Tribute Thread For the Recently Raptured Faith

Reports of my untimely rapture are greatly exaggerated. Why today? It's not even September 1st. Besides, I have Rosh Hashana in mind or some time around there or afterward, and although it would be lovely I am not at all dogmatic about it, just hoping. And not even completely hoping since I'm torn about those who would be left behind.And besides, I'm scared to death of suddenly flying up into the air.And besides again, I wouldn't be the only one from EvC to be raptured. Probably Phat, jaywill, mike the wiz, ICANT, iano and some I'm no doubt forgetting.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

And all the others I listed I assume. But of course it's nice to think I'd be missed, except I'm not sure you'll have much time to miss me. As I just posted on another thread: Message 60 has: The Rapture is to usher in The Day of the LORD which is referred to many places in scripture. This is another term for the Great Tribulation. Both terms refer to a seven-year period that is the as-yet-unfulfilled prophecy of the last "week" of the Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9, that were all fulfilled but this last one.Timing issues aside, if anyone has even a smidgen of an inkling that any of this might be true...Remember that the thief on the cross who was crucified beside Jesus went to Paradise with Him because he admitted he was guilty of the crime that he was being punished for, and acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah. Salvation is that simple. (Luke 23:39-43)And the prophet Joel said:
"Whoever calls on the Name of the LORD will be saved." Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

That would be a start, I suppose, but it wouldn't save you.

What would most likely really happen if you sold everything you own to give it to the poor is that you'd be homeless and have to apply for welfare and they might turn you down when they heard the reason for your poverty. AND you wouldn't be saved. No, I am not contradicting Jesus, you simply don't understand how to read the Bible. He said that in a particular circumstance to a young man He knew was too attached to his wealth, to test him. He was also too attached to his supposed righteousness in obeying the law. It was NOT a principle for all believers or we'd all be on welfare, having become the poor that need support ourselves, and unable to give as we do to support the many causes we support.Down the centuries there have been occasional believers who have taken that advice for themselves, feeling the Holy Spirit showed them it was for thesmevles, but one I think of immediately became a missionary to a small tribe somewhere, having been called to that. He'd been born into a wealthy family and gave it all up for that calling. But it isn't for all of us, only specific cases like his.

I find it hard to believe that you could say any of that without a twinge of conscience.

I said no such thing. The Sermon on the Mount is for all of us.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'm talking about ordinary Christians, not the wealthy.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You attributed a quote to me that is really Phat's, about EvCers being unimpressed with scripture. Please correct.

Saturday, September 1, 2018The Pre-Tribulation Rapture: Signs and Portents?So why do I believe the Rapture could be as close as this coming Rosh Hashanah? Well, it's mostly a series of personal experiences of things that remind me of such an event, just little personal hints, no major revelations or anything like that, just little things I take as reassurances and proddings from the Lord to be ready. Maybe many people are getting such hints these days.In Matthew 24 Jesus says we won't know the day or the hour, but He also gives us the parable of the fig tree as an admonition that we are to watch in order to recognize when it's near. It may be that when it is very close some of us WILL know the day and the hour, but I don't want to stick my neck out on that, and of course it may not happen so soon anyway. All this is just to say it could be close and in any case we should be watching for it.This may all be totally crackpot but here are some of the hints I've been getting.

• 1. The first thing that happened was that end times prophecy came up in a forum discussion. First we discussed the book of Daniel, spending quite a bit of time on the Seventy Weeks prophecy of Daniel 9, and then started getting in to Revelation as well. As I was tracking down references I started noticing the apparent absence of the Church in much of the relevant scripture, how very Old Testament most of Revelation is for instance, and how the Seventy Weeks prophecy is so emphatically focused on Daniel's own people and on Israel. That is what got me started on accepting the Rapture, to explain why the focus is so predominantly on the Jews in the Day of the Lord, and the very fact that this topic was being discussed in such detail was like a portent in itself, leading me to wonder if it could be right around the corner.
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• 2. Then on Christian radio a series on the book of Revelation was announced. That's an unusual topic for a preaching series so that seemed like a portent too.
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• 3. Then I got a phone call from a friend who didn't know I was thinking a lot about the Rapture, to tell me about a video presentation on that subject at You Tube. Another portent. I watched the video and he (Robert Breakers) ended up suggesting it could be on this coming Rosh Hashanah, but as usual I couldn't really be convinced by his reasoning (and besides, he said the Trinity is "one God in three PARTS" which doesn't reassure me that he's theologically up to snuff.). My own feeling about Rosh Hashanah is that it fits with God's pattern of having major events in the Plan of Redemption fall on Jewish Holy Days, and Rosh Hashanah is the next one in line.
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• 4. Somewhere in here -- I probably have these things out of order -- I found myself wishing to hear the book of Revelation read aloud. There is a Bible reading program on the radio which I hadn't heard in a week or so, and I wondered if it was getting close to Revelation. Later that night I just happened to turn on the radio to that program just after it started on the reading of Revelation 5 through 14.
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• 5. Another time I just happened to turn on the radio in time to hear a favorite Bible verse spoken. These things remind me that God is there and I'm in His thoughts, and they give me a spiritual sort of goose bumps.
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• 6. I took a break from all this to rent a movie on Amazon video, decided to watch one called "The Impossible" about the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia in 2004 and how it affected one family. The night before the disaster the family sent up some floating lanterns. It didn't ring any bells at the time but later in the context of the accumulating portents it seemed to add another: the image of lanterns rising into the sky an allusion to the Rapture of course, and the fact that the tsunami hit the next morning completes the picture of the Rapture as the trigger for the Day of the Lord, or the Great Tribulation.
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• 7. (I'll mention here something that's related but DOESN'T work as a portent: The lanterns in the tsunami film are the same kind that are sent up by the thousands in the Disney animated film "Tangled" which I enjoy enough to watch over from time to time. In brief it is a reimagining of the story of Rapunzel who was held captive in a tower. She is able to escape with the help of a thief for the purpose of watching a yearly display of these lanterns she's seen from her tower window. It's the story of an exodus that ends up in her discovering that she's a princess and being united to her royal family, and that is a way it DOES more or less parallel the idea of the Rapture. And the scenes with the lanterns, which are also a sort of picture of the Rapture are nicely done, quite beautiful. BUT that is the end of the similarity. It's a happily-ever-after fairy tale, and it didn't just suddenly recently enter my life either. There is no following Tribulation, though plenty of tribulation at various times in the story. I watched it again recently and the reason I'm reporting it here is to emphasize that it's not one of the things that work as a portent, though there are plenty of others that do. So although I may be emotionally noting these things they do have to work as portents, I'm not straining things to make them fit.)
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• 8. Before this some time but I don't know when, I remembered my move in November of last year, which in retrospect strikes me as a sort of picture of the Rapture. My brother was helping me move things out of my old apartment when he realized it was getting late and he had to get me to an appointment at my new apartment forty miles away, which is near where he lives. We dropped everything and rushed to the appointment. To save him another trip I stayed in the new apartment that night because it had enough furniture and other things to make that possible, thinking I'd return to the old apartment the next day. But I didn't return. That ended up being my moving-in day and others finished moving out my things from the old place. I had very little of my own in the new apartment, he and my sister-in-law had stocked me with a lot of new things. The suddenness and unexpectedness of the move from an old place to a new one, taking nothing with me, hits me as a portent.
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• 9. Then a week or two ago someone emailed me a link to the video of the Boat Lift of 9/11, which is the story of how something like half a million people were rescued by boat during the attack on the World Trade Center. They were stranded at the south end of Manhattan at the edge of the water, all the roads being closed, having no way off the island. The film shows them gathered there with the WTC burning behind them, then shows them engulfed in the cloud of debris when the buildings fell. The story is about how pilots of the boats that are always in the area, from ferries to tug boats, rallied to the cause of transporting them off the island. It's a very touching story and you can find it at You Tube. AND it's the story of an unusual exodus to escape tribulation. Another portent.
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• 10. More recently there was a headline on the Yahoo news page about a teacher who asked kids to decide who they would leave behind if Earth was going to be destroyed and only a certain number could be removed to another planet: Page not found - MSN A strange but from my point of view very timely picture of something similar to the Rapture idea.

So maybe all this just shows me to be a crackpot, but I'm posting as much as I can remember of these little hints because I think they may very well add up to a portent and there are enough of them to give pause to a too-ready dismissiveness. You can decide for yourself.Now THIS will really show me to be a crackpot: Recently I clearly saw in my mind's eye the date "SEPT 10." Make of it what you will.This year Rosh Hashanah starts at sunset on September 9 and runs to sunset of September 11, since the holiday is frequently celebrated on two days although it was initially just the first day of the month of Tishri which begins the Jewish New Year. Until I "saw" that date I had September 11 in mind since it seemed fitting that the Rapture might fall on the anniversary of the WTC attack. On the other hand the day before is perhaps more appropriate since 9/11 is more of a picture of Tribulation than exodus, the Boat Lift notwithstanding. And of course, the actual first day of Tishri is the 10th.There are two very brief passages in scripture that define this rather cryptic holiday: Numbers 29:1 and Leviticus 23:24-25 which I quote: No explanation is given, it's just that the seventh month of the year is also the first month of a year based on the harvest so it's announced with the blowing of the shofar which sounds like a trumpet, a hundred blasts according to one source I found.I pondered the fact that Israel would probably be the center of Rosh Hashanah ceremonies. How does the Lord deal with the time differences around the world for such an event as the Rapture? Israel time is ten hours later than my local daylight time. That is, if it's 8 PM here, it's 6 AM the next day in Israel. I mention 8 PM because that is about sunset here these days and I was thinking I'd take some coffee (and challah bread if I had any) and sit outside on the balcony from about that time on the evening of September 9th, anticipating the possibility of midnight for the blowing of the shofar heralding the Rapture. Of course that means somehow it will happen on local time even though I have no idea how that could be possible. It just doesn't seem right that it wouldn't happen at the start of the actual first day of Tishri everywhere.But if the Rapture occurs on Israel time I'd need to start watching about 10 AM on the 9th which would be their sunset which would be when they blow the shofar there. I don't want to be out on the balcony in the heat so I'll start watching from inside.Of course I may be sitting there a long time and have to conclude this was all my overwrought imagination in the end. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : add link to Boat Lift film and correct "service" to "servile"

Could be. But I'm familiar with that phenomenon and having so many reminders come up of something not so recognizable as a car, not to mention a phone call and relevant radio programs that just happen to be on the air the moment I just happen to sit down and turn it on . The lanterns are just a nice image of things rising into the sky, and not often seen in this part of the world either, like never? so it's hard to avoid the connection (it wasn't Japan, but a country in Southeast Asia -- looked it up: Khao Lak, Thailand). Oh and I really did SEE the date in my mind, a date different from the one I'd been favoring.But you could be right, I'll leave it at that.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I suppose I shouldn't bother answering this sort of nonsense for the umpteenth time, but I did recently post an article that confirms that conservatives, motivated mostly by religion, give a lot more to charitable causes than liberals. See Message 289. Christianity is NOT socialist because giving is voluntary, not forced on us by authority as socialism is.

If the Rapture DOES happen soon, or for that matter whenever it happens, the following Tribulation I wouldn't wish on anybody. Although I do think the first part of it may be very welcome to a lot of people because you'll all finally be rid of the main political barrier to a lot of liberal causes. Globalism should have a pretty free course, and socialism on a global scale.There will probably be some kind of global religion too but it won't be the hated religion of the Bible, more likely a form of paganism, something New Agey "spiritual" and man-centered. (It might call itself "Christianity" though, and I'd guess the Pope would put himself at the head of it). The book-reading program on my local Christian radio station (Pilgrim Radio dot com) just started on a book titled The Coming Pagan Utopia, a collection of essays by different Christian authors edited by Peter Jones, attempting to describe the political system they see coming down the pike these days. They aren't predicating it on Christians being raptured since it's written to help us cope with it when it comes, but if the Rapture does come soon it could describe how things will develop with us out of the way. The first essay describes how the system that develops will necessarily be totalitarian and personal freedoms will be lost because dissent would of course interfere with the program. That might not bother a lot of people who are already persuaded of the utopian vision. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Absolutely, everything I own belongs to God, but nevertheless He gives me the freedom to give it as I choose.

That's the spirit!