The Great End-Time Deception, What Every Christian Should Know.

Back in 1984 I set out to find biblical proof for the pretribulation rapture. I was a relatively new Christian but had been told that when it comes to the things of God to always find biblical proof before believing it. It was a good rule of thumb to follow and since most of my favorite Bible teachers believed in the pre-tribulation rapture, I assumed it would be easy to find Scripture to prove it. 

I had bought an exhaustive concordance to help me in my search and spent much time watching the Trinity Broadcasting Network, looking for the help I needed. While every expert seemed certain that the Church would be raptured before a period they called the Great Tribulation, no one seemed able to prove this and it began to frustrate me. After all, I was certain that my favorite preachers wouldn’t believe something of this importance without first seeing proof of it in the Scriptures.

Although I didn’t understand much about the end-times, one thing I soon learned was I couldn’t find proof of us being raptured to heaven before a great tribulation. The best I could do was repeat the storyline I had learned from the pretribulation teachers. Also, I was beginning to realize that there were many different beliefs about this rapture and that bothered me as well. 

I knew that God wanted to guide us into all truth based on John 16:13 because it tells us, “when He the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth.”  Thus, I knew the Holy Spirit wasn’t teaching some that they get raptured before the tribulation, while teaching others they get raptured in the middle of it, and then teaching others they get raptured after the tribulation. Then, on top of that there was a millennium that the Church also argued over which meant adding at least two more end-time options to the mix. 

The Spirit of God in me grieved when I pondered the lack of unity in the Church over our gathering together to Christ, and as a young naïve Christian who believed that all Christians wanted the truth, I set out to find that truth whatever it was. My motives were simple – to discover the truth and then to help others see it for themselves. I believed this would please God because it would mean agreeing with God and thus with each other. So, the first thing I did was to pray and commit that if God would show me the truth that I would not only believe it, but would also teach it to others. 

After my prayer, the first thing the Holy Spirit did was convict me of an arrogance that I didn’t even know I had. This arrogance was a subtle roadblock I had unknowingly placed between myself and the truth by presuming the pretribulation rapture was true. The conviction was what I needed to reposition myself so I could hear what the Spirit wanted to say. 

Over the many years since that encounter, I’ve come to conclude that the lack of this kind of conviction may be the reason people cannot bring themselves to drop their assumptions and let God freely show them the truth about this matter. I remember explaining how assumptions get in the way to a Facebook theologian who almost instantly responded that he always assumes he is right until convinced otherwise. I didn’t bother pointing out that he was doing the very thing I had been convicted of doing, because seeing God’s truth is not something to argue. It is something any of us can discover if we approach the Word with a humble teachable spirit. My sincere hope is that my book will challenge you to take a closer look at the Scriptures and believe them even more.

It was shortly after that adjustment in my prayer life that God showed me biblical proof that what most people claim is the rapture is really the promised return of the Lord. At first, I didn’t want to accept this. Even though my heart was convinced, my head was sure that this couldn’t be right. After all, how could all those great Bible teachers be so wrong about this? There was no way I was right and they were wrong, so, I humbled myself and let the TV prophecy teachers do their best to correct me. I even bought some of their recommended books hoping to find the proof I needed to correct my newfound belief. 

Perhaps it was just God’s sense of humor, but each time I let pretribulation teachers try to persuade me, the Holy Spirit took that as an opportunity to show me why they were mistaken. So, while trying to get back to a belief in the rapture, I ended up learning how to refute every error I encountered in the rapture teaching.  

So, persuaded that God’s Word had the answers necessary to bring us together on this matter, I decided to tell others. After all, other Christians certainly wanted the truth, and I just knew they would appreciate hearing it. Wow, was I mistaken! Most Christians not only disagreed, but were either unwilling or incapable of seeing outside their existing belief. Such thinking about the rapture reminded me of myself before God convicted me for limiting Him with such thinking.

Soon, my newfound joy for sharing the truth I had discovered came to an end. Because the message was stirring up division instead of unity in the Church, and I knew God didn’t want that, I decided it best to stop sharing what He had shown me. I would keep quiet unless asked and then only answer briefly so as to avoid potential arguments that could divide us over this matter. I explained my reasoning to the Lord and told Him I was no longer going to tell anyone else about this because His people weren’t ready for it and it was just causing division.  

Even though I no longer wanted to learn anything else about the end-times, the revelation of it kept jumping out at me from the Scriptures. This continued over a course of many years and so much so that I had to ask the Lord on more than one occasion why He kept showing me this kind of truth almost everywhere in the Bible. I never got an answer and it began to bother me. Couldn’t God see what was happening? Sure, a couple of people believed, but most of the time people not only disagreed, they also distanced themselves from me. 

Things changed for me in 1996. I was praying and studying my Bible one night when the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart to get a pen and paper because He wanted to show me something worth writing down. So, I did and followed where I knew to go in the Word and to my surprise, it was another nugget about the end-times! While this nugget would eventually help me see the big picture in perspective, at the time it just made me mad! I threw my pen down and yelled at Him, “God, please stop showing me stuff about the end-times! I told You that Your people don’t want to hear it, they aren’t interested and they aren’t ready to hear it!”

A few seconds of silence followed my outburst before I heard these words in my heart, “what if I want you to write about this?” After hearing those words, what could I do? If I loved God then it shouldn’t matter if people didn’t want to hear about it. If I loved God and was genuine in following His Son then the only thing that mattered is whether or not I would obey Him.

So, during the winter of 1996, I began to write what would be my first book about the rapture. While it was a great learning experience and it taught me that I liked writing, the book was never published and I shelved the subject again. Then fast forward to 2015, and after much prayer, it seemed right for me to again write about the rapture and that is how this book came to be. 

Thus, the reason I wrote the book was to keep the commitment I made to the Lord back in 1984 which, when combined with the continued revelations and the prompts to write – first in 1996 and then again in 2015 – could only mean God really did assign this task to me. So, regardless of its popularity, I’m committed to getting this message out to God’s people who have ears to hear.

I realize the message of my book isn’t for everyone, in fact, I am expecting many to disagree with it. But I do believe it will be helpful to those with a heart and mind willing to discover and accept what the Bible makes clear about the end-times. Does that mean I know everything or that I don’t make mistakes? No. It means, I’m simply obeying and doing my best to walk by faith and watch Him do what only He can do.  My prayer is that this book will be of help to a lot of people in their walk with the Lord and help generate a revival of end-time truth among God’s people.