Are We Days Away From The Rapture?

I believe we have been living in the last days for over 2000 years now. Even Paul and several other disciples thought that the rapture would take place in their lifetime. I just taught my Sunday School class yesterday about how all the signs have been given and all the prophecies have been fulfilled. All we are doing now is just waiting. But if Russia starts talking about attacking Israel we better get ready!

 

Fig tree - fig leaves. Any day now.

 

1The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, 2who testifies to everything he saw--that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. 3Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.

I guess the words- "soon"(vs.1) "and time is near" (vs.3) don't mean what they say they mean. Rather misleading to the early church don't you think?

Fig Tree

There really is no indication that the budding of the fig tree in Lk. 21:29-31 referred to Israel becoming a nation in 1948 (or in any other year). Verse 29 shows that the fig tree is not the only thing that sprouts leaves when summer is near. Jesus said, “Watch the fig tree and all the trees”. If we are to take the budding fig tree to mean Israel becoming a nation, then we must take all the other budding trees to refer to all the other nations in the world somehow becoming nations. But this would not make any Biblical sense.

Jesus did at other times use a fig tree to illustrate fleshly Israel. Once was when he cursed a fig tree on His way to Jerusalem (Matt. 21:19). After He cursed it, He said to it, “Let there be no more fruit from you forever.” This indicated the cutting off of fleshly Israel as God’s chosen nation forever. Today Christ’s Kingdom is God’s Nation, and all physical Jews are welcomed to become citizens of that nation along with all other nationalities. But fleshly Israel will never again, according to Jesus, produce fruit as God’s chosen nation. That holy duty and privilege belongs to Christ’s followers both now and forever (cf. Lk. 13:7-9; Rev. 6:13). The fig tree was not the main symbol of Israel anyway. Instead, it was the olive tree. - David A. Green

Mathew 24

What is the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?” (Matt. 24:3), they must have had in mind the destruction of the temple; Jesus had just told them that the temple was going to be completely destroyed (Matthew 24:2). For the disciples, the destruction of the Holy Temple would have been viewed as nothing less than a massive upheaval or end of their entire religious/political world. So it’s not surprising they would connect the destruction of the temple with the final coming of the King and with the end of the age (cf. Isa. 66:6).

Jesus said, “Many false christs will rise up, and false prophets” (Matt. 24:24). The rising up of many impostors was a sign that the last days had arrived. The apostle John understood that this was being fulfilled in the first century A.D. when he said, “...it is the last hour, and as you heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have risen up; by this you know that it is the last hour” (I John 2:18). John told his readers in this verse that they could know it was “the last hour” (the last hour of Biblical Judaism) because “many antichrists” had risen up. In other words, since Jesus said that many false christs and false prophets would appear in the last days, John and the other Christians knew the end was indeed near for them because many of the deceivers had already appeared.

Jesus said, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14). The good news had been preached to all the world by the time the book of Romans and the book of Colossians were written in the first century. Romans 10:18, “Their voice (the voice of those preaching the good news) has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world”. Col. 1:23, “This...gospel...has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven”. And shortly after the good news was preached in the whole world in the first century, the end of the Old Testament world came in fiery judgment in A.D. 70, at the destruction of Christ’s enemies.

Finally, in Matthew 24, Jesus said, “This generation will in no wise pass away until all these things have happened.” “This generation” means the same thing here as it does in most other places in the NT. It speaks of those living at that time. So all of Matthew 24 was indeed fulfilled within the forty year period between the cross and the destruction of Jerusalem, including the parousia and the end of the age. - David A. Green



1 Thess. 4:16-18 says “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 air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” How could this be fulfilled already?

ANSWER:
One thing that needs to be mentioned right up front is that there is a tremendous similarity between the language here in this context (1 Thess. 4, 5) and Matt. 23-25 (esp. Matt. 24:29-31). The angels, trumpet and gathering are mentioned in Matt. 24. The angels, trumpet and catching-up are mentioned in 1 Thess. 4. We should always use the easier passages on a subject to help interpret the more difficult ones. In this case, Matt. 24 is the easier one. It is a matter of historical record (Josephus, Eusebius, Tacitus and the Talmud) that the trumpets, voices of angels and angelic activity were seen and heard in the time leading up to and during the destruction of Jerusalem. Unfortunately many Christians are just not aware of this. They are not being taught this by current (predominantly-futurist) clergy. The “catching-up” (1 Thess. 4:17) or “gathering” (Matt. 24:31) was accomplished when the faithful remnant of Jewish believers with the in-grafted Gentiles were transformed (and transferred) into Christ’s new spiritual Israel. This was accomplished at the same time the old fleshly-based Israel was dissolved at A.D. 70. The meeting-place is the heavenly places in Christ – the spiritual kingdom.

The word ‘shout’ as used in 1 Thess. 4:16 carries the meaning of a command, or order. When God’s wrath was poured out on fleshly Israel, the command went forth in heaven for the Lord Jesus to return even as He had promised He would. That there was also an earthly ‘shout’ is undoubtedly more than mere coincidence!

“... Nor can one imagine anything either greater or more terrible than this noise; for there was at once a shout of the Roman legions, who were marching all together, and a sad clamor of the seditious, who were now surrounded with fire and sword. The people also that were left above were beaten back upon the enemy, and under a great consternation, and made sad moans at the calamity they were under; the multitude also that was in the city joined in this outcry with those that were worn away by the famine, and their mouths almost closed, when they saw the fire of the holy house, they exerted their utmost strength, and broke out into groans and outcries again; Perea did also return the echo, as well as the mountains round about the city, and augmented the force of the entire noise...” (Josephus – see 2 Peter 3:10).

The ‘trump’ of God is thus defined (Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance - Greek Dictionary of the New Testament), as a vibration, reverberation, or ‘shaking’. This kind of language was used in the OT prophets quite often of God’s judgment being poured out on wicked nations. This time the judgment of God was poured out on the Old Covenant world, and shook its institutions to the ground and replaced them with the real spiritual things that had only been prefigured and foreshadowed by the Jewish temple system.

Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger. (Isaiah 13:13)

The LORD also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the LORD will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel. (Joel 3:16)

For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land. (Haggai 2:6)

Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. (Hebrews 12:26)

The vibrations of the destruction of O.T. Jerusalem reverberated throughout not only the kingdoms, nations and empires of the earth, but the heavens also (where the angels, principalities and powers are).

It is worth noting some more of Josephus’ statements in regard to the tremendous significance of this disruption in the affairs of the world:

“This was the end which Jerusalem came to by the madness of those that were for innovations; a city other wise of great magnificence, and of mighty fame among all mankind.”

“...it had so come to pass, that our city Jerusalem had arrived at a higher degree of felicity than any other city under the Roman government, and yet at last fell into the sorest of calamities again. Accordingly it appears to me, that the misfortunes of all men, from the beginning of the world, if they be compared to these of the Jews, are not so considerable as they were.”

“Where as the war which the Jews made with the Romans hath been the greatest of all those, not only that have been in our times, but, in a manner, of those that ever were heard of; both of those wherein cities have fought against cities, or nations against nations.”

“That neither did any other city ever suffer such miseries, nor did any age ever breed a generation more fruitful in wickedness than this was, from the beginning of the world.” (Matt. 24:21; and Mk. 13:19).

 

Did the term "last days" have any real meaning to those who originally wrote it or not?

Recently I've heard that Saddam's regime is in it's last days. I hope the people who said that are not dispensationalists!

In Christ,

Tim