This notion of removing the Christian body of believers off the earth pretribulation, chops out a massive portion of the potential creative imagination that God…as righteous Judge and eternal Ruler of the realm…could bring to bear in one last final closing chapter of human redemptive history.
The recurring pattern of the cross of Jesus Christ, skillfully placed within a variety of indeterminate plotlines having uncertain outcomes in-the-moment, in what this book calls the danger zone of faith in the competence and the good will of the living God…is a direct argument against a full pre-knowledge of the early removal of the Christian church…and what amounts to a foreclosing of the opportunity to adventure through the illuminating danger zone of the tribulation…at the end of the ages.
A perceptive reader at this point might object that the revelation of the upcoming end-times macro-script in incremental stages through actual events and circumstances as they occur in real-time in-the-moment (Mt. 24:32-51)…rather than all upfront in a clear and full revelation…places God in the very role that has been criticized in this book as inadequate for the management of larger, expanding enterprises…that of appearing to be in the reactive mode.
Herein is where a biblical journey of faith in the danger zone can be taken apart and more well-defined.
God has all of the answers already…because God possesses timeless foresight. God lives in a timeless environment (Isa. 46:9-10).
Prior to the commencement of every biblical journey of faith, God has the script already pre-written. But God does not reveal all of the details upfront to each person of faith. God does not give us the entire blueprint of our journey of faith upfront for us to follow according to our own wits, personal interpretation, and take-it-or-leave-it pleasure.
This is why we call these God-composed life-scripts…walks of faith, journeys of faith, and adventures of faith.
The Bible says we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7).
If we had all of the information upfront about our journeys of faith, we would attempt to tweak some of the circumstances to fit more closely within the comfort of worldly conventional normalcy.
If Jesus the Son of God asked His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane if there was an alternate way to procure salvation for mankind, other than the events of the cross He was facing the next day, how do we suppose we will respond to the way of the cross in our own lives…if we knew upfront every challenge and difficulty we would face?
If Peter and John knew ahead of time that going to the temple in Jerusalem that fateful morning would result in the miraculous and sensational healing of the crippled man, and subsequently lead to placing the two of them standing foursquare before the intimidating Sanhedrin council demanding an explanation for this miracle, Peter and John might have decided to take a wise detour and go fishing that day instead.
God-composed journeys of faith are crafted for our benefit. A timeless God has all of the journeys of faith pre-written, including the great end-times scenario of eternally momentous events resolved through a brilliant script, surpassing the suspense of our best spy thriller or murder mystery fiction novels.
But though God is timeless, we learn through discovery…experientially.
God-composed life-scripts are ingeniously crafted to unselfishly and lovingly impart some of the characteristics of God to us.
Although God is never in the reactive mode, for reasons that we do not fully understand now (1 Cor. 13:12), the revelation of God to us must occur in incremental stages as our confidence grows with each tentative step in our walk of faith.
Abraham discovers through his journey of faith that God is true to His word.
Joseph discovers that God knows exactly what He is doing, even when all outward appearances argue in the opposite direction.
Moses discovers the power and resolve of God to finish what He starts.
David discovers that God is trustworthy as a companion and a guide even while walking together step-for-step through the valley of the shadow of death.
Peter discovers that God sees our hidden inner talents and can transform anyone, no matter how common our initial worldly status, into the “rock” He called us to be.
Through his remarkable adventure of faith, Paul amazingly discovers that God does actually know everything and can separate-out and illuminate the intricate parts of any issue through the divinely sequenced occurrence of events and circumstances.
The Cross in the Christian Life 