The Rapture Won't Happen How You Think

Will the church go through God's wrath? For see, the day of the Lord is coming, a terrible day of his fury and fierce anger. The land will be made desolate and all the sinners destroyed with it. So this is absolutely the great and dreadful day of the Lord. Now, the day of the Lord is actually the day of his wrath. Now, the question becomes, where are we, the faithful followers of Jesus, going to be? During the time of his wrath. This is the first time publicly I have ever said this, that I believe the church is going to be— Hey everyone, welcome to the John Bevere Podcast. I'm here joined with my son Arden. Arden, it's great to see you today.

It's good to see you. We're coming to an end of 2 Peter. It's kind of crazy.

It's been a year.

It's been almost a whole year.

And to be honest with you, we could spend another 3 years on this, but I, I want to keep it rolling.

And, uh, but, and we want to keep going through other books too as it comes up. So also, if you have book recommendations, throw them to the, uh, the comments below.

Yeah, that'd be a great idea. I'd love to hear from our friends what they'd love to hear taught. We've gone verse by verse, and I realize that Peter is moving through this book, first of all, talking about our character, second of all, warning about deception from false teachers, leading into the coming of the Lord. And the more I— I don't think I've prepared so much for a podcast as I have for this one, and yet the more I study, the more I realize how much I don't know. And so I am so crying out to the Holy Spirit. I was up at— literally, I was awake at 3 o'clock this morning, and at 4 o'clock I finally rolled out of bed and said, I just need to go get on this. And I'm just so excited. I mean, the more I study this, the more I get excited. And I want to emphasize to everybody, you know, Peter talks in really raw language about the day of the Lord, about the second coming of Jesus. And I realized that we could spend a lot of time talking about the logistics, just as, and I wanna take us back to an example I gave earlier. I remember back in the days of university when I had final exams. Now you better believe I wanted to know what time that final exam was and I wanted to know where it was. But that's not what I spent all my time preparing for. I spent hours and hours preparing for the exam. And I feel what is more important for the body of Christ is not to know the logistics of the second coming, but more importantly, how do we as the body of Christ, how are we readied? How are we prepared for his second coming? And we started talking about the things that would lead up to the return of Jesus. Number one being the apostasy. Number two, we talked about the latter rain. How exciting.

Always gets me excited.

Yeah, it does. I could talk about that one for podcasts. And then third, the Elijah anointing that would come. Calling those people, the millions that have walked away in the apostasy, back to the Lord. Because God loves people so very much. He's gonna give them every chance to come back, right? Well, today's podcast, we're gonna talk about the day of the Lord. Now, let me say this, 1 John 2:28, and now, little children, abide in him. There's your prep work. Abide in him, all right? That's preparing for the final exam. Why? That when he appears, we may have confidence. I wanted to walk into my final exams with confidence. If I didn't prepare, I was shivering. That we might have confidence and not be ashamed before him at his coming. If I flunked a test in college, I was ashamed before my parents. Okay, they still love me, they didn't throw me out of the family, but I never wanted my dad and my mom ashamed of my work. And so hopefully you will receive what we're saying in this podcast and even in the next one with that kind of a heart. 2 Peter, let's go there. Most importantly, I want to remind you that in the last days scoffers will come mocking the truth and following their own desires. So when we live in the flesh, it will actually cause an attitude in us to mock the truth. What truth will we mock? They will say, what happened to the promise of Jesus coming again? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. Creation. So living a fleshly life will actually position our heart to where we will actually mock the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the truth. We'll mock. But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: a day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years like a day. Now we move on. Verse 10: But the day of the Lord— I want everybody to take notice— the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the very elements themselves will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be found to deserve judgment. I'm gonna continue, but we're not gonna focus on that. We're gonna focus on verse 10. Since everything around us is going to be destroyed like this, what holy and godly lives should you live, looking forward to the day of God and hurrying it along. We hurry it by being busy about the work of the kingdom, living godly lives, being prepared, because God wants us to be what? He wants us to be joyful on the day of his return, not terrified like the sinners.

And also that he's saying before that he's patient for this coming because he wants to see the whole world saved.

He wants all men to be saved, so come to repentance.

But that understanding that we can hasten, we quicken the day of the Lord is pretty amazing, and it should put people more onto mission.

Yeah, I do believe that. Yeah. And so it's really important that— that's why I wanted to read the rest of these without really focusing on them today. On that day, he will set the heavens on fire and the elements will, will melt away in the flames. But we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth he has promised, a world filled with God's righteousness. So Peter is actually spanning the coming of the Lord all the way to the new heavens and earth. So he's actually in these few verses spanning over a thou— a little over 1,000 years. Wow. It's really important that we understand that, because if we're trying to pinpoint all of what he just said into one time period, it's impossible. And so verse 14: And so, dear friends, while you are waiting for these things to happen, I might add eagerly waiting, make every effort to be found living peaceful lives that are pure and blameless in his sight. And remember, our Lord's patience gives people the time to be saved. Let's go back to verse 10. Peter makes a statement: But the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Now we have questions to ask.

Yeah.

Is this unexpected? Is this for everybody? Is this for the unbelievers? Is the day of the Lord— does it affect us believers who are the body of Christ, who are really called the bride of Christ? This is what we want to answer on this podcast. These are some big, big questions. Okay, so where we need to begin, Arden, is what is the Day of the Lord?

Yeah, so Dad, we actually use Logos to not only just take a summary of what the Day of the Lord is, but actually to pull from 75,000 using their AI, pull from 75,000 of the resources that you have to come up with this definition.

In my Logos library?

Yeah, the definition.

Okay, so read it. What's the summary?

I think we have a pretty good summary here. It says the The day of the Lord is a significant concept in the Bible, in biblical prophecy. It refers to the time where God intervenes directly in history to execute judgment and fulfill his purpose. So this phrase appears multiple times in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, and it describes it as a period when God will judge his enemies and defend his faithful people.

Judge enemies, defend his people. Uh-huh.

Okay, but specifically his faithful people. And it says the day of the Lord serves as both a warning of impending judgment for sinners and a promise of deliverance for those who repent and trust in God. So what we talked about recently, it says, it is important to note that while some people assume they were exempt from judgment due to their heritage, prophets like Amos warned that without repentance, the day of the Lord would not be a pleasant time for them.

So Locus just read through 75,000 of my reference books. Yeah. And gave us that summary. I love this. Yeah, I've been using this feature so much. Yeah. All right, so now I want to confirm what you just read from the book of Isaiah. Isaiah writes in Isaiah 13, verses 9 through 13, he says, for see, the day of the Lord is coming, a terrible day of his fury and fierce anger. The land will be made desolate, and all the sinners destroyed with it. The heavens will be black above them, the stars will give no light, the sun will be dark when it rises, and the moon will provide no light. So we see this in the Book of Revelation, we see this over and over, Jesus talking about it in the Gospel of Matthew. I, the Lord, will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their sin. I will crush the arrogance of the proud and humble the pride of the mighty. I will make people scarcer than gold. Wow. More rare than the fine gold of Ophir. I will shake the heavens. Remember, Hebrews tells us yet once more he's going to shake not only the earth but the heavens. I will shake the heavens. The earth will move from its place when the Lord of Heaven's armies displays his wrath. Now, that's a real key word there. Wrath in the day of his fierce anger. Now notice We're not talking about any other time period in history here. Isaiah, he's not talking about when the Babylonians came right here. He's talking about the world. He's not talking about Israel. He's talking about the world. So this is absolutely the great and dreadful day of the Lord. Now, what he says here, Isaiah, is very key to what we're going to talk about. The day of the Lord is actually the day of his wrath. Hmm. Now, the question becomes, Where are we, the faithful followers of Jesus, going to be during the time of his wrath? The day of the Lord is referred to in the scripture, and I've heard many, many teachers and theologians say this, multiple, that the day of the Lord is actually not one single 24-hour period. It's actually the 7-year tribulation.

Interesting.

We call it the 7-year tribulation, and the Bible also refers to the second half the 3.5 years at the end of the 7 years as the Great Tribulation. So many people ask us, how does John and Arden go so deep in their study? It's easy. We have this program called Logos. I have been using it for years. I use it to write books, Arden. I use it for my podcast. I have my notes on one page of the computer and the Logos is right next to it. I can go into the root word studies. I can go back to the original. I can see what was happening in the time period. It's absolutely amazing. It's a game changer.

And not only that, but Logos is offering everyone who signs up right now for this limited time offer 60 days free.

Okay, that's amazing.

So it is completely free for you. So please, please do not miss this chance. Go to logos.com/bavere and you can sign up right there. Not only that though, there is a video that's a Zoom call that we did that shows you how to better use it because If you have a tool and you don't know how to use it, you probably won't use it. And we want people using this every single day because it will help them go deeper in their studying of the word.

So everybody just click the link below and we can jump right back into our study.

Why would the one day not be considered a thousand years?

You know, that's a really good question that I can't answer. And I'm glad that I'm always going to say that to you. You ask such good questions and sometimes I can't answer. Yeah, it's a term. That God has used, like Logos said, all through the Old Testament and New Testament to describe the period that his wrath is poured out upon the earth, which we know from the Book of Revelation, that is going to be that 7-year period. We know this from the Book of Daniel. We know this from the Book of Revelation.

Okay, now the 7 sevens, is that kind of according to it?

Okay, so if you'll remember, there were 70 weeks of years. 69 weeks of those years have already passed. The end of the 69th year is when Messiah was cut off, yet it looked like he appeared to do nothing, according to the New Living. There's still one 7-year period left. Now remember, this was determined for your people. This is what Gabriel says to Daniel. So it's actually specifically referring to the Jewish people. Not the church, the Gentile church. He's saying God is gonna deal with the Jewish people for 77-year weeks. We have one 7-year period yet left, which tells me that the focus of God during that 7 years, that's going to be Israel. Now don't get me wrong, many, many, many Gentiles are gonna get saved during that time. But if you remember in the book of Hosea, he has torn us, he has healed us, He is stricken, he will bind us up. Okay, now a lot of people get really confused when we start talking about where is the church going to be during this time period. First big argument is, hey, why would we ever share that we would escape tribulation? Why would God take us out of tribulation? I think what these people need to understand is tribulation is used in two different ways. All right. You have tribulation now. It's happening now. Jesus said in John 16:33, "In this world, you will have tribulation." Arden, I have sat with pastors around the world, and some of the persecution that's going on is heartbreaking. Just recently, 70 people were beheaded. Okay, I remember sitting in Vietnam with the 5 leading pastors We went over there and we spoke to 4,000 pastors, but then 147,000 joined us live online 'cause they were hiding, they were a little concerned. And I remember the 5 pastors we had dinner with, their faces were glowing. I think 2 of them were missing teeth and it was from the persecution they had received in prison. They were, the previous 20 years, they were in prison more than they were free. And tortured for their faith.

[Speaker] Just for their faith, yeah.

[Speaker] There are people in Africa, in Asia, I mean, people being tortured, even in Europe, for their faith. And so—

[Speaker] Which, I mean, what a perspective. Like, I mean, sometimes we can look at this, and I know we all navigate things that are tough and trying, but we can also have that perspective of like, wow, a lot of us are not being put into jail for more than 10+ years of our life because of our faith. We get to openly maybe express our faith. We openly carry that out and share it with people. But what a perspective just to be able to see, like, thank you, God. Like, sometimes I'm sure people are like, man, I'm going through it. And I know there's a lot of people going through it. But then looking at the things that you get to say, God, thank you. Thank you that I get to live this way. Thank you, God, I get to be open about my faith. It's just every time I hear them, like, it's such a great reminder. Well, they're free, man.

It's Christ's slave. And the man in jail is Christ's free man. That's what Paul said. And I look at the people in the West, we're going through tribulation because tribulation literally is the Greek word thalypsis, which means a pressure on either physical or your soul. And there's a lot of pressures in our mind, in our soul that people have to battle. So it's not just physical torture or persecution. It is, pressure on the soul or on the body.

Yeah, that's good.

If you look at Acts 14:22, Paul returning to the churches that he had established said he strengthened the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith. And this is what he said to them: we must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God. So in no way or means do I mean to convey if I do say that the church is going to be taken out before the tribulation, because I haven't said it yet, if I do say that, I'm not talking about us avoiding tribulation. We are going to go through tribulation, and it may even increase, and it may get far worse in the West. I'm talking about in the United States. But the 7-year tribulation actually speaks of God's wrath. Remember, we read in the book of Isaiah, the day of his wrath. Now if I look at Revelation 6:16 and 17, these people said to the mountains and the rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of his wrath has come, and who is able to stand? If you look at Revelation 18, the nations were angry 'And your wrath has come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that you should reward your servants the prophets and the saints.' So we can see clearly it's called the Great Tribulation, or I should say the tribulation, the 7-year tribulation, but it's just as equally in scripture called the day of his wrath. Now, will the church go through God's wrath? That's the big question. Paul is writing to the Thessalonian church, and he writes more to them about the second coming of Jesus than any other church. In his first epistle, he introduces it, and he writes about it extensively in chapter 4. But look what he sandwiches in between. In verse 10 of chapter 1, Paul says to this Thessalonian church, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivers us, us being his church, from the wrath to come. Okay, so that's pretty clear to me. Now I want to go to the end after he talked about the second coming of Jesus. For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. So So let's now talk about the scriptures that these two scriptures are sandwiched in between. That would be 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. Let's start with the 13th verse. And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope. So this church was historically very concerned about the people that had passed. They really believed Jesus was going to return in their lifetime. And remember, we covered that in another podcast. God almost allowed this to happen with every generation so we would keep an urgency, because this having the urgency protects us from sliding back into slothfulness and into worldliness. So these people had a concern that the people had already died and they were going to miss the coming of the Lord. For since we believe— so verse 14, he goes on and says, for since we believe that Jesus died and was raised again, we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died. Now, I love this. Verse 15: For this we say to you by the word of the Lord. Okay, is there— how many places in Scripture do you see Paul saying, I am saying to you by the word of the Lord? Yeah, I don't see that many. Pretty rare. So he's really prefacing what he's about to say is, guys, this is a direct word from God that we who are alive and that word alive is the Greek word zao, which is actually found in John 6:51, where Jesus said, "I am the living bread." So he's not just talking about physically alive. He's talking about alive spiritually. Many of you know how passionate I am about taking care of the temple of the Holy Spirit. It actually began for me 4 decades ago when the Holy Spirit said, "Your body is mine, take care of it." We've got something we want to offer to you. We've got some dear friends, Ben and Corley Spell. They own a company called Good Ranchers, and what they're doing is they're feeding Americans healthy meat. So many of our meats today are filled with steroids, antibiotics. They are not grass-fed, pasture-raised. If you go to goodranchers.com, you're going to go to a company that actually connects small farms with us. Lisa and I are actually going to have two steaks tonight from them. We get the meat delivered right to our front door. That's exactly what they will do, and they are doing it for tens of thousands of people. We want you to be one of them. So go to goodranchers.com and then type in the code John. It's a Spring Into Action special. You're going to get $40 off plus additional things, and this is their best offer yet.. And I think they're doing this because they love this podcast so much and they love you. We want to see you healthy. We want to see you strong. We want to see you eating well, and we want you to enjoy the food you're eating. So go to goodranchers.com, American meat delivered. Bon appétit. For we who are alive and remain. Now the word remain is really interesting, and I learned this from my friend Rick Renner. The word, this word is, I'm not gonna even pronounce it, the Greek word, but it's defined as a remnant. So we who are spiritually alive, and he's talking about a remnant. So a remnant is a smaller part of a large part. We who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who have died or fallen asleep. For the Lord himself, now do you realize this is the first time Jesus has left heaven in 2,000 years? He has been in heaven for 2,000 years. Yeah. The angel said, hey, he's gone. He's at the right hand of the Father, and he's not gonna return until he comes back for a second coming. Yeah. Okay, so the Lord himself will descend from heaven. Now watch this, with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ are gonna rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up. —now that word caught up, remember it—together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. So notice Paul is emphasizing, we're going to the clouds and we're going to meet the Lord in the air. So we're not meeting him on the earth, we're meeting him in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort—that word comfort is also translated in other translations, encourage. In other words, this will speak speak courage into your heart. Comfort one another with these words. Doesn't say torment one another with these words. Yeah, it doesn't. Okay, it doesn't mean scare one another with these words. Yeah. So when somebody is preaching on the second coming to the people who are walking faithfully with Jesus, yeah, it's not supposed to be a— it's not supposed to breed fear. It's supposed to breed courage. Yeah, it's not supposed to breed discomfort and terror.

It's supposed to breed, courage, and comfort. Yeah, comfort.

All right, good. All right, so we're going to meet the Lord in the air. Now I'm going to take you to Zechariah 14. I know there's a lot of scripture today, but it's important that I back everything up with scripture. Zechariah talks about when Jesus will physically come back to the earth. Yeah, not in the clouds. He's going to physically come back in the earth. Watch for the day of the Lord there's the day of the Lord, is coming when your possessions will be plundered right in front of you. I will gather all nations to fight against Jerusalem. Now, if you go to Revelation, this is when Jesus returns and they're all going to be gathered in the Valley of Megiddo. And there's going to be a great war that's actually going to be one like that because it's going to be the sword that comes from his mouth. I will gather all nations to fight against Jerusalem. The city will be taken, the houses looted, and the women raped. Remember when Jesus was talking about when he returned? He said, pray that your flight is not on the Sabbath. How would that affect us Gentiles? On the Sabbath, do you not travel more than— do you refrain from traveling? No, but the Jewish people on Sabbath could not travel past a certain distance. That's why Jesus said, pray that this doesn't happen, that the Antichrist walks in the temple of God and says, I am God, when the city gets surrounded by the armies, pray that doesn't happen on Sabbath. Yeah.

Which, sorry, and this is like, I have a couple questions, so I don't know if I can interject here, but you brought up the Antichrist. We've talked about this a little bit before. Do you feel like the Antichrist is a singular person, or do you feel like it's more of a spirit?

Excellent question. There is a spirit of Antichrist. Yeah. All right. However, there is a man called the man of sin that Paul talks about in 2 Thessalonians. Yeah. And we're gonna get to that hopefully this podcast, maybe the next podcast. But he's literally called a man who embodies the very antithesis of Jesus Christ. He is literally possessed by Satan. And he is a man. But John the Apostle wrote, many antichrists have already come. So the antichrist spirit is the spirit that fights against the lordship of Jesus, the divinity of Jesus, okay? Any other questions?

Yes, I do. So in terms of a practical standpoint of us saying, okay, all nations will be gathered, what does that actually look like?

Are you saying it's every single nation on earth? The man of sin will be a world ruler. That's very clear. Just like Nebuchadnezzar ruled the world, this man will rule the world.

So you're saying the Antichrist?

He's going to gather the nations, and they're going to come, and they're going to come to devour Israel, and literally, He's going to lead them in a charge, and Jesus is going to come back, and they deceptively think that they can beat him, but they're going to be taken out like that by the word that comes from his mouth, because fire is going to come from his mouth and literally devour those enemies.

And I think I'm thinking on like a practical term of how like warfare has advanced so much where I don't see as much of an army that is coming in, but more of like military strikes and airplanes, aircraft, things like that.

So don't really have any thoughts on that one. I believe it is gonna be a physical army, and the reason is, is because in the book of Revelation, it says the vultures are gonna gather, or the birds are gonna gather, and they're gonna feast on the flesh of these people. So it's not just gonna be equipment. They'll have equipment, but I believe it will be literally a physical army coming down. Yeah, and then we— Swooping down on Israel.

Then we as believers, if we're caught up into that battle, what does that look like?

Okay, so we're gonna get to that. That one we're gonna get to. Okay. Okay, so God says, I'm gonna gather all nations to fight against Jerusalem. The city will be taken, the houses looted, the women raped. Half the population will be taken into captivity and the rest will be left among the ruins of the city. Then the Lord will go out to fight against those nations as he has fought in times past. On that day— now listen to this carefully— his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives will split apart, making a wide valley running from east to west. Half the mountain will move to the north, half to the south. The Lord will, now listen to this, the Lord God will come and all his holy ones with him. Does that mean coming out of the earth? Lord's gonna come from heaven. Okay. With his holy ones. Now we're gonna get to this.

Which I know that, but I'm saying it's talking about half the mountains being shifted. So, what I'm trying to point out is, what I'm pointing out here, there's two different events.

On the second coming.

That's what I'm asking.

One, he meets his saints in the air. The other one, his feet touch. Touch the ground. And then he's going to set up his 1,000-year reign. Okay? Now, the Lord will come. On that day, sources of light will no longer shine, yet there will be a continuous day. Only the Lord knows how this could happen. There will be no normal day and night, for at evening time, It will still be light. Yeah. Okay. So, so much is here. And this is why, everybody, I'm studying and studying and studying and feel like I need to study even more.

Which, which that's probably not thinking in terms of like the sun will no longer exist or will blow up. But it's that what Revelation talks about, like heaven. So brilliant, so bright.

He's going to light up the earth. Now watch Revelation 19. I'm going to compare Zechariah to Revelation 19. Then I saw heaven open and a white horse was standing there. Its rider's name is Faithful and True, for he judges fairly and wages a righteous war. His eyes are like flames of fire. On his head were many crowns. A name was written on him that no one understood except himself. He wore a robe dipped in blood, and his title was The Word of God. The armies of heaven. So just as what did he said? His holy ones are with him. John writes, the armies of heaven dressed in the finest pure white linen. Who's dressed in the finest pure white linen? Just a couple verses earlier it says his bride has made herself ready, for to her it was given to be arrayed in fine linen, which is the righteous acts of the saints. So we know right here these armies, according to Zechariah, his holy ones with him, and this army that's coming with him, this is the church. This is the bride of Christ. All right. From his mouth came a sharp sword to strike down the nations. He will rule them with a rod of iron. He will release the fierce wrath of God Almighty. He will release the fierce wrath of God the Almighty like juice flowing from a winepress. On his robe at his thigh was written the title King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Then I saw the beast the beast would be the man of sin, and the kings of the world and their armies gathered together to fight against the one sitting on the horse and his army. Who's his army? His bride, arrayed in fine linen. Their entire army was killed. That's the beast with a sharp sword that came from the mouth of the one who's riding on the white horse. And the vultures all gorged themselves on the dead bodies. All right, so now we've taken Zechariah and we've taken the Apostle John and we put them together. Yeah. So now we're going back to Thessalonians so we can start talking about this. All right. Paul said in verse 17, I read it earlier, then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them. That's the dead in Christ that come out of the graves in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. So two different situations. One, his feet is going to end up— he's going to devour these armies. His feet are going to touch down on the Mount of Olives. The other one, we're meeting the Lord in the air and we're going to forever be with him. Yeah. The key word is caught up. We who are alive and remain shall be caught up. What is the word caught up? It is Greek word harpazo. Now let me give you the definition of that word caught up. Or harpazo. It means to grab or seize by force with the purpose of removing and/or controlling, to seize, to snatch away, to take away. This word is found 14 times in the New Testament. It's really important that I illustrate this. Matthew 11:12, the kingdom of heaven suffers violent and the violent take it by force. The word take it by force is harpazo, okay? Matthew 12:29, No man can enter and destroy a strong man unless he enters his house and plunders his goods. Harpazo, he takes his goods by force. The parable of the sower, the thief snatches the seed away. That's harpazo. If you look at John 6:15, the people came and wanted to make Jesus king. They wanted to seize him by force and make him king. Let me just do a couple others. When Philip baptizes the Ethiopian eunuch, He disappears. Yeah. And the Bible says that he was caught away. Yeah. Harpazo. Yeah. When Paul says, I know a man in Christ who was caught up to the third heavens, talking about himself, the word he uses, harpazo. I was caught up to heaven. Are you seeing this? Yeah. This is pretty amazing. Revelation chapter 5, the woman brings forth a man-child who would rule the nations with a rod of iron. Her child was caught up. Greek word Harpazo. That's what happened when Jesus went up to heaven. Are you seeing this? Yeah. So this Greek word, you're— it means to be caught up. Now, there's a lot of people today that have coined the term rapture. Is rapture in the Bible? Yes and no. Okay. All right. Let me ask this first. Is the word Trinity in the Bible? No. You won't find it anywhere. But yet we use it freely. We don't call somebody a heretic if they say the Trinity. Right? Second Coming, the term Second Coming isn't even in the Bible. Yet we use it. Okay? All right, now where does rapture come from? There was a guy named Jerome, that in 390 AD he completed the Latin Vulgate. People in the world were speaking Latin, more than Greek, so he spent 23 years to translate the Greek New Testament into what is known today as the Latin Vulgate. Interesting. That Vulgate was so respected by Jerome that it was used for 1,000 years to translate other languages' New Testament. That's how accurate the early church saw his translation. Wow. Okay? Yeah. Now, this word harpazo, the way it's translated into the Latin Vulgate is raptir. Okay. All right. And it's where we get our word rapture from. That makes sense. Okay. Now, there are people who say this word was invented by John Nelson Darby in the 1800s. That's when the rapture started being talked about. I'm going to tell you that's not true. Yeah. And I'm going to— I'm going to say this. I have early church fathers and I have to go way down in my notes. And here they are. I'm going to show you that people before John Nelson Darby talked about the saints of God being caught away and not being judged. Yeah. First of all, Enoch. Now, I want to make this clear. This is not scripture. But Enoch walked with God, and he was so close to God, God took him. Yeah. Okay. Billy Graham walked close with God. And when Billy Graham writes something in a book, I know there's something that's come out of prayer, and I'm going to treat what he says differently than the authorized canonized scriptures. But I'm going to put a lot of weight in his prayer. Enoch says they, the godly, will not die in the time of wrath. Okay. They will not die in the time of wrath when their number is complete, but instead live in peace with the number of their years multiplied eternally. There is a man named Shepherd of Hermas. He lived in AD 150. Okay. This was a great leader in the early church. He wrote, go therefore and declare to the elect of the Lord his mighty deeds and say to them that this beast is a type of the Great Tribulation which is to come. 'If you therefore prepare yourselves with all your whole heart and turn to the Lord in repentance, then you shall be able to escape it.' Do you remember Jesus said, 'Pray that you might be able to escape all these things,' talking about the tribulation? Okay, it's not that we are afraid of tribulation. No, Jesus said you're gonna have tribulation. It's just, we're talking about escaping the wrath of God, not tribulation. All right, Irenaeus. He was taught by Polycarp, and Polycarp was a direct disciple of the Apostle John who got the Book of Revelation. Irenaeus wrote this: When in the end that the church will be suddenly caught up from this, then it is said there will be tribulation such has not been since the beginning, nor will be. Irenaeus wrote that. Yeah. In the first 3 centuries. I think it was the 2nd century he wrote that.

Being 2 people basically removed from John. Yes. That's pretty interesting.

Hippolytus, he's another church father. I think he was in the 300s, wrote, "Those who hear the sound of the trumpet stand before the Lord. They do not resurrect after the wrath is poured out, but before it begins." Ephraim the Syrian in AD 373, So we're talking about the 4th century. Because all saints and the elect of the Lord are gathered together before the tribulation, which is about to come and be taken to the Lord. Okay, so now I think everybody's beginning to understand this is me personally. Yeah. Okay. And I'm going to say this, if somebody is listening to us right now and they say, no, I believe that the saints are going to be taken at the end of the 7-year You're my brother and sister in Christ, and there is no way I'm dividing over this with you.

I'm not gonna argue with you about it. Yeah, with other people.

And don't argue with other people, please. Well, hey, Mom, Mom is up. My own wife thinks it's a post-tribulation, okay? So we are very much in love. We preach together.

You guys could disagree.

We live together. I sleep with her.

And yet we have two different viewpoints. So if you guys can agree and you live with each other and do all the things, then you guys can be okay with it in the comments.

I have done this with so much fear and trembling. And I realize this is the first time publicly I have ever said this, that I believe the church is going to be taken away prior to the 7-year tribulation. All right, so we've established this word caught up, harpazo. Now, What a lot of Westerners don't understand, and I have studied this, I have read like 2 or 3 books on this, and I have loved it, is this is all wedding language. It's not wedding language today. It's wedding language in the days of Jesus. Yeah. Okay. Jesus tells about an ancient Jewish wedding, and he uses it to describe how he's going to come get us. This is something we are going to talk about in the very next podcast. Gosh, I'm gonna leave everybody hanging. Yeah. But the word harpazo has a direct connection to the ancient Jewish wedding. And we're going to see how Jesus speaking to these guys, they perfectly understood what he was saying. Because every one of them had either been a part of a wedding, or been in weddings in their days, and their weddings are totally different than our weddings, and we're going to talk about that in the next podcast.