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The Sweet bye N’ bye Nasty Now N’ Now? General James Green
True, Jesus did teach the END of the age—when the world as men know it would END, when God and the Son of Man would overthrow the dark forces of evil in a cosmic act of judgment, and establish their utopian Kingdom here on earth. We don’t want to lose sight of this, but we can’t just dream about these events while the world around us NEEDS SALVATION, DELIVERANCE, HEALING, TEACHING!
Plenty of Doomsayers I BELIEVE in God’s judgments, as well as His Prophets proclaiming such doom, but still, I find it unchristian for these modern ones to focus entirely on END TIMES PROPHECY, and not work at setting the captives FREE. Most of us remember Edgar Whisenant’s book “88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will be in 1988” (Nashville: World Bible Society, 1988). I well remember that year, for I was teaching WHY there wasn’t going to be a rapture (I have all those tapes too)! Being a former NASA rocket engineer, Whisenant was considered SMART. He predicted that some time during the Jewish festival of Rosh Hashanah, Sept. 11-13, our Lord Christ would leave heaven and come to earth to “catch up” His people (the RAPTURE!). In fact, I was brainwashed with this during my “church” ministerial training in a Pentecostal denomination from 1972-1977. The Tribulation was supposed to begin at sunset Oct. 3, 1988, when Russia invaded the tiny state of Israel. I won’t bother to repeat this, for it has been repeated for centuries already. Of course this never happened!....and it never will either. But, as far as Whisenant, and countless other are concerned, their FAILED prediction is blamed on their “MISCALCULATION OF THE JEWISH CALENDAR.” So, what did Whisenant do about his failed prediction? What did Hal Lindsey do when his predictions failed? You got it!...write another book!! Whisenant wrote: “The Final Shout Rapture Report” (1989 of course), explaining his slight miscalculation: the end, he reassured his followers, would surely arrive now on the new date of Sept. 11-13 1989. Well, dear ones, as I point out in my “Rapture” teachings, 1988 has come and gone along with 1989, 1990, and up until today (2014–still going strong 26 years later!)
Millions and Millions YES, MILLIONS are being deceived by all these ‘END TIME prophets,’ and they still make lots of $$ off of lazy “Christians” who don’t study their Bibles. Thru the years I have run across dozens and dozens of Whisenant and Lindsey’s discarded books. However, Mr. Lindsey keeps going on with his unBiblical books, and people still buy them. He tailor-makes his books for every distraught decade, hoping that he will finally be RIGHT. Bart Ehrman, in his book “Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet” writes: “The failure of these past predictions to materialize has done little to stall the cottage industry of prophecy books. In fact, if millions of the Bible-believing faithful in America thought the time was ripe at the end of the 1980s for the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies, the end of the 1990s (when his book was published) has created even more worldwide interest in the possible end of the age, even outside of the evangelical ranks.” This is so true! Just look at all the movies Hollywood has made with the END TIME theme. I do believe in the END, but not the way these false prophets predict it. I gave up on all this “web spinning” in 1979 when the Lord taught me about the falseness of the “rapture” (a theory indeed).
Nasty Now N’ NOW! FAR LESS believers want to face the every day grind of things. However, WE HAVE BEEN COMMISSIONED BY CHRIST TO MAKE DISCIPLES OF THE NATION (Matt. 28:19), not tease them with religious intrigue. And, we are taught in Holy Scripture to produce fruit in our own lives...this is in God’s Word:
◘ What can we do to serve others? ◘ What can we do to make disciples? ◘ Can we make Biblical Truths march and conquer some field of practical life?
WE CANNOT GO ON LIVING WITH OUR HEADS IN THE CLOUDS.
The sage in the armchair, who constructs fantastic ideals (like the Rapture, or the prosperity message) of life out of his/her head, has lost his/her true audience, and can no longer live upon the praise of his/her readers. Even though they keep on making their imaginary stories, only the BIBLICALLY UNEDUCATED will buy them...that is why so many folks in America purchase these books! Truth is shunned, lies are embraced: this pretty well sums up America. If one is called a ‘prophet’ or even a ‘Bible teacher,’ that one should do something to arrive at godly wisdom in the practical fields of tasks, not conjecture and propagate fantastic dreams. The junk pushed off as God’s Word/Truth today borders blasphemy! How Long? HOW LONG will you silly American “Christians” believe these liars? I ask you plainly: “Is the Rapture prophecy a heresy?” It cannot be both true and false. To make things worse, within the “Rapture” camp, we have the pre, mid, and post folks, it has to be one or the other—if you insist there is such a thing.
“Caught Up” “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” (1 Th. 4:16-17). For the sake of argument, why do people believe that 1 Thes. 4:16 and 17 speaks of a “Rapture,” that is, a “catching up” God’s people off the earth? I know what the pro-rapture folks teach, for I once taught this (the pre-rapture theory). I found out, to my shame, that THE WORD, “RAPTURE,” DOES NOT APPEAR IN THE TEXT OF MY TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE, IN ANY LANGUAGE! What we have is a fabricated word. But they argue: “the word ‘rapture’ came from the Latin, ‘rapio.’” This may be true, but the texts (1 Thes. 4:16, 17) were first written in Greek, not Latin. A Latin to English dictionary defines the Latin word, “rapio” as: to seize, take by force, to become one...and this is the root word for the English word, “rape.” I highly suggest the use of a good Greek concordance of the Bible.
Young’s Analytical Concordance ON PAGE 140, under the word, “caught” we cannot find 1 Thes. 4:17 listed! Well, let us look up the word, “up” (ano, G507), “up to” (heos, G2193), and “to rise up” (anatello, G293)...still no 1 Thes. 4:17 found. You can find the words “catch up” (harpazo, G726) in vs. 17. But if one looks on page 72 (in back of Young’s in the Gk. Lexicon), we find out that harpazo appears some 13 times in the KJV, and is translated 6 different ways: catch, catch away, catch (caught) up, pluck and take by force. This “take by force” of Young’s, agrees with the English translation of the Latin word, rapio= “to seize, to take by force.” If we turn to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, on page 176, word G726, agrees with Mr. Young’s definition of the Gk. word harpazo, and is derived from the word G138, haireomai. If we translate this word into English it means: “TO TAKE FOR ONESELF, TO PREFER OR CHOOSE.” [Note: This phrase “catch up” more accurately means: “GOD’S PEOPLE WILL BE GATHERED TOGETHER FOR HIMSELF,” instead of the church misinterpretation that: “they will fly up in the physical air in the rapture.” The proof for this comes from the fact that the Greek word “up” (G507) is not used in the 1 Thess. 4:16-17 passage. The word for “physical up” is what we can see in John 2:7: “Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them UP TO THE BRIM.” In this Thessalonians supposed “proof for the rapture” text, the word used is harpazo (G726), which means “CAUGHT UP TO GOD” in a SPIRITUAL sense. Harpazo is used in this Scripture, just as it is used in reference to John being caught up/away in Rev. 12:5, and Paul being caught up/away in 2nd Cor. 12:2+4. These passages use the same Greek (harpazo) word meaning “taken/gathered,” NOT “PHYSICALLY FLY UP IN THE AIR,” (which would be G507). We see that “caught up” does not really mean “physically up,” so what does it mean? Going back to the stem of the word, G138 (aihreomai {according to Strong’s and Thayer’s}/haireomai {according to BDB/Vine’s), we can see it used in other passages translated into English: CHOOSE, CHOOSING, AND CHOSEN. So, the faithful of God’s people will be gathered/chosen for Him in the Spirit {To find out more about how “air” means “spiritual air,” and many other in-depth aspects of this conjured up false doctrine, request General Jim’s explanatory and realistic anti-rapture teachings called: “Coming For Or With The Saints?” parts 1+2.} M.T.W.] If one really wants to study the 12 other Scriptures where harpazo is used, NOT EVEN ONE proves that it means a physical removal of living people from the earth/world up to heaven.
Get Serious! WE’VE ALL BELIEVED that heaven was/is UP!...but consider this: take 4 people, from 4 different directions in the world (it being round, not square). Now, think, if a rapture did occur, and the living saints were “caught UP,” these people would go in 4 DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS. Correct? Most certainly. So, the one at the North Pole would go up, and the one at the South Pole would go to, what would be up to them, up, which would mean the other would be going down. See how foolish all this literally ‘up’ thing is? I go into all this in my Rapture teachings, along with the word “air” (there is no air in heaven, for air is only so many feet above the earth), and the word “clouds” (we would have to have a universal cloudy day for the saints to be “caught up” in the air on clouds). With a thorough study of the Greek words mentioned, one would have to lie to himself/ herself to believe in a physical rapture. Getting Back to Earth NOW THAT WE’RE BACK TO EARTH AGAIN, WE HAVE A MORAL OBLIGATION TO TEACH AND PREACH THE GOSPEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD….NOW! Yet, we have “great” ministers that do nothing but write books and teach about the End Times that are almost always centered around a rapture. In a society where our duties must be wrought, it is good if we practice/do Mark 16:15-18. Why spend our days up in the clouds dreaming while souls are dying all around us? Church’s Grand Sin! IN OUR GENERATION, Church after Church has toned down the idea of world missions. They have settled for giving small sums of $$ to support a missionary or two. We must raise up the battle standard once again, let it fly in all the countries of this sin sick world. Away with disobeying God’s commission/Jesus’ official position, which conflicts in any way with their holy standard for men to live by. We must work while it is day! True Christianity BEING CHRISTIAN is not the pursuit of, and acquiring the accumulation of stuff and things, but LIVING AND TRANSMITTING THE TEACHING OF CHRIST. We should acquire a direct and personal apprehension of God, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and then interpret/translate our experience to our generation. As far as its significance is concerned, Christianity is essentially social; we are living Ekklesia life first, and witnessing second. Real Christianity was never meant to be a disembodied idea, or ideal, or spirit. We are to be ONE (in union) with the Three, and Transmit the power, glory, Word, miracles, signs, wonder, etc. to the lost. I realize what I’m writing will be, and is, tedious, painful and many times, misunderstood...even hated! But, love for God, and our fellow man should be our supreme motive to carry on and incarnate Matt. 28:19, sowing the seeds of the Gospel kingdom throughout the world.
Force or Infusion? THE EKKLESIA is not to use violent means and methods to form a new social order, nor use legal enforcement of biblical Truths. But, by the vital infusion of a new living Spirit, we can propagate a passion of love for the lost. May we beg our God for more frequent outbursts of Pentecostal faith, fervor, and FIRE! The immanence of God should not be swallowed up and lost in the vast congeries of things, but it should be taken to our bosoms, loved, and transmitted to the lost, the miserable, and the sorrowful. His nature is transcendent, as well as immanent. His love can go down to the deepest pit where some men dwell, or it can ascend to the heights to give us glimpses of eternal glory. He is both within us, and beyond us, within the confounds of time, and beyond eternity. What god is likened to our God? We would like to
hear from you!
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