Posted on 03/24/2017 6:17:19 PM PDT by amessenger4god
I am being gathered by the angel of the Lord, the chariots of the Lord, there are thousands upon thousands, the coming of the Lord is as lightening is from the east to the west...there was a sense of swiftness, but it was almost as I was seeing it in slow motion, this lightning coming, I was seeing it in slow motion, I didn't see a driver, I didn't see an angel, I didn't see the conveyance, I just had a sense, I knew I was being carried and taken and it was moving swiftly, and people were being snatched from homes and from the streets.
And I remember specifically going into a particular home and there were 3 people that I recognized, 2 were friends and 1 was a family member, and we went right by, and there was as sense, a sudden sense, oh God, they were being left behind, and the Lord allowed me to, for a few fleeting moments, to sense the terror of what it would be like to be left behind when the angels of the Lord come and gather His elect from the 4 winds.
I was made to know at that time that even those who call themselves Christians, and were not really Christians, who despised the grace of God went out and sinned and said I can easily confess, never did forsaking their sin, there was a sense that even though they were sleeping they were aware, there was an awareness that the Lord is coming and there is a sudden moment because I saw hands being raised, people reaching out and waving.
In fact as we kept moving on there were people that were moving and trying to get the attention of this driver, this conveyance, and I was screaming and yelling get out in the open, as if I thought if they were out in the open they could be seen and get caught up but it went swiftly on, but there was a sense that I have never experienced in my life, even though all my life my father taught on the coming of the Lord, my grandfather taught on the coming of the lord, taught about it.
The bible says we shall all be changed, in the twinkling of an eye, suddenly we're going to be changed, the bible says, this corrupt body shall put on an incorrupt body just like His. And the bible says that we are to be prepared and ready, expecting, the bible says He is coming for those who look for His appearing. And those who are expecting, even though sleep they are going to be caught, if it's in the middle of the night.
Now I'm not going to be get into the doctrine of the rapture, when this happens, before the tribulation, middle of the tribulation or after the tribulation, I am just telling you I had a sense of the horror it's going to be for those who knew the gospel, who had one appeal after another, who knew the grace and the mercy of God and they were not ready. They were not taken, they were not gathered in this, and I remember the swiftness of moving, and seeing the people left behind, the conveyance just passing by, and this terrible sense. Lord I know I'm saved, I know I'm redeemed, I'm going home, but those 2 friends and that member of my family... and there was a terror. Two shall be sleeping in a bed, one shall be taken the other left...watch therefore He's coming as a thief in the night. He's coming folks.
Right now I sense in my spirit that in less that 5 years there will be no more so-called gospel television networks. They will all fall into bankruptcy and absolute ruin.
I have had recurring visions of over 1,000 fires burning at one time here in New York city. I am convinced RACE RIOTS WILL SOON EXPLODE! New York City is right now a powder keg-ready to blow!...federal and State Welfare cutbacks will be the spark that ignites the fuse. NEXT YEAR, New York City could have over 100,000 angry men on the streets, enraged because they have been cut off from benefits....Federal troops will have to move in to restore order. New York City will have tanks running down its avenues....Churches will be closed for a season because it will be too dangerous to travel about. Fires will rage everywhere.
For the last two years I have been crying aloud, warning all who would hear that America is receiving her last call and that judgment is at the door. I did not say this was the end of the nation, but the last call before a financial crash.
I am writing this letter to you on Saturday, April 15th, 2000. I have on my desk the headlines in yesterday's paper: "BLACK FRIDAY - BIGGEST ONE-DAY DROP IN HISTORY." The Dow fell 618 points - the Nasdaq fell 355. I do not know what is coming in the next sixty days. If the market bounces back, I can assure you it will be temporary. THE CRASH IS INEVITABLE - NOTHING CAN STOP IT.
In prayer, I have told the Lord I am ready at any time to confess I am wrong - that I must have spoken from my own fears or that I have spoken unadvisedly. Recently, when the market reached record highs, I wondered if those calling me a false prophet were right.
Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.
Moses writes this about the righteousness that is by the law: “The person who does these things will live by them.” But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim: If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.
But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. - 1 John 5:13
Then hear from heaven, your dwelling place. Forgive and act; deal with everyone according to all they do, since you know their hearts (for you alone know every human heart), - 1 Kings 8:39
I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. - John 16:33
You, little children, are from God and have overcome them, because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. - 1 John 4:4
For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. - 1 John 5:4
Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. - 1 John 5:5
For he says, "In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you." I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation. - 2 Cor. 6:2
Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
on the day of testing in the wilderness,
where your fathers put me to the test
and saw my works for forty years.
Therefore I was provoked with that generation,
and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;
they have not known my ways.’
As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’”
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
Last Days Ministries,
Keith and Melodie Green.
We Are Blessed.
Bump
I remember the Jesus Movement very well...a wonderful time to be a Christian.
No one.
Nah.
If you think these networks preach the Gospel then you have more problems than David Wilkerson. I liked David's writings but he was not a profit.
Do they tell you what to do when the Pope isn't a Catholic?
Neither does “trinity”, “incarnation”, or “ Bible”.
There are words we use to identify concepts more easily and readily and rapture is one of them.
Just because the word itself isn’t used as some people want it to be or as they think it should be, doesn’t mean the concept isn’t taught.
I’ve been assured by a few FR Roman Catholics that God will strike down a heretical Pope. While I know God’s time isn’t our time, time’s a-wasting.
How quaint.
Someone who doesn’t believe in a doctrine educating those of us who do about it.
Kind of like an atheist deciding to educate eveyone about God.
Heb_9:28 so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation
It's not going to be a secret:
Mat 24:26 "Therefore if they say to you, 'Look, He is in the desert!' do not go out; or 'Look, He is in the inner rooms!' do not believe it.
Mat 24:27 For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.
It's going to be lightning..you can't mistake it happening.
Mat 24:30 Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
Mat 24:31 And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
This is the 2nd coming, when those who are Christ's at his coming and those in grave that died in Christ are converted to spirit beings. At the last trumpet, when he takes over earth:
Rev 11:15 Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!"
Christians aren't going to be secretly spirited away, be somewhere for seven years, and then come back.
“Those nations however, who did not of themselves raise up their eyes unto heaven, nor returned thanks to their Maker, nor wished to behold the light of truth, but who were like blind mice concealed in the depths of ignorance, the word justly reckons “as waste water from a sink, and as the turning-weight of a balance — in fact, as nothing;”(1) so far useful and serviceable to the just, as stubble conduces towards the growth of the wheat, and its straw, by means of combustion, serves for working gold. And therefore, when in the end the Church shall be suddenly caught up from this, it is said, “There shall be tribulation such as has not been since the beginning, neither shall be.”(2) For this is the last contest of the righteous, in which, when they overcome they are crowned with incorruption.”
Irenaeus in this passage describes the church leaving the sinful world just before unprecedented disasters. Note his use of the term “caught up” which is Rapture terminology as that is the meaning of harpazo, the term for “caught up” in the King James Bible describing the Rapture in 1 Thessalonians 4. He then quotes Matthew 24:21 where The Lord Jesus Christ says: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.” And it is during this time that those who convert to Christianity during the final years will receive the incorruptible crown mentioned by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:25. In Irenaeus’ belief, the Rapture took place prior to the end times Great Tribulation.
Cyprian
Cyprian (200 AD – 258 AD) – Cyprian was Bishop of the church in Carthage. During his short stint as leader of the church, he guided the flock through intense persecution at the hands of the Roman Empire. In 258 AD after spending seven months of confinement to his home by order of Roman authorities, he was beheaded for his faith. Several of his works still exist today.
In Treatises of Cyprian he wrote in describing the end times Great Tribulation:
“We who see that terrible things have begun, and know that still more terrible things are imminent, may regard it as the greatest advantage to depart from it as quickly as possible. Do you not give God thanks, do you not congratulate yourself, that by an early departure you are taken away, and delivered from the shipwrecks and disasters that are imminent? Let us greet the day which assigns each of us to his own home, which snatches us hence, and sets us free from the snares of the world and restores us to paradise and the kingdom.”
Again we see use of language commonly found in reference to the Rapture as Cyprian describes the judgments of the end times as “imminent.” And he makes his belief on the timing of the Rapture when he wrote that Christians will have an “early departure” and be “delivered” from the devastating global judgments that come during the Day of The Lord.
In line with the Apostle Paul who wrote that “God has not appointed us to wrath, but salvation...” Cyprian expressed joy and encourages the believing reader to rejoice that the Church will be “taken away” before the disastrous Great Tribulation. Just as The Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 24 used the same language of one “taken away” and the other “left.” Additionally Cyprian references the mansions which The Lord Jesus Christ promises to come back and take His believers to in John 14.
“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” – John 14:1-3.
As Beginning and End detailed in our article “The Red Moon Rapture – The Biblical Timing of The Rapture”, in both the Matthew 24 passages (“one taken, the other left”) and in John 14 (“..receive you unto myself..”) the Greek work paralambanō is used for taken and receive. The meaning of that word is “join to one’s self” indicating that Jesus is coming to fully unify with His church – which takes place at the Rapture. Clearly Cyprian believed and taught that the Rapture takes place before the Great Tribulation.
Ephraim The Syrian
Ephraim (306 AD – 373 AD) was made a deacon in the church in Syria in 338 and later became the bishop of Nisibis. Although he was made a “saint” in the Roman Catholic Church, he was not involved in Catholicism and did not even live in the Roman Empire until the final years of his life. The book Pseudo Ephraim was one of his still existing works. It was called “Pseudo” because of later dispute over authorship. However the book’s one reference to the rapture is very compelling:
In his work, On The Last Times 2, he wrote:
“We ought to understand thoroughly therefore, my brothers, what is imminent or overhanging. Already there have been hunger and plagues, violent movements of nations and signs, which have been predicted by the Lord, they have already been fulfilled (consummated), and there is not other which remains, except the advent of the wicked one in the completion of the Roman kingdom. Why therefore are we occupied with worldly business, and why is our mind held fixed on the lusts of the world or on the anxieties of the ages? Why therefore do we not reject every care of worldly business, and why is our mind held fixed on the lusts of the world or on the anxieties of the ages? Why therefore do we not reject every care of earthly actions and prepare ourselves for the meeting of the Lord Christ, so that he may draw us from the confusion, which overwhelms all the world? Believe you me, dearest brother, because the coming (advent) of the Lord is nigh, believe you me, because the end of the world is at hand, believe me, because it is the very last time.
Or do you not believe unless you see with your eyes? See to it that this sentence be not fulfilled among you of the prophet who declares: “Woe to those who desire to see the day of the Lord!” For all the saints and elect of God are gathered, prior to the tribulation that is to come, and are taken to the Lord lest they see the confusion that is to overwhelm the world because of our sins. And so, brothers most dear to me, it is the eleventh hour, and the end of the world comes to the harvest, and angels, armed and prepared, hold sickles in their hands, awaiting the empire of the Lord. And we think that the earth exists with blind infidelity, arriving at its downfall early. Commotions are brought forth, wars of diverse peoples and battles and incursions of the barbarians threaten, and our regions shall be desolated, and we neither become very much afraid of the report nor of the appearance, in order that we may at least do penance; because they hurl fear at us, and we do not wish to be changed, although we at least stand in need of penance for our actions!”
>With a sense of urgency and strong warning, Ephraim writes that the end times are upon this world and could start at any moment. This text very clearly states the saints and elect of God, all born again believers in The Lord Jesus Christ, will be “taken to the Lord” before the Great Tribulation. Ephraim also identifies the Old Testament “Day of The Lord” and the end times Great tribulation as the same event (in line with the teachings of the Beginning and End Rapture Series). Ephraim quotes Amos 5:18 which says: “Woe unto you that desire the day of the LORD! to what end is it for you? the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light.”
The point he makes is that a Christian should know the Day of The Lord is coming. In the first part of the passage Ephraim notes that:
“We ought to understand thoroughly therefore, my brothers, what is imminent or overhanging. Already there have been hunger and plagues, violent movements of nations and signs, which have been predicted by the Lord, they have already been fulfilled (consummated)” And not only that but that true Christians will be taken away before it starts.
Here he is describing the first 3 of the first 4 seals of Revelation 6 – wars, famines and plagues. These are the same end times signs Jesus Christ describes in Matthew 24:
And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. – Matthew 24:3-8.
Jesus describes these events as “the beginning of sorrows.” He also says that when these things come to pass “the end is not yet.” Ephraim’s writing agrees with this interpretation as he says those same events have been “fulfilled (consummated)” in his day, but it was still not the actual Great Tribulation. This also falls in line with Beginning and End’s Rapture series as explained in our article Who Are The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse? (The first four seals of Revelation 6 were opened at the time Jesus Christ ascended to Heaven. And the rapture itself does not occur until the opening of the 6th Seal.)
Ephraim in very strong language warns the reader not to be consumed with the cares of the world because the world in its current form, is coming to an end. As the Second Advent or Coming of The Lord Jesus Christ grows near, believers are to look to Heaven and set their hearts on pleasing God. It is clear that Ephraim distinguishes the Second Coming of Christ from the rapture, placing the Rapture before the Great Tribulation to come.
The Early Church Believed In The Rapture
The ancient writings are clear – the belief in the Rapture has existed since the days of the Apostles.
Although there are not a great number of writings on the end times from the early centuries of the church, there is no question that there was a belief in the Rapture among the church fathers and they taught it with strong language and scriptural support. In terms of the timing of the Rapture, the early church fathers placed it before the end times Day of The Lord/Great Tribulation. The writings of early saints in the church are not Scripture and should not be treated on the same level of the Bible. These writings also do not “prove” that the pre-Great Tribulation Rapture or the Beginning and End Rapture series are correct. Only rightly divided Scripture from the Bible can determine if a specific belief is accurate or in error. But the writings of church fathers can serve as useful commentaries (just as we use Bible commentaries today in our studies) and certainly prove that the Rapture doctrine existed well before John Darby and has been a part of Christian belief since the earliest days of the Apostles.
SOURCE: What Did Ancient Church Fathers Believe About The Rapture? | Beginning And End
imagine...thinking yourself sooo good that Jesus will take you right up to heaven....smacks of arrogance,similar to the Pharisees and Scribes..
Amen.
Don't bet against Fab Five Freddie.
As for the “Rapture” as its taught...
A Damnable lie.
Ah, so you claim...
PDF - 24 pages for your enjoyment: THE RAPTURE IN TWENTY CENTURIES OF BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION
Trusting the promises of God in inspired Scripture is never arrogance.
It is based on His merit, imputed at the cross, through His blood that paid the penalty for our sins, and on no merit of our own.
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