End of the World “Rapture” April 23?

According to the “Bible expert” quoted in the news article at the above link, the rapture is going to take place on April 23 of this year (2018), followed by the end of the world.

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, “Well, here they go again.”

It seems like every year or so now a new “Bible expert” rises out of obscurity to predict this will be the year of the rapture.

I’m old enough to remember when folks thought it was going to be in May 1988, and Christians were pictured in national magazines quite literally standing on the hoods of their cars with their arms in the air, waiting to be whooshed up into the sky and flown away by Jesus the great helicopter pilot.

Since that time, the date of the rapture has been announced over and over again, by other “experts.”  But each time, no rapture.

Folks, there’s a reason for that.  It’s because there isn’t a rapture written of anywhere in the Bible.  Never has been.  Never will be.  The Christian church is nearly 2,000 years old.  But the so-called “rapture” doctrine is only about 187 years old.

In other words, for the first 1,800 years of Christianity, the rapture teaching didn’t even exist.  No apostle taught it.  Not a single church father taught it.

The idea of a “rapture” simply didn’t inhabit the minds of Christians until the 1800’s when a Scottish gal named Margaret McDonald began having strange religious visions and told some local preachers about them.

The preachers, in turn, began preaching the woman’s visions from their pulpits in order to draw church attendees.  And the rapture was born.

Today, all-too-many churches offer the rapture theory as a sort of mass “security blanket” to their congregations.  “Stick with our church,” they intone, “and you’ll be caught up to heaven in the rapture, with the rest of us, when Jesus comes.”

It keeps the congregation returning, so the plate can be passed.  But that’s about all it accomplishes.

Problem is, the Scripture clearly states that Jesus is returning to this earth to establish His eternal kingdom.  He’s not rapturing anyone out.  He’s coming here, shortly after Satan arrives in his role as the false messiah.

And He’s coming to cleanse this old earth of Satan’s stench, and throw Satan into the pit so God’s children can be taught correctly and without interference during the Millennium teaching period.

If you’d like to read the Biblical documentation that there’s no rapture, here are two comprehensive Bible studies you might want to take a look at:

• The Any-Moment-Now Rapture Theory: a Deception Leading Straight to the Antichrist

• The Christian Church in Apostasy

The bottom line is that the so-called rapture has become an empty substitute for what God’s Word actually says about Christ’s Second Advent.

Indeed, not just an empty substitute, but something far worse:  It’s a doctrine that leads Christians directly into the arms of the first miracle-working supernatural being who sets foot on this earth claiming to be God.

Unfortunately, because Christians have been taught that “Jesus can come at any moment now” to rapture them away, most Christians will believe that the first supernatural entity standing before them working miracles is the Lord.  But it won’t be.  Instead, it will be the antichrist himself, exactly as St. Paul explains in II Thessalonians 2:1-4.

Check out the Biblical documentation for yourself in the two studies linked to above.  And if you have Christian friends who are on-the-fence regarding the rapture, maybe consider sending them the links to the above two studies.  You just might help save one or two of them from the embarrassment of unwittingly ending up worshiping the antichrist.  And they just might thank you for it.

Sign up here to receive notifications of Steve’s News & Current Events Commentaries, as well as notifications when new in-depth Bible studies are posted.  When you sign up, you’ll also receive a free copy of Steve’ in-depth Bible study, The Four Parts of God’s Plan.