Future Events: The Rapture and World Wide Judgment. Will You Escape The Coming Tribulation?

Last post I dealt with the Rapture, explaining what it is and going over the two largest passages that support this teaching in the Bible.  This post will provide further evidence for the Rapture by explaining from Scripture common elements associated with the Rapture event.  The goal of this post is to demonstrate that when it comes to the judgment of the wicked, God will save Christians from future world wide judgment.

Let me explain some elements that are associated in context to the Rapture event:

• Christians: Christians are the ones taken up by the Lord Jesus at the time of the Rapture (some also argue the resurrection of OT saints takes place here). Who are Christians?  Christians are those who believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ as their only means of salvation from their sin (John 3:14-18).  Christians believe that Jesus Christ, God's only begotten Son, who is God (John 1:1), was born of the virgin Mary, lived a sinless life, died on a Roman cross for the purpose of saving people from their sins, and rose again the third day from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:1-4).  Christians believe that Christ is now with the Heavenly Father, preparing a place for all who come to Him for salvation from sin by faith (John 14: 1-3). Christians also believe Christ will return again a second time to earth. 

Figure 1. Click on image to see larger picture of the timeline of future events.  Many of these items are referred to in the following bullets.

• Rapture: The event at the end of the church age (the age we are now in Biblically) before the world wide judgment (Tribulation).  The event occurs when the Lord Jesus Christ descends from heaven, resurrecting all the bodies of dead believers first and then calling up all living Christians from the earth. All these people will have glorified bodies like Christ (1 Corinthians 15:50-57).  Everyone will meet the Lord Jesus Christ in the sky to live forever with Him (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).  After this Rapture, believers in Christ will stand before Christ and give an account for how they served Him on earth.  Also, in addition, many believe that after this accounting (called the Judgment Seat of Christ--2 Corinthians 5:10), believers will celebrate the Marriage of the Lamb (Revelation 19: 1-10).

• World Wide Judgment: World wide judgment has occurred once before with the global Noah's flood (if you doubt the Bible's account look at all the billions of dead things, buried in rock layers, laid down by water, all over the earth!). Word wide judgment will occur a second time between the Rapture of Christians and the Second Coming of Christ to the earth.  This period is called the Tribulation (Matthew 24: 21-31--See Figure. 1).  The purpose of this judgment is to judge humanity for their sin because they have reject Jesus Christ as being their Lord and Savior and have in-turn trusted in the another called by many Anti-Christ (See Daniel 7:1-28; 9: 24-27; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12; 1 John 2:18-22; 4:3; 2 John 1:7) as being their god. This judgment begins when the Lord Jesus breaks the first seal of judgment (Revelation 5:1-14).  There are a total of 7 seal judgment (See Figure 2), with each judgment being worse than before.  The last seal judgment contains all 7  trumpet judgments.   These judgements are worse than the seals.  The last trumpet judgment brings in the bowl judgments which are extremely severe and focus primarily on the rule of Anti-Christ and his worldwide kingdom .  At the end of this judgment period, the Lord Jesus Christ returns to earth a second time to defeat the nations, the Devil (the Devil will be bound), Anti-Christ, the False Prophet, and begin His 1000 year reign from Jerusalem. After the 1000 year reign of Christ, the Devil will be loosed for a short season and there will be a final judgment (Great White Throne) that will begin Eternity.  At this point of final judgment, the Devil will be cast into the Eternal Lake of Fire along with (the next two have been there since the Second Coming of Christ) the Anti-Christ, the False Prophet, and those people whose names were not found written in the Book of Life.

Figure 2: Timeline of the Seal, Trumpets, and Bowl Judgments

• Second Coming: Christians also believe that Jesus is coming back a second time to earth physically, not as a Savior this time, but as a King (Acts 1:11; Revelation 19:11-21).  Many Christians believe that this event takes place after the Tribulation. In this Second Coming, the Jewish people will realize that Jesus Christ is their Messiah and believe on Christ for Salvation (Zechariah 12:1-14; Zechariah 14:1-9).  Once Christ returns, He will reign from Jerusalem, and for a thousand years the world (Revelation 20: 1ff) will be under the direct rule of Christ, fulfilling in the process all the promises made to Abraham and David in the Old Testament.  The Second Coming is not the Rapture event because during the Rapture event the Lord only meets His people in the air.  

There will be one more post on this subject concerning the Rapture.  I hope this information is helping you to understand the importance of being ready to meet the Lord.  The Rapture could occur today.  Tomorrow could begin the period of judgment called the Tribulation.  No one but God the Father knows the day or the hour.  Therefore, you need to be ready.  Turn from your sin today!  Trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior!  It is a frightful thing to fall into the hands of an angry God who is perfectly holy and just and is all seeing and knowing (Proverbs 15:3).

A future post will deal with the historical events in the Bible that help give more evidence that there is a coming Rapture of God's people. 

Rev. Steve
Psalm 119:89