October 9, 2012

• Gathered To Heaven, One Group After Another

  My Bible college education began with a course entitled Biblical Eschatology back in 1991  because I could afford it, a deeply- discounted correspondence course offered by the Moody Bible Institute. I ordered it without even knowing the meaning of the word eschatology.  I studied earnestly and learned the differing positions regarding God’s harvesting of His saints from the earth at the end of the present age, the age of grace.  And in the end I accepted the position of the course, that is Pre- tribulation, over Mid- tribulation and Post- tribulation, all three relative to that six-year period of hell on earth known as Daniel’s Seventieth Week, or Jacob’s Trouble, or The Great Tribulation.  And I’ve rested comfortably in my Pre- tribulation position for twenty years. 

  BUT GOD can teach even this old dog new tricks!  And recently were my eyes opened to see that The Book of Revelation clearly teaches a "pan- tribulation" or successive harvesting of God's people still living during the time of the “first resurrection” when the Lord Jesus Christ returns for His people and to judge those who are not. 

  First, there are some who "escape" the tribulation, being taken to heaven before it comes. 

  Jesus said “But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly.  For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth.  Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.”  Luke 21: ^34-36 

  And the Apostle Paul wrote: "For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.  For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.  Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air."   1^st Thessalonians 4: ¹⁵ 

  There are others who suffer into and through at least part of the tribulation and are only taken to heaven out of it.  Rev 7:14.  And there is a peculiar company of sealed ones, jewish and not gentiles, who come out of the tribulation at a still later period. Rev 7: 1 - 8

  And there is a "harvest of the earth," still subsequent to those sealed ones’appearance with the Lamb on Mount Zion, of those under torturous pressure by Antichrist who "had not worshipped the beast, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands." Rev 14: 14,15;   Rev 20: 3 –5

  All of whom together make up the fullness of the first resurrection.  Rev 20: 5 - 7 

  In this I see a new importance of learning what it means to be “counted worthy to escape all these things,” and also a glimmer of horrible hope of eternal life even for “apostate Christians.”  So, where do you stand?

   

  • 3:17 pm
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