page headlines:

ALL CHRISTIANS ARE TAKEN A

Mass Vanishing Startles World.

   SCRIPTURES DECLARED TRUE; CHRIST COMING IN 7 YEARS.

    Theologians Alter Stance; Recommend Accepting the Lord as Savior.

GREAT TRIBULATION IS NEXT EVENT TO UNFOLD

Rule of Roman Prince, False Prophet Coming

TIME AND PLACE OF WORLD WAR III

DISCLOSED; OUTCOME REVEALED

Roman Empire and the Antichrist To Lose Despite U.S. Assistance

The stories detailed the events of the following seven years, explaining how the Roman Empire was going to be revived as a 10-nation confederacy and how it and the Roman prince that would be its leader would take over the world. An effort to assassinate him would fail and, recovering miraculously from a fatal head wound, he would go on not only to rule but also to be worshipped. At first everyone would be impressed with this leader, especially the Jews because he would settle the Mid-East threat of war with a brilliant solution and make a covenant with them that would re-establish their Old Testament institutions, which presumably they were all eagerly seeking. The temple would be quickly re-built and they would then be able to start offering animal sacrifices again. Meanwhile, 144,000 Jewish evangelists would have appeared and gone forth to convince many that Jesus was the Messiah. These new believers would criticize the doings of the Roman prince and he, assisted by the False Prophet, would see to it that they couldn't buy or sell or get jobs. Only those who accepted his mark of 666 could prosper. Suddenly the prince would show his true colors as the Antichrist, establish his throne in the temple, cause the sacrifices to cease, and start to persecute everybody, especially the growing number of once-unbelieving Jews who would come to accept their Messiah during the seven years. Finally, the world would see that the Antichrist's promises of peace were no good, and all-out war would follow.

The Antichrist and his followers would totally annihilate the Russians but then an army of 200 million Chinese would march on Israel. Those kings of the east would battle the Antichrist, with his allies of Western Europe and the Americas, including the United States, and they would be in the process of totally annihilating each other with thermonuclear weapons in the battle of Armageddon when Christ would return. Half the world would have been killed during the seven years. The surviving unbelievers would be judged then and cast off the earth, and the surviving believers would enter the Millennial Kingdom as mortals to repopulate the earth. The Antichrist and the False Prophet would be cast into the lake of fire and Satan would be bound for 1,000 years. Christ would then rule from David's throne, and there would be total peace and prosperity. Everyone in the world would crowd into Jerusalem once a year to worship. At the end of the 1,000 years, Satan would be released to test everybody on earth and those that rebelled and followed him would be judged and cast off the earth. Satan would then go into the lake of fire, and eternity would begin.

Chad hoped he had gotten the facts rights but some of the books Ted had given him were confusing and very complicated. The whole sequence of events sounded crazy to him but he figured that was because he had never been religious enough. The Clarion's interview with the Rev. L. Louis Allison made the front page. Dr. Allison's reputation as a lecturer and teacher was widespread. He was the author of an extremely scholarly book aimed at proving that the date of the writing of the book of Daniel was much later than commonly believed, his philosophical articles had appeared in many important publications, and he had been awarded many honorary degrees. Dr. Allison told the reporter who contacted him that he had figured out what had happened as he drove to the hospital. He had, of course, heard all about the Secret Rapture at seminary but he had never had much interest in such things. Actually it was quite unfair that he and his wife had been left behind, he said. After all, both he and Mrs. Allison had been baptized as infants and had attended catechetical classes and formally joined the church many years ago. Besides, he had all those degrees.

"Is it too late for us then, Dr. Allison?" the reporter asked nervously.  "Late? Why, no, it's not too late," the good reverend replied with a new note of cheer in his voice. "It's not too late at all. We can still make the team. Oh, we might have to go through a difficult seven years but the important thing is eternity. Now that we know it's all true we have a second chance for salvation. Why, I might even write a book about it". "Thanks, Dr. Allison," the newsman said as he hung up. "I feel better about it already." Yes, yes, Dr. Allison thought to himself as he put down the phone. We're going to be all right. This has been a great faith-builder.

The day after the disappearance of the Christians there was a massive worldwide rush to the Christian bookstores. Many of them had not opened for business that day; their owners couldn't be found. But the mobs of people seeking copies of the books referred to in the newspapers weren't deterred. They smashed doors and windows in the stores that were closed, elbowed some clerks aside in the stores that were open, grabbed any book within reach, and fought frantically for those whose titles they recognized from the news reports. Other crowds swarmed through libraries, seminaries and churches, and many people were known to have looted the homes of departed Christians, seeking not their money or valuables but their collections of Bibles, books and charts. Copying machines around the world churned out reproductions of key pages and chapters, and a black market quickly developed for the books themselves, sending their prices skyrocketing until the delighted publishers were able to print and rush to market millions of new volumes in dozens of languages. Hollywood titans bid astronomical prices for the movie rights to the books, and newspapers around the world ran daily feature articles that carefully presented the step-by-step development of the events scheduled to happen over the next seven years.

In the first frantic hours after the news media broke the story, governments around the world acted with dispatch. Swiftly their operatives obtained copies of the necessary books, and the keenest eyes and cleverest minds of their intelligence agents analyzed them. It was quickly apparent to each major nation where it was supposed to fit into the unfolding order of events. "So be it then," some of their leaders muttered. "So be it." But others weren't so sure. Since they knew in advance everything that was supposed to happen over the next seven years, they were pretty sure they could take the necessary steps to prevent at least some of those things from happening. Russian military experts, for instance, assured their masters in the Kremlin that they had no intention of conducting the kind of Middle East military campaign that was charted and outlined in the books, in which they were totally annihilated by the Roman prince. "Let's get him before he gets us," they said. "As soon as he appears, we shoot him." One of their leaders smiled, his face twisting with infinite cunning, "We will shoot him twice," he said. "I read the books; he recovers from the first wound."

In Red China they didn't take kindly to the expense of marching 200 million soldiers all the way across India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq. "On my map that looks like about a 4,000-mile march just to get into a big fight we can't win," one of their leaders said to his chief intelligence agent. "What are we supposed to be after over there?" The agent shook his head. "I don't know," he replied. "It can't be real estate. We've got so much already, and the whole nation of Israel is only about the size of the state of Maryland in the United States." "Well, let's just hope the Russians shoot him twice as soon as he appears," his master replied, "and if they don't, let's try to use an H-bomb by way of an ICBM and keep our boys at home."

In the United States, the halls of Congress rang with heated debate as senators and representatives angrily warned the president against sending any troops to fight, either for or against the Antichrist. "This will be worse than Vietnam!" they cried angrily. The Senate passed a bill condemning the use of U.S. troops at Armageddon. The vote was 95 in favor, 5 had been raptured. And so the world waited. In every nation a majority of the people had all the details of the next seven years committed were nearly over since the books showed that the Antichrist would persecute and kill many believers. All eyes were on Europe, watching for the appearance of the dreaded leader. They knew he would be an Italian or some kind of Roman prince, and they waited anxiously for him to start taking over a 10-nation European confederacy. And somewhere the Antichrist, too, undoubtedly waited anxiously, all too aware that the whole world was watching for his every move. Deep in the blackness of his heart he probably cursed the books and charts that had given him away. There was only one thing he could do. He'd have to go to the False Prophet, much as he hated to interrupt the work that the Prophet was doing in preparation for stamping the number 666 on everyone, and ask him what he should do. The F.P. [False Prophet] was clever, devilishly clever; surely he would be able to conjure up a way out of this impossible mess.

Chapter 6

WEIGHED AND FOUND WANTING

I am not wholly unrepentant for having penned the preceding chapter but on the other hand sometimes it's necessary to fight foolishness with foolishness. Fables should always be spun out to their full length. If you are still with me at this point, and if you have in times past accepted with no questions or with few questions the fable of the Secret Rapture of the Christians, perhaps by now you are having some second thoughts about either [1] some of the scriptural and theological difficulties the concept presents, or [2] some of the violations of good old-fashioned common sense that it embodies. The extreme means employed by the previous chapter were, of course, utilized to point up exactly these difficulties and absurdities. My pursuit of the events following the Secret Rapture to their logical and inevitable conclusion was perhaps ruthless but it was by no means exhaustive. [For example, you yourself probably came up with the idea of the funeral of a Christian where the pallbearers suddenly were stunned to have their burden lightened by maybe 180 pounds, or many more.] We could go on and on, piling the ridiculous on top of the absurd, but I think that we have already adequately proved these important points:

1. The Secret Rapture and the chain-reaction of events following it would constitute a highly visible phenomenon unparalleled in modern world history.

2. The massive body of literature produced in recent years by adherents of this 'fable' would ensure that the world would quickly know and understand what had taken place. [So - to the best of my knowledge, the tattle-tale books and charts are not taken out of the world along with the believers. Why not?]

3. With the theoretical scheme of future events fully exposed in all its detail to the people and governments of the world it seems highly unlikely that those events would then be allowed to occur in the precise order in which they are predicted. [Thus the futurists' own literature would be the best guarantee that the events they predict would not come to pass.]

4. If nevertheless these events were to unfold exactly as predicted, many basic, fundamental, totally orthodox Christian doctrines 'would have to be violated or set aside'. A few of the most important are:

   A. The belief that no one except God knows the time of the second coming of Christ. In the futurists' scenario the world would know that His next coming would be exactly seven years later.

   B. The belief that no one will get a second chance for salvation after the evidence is in. In this scenario, however, faith is no longer necessary; the Tribulation "converts" can walk by sight, not by faith.

   C. The belief that we become God's children only through a spiritual re-birth made possible through the ministry of both the Word and the Holy Spirit. In this scenario, however, we are asked to believe that millions will be converted after the Holy Spirit, who is resident in the church, is taken away with the church.

   D. The belief that the thing nearest and dearest to the heart of God, after Christ Himself, is the church, His creative masterpiece for all eternity. In this scenario, however, the church is merely a temporary instrument whose ministry later will be overshadowed by the spectacular results to be achieved by the Jews in a period of just a few years. Besides their recklessness in abrogating basic Christian doctrines, the futurists clearly violate the limits of common sense with their 'farcical fables'.

Do you really believe that Red China could march, or would march, an army of 200 million across the five sovereign nations that lie between China and Israel without in the process provoking World War III long before they reached Israel? How long would such a march take? Who could control an army of that size? How would you feed them? And can you imagine how crowded it would be when [if] they reached their destination? The combined total of the Chinese and their opponents would create a far worse situation than you'd have if you tried to jam every American citizen into Maryland at the same time. In addition, we have previously pointed out how foolish it is to suggest that the Rapture could be kept a secret considering the fact that it is heralded by the shout of the Lord [can you imagine how loud that must be, to be heard around the world?] and the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God. We also mention briefly again that since things at the time of the coming of the Lord for His church are to be as they were in the days of Noah and of Lot, then destruction and not seven years of fabled events awaits those who are not the Lord's are ["punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord" is the way 2 Thessalonians 1 :9 puts it]. In their desperate effort to find scriptural backing for the idea of the church going up into heaven for seven years, the dispensationalists have seized upon Revelation 4:1, where a voice from heaven tells John to "come up hither," as "a symbolic representation of the translation of the Church as occurring before the events of the tribulation described in chapters 6-19" [New Scofield Reference Edition note to Rev. 4:1].

Was John in that context really symbolic of the worldwide church of Christ of today, or was he representative of just one man receiving a great revelation while "in the Spirit" [Rev. 1 :10] in the same way that Paul wrote of being "caught up to the third heaven" and "caught up into paradise" where he "heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter" [2 Cor. 12:2-4]? Nevertheless, if John were symbolically representative of the entire church, then a consistent application of that theory would require that the church would come back down to earth before the seven years and the Great Tribulation were completed. Why? Because in Revelation chapter 10, John is told to go back down from heaven, to "go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth" [Rev. 10:8] and to "prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings" [Rev. 10:11]. Thus the church, if that is what John symbolizes, would have missed only chapters 6 through 9 of Scofield's tribulation period but would be back on earth to go through all those horrors of chapters 11 through 19. 

Perhaps you have also noticed the dilemma the futurist gets himself into with Gog and Magog. He tells us Gog and Magog represent the Russians and their allies who are completely annihilated and destroyed by the Antichrist and his armies late in the seven-year period and before the Millennium. And yet, after the Millennium, there are old Gog and Magog, still as numerous "as the sand of the sea" and ready for another battle [Rev. 20:8]. Many more examples of common-sense violations could be given, but if the point has not already been made my ruthless pursuit of it will not compensate for lack of insight. Accordingly, we will lay aside the issues we have been discussing and proceed to the more important task of applying our three tests to this first piece of the futurist's puzzle, the two-stage concept of Christ's return.

During Jesus' last supper with His disciples, before His betrayal in the garden, the Master lifted up His eyes to heaven and prayed the eloquent prayer for his disciples that we today identify as the 17th chapter of the gospel of John. That the prayer was not only for the 11 apostles, but also for us is clear from John 17:20: "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word." Jesus said that while He was in the world He had kept His followers in the Father's name [John 17:12] but now, with His departure being imminent, He prayed: "Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, as We are" [17:11]. And then He said: "I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil" [17:15]. Despite that, we have multitudes of Christians today who are praying, "Father, take us out of this world." Now as a minimum requirement, it seems to me that our daily prayers ought to harmonize with our Lord's prayer. 'Can two walk together, except they be agreed?' Are we entitled to harbor a concept different from Christ's regarding our place and expectations in this world? 

Before that memorable prayer, the Lord had told His followers many other important things. One of them was this, "The servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you," [John 15:20]. The implication is plain-we walk in the Lord's footsteps, share in His sufferings, take up our cross daily, and endure to the end. Jesus is our pattern, because He was obedient unto death, God highly exalted Him. He could have called 12 legions of angels to destroy all about Him and set Him free, but instead "for the joy that was set before Him He endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God" [Heb. 12:2]. Are we not called to do the same? Are we not to welcome the testings and trials that may come, and "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing." [Jas. 1 :2-4 ]? Are not those the things that are designed to change us "from glory to glory" into the image of the Lord? [2 Cor. 3:18]. Are we not told in Hebrews 12:1-13 to cheer up, and to accept the chastening we receive, knowing that it comes from a loving Father and is intended for our own good, and that while grievous for the moment "nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness" [Heb. 12:11]?

The sum of these things is this:

1. It pleased the Father "in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings" [Heb. 2:10].

2. "The servant is not greater than his Lord" [John 15:20].

The message is plain. God the Father ordained sufferings for His Son to perfect Him, and for us to perfect us. He puts us in the fire to purge the dross and cause the pure gold to shine forth. He disciplines us and gives us the things we need, the circumstances we need, the problems we need, the adversaries we need, in order to change us into the kind of people He desires. In the light of that, let us apply our three tests to the idea that Christ's second coming is a two-stage event, the first part of which involves a trip to earth's atmosphere, but not to earth's surface, for the purpose of taking the then current generation of believers out of the world.

First, does it glorify Christ? It hardly seems to. In our vision of the church that Christ came to manifest, we saw a people who were called out of darkness, fear and confusion, and were trained, strengthened and equipped to stand steady, as a shining example of God's wisdom and might, in the midst of a world where everything was being shaken. If we now say that these people are to be whisked away from the world before the violent, turbulent end of this age, we introduce confusion, and we know our God is not the author of confusion. We raise questions like these: Was Christ's redemptive work so imperfect that this special people cannot demonstrate God's wisdom to principalities and powers? Was this army so ill-equipped, was God's "Whole Armour" so faulty, that His people cannot stand as an example to men and women in a world gone mad? If not, if in fact they have become the crack troops they are supposed to be, why evacuate them just before the battle? Has Jesus' prayer changed, so that now He will request the Father to take one generation of believers out of the world, or would that violate the rule that "there is no respect of persons with God" [Rom. 2:1])? Is this one generation of servants to be greater than their Lord, to follow a pattern different from the one followed by believers for more than 1,900 years?

How is Christ glorified? We know that after His death, burial and resurrection His Father glorified Him because, though He had been in human flesh just as we are, and "was in all points tempted like as we are" [Heb. 4:15], nevertheless He was obedient to His Father's will, even to the death. So likewise Christ is glorified when His victorious life is lived out in the weak human vessels through whom He has chosen to manifest that glory. For that reason the Lord told Paul: "My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness" [2 Cor. 12:9]. And for that reason Paul could say: "Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake" [2 Cor. 12:10].Christ is glorified by taking His people through difficult situations not around them. How would He have received the greater glory-by rupturing the three Hebrew children or by allowing them to be cast into the fiery furnace and then standing there with them? By rapturing Daniel or by allowing him to be cast into the lions den and then shutting the mouths of the lions? Or consider the vast numbers who are today martyrs for Christ in cruel Communist and Islamic prisons, those men and women who, like centuries of martyrs before them, are "tortured, not accepting deliverance" and have "trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment" [Heb. 11 :35,36]. Is Christ glorified more by their patient exercise of faith in the face of torture and death than He would be if He had just raptured them away? If you've read any of their stories, and wept as Christ strengthened their frail bodies and embraced them in His arms, and you cried, "Glory to God!" through your tears, you know the answer. Does the idea of having your bags packed for that quick trip into the sky still seem so scriptural to you? It seems obvious that it fails the test of glorifying Christ.

How about the second test? Does this doctrine honor the church? I believe we've pretty much answered that in what we've said above. If it doesn't glorify Christ who is the Head, it's hard to see how it can glorify the church which is His Body. Beyond that we can add that it is undoubtedly true that an "escape" story like this can sound exciting, and can be made to sound like a victory. But it is the world's way of dealing with a problem, the flesh's way of dealing with a problem, and that way should not be the church's way. The world says, "Run." The church should say, "Stand."  The flesh says, "Stay out of the land, there are giants there." The church should say, "Enter in, they're bread for us." But the greatest dishonor done to the church through the proposed sudden flight from this earth, is the implication that {[1] the church has failed in its mission and [2] another group of people will do the job of evangelism that the church failed to do.

The fable tellers ask us to believe that after the taking away of the church and the Holy Spirit [who is resident in the church] there then appears a red-hot band of Jewish converts which in turn converts millions and millions of people. Now most Christians believe that we are born again through the dual ministry of both Word and Spirit, and that without the Holy Spirit there could be no convicting, no convincing, no conversion. We also believe that "we walk by faith, not by sight" [2 Cor. 5:7] and that "without faith it is impossible to please God" [Heb. 11 :6] and that "a man is justified by faith" [Rom. 3:28]. However, these so-called Tribulation converts would be walking by sight, with no need of faith. Without the Spirit to convert and empower, without the necessity for faith, the supposed acceptance of their Messiah by the Jewish evangelists would have to be only a mental assent, not a spiritual re-birth, and their supposed ministry to the world would be just the first-century Pharisees again compassing sea and land to make proselytes, and not the true followers of the Lord carrying out the Great Commission. To say that the church, empowered by the Holy Spirit and built up on faith, is a failure in its mission and that later a group of men with only a mental belief will do the church's job for it, is an affront to God's creative masterpiece, "His Body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all" [Eph. 1:23].

Having now failed two tests, the Secret Rapture faces the third: Does it contribute to the spiritual growth of individual believers and help conform them to the image of Christ? [Eph 2:10] "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." By now you probably suspect what my answer to that will be, and you're right. It's my opinion that this belief robs the believer and contributes only to immaturity and defeatism, which are certainly not part of the image of Christ. Why immaturity? Well, look at it this way. Why bother to train for a battle that I'm not going to be in? If I'm going to be snatched away when the going gets tough, why should I get in shape for a fight? Why study the Word; why let the Potter spin me on His wheel, and twist and shape me, and bake me in His furnace; why let the Lord deal with all those un-Christ-like qualities in my life? If I can assume I'm simply going to be taken away one day, and changed in a moment into His image, I will continue to be a spiritual baby until that day. And if that day doesn't come in my lifetime, as has been true for 19 centuries of believers, than I'll still be a baby the day I die.

Why defeatism? Because the Secret Rapture is supposedly the signal for God's clock to start ticking off the last seven years of world history, after which Christ is finally to become King and finally have His kingdom. Only at that time, we are told, are we going to be able to reign with Him. That's futurism of the worst sort, as we will show in a later chapter. For now it's sufficient to say that Christ is already reigning "far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named" [Eph.1:21]. And we are seated there with Him [Eph. 2:6] and are members of His royal household [Eph. 2:19] and His royal priesthood [1 Pet. 2:9]. He "hath made us" [past tense, it's already done] kings and priests unto God [Rev. 1:6] and through His grace and righteousness we reign in life [Rom. 5:17].     The recently contrived doctrine of the Secret Rapture must be judged to have been weighed and found wanting. It fails completely our three tests and deserves the shredding machine. The true Rapture of the church will come when the saints of all ages go up, up and away to meet their returning Lord in the air, to escort Him to earth in rapturous triumph for the final consummation of the glorious kingdom He manifested here 19 centuries ago.

Chapters 7 - 13

Continued