Rapture--Yes/No/Maybe--Isaiah 26:19-21

Day 8

Maybe the Rapture is a myth?

Just man’s way of trying to explain something like Jesus’ Second Coming in a way that is cleaner and more understandable–and less chaotic and confusing.

Maybe Paul’s words in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 was just artistic license a poet might use to describe the vision of Jesus returning and being given a great reception in the air.

Or maybe you’re Catholic and have never really thought much about the Rapture at all.

A.W. Tozer, American pastor (d.1963) and whose The Knowledge Of The Holy has been one of my constant references as I excavate The Word, does think some about the Rapture:

‘And think about the Rapture. Have you ever stopped to think about the Rapture? Now, some of you have gotten so far from prophecy. You’ve been scared out and intimidated and chased down the alley until you don’t believe in the coming of the Lord anymore. The pre-tribulationist and the post-tribulationist and the amillennialist and what have you, have all scared a lot of you people and scared me. I still believe Jesus Christ is coming back to the world He made and died for. I still believe He’s coming back and His feet will stand on that day where they stood once on the Mount of Olives. Do you believe that? I believe He’s coming back.”

If I didn’t feel like Tozer was a teetotaler (and I couldn’t find any proof of this one way or another), I would like to sit a spell on the balcony with him and sip some bourbon.

I feel like ole A.W. was scared up about the Rapture the same way I’ve been. 

What if THERE IS a Rapture and Karen is “caught up” and I’m not?

Tozer continues and echoes Charles Spurgeon in his neglect of ALL of the particulars of the Rapture and end times:

“Now I’ll admit that I don’t go with everything I see in the Scofield notes. And I’ll admit that I don’t go along with everything that everybody puts on a chart and stands up with a long stick and says, now, this is this and that’s that and the other thing is the other thing. That’s carrying it too far brother. I don’t want to know more than Isaiah. I’ll be satisfied if I’m just a shade under Isaiah. But not more than Isaiah. So I’m not going to, I’m not trying to know more than Daniel and Isaiah and John on the isle of Patmos. Yeah, well, I knew John was somewhere but I’m getting tired and forgot where he was.”

I like how the pre-eminent preacher of the last century gets as flummoxed and confused about Scripture as I do.

Tozer mentions  Isaiah–whose prophecy dispensational premillennialists take as a proof text for the Rapture: 

Isaiah 26:19-21 Your dead will live; Their corpses will rise. You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy, For your dew is as the dew of the dawn, And the earth will give birth to the departed spirits. Come, my people, enter your rooms And close your doors behind you; Hide for a little while Until indignation runs its course.  21  For behold, the Lord is about to come out from His place To punish the inhabitants of the earth for their wrongdoing; And the earth will reveal her bloodshed And will no longer cover her slain.

I suppose the “corpses rising” could be that bodily resurrection Paul speaks of for the “dead in Christ.”

Maybe those rooms to hide in are up there with Jesus.

Maybe the “indignation” is the tribulation.

Maybe that’s as good an explanation as any to deciphering Isaiah’s prophecy.

An Old Testament assurance of bodily resurrection with Christ or…something else?

I think faith is a private and personal matter.

I can live right beside, cheek to jowl, with Karen (and that’s always rash-inducing for her because I don’t shave all that much) and feel and believe differently about The Word than she does.

And we talk a lot about those differences and I think we are in communion with God when we do.

But…I think there are times when I should shut my doors to the noises and distractions of the world and pursue God’s truth in private.

Especially when grief or uncertainty or fear or the inevitability of death is a pall over my daily life.

Tozer finishes his thoughts on the Rapture from 1958:

“But then, coming up out of there; getting up out of there. And if you’re walking around on the street and the Lord; you hear the sound of a trumpet that’s louder than the horn of a diesel engine and you recognize the timbre isn’t earthly at all. It’s heavenly, and it isn’t even the music of the spheres. It’s the music of the voice of Jesus, the Son of God. And suddenly you’re transformed. You won’t know what to do. You know, you won’t know how to act. You can’t find out anywhere. When they are going to be presented before the Queen, they know how to curtsy. You know that I couldn’t do it, I’d fall apart, but they do it. They curtsy and they know how to approach kings and queens and presidents and all other VIPs. But nobody’s told us what to do when we get over yonder.”

As far as I know, it's only women that curtsy.  🙂

It’s a good thing too, because my knees are shot and if I have to curtsy in Heaven, I’m going to get kicked out.

But Tozer is right.

No one knows how to act.

Whether it's God’s people being carried away and securely hidden from a time of great indignation during the Rapture or if Isaiah is just saying TAKE A MINUTE and commune with Jesus privately–no one really knows.

Lord, I pray for the fulfillment of the promise in Isaiah and that we would feel the breath of new life in us.  I pray for those who have passed on from this life and that they experience the resurrection and eternal life that You have promised us.

Amen.