Changing from glory to glory

A Canadian actress by the name of Rachelle Lefevre recently entered a Target store with her non-binary seven-year-old son and was shocked to find that the “Pride” display, consisting of gender fluid mugs and Rainbow-themed clothing for children, had been removed in response to a strong conservative backlash. The large box store had already lost over $13 billion in revenue over the LGBTIAA2S+ display, and now they were getting hit from both sides. The actress’s seven-year-old son, according to his outraged mother, had said earlier upon entering the store, “Look, Mom, it’s Pride week. They’re going to celebrate me.” And we all know how woke seven-year-olds can be about such things.

     But now that the display had been relocated to the back of the store, Lefevre was enraged, fearing her amazingly woke seven-year-old would be crushed by its removal. In an emotional Instagram post she accused Target of being hateful and “trying to erase” the LGBTIAA2S+ community, and she vowed to boycott the store before her amazingly woke son suffered any further violence. She added, “We can do much better than this. We’re not supposed to negotiate with terrorists.”

     If I had just arrived from Pluto and was only told one example of our descending cultural rot and mass insanity, this story would be so instructive, and in so many ways, I wish I’d created it myself. It’s not too long ago when this story might have been found in a National Enquirer-type magazine you could read about in the checkout lane at Safeway. Using this scene as a barometer to gauge the world’s rapid dissent into Rainbow debauchery, it’s obvious we have plummeted closer to Dante’s Inferno, and don’t bother asking how much lower it can go or the devil might overhear you and get another idea.

     But none of this should shock biblical believers, okay, it’s shocking nevertheless, ever new degrees of increasing shockwaves, but we’re told in 2Timothy 3: “that in the latter days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient [rebellious] to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” Is this not the exact world we increasingly live in?

     The moral confusion behind the debacle of LGBTIAA2S+ isn’t because we’ve suddenly discovered that many of us were born gay or transgendered or any one of the other seventy newfound genders. And it’s not because we’ve suddenly become enlightened and that now those who’ve been forced to closet themselves finally feel safe enough to declare their true personhood. No, that’s just the smokescreen, the chosen narrative. It’s no more than another point of contention, a Marxist strategy to divide people: “divide and conquer.” They tried rich against poor, the haves verses the have-nots, but that didn’t play out very well, because as Americans we have unprecedented opportunities for financial advancement and we take care of our poor better than most. They’ve tried socialism verses capitalism, and that began to make some progress in our universities, but it kept losing its appeal with so many enjoying the fruits of free enterprise, especially compared to nations that already practiced Marxism. And then there were those promoting baby killings and those who thought babies should be allowed to live out their lives like anyone else, which sometimes erupted into violent clashes and with imprisonments of those wanting to save the babies. They’ve tried dividing people by race, but their race-baiting efforts kept running out of steam, since America had become the least racist nation in the world. A little perspective here would be useful: did you know that the only nation in all of history that never practiced slavery was Liberia, and that America and the UK spearheaded the ending of slavery, at least in Western Civilization, and that many African and Arab nations still practice it today?  

     The sports world has recently become a dutiful ambassador for this “divide and conquer” gospel, taking away one of the prime reasons sports are so popular in the first place. Who can forget the ungifted quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who began the social justice circus with “taking the knee for equality.” He stirred up the racial pot temporarily, but it fizzled out for lack of much actual racism, since 70% of the players were already black, and so he just settled for a cash out.  A Toronto Blue Jays pitcher came out against some transgender ads on social media and was loudly booed by his hometown crowd, so he quickly repented and fell in line with the program. But too late, his mea culpa wasn’t enough of a penance and he was cut from the team. Major League Baseball teams celebrated “Pride Night” in one of their home games this year, while experiencing backlash from “hate groups” like the religious Right and constitutional conservatives and any others who hadn’t been bullied into abandoning their consciences. Of the thirty-two teams, only the Texas Rangers were bold enough to opt out of celebrating Pride. They’re not called the “Lone Star State” for nothing.  

     But now, it was time for a more radical approach, something to push the already insane, far-Left agenda to new depths of depravity, knowing it would increasingly clash and cause more divisions with normal people who hadn’t completely lost their minds, those who still wanted to retain some connection to our Judean-Christian family-centered ethics. 

     Enter the transgender storm, which swooped in as if pre-planned, just waiting to be deployed. Some doctors gleefully cooperated, finding the removal of teen’s sexual body parts extremely profitable. The sycophant news media played its part, dignifying the subject as a natural evolution of our true selves, and dared any “do-gooders” to express their bigotry. Bud Light agreed to help push the narrative with their transgender Dylan Mulvaney influencer, as did Nike. With Bud Light taking a loss of billions from a transgender backlash from “unwoked” beer drinkers, they realized they were trying to push too much too soon, and so retreated back to safer ground, ground already won, by openly supporting gay marriage with help from Ellen DeGeneres and Amy Schumer, while Kohls joined Target in their dumpster-diving push to Sodom with their binary-fluid clothing line.

     Now they’ve got the two sides where they want them, fighting each other instead of focusing on the marionette-masters pulling the strings backstage. These Central Planners had to be delighted upon hearing of a physical fight that broke out outside a California school district meeting between those who supported teaching third graders about transgenderism and drag queens and those who thought the subjects unworthy of a civilized society. Call it a political shell game, a highly explosive divide and conquer scheme, where one’s eyes are diverted by all the drama of division until the real battle is lost, the battle for freedom, and the soul of a nation destroyed.

     This is how Satan has always operated, going back to the Garden. He came to Eve and invented some hostility between her and God, a division that didn’t exist previously. He not so subtly suggested that God was withholding something good from her by not allowing her to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He then convinced her she was a victim of an unjust system, and now driven by a sense of entitlement, she allowed herself to be set at odds with her Creator, bringing this division into her marriage as well.

     But there is one division, a very necessary division, a righteous division that exists between the natural world and the Kingdom of God. This natural world, with its own illusionary version of reality, that world which we can see with our eyes, that world whose gravity pins us to its surface, that world of the Fallen curse, is rapidly passing away. James says, “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” So now, the god of this present world, who knows his hour is almost up, is laying all its wild cards on the table in hopes of extinguishing any ray of Light.

       The darkness cannot see or understand the supernatural life of those in the Light, so it’s a threat to them. The Light reminds them of what they don’t want to know or even think about, and so just as Saul was obsessed with killing David because he represented that Light, the unconverted world is enraged unless they can snuff it out. Sometimes this threat is so serious it leads to violence, but usually it settles for a further compromise. This natural world has its own system of thought and practice. It’s not an exclusive club, but you’ve got to sell yourself to it if you want to join and be accepted. And it constantly beckons in subtle, and sometimes not so subtle ways, for you to follow them and just give up the fight. The spiritual man has to relentlessly resist seeing the world the way they want you to see it or they will become more like them.

     The ultimate division of mankind will come in the form of a Final Judgement, where Jesus will “separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats… And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” And this final separation is just that, final, and once the curtain is drawn there will be no further debate beyond the grave.

     “Today, if you would hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” against God, who wants to give you a free gift, a gift that will separate you from the Evil that is fast descending and will soon engulf this whole world, for “it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”   

Before my salvation in 1977, I fought in the Vietnam War, First Air Cavalry infantry, bronze star for action in Cambodia, and then like many disillusioned young men in those days, I later became a hippie and even marched with the “Vietnam Veterans Against the War.” We failed, the military defense companies made off like bandits, the Left rejoiced, and millions of innocent Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians were slaughtered, the eventual result of all tyrannical takeovers. Now, in my latter years, I find myself fighting again, here at home, only this time it’s a tyrannical global coup, where our own nation’s leaders are directing the charge.

     Like many others, especially those of my generation, I used to be proud of America. But that was back when they stood for something and before they fell for everything and before being taken over by a cartel of billionaire goons bent on reducing the population of the earth by ninety percent through medical genocide. My apologies if that hit you kind of hard and this is the first time you’ve learned of this, but there was no easy way to say it. Like the beautiful daughter of the King of Taiwan, the physically fit, forty-four-year-old heir to the throne, Princess Bajrakitiyabha, who after receiving a Pfizer booster shot, soon fell into a coma and has now been on life-support for several months.

     Or like the mega-star performer, Justin Bieber, who recently suffered a partial paralysis of his face. His case is being called “Ramsay Hunt Syndrome,” as if the media had to scramble for cover and invent a new disease. I know, it’s a real thing, however rare, so rare that no one outside the field of neurological science has ever heard of Ramsay Hunt Syndrome before. But in an atmosphere where millions of Americans have already been vaccine injured and who will never be able to return to work, it’s difficult to pin this one on a rare disease. And who’s to say Ramsay Hunt Syndrome isn’t just another result of a vaccine injury?

And then there’s that delicate question you have to ask in these situations, in sort of an apologetic whisper: “Was he vaccinated?” Tiptoeing lightly as if walking on a newly filled grave and while paying tribute to the new gods of woke, one dares to respond, “We don’t know.” But what we do know is that Bieber was well-known for his support of the vaccines, requiring them for all who attended his concerts. You don’t have to follow too many dots to realize that Bieber was another victim of a medical crime against humanity.

     And now, comedian and actor Jamie Foxx, who was forced recently to take the jab by his studio bosses, has been vaccine injured, struck blind and partially paralyzed as a direct result. Though thankfully he’s recovering in the hospital, he’s had to, at least, temporarily cancel his latest movie he was shooting in Atlanta with Cameron Diaz. The doctors say they are scrambling to find out what caused his “medical emergency.” More likely, they are scrambling to find a medical scapegoat because they’re not allowed to admit the obvious.  

     Back in 1976, the swine flu vaccine shots were halted after just three reported deaths. The COVID injections have resulted in over 150,000 American casualties, more than twice the deaths from the Vietnam War. But unlike in those days, when Walter Cronkite droned out the daily death count on the CBS Evening News, today’s casualties are censored from the public by these same news agencies. One prominent doctor said that one-fourth of all his patients are for vaccine-related injuries. If one’s head wasn’t buried in the proverbial sand, one might suspect something is purposefully afoot about all this, that is, if they didn’t mind being panned as a “right-wing conspiracy theorist.”

     Until recently, I didn’t personally know anyone who was vaccine injured. I’d only heard it from trusted sources that there were millions of them. But now I know of one, a dear older lady, and she’s angry. Angry that her doctor won’t tell her what’s wrong with her, even though she’s screaming at him that she knows it’s the vaccines. And she knows of several others in the same situation. We didn’t have any ivermectin or HCQ to give her. Thanks to the fraudster and serial-killer Anthony Fauci, along with the CDC and the WHO, it’s much easier to get fentanyl-laced heroin than inexpensive drugs that have proven highly successful in combating COVID. Literally, billions of these tablets have been destroyed and factories that make them burned down for fear they’ll replace BIG Pharm’s drugs like remdesivir, which is not only very expensive, but it has horrendous side-effects and is often lethal and has no actual value in combatting COVID.

     If you are one of those who’ve been vaccinated because you were hoodwinked by the propaganda or bullied into it by your employer, don’t give in to despair. If you haven’t already turned to God, this would be your greatest asset and comfort. He’s more powerful than any poison that’s been put into you. He once protected the Apostle Paul from the poison of a deadly viper, and he can protect you too from the Evil that’s been done to you.

      On a more earthly note, it’s still possible to get the above-mentioned drugs if you know where to look, drugs that will limit the damage and that will shred the spike proteins that were injected into you from the vaccines. You can also start taking Vitamin D and C and Quercetin and zinc and soaking your feet in warm water with Epson salts for at least twenty minutes.

     It may be humiliating and fearful to suddenly realize you’ve been duped, poisoned by people you thought you could trust. For most, this is their first confrontation with real Evil, the Evil that rules this world behind the scenes. There’s the “shadow government,” and then there’s another behind them that wields the real power. So, don’t be ashamed., it could happen to anyone. You didn’t do anything wrong, you were fooled or coerced. Forgive yourself, and forgive God, if that’s an issue. I’m not asking you to forgive those who purposely knew they were injuring you, like the Fauci and Gates-types, that you will need God’s help to do.  

     Did we not see this before because their Evil just wasn’t as obvious back in my childhood 50s and 60s? After all, I was only in grade school when they killed Kennedy. Is it that the coup hadn’t come out of the closet yet? Or perhaps their skills weren’t developed enough back then, but now, with seared consciences and high-tech as their enabling allies, they have fully outed themselves, and like the ancient builders of the Tower of Babel, there is seemingly no Evil scheme beyond their reach.

     So, I am branded by the gods of “woke” as a straight, (“cis-hetero-normativity,” to use the gender fluidity advocate’s own lingo) white privileged, conservative Christian male, one who exhibits toxic masculinity, and a species tilting precariously on the brink of extinction. In our Brave New World, which is neither “brave” nor “new,” my ilk has been relegated to the scum on a public toilet. But don’t expect me to apologize for any of it, I’m just grateful that I wasn’t raised in a hellhole despotic nation like Somalia or Afghanistan, or worse, like China or North Korea. Being an American has offered me freedoms and opportunities most of the rest of the world could only dream of, which has made her the prime target of the World Economic Forum’s Agenda 2030.

     But worse, I’m also a nationalist, because I loved this country, second only to Israel for its solid biblical roots. Whatever her flaws, and there were many over these past two-and-a-half centuries, they were surpassed by her commitment to our Constitutional God-given freedoms, which made us the freest and most prosperous nation in the history of the world. Had we continued to follow God, I don’t believe we would be in this present death spiral. So, like many others of my generation, I grieve the loss of someone I admired for so long, and someone who helped to father in my safe and secure image of the world.

     But now, with our national roots being erased, it’s like waking up one day and discovering your loving parents were actually serial killers. And worse, now they’re coming after you too, with a loaded syringe. It’s that kind of grief. For the freedom-loving and God-fearing, watching America being slowly and purposely tortured to death has led to unavoidable feelings of sadness and defeatism, relieved only by the knowledge that she, who was once Israel’s chief supporter and a spreader of the Gospel to the ends of the earth, had now become the world’s leading exporter of corruption and every brand of moral depravity. Jesus must have felt like this when he wept over Jerusalem, knowing it would soon be destroyed by the Romans because of their unbelief. So, God, being a just and holy God, has no choice but to bring his judgment on America. He has allowed us to degenerate into the End Time’s Sodom and Gomorrah. Better politics is no longer a solution. This time, it’s turn to God or face the ultimate Evil without him.

     One of the most tragic consequences of our national fall from grace is the loss of this recent generation of young adults, who came of age into a world that offered little inspiration for them to even want to be one, at least, not if they didn’t have to. The coup of America has stolen their hopeful future, robbing them of their innocent confidence of a full and satisfying life. Most will never own a home, most will live paycheck to paycheck, and most, outside of God, have nothing to live for, which accounts for the highest suicide rates of young people in our history, especially from drug overdoses. Without God, all people have left is to “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” But if this generation experienced a genuine revival, like mine did in the “Jesus People Movement,” like the one that recently broke out at Ashbury University in Kentucky, a revival built on prayer and repentance, not on a charismatic circus, and that generation turned to Christ, regardless of how things played out in the world, a final harvest of souls could be rescued in these closing hours of this Laodicean Age.    

     I am also grieved by our Third World, tin-pot, rigged elections, by the takeover of our major levels of power, by the weaponizing of our medical profession and even our FBI, by our Stalinist-style censoring and our gaslighting media, by our government-perverted educational systems, by our wokish military, and to the rapid rise and celebration of every imaginable and unimaginable sexual perversion. So, then, why am I not more thrilled at the prospect of Christ’s soon return for his faithful?  For one, that joy is tainted by the fact that most people I see around me are going to unwittingly enter into the Tribulation Period, and many of those are not going to make heaven their eternal home, and the consequences of that are unthinkable. That’s a major buzz-killer. And this grieves the heart of God as well.

     If all this sounds hopeless and depressing, that’s because it is, if it wasn’t for the promise of “Our Blessed Hope,” without which I would just like to cash in my chips at 73 years and call it over for this world. But now, I’ve got a courtside seat for one of the greatest events in all of world history: The return of Christ for His Church, known as the Rapture. Paul said, “Waiting for that blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”

     Is it going to get worse on this earth? Yes, absolutely, which makes Scriptures like Rev.3:10 all that more important. “Because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth.” This is our “Blessed Hope,” that God’s faithful, his Bride-to-be, will be kept from this coming judgment of this Christ-rejecting world. As Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, “For God has not appointed us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” And elsewhere, Paul wrote, “In a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet…For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then, we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.”

     This is the believer’s “Blessed Hope,” the only real hope of mankind. And this Hope is available to anyone who calls upon the name of Jesus. I cannot conceive of living in this present world without God, but with him, by faith, we can rejoice and hold tight to his love, and hopefully slay a few more giants and dragons while we anticipate that soon-coming Better Day.

I briefly attended a church once that believes we have to go through at least the first half of the Tribulation Period. I noticed that some of their doctrine began to take hold of me and I found myself getting depressed and stressed out about it. And then I would get convicted about not being willing to suffer for Christ. That led me to understand that one of the reasons the devil has planted this fallacy among believers is to rob them of their joy and freedom in Christ. I also believe it’s there to diminish one of the greatest evangelistic tools of all times: the sudden and eminent return of Christ in the air to Rapture his Church.

All this motivated me to revisit my own beliefs on the End Times, and especially my convictions about the pre-Tribulation Rapture. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something. I’m not so cemented into “non-essential” doctrines that I can’t be convinced otherwise. In my forty-six years of salvation, I’ve always believed in the “getting Home quicker” option, not just because it was more comfortable, but because I believe Scripture backed it up.

But now that my belief had been challenged, I’ve had to dig deeper. In doing so, I’ve discovered that my theology on the subject was at best, undeveloped and that if I was challenged to defend my position, I would be unprepared and would lose the debate. In re-examining the subject, I went straight to the most defining and understandable Scripture text on this: 2Thes. Chapter 2. The Thessalonian believers feared, because of all their present-day persecution, that the Day of the Lord, or the beginning of the Tribulation had already begun. The main purpose of Paul’s letter was to assure them that it hadn’t. He said, “Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first. The Greek word for “rebellion” is apostasia, which means, “departure.” I believe this word was specifically chosen by the Holy Spirit for its dual application, that is, as we near the Tribulation, where the world will increasingly become more wicked and suffer the birth pangs of the coming judgment, that many believers will depart from the faith. But I believe this “departure,” or another translation has it, “a quick snatching away,” is also describing the Church being snatched away to heaven by Jesus before the judgment of this world begins. Many have debated back and forth about the meaning of apostasia, as if it had to be one or the other. I believe it can mean both.

The second part of that verse says that the Day of the Lord, or the Tribulation Period, cannot begin until the anti-Christ, “the man of lawlessness is revealed.” And how will he make himself known? By brokering a seven-year peace treaty between Israel and her Arab enemies, which will signify the beginning of the seven years of Tribulation. So, in this one verse, Paul is saying that the Tribulation cannot begin until after a great falling away of believers, the Rapture of the Church, and until the antichrist is revealed. If all one had to go on was this single verse, properly interpreted, it would be sufficient to settle the matter.

But some believe, however, that the term, “that day,” refers to the day Christ returns for his own, not the beginning of the Tribulation, and so they mistakenly place the Rapture AFTER the anti-Christ is revealed, requiring the Church to go through at least part of the Tribulation. This argument falls flat because the New Testament definition for “that day” means the “day of God’s wrath,” not the day Christ returns for his Church.

In this same chapter, Paul goes on to say that this “mystery of lawlessness,” the works of the antichrist spirit, are already present in our world, “only he who now restrains it will do so until he is taken out of the way.” And who is this “restrainer” that holds back the full fury of the antichrist but the Holy Spirit that inhabits the Church. Once the Church is removed, the salt and light, Evil will have full reign to do its worst. So, the Day of the Lord cannot begin while the Church, the “restrainer,” is still here. I believe Satan also anticipates the Rapture of the Church, for he can’t take full dominion of the world until she is gone.  

Paul writes further about the Rapture in 1 Cor.15:51: “Behold! I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep [die], but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.” Now, this is going to get more in the weeds, but I’ll try to keep it simple. Many of those who believe in a mid-Tribulation Rapture, believe that this “last trumpet” is the same as the last trumpet judgment of Revelation 11. But these two trumpets are not the same. The main difference between them is that Paul’s “last trumpet” of the Rapture is announcing a gathering together of God’s people in preparation for a glorious departure, while the trumpet of Rev.11 is about God’s wrath and judgment.

According to Amir Tsarfati, a Messianic Jew, this truth about the trumpets is illustrated in the Jew’s exodus from Egypt and their desert wilderness experience. With three million people to manage and no modern means of communication, they used an assortment of different trumpet blasts to communicate their messages. This same idea is seen today when the conductor of a train sounds three short horn blasts to signify to the rest of his crew in the rear that he’s ready to pull out. When Moses wanted his leaders to assemble, he had a single trumpet blast sound. If he wanted all the people to gather, he had two trumpets sounded. Another set of blasts signified a warning of sudden danger. And, when it was time to break camp and move out, a final trumpet blast was sounded. Tsarfati believes this is the picture Paul had in mind when he wrote about the “last trumpet” of the Rapture in 1 Cor. 15.

Another inconsistency of the mid-Tribulation doctrine is in their belief that the first half of the Tribulation won’t be too bad, and only the second half will be what is called “The Great Tribulation” and the “great day of his wrath.” That doesn’t work either, because the first half of the Tribulation contains the seven seal judgments, which include severe worldwide famine, the killing of a fourth of mankind by pestilences, the sword, and wild beasts. Some believe these “wild beasts” to be the demonic giants of Old, the Nephilim, who will be released in the Tribulation and will cannibalistically hunt people down, especially “Purebloods,” those who haven’t taken the vaccines and so haven’t begun the process of “trans-humanizing.” One way or the other, this will be a time where multitudes will be martyred, many who will be beheaded for their faith in Christ. This doesn’t sound like a “not so bad three-and-a-half years” to me. But this also doesn’t work because the terms, “the great day of his wrath” and the “Great Tribulation,” appear in Revelation chapters six and seven, well before what they believe will be the mid-point of the Tribulation in Revelation 11.  

The Church is absent from Rev.4 to Rev.19, not coincidently, the same time as the Tribulation Period. Then, after that time, the Church will return with Christ at the End of the Age, when he comes to defeat the antichrist and revenge the Gentiles for their treatment of Israel. Some have referred to Daniel 7:21 to prove that the church will be in the Tribulation, because it says, “As I looked, this horn [antichrist] made war with the saints and prevailed over them.” But the “saints” mentioned here are not the Church; these are those who converted to Christ during the Tribulation, possibly through the preaching of the 144,000 Jewish evangelists. And how could the antichrist prevail against the church when Jesus said that the gates of hell will NEVER prevail against them?

Many of these same people also believe that the Church will be in the Tribulation because Jesus said in the Olivet Discourse, “But for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short.” But the “elect” in this instance refers to Israel, not the Church, since they are the focus of this judgment in the first place. I’m not addressing the post-Tribulation believers, because that gets into “replacement theology,” believing that somehow the Church has replaced Israel, which is even more bizarre.

In Daniel 9:25, God gives Daniel a picture of the Last Days. He tells him that from the time the decree went forth from King Cyrus to rebuild the temple, God says that 70 weeks, 70 weeks of years, or 490 years are determined for his people (the Jews). Sixty-nine weeks, or four hundred and eighty-three years later, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and was crucified. From that time to the present, there’s been about a 2000-year gap, which is called the Church Age, which will end at the Rapture. So, where’s that 70^th week? After the Church is removed, the time clock for Israel will be restarted to complete those last seven years, which is the Tribulation Period. Again, this final week of Daniel’s prophecy, the last seven years, is all about Israel, the Church has already been removed and is dressed in fine linen, pure and bright. These last seven years are called “Jacob’s Trouble,” not the “Bride’s Nightmare.”       

Only a pre-Tribulation Rapture makes the rest of the Bible fit perfectly into place. To believe otherwise, you would have to torture other scriptures to make the pieces fit the puzzle. Rev.3:10 says, “Because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole earth.” How can this be? Because Jesus took the wrath of God for us. To say that believers must endure years of the wrath of God is to say that Christ’s blood wasn’t sufficient enough to deliver us from it.

I’ve long believed that differences in “non-essential” doctrines shouldn’t separate genuine believers, and I still do. But when a church adopts a mid or post-Tribulation position and this comes over the pulpit, it creates a totally different spirit in the church. From what I’ve witnessed, many people in these churches, though sweet and strong believers have a heavy, depressive spirit, one of foreboding and doom. You can see it on their faces; they just want to be encouraged and built up, but instead, they’re reminded at every church service that they have to go through a Catholic-like purgatory for several years, where they’ll be hunted down like wild animals. I don’t think this is what Paul believed when he said to “encourage one another with these words as you see that day approaching.” Unless you have some bizarre need to participate in a spiritual version of the Hunger Games.