When Will Rapture Occur?
The controversy regarding pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation and post-tribulation rapture becomes redundant when you consider that there are three great tribulations mentioned in the Scriptures. Four raptures rather than one will occur during the last seven years of the dispensation of grace.
There are three groups of people on earth: Gentiles, Jews and the Church. Each has a great tribulation peculiar to the group.
For Gentiles it is 70th week great tribulation with duration of seven years. I call it Heptad great tribulation: Dan 9:24-27; Rev 7:14.
For the nation of Israel it is Jacob’s Trouble great tribulation: Dan 9:27; 12:1. It has duration of 3½ years.
For Christians it is what I term Sickbed Great Tribulation: Rev 2:18-25. The duration is undisclosed in the Scriptures.
Pre-tribulation rapture will involve the church only. It will start before the beginning of the last seven years of grace.
In 1 Pet 4:17 it is written: “For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?
Judgment will start with Christians. Sexual sins challenge the authority of God as Creator of all things. “Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.”(Heb 13:4). God the Father has delegated the judgment of the world to Jesus. Out of love He will purge the Body of Christ of filthiness. The Father is currently judging the Church mostly of four things:
1. Sexual perversion, such as whoremongers, adulterers and abnormal sex practitioners masquerading as Christians.
2. Deeds of the Nicolaitans that include idolatry, image worship and those with weird doctrines in the church, as well as false professors of Christianity.
3. Doctrine of Balaam – those taken in by material prosperity and mammonism, the god of money.
4. Doctrine of Jezebel that portrays deviation from the norm, usurpation of authority and adherence to LGBTQ+ tenets.
The judgment of the Father over 1-4 above has already begun. The purpose is to bring many backslidden Christians back to the fold in time for evacuation to heaven.
God is not judging the world – that has been reserved for Jesus and His Wife. God’s judgment of Christians is a love apparatus designed to save some of His recalcitrant children from the doom awaiting the rest of the world.
God the Holy Spirit has the sole responsibility of judging the world of sin. His role as judge of the Church is to select eligible living saints who have made themselves ready for airlift to heaven. Rapture is judgment and it will be executed by the Holy Spirit as a culmination of the judgment of the church on earth.
The Lord Jesus Christ will complete the judgment of the church at the atmospheric heaven immediately after the rapture and distribution of white stones to participants. Bema, also known as the Judgment Seat of Christ, will take place in heaven. It was designed not for punishment but for award of rewards for faithfulness and fruitfulness.
The judgment of the Holy Spirit will separate heaven-minded believers who are expecting the return of the Lord from unserious and unprepared Christians who will now have a different method to make it to heaven – a second chance option namely Rev 12:11, which has martyrdom as one of three criteria for rapture. In addition, saints who survive the seven year tribulation by escaping the reign of the Beast will be subject to angelic selection at the end of the age of grace to transit into millennial reign in human form.
There is hierarchy in heaven. The judgment Seat of Christ is in reality an award-giving ceremony, which will determine hierarchy in the millennial reign of Christ.
The pre-tribulation rapture concerns the church of Jesus Christ only. It will signal the end of the sick-bed great tribulation. It’ll also indicate the beginning of the last seven years of the dispensation of grace.
Mid-tribulation rapture concerns 144,000 Jewish evangelists who will be raptured from Jerusalem 3½ years after the rapture of the church at the mid-point of the last seven years. They will be raptured alive.
Post-tribulation rapture will involve two groups: Two Special Witnesses Moses and Elijah and tribulation martyrs. The rapture of Moses and Elijah will occur a day or two before the Marriage Supper, which will take place on the last day of grace. The rapture of tribulation martyrs will occur while the setting for the Marriage Supper is on.
Tribulation martyrs will be ushered into the venue of the Marriage Supper and accompany Christ and His entourage of raptured saints and holy angels as they descend on predetermined locations on earth. These activities will take place on the last day of grace, which is also the first day of millennial reign.
For the avoidance of doubt, take note that God the Father “has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”
However, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit will participate in the judgment of the church. Since judgment must start with the household of God, the judgment of the church was scheduled to take place on earth and in heaven.
God the Father and God the Holy Spirit will judge the church before the rapture of the church can take place. Consequently, the judgment of the church by the Father is ongoing all over the world at the moment and will continue until the church is raptured. Thereafter the great deceiver, the ‘Man of peace’ who will later become the Antichrist will be given three and one half years to deceive the whole world especially the Jews.
Concerning the rapture of the church Jesus said: “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Mk 13:32)
Saints who have the mind of Christ are given to know the times and seasons. Nevertheless, it is good to be prepared as no living saint can know the day and hour the airlift of eligible saints to heaven will take place.
Be ready!
