WORTH QUOTING

Amir Tsarfati, author, teacher, Israeli tour guide

If you and I knew that the Rapture was going to be on a certain day, 3-1/2 years from now, we would all set our alarm clocks and go to Vegas. Listen, the reason why we don’t know the day and the hour is so we will be ready now and live a holy life now.

The timing of the rapture affects how we live today. Pre-tribulation believers fulfill the calling of Colossians 3, “If then we are raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things of Earth.”

The Rapture is our blessed hope and provides peace in this chaotic world, as 1 Corinthians 15 talks about. As Titus 2 says, “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing in the cloud of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

It also encourages holy living and the desire to fulfill our calling while we remain in this world.

Pastor Jack Hibbs, Calvary Chapel, Chino Hills, CA

I’m here to tell you, my friend, that you and I are like Lot in today’s culture. We stand at the threshold of our homes as society pounds on our door with demands to give into immorality. We have the choice to make a stand or to compromise— often at the expense and to the detriment of our children.

Look no further than Florida for proof. Disney, which was once a champion of families, has descended to the point where it stands in opposition to a common-sense law that protects kindergarteners through third- graders from sexual indoctrination (whether gay or straight) in schools.

The company executives are actively and aggressively looking for ways to “add queerness” wherever possible to children’s programming, thanks to a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda.” They are removing the terms “ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls” from their theme parks to encourage the notion of gender fluidity.

In short, they are knocking on the door of your household with the intention of sexualizing your children and violating their innocence.

You have a choice to make a stand or give in to compromise. Imagine if we all had the backbone to say what Lot didn’t: “No. Never. I am the protector of this household and all who enter this home. Take your perversion and get out of here!”

Jonathan Brentner, author

We see a foretaste of God’s heavenly glory in beautiful sunsets, the grandeur of snowcapped mountain tops, and through the beauty and wonder of nature in all its various forms. Last week, my wife Ruth and I hiked in a Wisconsin state park where the leaves had just begun to change colors; it was breathtakingly beautiful. God’s creation reflects His beauty, magnificence, and splendor, and for those paying attention, nature glorifies its Creator.

On the other hand, we will not see the glory of which Jesus spoke in John 17:24 until we are with Him in heaven. All the magnificent scenes in nature are but a sampling of the beauty that Christ desires to show us once we are physically present with Him. The full magnificence, splendor, and power of our Savior are not things we are currently capable of witnessing apart from our glorified bodies, which we will receive when Jesus appears to take us home (1 Corinthians 15:51-55).

Terry James, author

Personally, I believe the time for debate on this matter is past. It is time now to just offer the assurance of that soon to come exhilarating moment when Christ will say, “Come up here!” (Revelation 4:1).

There are so many scriptural assurances of the pre-Tribulation Rapture that we could fill many articles with them. As a matter of fact, we have done just that on the Rapture Ready website.

I wish to mention only one Rapture factor here, because I believe it is the most reassuring of all truth in God’s telling His children that they are not appointed to His wrath. Here we interject the question proposed in our title: Where’s the Comfort? By that we ask: What comfort is there in the argument that Christians will go through the Tribulation?

Paul the apostle first assures us of this fact: “For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:9). But, it is the next thought from the mind of God that should cause warm reassurance in the spiritual heart of every believer: “Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.” (1 Thessalonians 5:11).

Get it? We are to “comfort” ourselves, not wring our hands looking for these things to destroy us or to look for Antichrist. We are to be looking for our “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13).

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