Category: The Church in the Last Days

In my opinion, the organized Christian church (the outwardly visible church) today does not know who or what it is.

Some “mega-churches” rely on well-dressed people driving into the parking lot for Sunday worship in expensive luxury cars, able to write substantial checks to support the large new building mortgage debt.

The stark economic reality of  increased financial responsibilities often forces the “church growth” program of the mega-church to foster and maintain an artificial exterior front that everything is socially, economically, and spiritually perfect in the lives of its church members…in order to attract the “unchurched” and expand its support base.

Other churches sadly are so mired in stuffy rituals and old-fashioned tradition…that the Holy Spirit…and most young people have left.

Some churches wanting to be acceptable to the world and to fit-in with the liberal cultural agenda of moral relativity and universal tolerance, have abandoned any fidelity to absolute moral truths and biblical ideals.

All the while a new covenant journey of faith following Jesus Christ that would actualize into every Christian’s experience leading personally to knowing God from the least to the greatest (Jer. 31:31-34), is sadly neglected and placed at the bottom of the priority list.

The Christian church needs God’s help to find itself.

The Christian church does not need an early exit, pretribulation rapture from the typically biblical, unimaginably unconventional scenario of events that God will guide and shape in the last-days for the eternal benefit of His church.

The plans, schemes, and actions of God that we read about in the individual lives of the people of faith in the Bible give us a clue as to what we might expect for the last-days Christian church as a whole.  This is the final exam, the capstone course on faith and trust in the good intentions of God, worked out through the tightest of circumstances to match His normally unusual, brilliantly ingenious method of operations.

In short, we need God to set-up the unique circumstances in life to enable us to find ourselves and to find God.

A journey of faith is a journey of discovery, and only our Creator God knows the end-point of purpose that will fulfill each of us individually and as a church.

This is a work of the Holy Spirit, the gift of God purchased for us through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Abraham discovered both his true self and God through his journey of faith, pushed to the limits of human patience and endurance.  Likewise all of the positive characters of faith recorded in the Bible found their true selves and God…by being pushed to their limit by the carefully crafted journeys of faith composed by God.

No one could have engineered these brilliantly imaginative biblical life-scripts except for the living God.  There is no comparable frame of reference throughout all of human culture, literature, or history for a biblical journey of faith.  By intentional design, a biblical journey of faith falls completely outside of humanism.  It is not something that we can manufacture on our own.

A journey of faith following Jesus Christ comes entirely by grace through faith.  This is why the scripture says that without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6).  Without a God-composed journey of faith fully integrated into our lives, God cannot impact us in the supernaturally transforming way He intends.

This is what is at stake for individual Christians and the Christian church as a whole.  This is what Lucifer and the powers of deception will attempt to undermine and destroy in the days ahead.

In the last-days one of the things in Christianity that will be most targeted by radical skeptical unbelief is the one thing…the supernatural elements in the narrative stories of faith in the Bible…that serves as the strongest antidote for the individual defense of our faith.

The debate over the credibility of the Bible is not only a macro-battle that will continue to take place within apologetics, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, linguistics, and the natural sciences, but also at the micro-level in the everyday experiences in the lives of Christians.

We prove the faithfulness and credibility of Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life within our personal and collective journey of faith experiences.

It is easy to have faith when we are living on the mountaintop.  Christianity is easy when life’s events are going smoothly in parallel with worldly conventional normalcy.  The acid-test for Christians is at the point where God inserts hardships and suffering, expertly designed for our character growth but painful nonetheless, according to a game-plan and training regime that is not of our making.

This is a key feature of our Christian walk following Jesus that elevates it far above irrational and make-believe religion.  Defining who the real Jesus Christ is, as Creator, Savior, and King of the realm for all eternity as revealed in His divine Word the Bible…but also through God-composed journeys of faith… is the central issue to be finally and emphatically resolved in these upcoming last-days.

Can we as individuals and as the church exercise our faith and maintain our fidelity to Jesus Christ if He leads us into the darkest valley (Ps. 23:4)?  Can we push through in faith as overcomers, bearing our cross despite dauntingly negative appearances?  This requires the most expert advance training.  This training needs to begin now.

The first-century apostles were not initially the intellectual and spiritual elite of Israel.  They were ordinary and unremarkable people from a worldly viewpoint.  God crafted them into the spiritual elite of Israel, creating through them the early Christian church that has withstood the test of time.

God has been capably transforming lost sinners into mature saints of God for thousands of years.  This provides hope that God can do the same for Christians today.

What is it worth to find out through first-hand experience that our God is more intelligent and wiser than ourselves, beyond human imagination?

Is it worth a journey of faith containing the risk that God might fail us?  This is the question that was in the back of the minds of every person of faith answering their individual callings of service in the Bible, and the question that each of us has to individually face in our own journeys of faith.

What would be our source of joy for the length of eternity?

It would be to serve a King who is wise, intelligent, adored, respected, and interesting beyond our imaginations, and has our best interests at heart in all of the activities He would involve us in.

God has enlisted this current broken world as the optimum, temporary school for the lessons of faith that will serve us for eternity. This is why an active journey of discovery now is vitally important for the Christian church as a preliminary lead-up to the enormous spiritual conflicts of the last-days.

Some people will accurately complain that I am overstating the case repeatedly throughout this book.  I admittedly am guilty of “over-painting the canvas” in coming back to the cross and the need to surrender our self-in-control natures to God to make room for Him to work in our lives.

This issue is so important that I risk the impatience of the reader in sounding like a broken phonograph record.

The highest standards of God for Christians and the Christian church today starts with the surrender and yielding of ourselves to His leading, so that He can initiate the type of biblical-quality life-plans that will get us into top spiritual shape to meet the end-times challenges ahead.

It is the deep and uncompromising love of God that wants to see each one of us triumph as overcomers in this upcoming great end-times conflict between truth and error.

To close out the book, I quote from 2 Corinthians 4:7-18 (KJV):

7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.

8 We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair.

9 Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;

10 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.

11 For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.

12 So then death worketh in us, but life in you.

13 We, having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak,

14 Knowing that he who raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.

15 For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.

16 For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

 

“Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure; for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall.”      (Pet. 1:10)

As I explore the narrative stories of the people of faith in the Bible, I see God deliberately leading and maneuvering people into challenging trials, almost impossibly tight circumstances, and nearly hopeless situations…way beyond our natural desire for worldly soft, conventional normalcy.

Like inspired athletic coaches pushing their players towards excellence achieved through total commitment, the God of the Bible sets up unimaginably unconventional scenarios that require faith and trust to break through to a positive outcome for our eternal benefit (Jud. 7:2).

This has been the experience in my own life that informs my understanding of the Bible and the writing of this book.

It is certainly not Abraham’s idea to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah.

It is not Joseph’s plan to eventually end up in Pharaoh’s prison.

It is not the fault of Moses that Pharaoh’s heart is stubbornly hardened and bent on keeping the Israelites as slaves in Egypt.

The singularly unique strategy for Gideon to defeat the invading Midianites is God’s plan…Gideon would never come up with this battle plan in his wildest imagination.

Similarly, the unusual military strategy for Joshua to bring down the walls of Jericho belongs entirely to God.

The anointing of David by the prophet Samuel to become the future king of Israel did not include the relevant information that a jealous King Saul would pursue David to kill him.

Ruth’s decision to follow Naomi is in response to the unexpected death of Ruth’s husband.

The deadly confrontation between the three young Hebrews and King Nebuchadnezzar…regarding the idol worship of the King’s image…is not of their making.

Daniel is completely innocent of any wrongdoing as he is being lowered into the lion’s den.

The desperate plan of Esther and Mordecai to derail Haman’s evil scheme to destroy the Jews, balances precariously on a knife’s edge.

Nehemiah faces enormous external opposition in his attempt to rebuild the walls surrounding Jerusalem.

Jeremiah’s best prophetic utterances to reform Israel…end in outward failure.

It is not the plan of Peter and John that God should heal the crippled man at the gate called Beautiful leading into the temple on that particular morning, initiating a remarkable cascade of events resulting in Peter and John being “set in the midst” of the Sanhedrin council (Acts 4:7).

The Holy Spirit empowered witness of these two disciples to the resurrection of Jesus is so committedly fearless and forthright…that Peter and John were probably not only amazed at their own courageous stand…but members of the Sanhedrin “marveled” at their boldness (Acts 4:13).

The opposition that Paul faced continuously throughout his evangelical ministry to take the gospel message to the first-century Greco-Roman world…is not of his making (Acts 26:22-23).

If we are engaged in a biblical-quality adventure of faith, God will eventually take us to places where we do not want to go, to fulfill unseen potential within us and to stretch our faith, both for personal growth and for the benefit of others (Lk. 22:42).

We all have a tendency to want to do things our way (Isa. 53:6).  Each of us to some extent has trouble listening to others…listening to parents, a spouse, family members, children, friends, co-workers, and listening to God.

We all want to stay within the comfort zone of our own ideas and our own ways of doing things.

Only our Creator God could beneficially override this innate tendency by inserting supernatural plans and outcomes into our everyday lives.  But this requires our willing cooperation, and faith and trust in God’s character and intentions.

A biblical adventure of faith, where our self-sovereignty as kings sitting atop the thrones of our lives…is placed on the cross to be crucified alongside Jesus…is specifically designed to cancel-out the stubbornly prideful component of the I-know-it-all, I-can-do-it-on-my-own tendency.

If the Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, and lawyers in the first-century had been flexibly open-minded and teachable, they would not have rejected the message and the Person of Jesus Christ as Messiah.

If they had been actively engaged in their own biblical-quality journeys of faith…they would have recognized the Holy Spirit within the actions and speech of Jesus of Nazareth.

In the extreme, the insistence upon having everything our way, as demonstrated by the religious leaders in first-century Jerusalem, leads to the final tragic outcome of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

A journey of faith humbly following the leadership of Jesus Christ in our lives, trusting upon His wisdom and good intentions for us in everything, is the opposite attitude of the entrenched religious leaders in Jerusalem wanting only their worldly conventional vision of a military style messiah…promising political and economic deliverance from Roman rule…or nothing at all.

Of course we should never surrender our independent moral judgment to other people (Acts 21:13).  But the ability to listen in the Spirit, and be open and teachable to truth is an attribute that with few exceptions every person can improve upon (Acts 19:30).

God invented the supernatural vehicle of a journey of faith to navigate triumphantly through this broken world.

God, in His infinite wisdom, took the malevolent temptation of Lucifer in Eden that “ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5) and turned this around into a positive, commendable, prophetic mission-statement for mankind.

God created this spiritual vehicle called a journey of faith, whereby He could engineer events and circumstances in the lives of the people of faith who willingly trust and follow Him, brilliantly crafting and reshaping Lucifer’s ill-intentioned and destructive temptation into positive fulfilled prophecy in the most laudably clever and commendable way (Prov. 3:5-6).

2 Corinthians 4:17 reads: “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”

One of the clear signs we can detect in the apostate church is the attempt to homogenize the “light affliction” part of Christian discipleship…removing it entirely out of the experience.

“Christian” churches that have a lot to offer in terms of various programs, but demand very little in terms of teaching people about the costs of discipleship, actually prevents the Holy Spirit from actualizing in the lives of the congregations the challenges of faith that lead to spiritual maturity.

Apostate churches celebrate worldly success in the outer natural realm, having no potential for creating spiritual growth.

Paul says that momentary light afflictions will work for us eternal glory.  The apostate church has no idea what Paul is talking about here.

In John 6:22-65, Jesus is talking about Himself being the bread of life from heaven.  Many of the disciples at that time were offended by the statement by Jesus that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood in order to have life.

John 6:66 then says: “From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.”  Then with a voice that has a note of sadness in it, Jesus asks the twelve apostles: “Will ye also go away?”

This is not a mere Old Testament prophet or one of the New Testament apostles speaking.  This is Jesus the Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, the Creator of the heavens and the earth.  Jesus is teaching the truth, because He is the Truth, and some people are choosing to “walk no more with him.”

The preaching and teaching of the truth sometimes winnows and sifts out people from following God.  In this example, we see that teaching the truth does not always result in increased popularity and “church growth.”

The lesson of Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve apostles, tells us that a person can be in the presence of Christ (in the church), and yet not be born again in heart and mind.

Judas had a divided heart. He wanted to follow Jesus as long as this appeared to lead toward a position within an earthly kingdom of the Messiah in Jerusalem.

When it finally became apparent that Jesus would be rejected by the recognized political establishment, and that following Jesus would lead to a much more costly, worldly-humbling brand of service to the Messiah, Judas sold out Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.

All the while, not even the other eleven apostles appear to have been aware of Judas’ traitorous intentions.

It is possible to produce large bodies of similarly unconverted, half-hearted “followers” of Christianity simply by downgrading and diluting the gospel message to the point that adherence produces no real discipleship challenge.  Christianity then subtly morphs into self-composed and self-directed religion, with churchgoers sitting atop the thrones of their lives in self-sovereignty.

Peter said to Jesus “Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee” (Mk. 10:28).

Judas Iscariot brought some of the world with him in following Jesus, and never “left all.”

A large number of Judas Iscariots can be created in the apostate church by compromising the “left all” portion of the gospel message.

The falling away is a real event that will occur in the future.  Whether the main body of the Christian church will be on earth for this event…I cannot dogmatically say.

But there is a strong argument…reasoning out of the scriptures…that there cannot be a noticeable falling away, worth mentioning in the Bible…without a large number of Christians and nominal churchgoers together as one homogenous group on earth at the same time.

I believe there is a storm coming, a massive spiritual hurricane that will engulf the entire planet (Mt. 24:21).

But you would never know a storm was coming by the outward attitude in contemporary Christendom.  Some churches in America today seem to have an almost pre-storm party atmosphere.  Light-heartedness in our worship can be taken too far.  The word “good” can have too many O’s in it, if we are not careful and not biblically watchful.

The Old Testament prophets were rejected and sometimes killed because they brought a sobering message that people did not want to hear.  Jesus told us to always be alert and to watch.  This is certainly a timely message for today.  But a portion of the organized church seems to be looking the other way, towards things that do not lead to spiritual alertness and readiness for the end-times.

Finally, every Christian should examine where their investment lies.  Unsaved, nominal churchgoers, who have their investment in careers, material possessions, family, friends, the future well-being of children and grandchildren, and next summer’s European vacation, will be extremely disappointed in God when and if conditions deteriorate on earth as prophesied in the Bible during the upcoming end-times.

If our investment is in earthly things exclusively, then we are setting ourselves up for the great falling away.

When our expectancy for worldly conventional normalcy begins to become jeopardized, this will be one of the factors initiating the falling away.  World events will begin to expose people’s expectations and motivations, and will sift-out and separate true Christian disciples willing to stand with Jesus at the cost of their lives…from nominal churchgoers perfunctorily going through the motions of church attendance for reasons similar to those of Judas Iscariot.

All of the good things in the natural realm…careers, family, friends, material possessions…are commendably virtuous only when they are recognized as God’s gift to us and are therefore completely surrendered to Him.

True spiritual balance comes when we can understand that everything good that we have and enjoy comes from God alone, that we ourselves belong to Him, and that we can let go of our treasures and confidently place them in His hands for safekeeping.

The concept of “Occupy till I come” (Lk. 19:13), including all of the normal cares and responsibilities of this life…when in proper balance…compliments and harmonizes with a journey of faith following Jesus Christ.

But the catastrophic end-times events, assuming the Christian church is on the earth for some or all of its tribulation and persecution, can and will cause a shaking loose of our attachment to everything that is near and dear to us, so that we will correctly focus our eternal investment upon God alone.

We can begin doing that now in anticipation of these end-times events, through a surrendered, crucified life in service to Christ.

If we are coming up upon the start of Daniel’s seven-year tribulation period, which begins the final countdown to the end of this present world, then beginning to let go in service to Christ, while still “occupying till He comes,” is the most rational approach.

When the storm of persecution and tribulation finally comes…to borrow a line from the recent movie Elizabeth starring  Cate Blanchett…each person on earth will respond according to their character.

Some will be brought down by the terror of the situation.  Others will flee in fear and attempt to hide.  Christians who have been prepared by God for these events will spread their wings like eagles and soar with the wind.

This is God’s promise to us, and the consistent history of God’s performance in the lives of the people of faith in the Bible.

“But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”    (Isa. 40:31)

Paul writes to Timothy: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.” (2 Tim. 3:1).

This verse, combined with 2 Thessalonians 2:2-3…giving the sequence of a falling away and the revealing of the son of perdition before the rapture… implies that the fiery challenges of the great tribulation period are in full play and producing noticeably prophetic results on a grand scale…by the time the rapture occurs.

Many people believe and teach that all of the prophecies that are required to take place prior to the rapture were fulfilled with the formation of the nation of Israel in 1948.  I am not so sure.

The Bible talks about a great falling away before the coming of the Lord, as quoted above, regardless of whether the “day of the Lord” refers to the rapture or the second coming of Christ.

It talks about scoffers in the last days chiding Christians about the rapture or the second coming not having occurred yet (2 Pet. 3:3-4).

The Bible talks about perilous times, when people’s moral standards and sense of right and wrong will have noticeably deteriorated (2 Tim. 3:1-5).

The Bible talks about believers prophesying, seeing visions and having dreams, to the point that this prophesying is probably recognizable and notable to skeptics and believers alike (Joel 2:28-29; Acts 2:17-21).

2 Timothy 4:3-4 talks about a time when people will not endure sound doctrine, but will turn their ears away from the truth.

The gospels tell us not to be afraid when we hear of wars, of nation rising against nation, of great earthquakes, and famines, and pestilences, as if we are still on the earth and not raptured yet (Mt. 24:6; Lk. 21:9).

The Bible tells us that the whole world will be evangelized before the end comes (Mt. 24:14).

These scriptures suggest either an intense preliminary period of distress and spiritual activity containing all of these challenges for the church leading up to the tribulation, or the church still being on the earth for some period of time overlapping into the tribulation.

How might the falling away transpire?

If large numbers of people were attracted to a version of Christianity Light that promised positive-thinking outcomes with no discipleship costs involved, in keeping with our instant coffee, microwave popcorn culture, and they were transported back in time to one of the great persecutions under the Roman emperors in the first or second centuries…then we can easily see where a lot of these people would reconsider their membership in the church.

There was no opportunity for a Great Falling Away during the first three centuries of the Christian church, because there was not the time and population numbers to build up a watered-down, worldly attractive, compromised apostate church in existence that would draw-in millions of nominal adherents.

Life-and-death persecutions under the Roman Empire from time-to- time sifted out nominal believers from the Christian fold, because it truly meant the possibility of death when the authorities would catch and put on trial a professing Christian during these periods of widespread persecution.

In our modern times, people who have joined a church because they are attracted to the positive-thinking, upbeat message of God helping us to obtain better jobs, bigger houses, nicer cars, and better relations with family and friends…through what often amounts to a form of self-realization, will in all probability abandon the Christian church at the first signs of trouble.

People who join a church because it is a friendly club for social networking, family activities, and to make business contacts, will have a difficult time re-evaluating the decision they made for this easy and worldly compromised version of Christianity…when it is compared to the alternate real version of Christianity where believers will have to take a courageous stand for their faith that will cost them their lives (Rev. 12:11).

When the Antichrist changes his tactics from deceptive peace (Dan. 8:25) to deadly persecution, and begins to require people to take the mark of the beast or suffer the consequences…the nominal churchgoers will probably opt for survival (Dan. 3:7).

We can have large, arena-type sanctuaries, with comfortable stadium seating, state-of-the-art lighting and sound systems, worldly entertaining “rock and roll” style worship music having over-simplified Christian lyrics that appeal to large numbers of people, and positive-thinking motivational style messages mixed with watered-down Christian doctrines.

But what will it profit if the people who attend these churches do not get challenged and inspired to follow Jesus into an intimate journey of faith?

What will it profit if end-times persecution exposes these types of churches as being shallow and empty in terms of preparing Christians to live lives that would faithfully stand up in the heat of hard times?

What will it profit if people have been mistakenly taught that they could successfully have one foot in the world and one foot in Christ, without any future adverse consequences or reckoning? 

            What will it profit if the external environment of persecution and tribulation removes overnight the possibility of safely attending the currently popular mega-churches, and the churchgoer is left “high and dry” without having established a personal relationship with Jesus Christ with the ability to listen and follow the Holy Spirit on their own?

What will it profit if the end-times churchgoer cannot tell the difference between the counterfeit but worldly appealing Antichrist (Dan. 7:25), and the genuine Jesus Christ who calls us to pick up our cross and follow Him?

If the true church of believers is lifted off the earth in large numbers pretribulation, who in the world would take much notice of…or care much about…leftover churchgoers “falling away” as the result of merely being left behind…like everyone else following such a cataclysmic event as the rapture?

Such a falling away, immediately after-the-fact of the rapture, would be anticlimactic, comparatively inconsequential, and barely worth noticing.  It would have trouble getting news-media coverage on the back page of the newspaper, because a post-rapture falling away would be a non-event.

To constitute a noticeable falling away capturing the attention of the world, worthy of mention in biblical end-times prophetic scripture, the Christian church must still be fully in attendance on earth.  This includes all of the saints of God who will eventually be martyred or raptured, and includes all of the nominal, unsaved churchgoers who will “fall away” as a result of an as-yet-to-be-determined, currently unknown reason.

If the Christian church is not raptured pretribulation and is on the earth for some of Daniel’s seven-year tribulation, a more plausible motivation for nominal churchgoers to fall away would be the hard choice of facing persecution along with the genuine church, compared to the easier choice of saving their own skins by compromising with the direction the world is going in accepting the mark of the beast.

Or some modern application of Daniel 8:23-25 might explain large numbers of nominal churchgoers mistakenly falling away to follow the deceptive and smooth-talking appeal of the Antichrist at the beginning of his reign…of falsely promised peace and worldly prosperity.

This might presumably be followed up with a more complete falling away after persecution begins for the genuine Christians (saints of the Most High) who are not taken-in by the deceptive appeal of the Antichrist (Rev. 13:16-17).

Because of the unique character of post-rapture tribulation saints, the falling away that Paul describes in 2 Thessalonians 2:2-3…would not likely occur between the time period of a pretribulation rapture of the church…and the second coming of Christ seven years later.

In a pretribulation rapture scenario, the tribulation saints that become Christian believers after the rapture are probably a hard-core, uncompromising group of determined disciples, having themselves missed the rapture, who will not fall away in large numbers as a result of anything that comes against them during the tribulation period.

All of the “left behind” nominal churchgoers who do not become tribulation saints would quickly be absorbed into the world-at-large and quietly fade away into the background.

The characteristically hard-core, resolute commitment of last-days tribulation saints, steeled in their faith by the knowledge that their conversion came too late to participate in the rapture, eliminates them as plausible candidates to fall away under harsh persecution.

Continuing this argument, once the church is raptured (pretribulation) and gone, the contrasting spiritual makeup of the remaining cast of characters would be rigidly polarized and separated for the rest of the tribulation period.

Remove hundreds of millions of Spirit-born Christians from the earth, and the current reality of a large, undecided, unbelieving composite mix of people co-existing undetected within churches…would overnight become a separate and homogenous group…easily identifiable and totally distinct from the soon-to-be converted, immerging group of tribulation saints.

From that time forward…post-rapture…there would be no internal motivation based on shared common beliefs, nor the existence of external communication channels recently in place in organized Christian church structures, for these two dissimilar groups to merge.

The zeal and determined dedication of the tribulation saints to become and to remain faithful Christians “come what may,” would separate out tribulation saints as a uniquely zealous and distinct group of people for the remainder of the tribulation period.

Paul presents the falling away and the revelation of the son of perdition as signs leading up to the rapture.

The rapture and the falling away cannot be bundled together in reverse order within a short time-span.  The magnitude of the rapture would completely overshadow any subsequent falling away.

Another reason a falling away would not likely occur between a pretribulation rapture and the second coming of Christ seven years later, is that Paul is addressing this scripture directly to the Thessalonian church in the first century.

There is not the slightest hint that Paul is lobbing a football pass over the heads of the Thessalonians to a future group of “tribulation saints” who have missed the rapture.

Paul is telling the contemporary, first-century Thessalonian church to watch for the sign of a falling away as a precursor to the “day of the Lord.”

This instruction of Paul to the Thessalonians directly applies to the Thessalonian church while it is still on the earth…a group of people Paul knows intimately well…and not to some unknown group of believers to be formed after the first-century church has left the scene through the rapture.

The expectation of the rapture, followed by the second coming of Christ, and the beginning of a new earth and a new heavens where peace and justice will reign, is a hope that is rightly supposed to reside within the hearts of Christians in every century leading up to today.

The fact that the rapture and the second coming did not occur in these past centuries, even though Christians were faithfully watching and looking for these events, is due to some overriding considerations that are more important than the timing of the rapture or the second coming of Christ.

One of these important considerations is the salvation of the many sheep that Jesus speaks about when He says He has other sheep to call that are not of this first-century flock:

“And other sheep I have, that are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd” (Jn. 10:16).

Those sheep that Jesus is referring to, at this current time, happen to be us.

Because The Great Commission takes precedence over the rapture, the second coming, and the millennium…this John 10:16 concept of remaining lost sheep to be brought-in allows the prophetic 2 Thessalonians 2:2-3 scriptures to continuously extend unbroken through each successive generation of Christians throughout the church age…down to our present day.

This instruction by Paul to the Thessalonians is still in full force and effect, held in suspension until the appointed time.

In my opinion, therefore, this great falling away should occur before the rapture of the church, and not afterwards.

This view regarding the timing of the falling away and the revealing of the son of perdition…refutes the traditional pretribulation scenario…because currently there is no rationale for the extreme magnitude of worldwide events that would facilitate both this mass falling away and a revelation of the son of perdition…within a brief time-period…other than the great tribulation itself.

Some worldwide events of colossal proportions must certainly occur to cause this falling away, but a pre-rapture falling away does not conveniently fit within the scheme of events currently hypothesized within the pretribulation rapture program.

“That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter from us, as that the day of the Lord is at hand.  Let no man deceive you by any means; for that day shall not come, except there come the falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.”                                                           (2 Thes. 2:2-3)

The “falling away” (the Greek word apostasia, meaning the rebellion or the departure) presupposes that there will be a large enough group of people involved in this distinctive end-times event…to be worth mentioning in Holy Scripture.

If the Christian church were to be raptured pretribulation into heaven before this falling away, so many hundreds of millions of Christians would be absent off the earth through an unexpected early rapture…then there would not be a large enough number of people physically present in orthodox Christian churches to have a rebellion, a departure, or a falling away from.

Certainly large numbers of unsaved people in modern-day, liberal, apostate churches would be left behind in a pretribulation rapture scenario…along with some people in orthodox Christian churches…who were unsaved…would be left behind.

But being “left behind” in a pretribulation rapture context would not be a rebellion, a departure, or a falling away.  It would more accurately be called an exposure.  It would be a decisively clear and public revelation of a nominal, unregenerate, hypocritical spiritual condition that…before the rapture…would not be openly apparent.

To accurately be called a falling away in this end-times prophetic context, we have to have something numerically substantial enough in-place to fall away from.  Things that fall away from nothing do not fall-away, they independently dissipate, dissolve, or collapse.

If a pretribulation rapture triggers a subsequent great falling away, as some people believe, how then does a person rebel, depart, or fall away from a church that essentially no longer exists?  How does a person fall away from a church that has ninety-five percent or more of its members disappearing instantly through the rapture?

In this case the raptured church lifted off the earth has done the “falling away”…the active movement…not the left behind person standing alone in an empty church that no longer has a congregation.

And why would a person rebel, depart, or fall away from an apostate church that has only five percent or less of its members disappear instantly through the rapture, with ninety-five percent or more left behind?

This is not a question of word semantics.

Paul is clearly differentiating the falling away from the rapture, because He says that one cannot happen before the occurrence of the other.

The point I am making here is that not only are the falling away and the rapture two different events, but also that the falling away is not plausibly a result or a by-product of a pretribulation rapture.

If this line of reasoning is correct, this has huge implications towards a better understanding of the dynamics of the upcoming great tribulation…for the Christian church.

The rapture would not generate the great falling away of 2 Thessalonians 2:2-3.

The three components that Paul lists here…the rapture, the falling away, and the revealing of the son of perdition, must occur in the sequential order he gives.

The question the Thessalonians were asking: “Did the rapture already occur and did we miss it?” is answered by Paul by saying that the rapture cannot happen until the falling away and the revelation of the son of perdition…have occurred.

That this end-times prophetic question by the Thessalonians involves the rapture and not the second coming, is inferred by Paul and by the Thessalonian leaders writing to Paul, by the simple fact that both Paul and the Thessalonians are unquestionably saved…but physically still on the earth…still alive…and still legitimately discussing this issue.

If the topic under discussion involved the second coming, the entire first-century church at that time understood correctly that Jesus Christ instead would then be openly ruling and reigning on earth, and the original question sent by letter to Paul would have been moot and nonsensical.

Like today, the timing of the rapture within the sequence of end-times events was an unsettled question, and Paul gives additional information to the Thessalonian Christians…to the limits and extent of his inspired understanding.

Again, the people who would be “left behind” in a pretribulation rapture are left behind in-place.  “Left behind” is not synonymous with “falling away.”

There is no remarkable displacement…no noticeably important movement of the “falling away” group…if the main body itself…the raptured church…is the entity that has done the actual moving away through a physical disappearance.

The world-at-large would not therefore view the non-raptured churchgoers, who would stop attending a non-existing church because it was now pointless to do so, as the New Testament prophesied “great falling away.”

The Counterfeit Messiah

Finally, if the universe is designed for human discovery, and if the scientific evidence is trending toward an acknowledgment of the existence of an intelligent designer…about the time this historic event would be persuasively decided by the scientific community…the upcoming Antichrist may come along and say:

“Yes, God does exist, and He is me!”

The arrogance of the grand deception of undeservedly stealing the credit for the brilliance of creation, an appreciation of that brilliance being the result of centuries of human labor investigating the inner workings of the natural world, would truly be ironic on a “galactic” scale.

2 Thessalonians 2:3 tells us that in the end-times the “son of perdition” will finally be exposed as the deadly and deceptive fraud that he is.

In my opinion, the Antichrist will initially be a worldly acceptable rendition of a modern-day messiah…falsely promising worldly economic salvation in a modified version of the temptation by Lucifer of Jesus in the wilderness…having short-cut, alluring, temporal worldly benefits…but eternal, spiritual destruction.

The outwardly attractive, winning ways of the Antichrist would entirely sidestep the currently contentious debate of Darwinian evolution versus theistic creation, because the key worldview issues would immediately shift downward several levels into the lower zone of worldly horizontal, temporally appealing concerns.

This is the same level at which Jesus of Nazareth was rejected as Messiah at His first advent.

Jesus of Nazareth…as the atoning Savior for sin…fell short of people’s worldly expectations for the Messiah.

This is the same level that Jesus will again be rejected by the world, but this time in head-to-head comparison between the Christian church and an Antichrist on earth visibly representing all of the attractive allure of the “cares of this world” in contrast to the higher realm of the spiritual life that only God can produce.

This will be the area of contention…because Satan has nothing else to work with.

The clever counterfeit journey of self says yes to the worldly enticing portion of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness (Lk. 4:5-80.  A biblical-quality journey of faith says: “no thank you.”

Unbelieving Jews in the first-century wanted worldly conventional salvation from their everyday cares, not an adventure of faith following God like Abraham, Moses, or David.

Christians operating at the higher spiritual level will recognize this subtle but deadly deception…the temporal promise of worldly counterfeit salvation at the cost of eternal damnation.

Lucifer is not God…and his promises are empty, malice-filled, and intentionally misrepresented…in the most heinously fraudulent way.

A genuine God-composed journey of faith, when viewed alongside recent scientific discoveries supporting intelligent design…removes randomness, blind chance, and whimsy from the narrative stories of faith recorded in the Bible.

Intricate, meticulous, brilliantly ingenious, and inventively arrayed bundles of information characterize the marvels we now better understand in the natural world.

This lends confidence to a present-day journey of faith following Jesus Christ in a new emerging way that is designed to bolster our resolve and determination to withstand the current attacks of radically skeptical unbelief, and the changing subtleties of the upcoming appeal that will mark the final world-class deceptive attractions of the counterfeit messiah…the Antichrist.

Free-Will Moral Agency

God created humans having the distinctive feature of being free-will moral agents, but this freedom has its limits.  We did not choose to be born.  We did not select in advance our unique abilities and character traits.  None of us can independently choose through free-will volition to live morally perfect, mistake-free lives.

Free-will moral agency divides into the widest possible gulfs in the practical applications of Darwinian evolution…and the fiat special creation of becoming Spirit-born Christians.

After Adam’s fall in the Garden of Eden, man is incapable of living a perfectly righteous life using free-will moral choice (Rom. 3:23; 7:14, 19, 20, 23).  Man cannot satisfy God’s law requiring perfect righteousness on our own.  We cannot evolve to this elevated character level.  This is a discontinuous gap in the moral realm.

By accepting Jesus Christ into our lives, Christians are admitting that we are incapable of living perfectly righteous lives by our own autonomous, free-will moral agency, apart from Christ’s divine input.

This is the direct opposite of the notion of evolutionary progress by totally naturalistic causes through self-realization, or a program of self-propelled works, or things simply falling into place by mere random chance.

Like the debate between Darwinian evolution and special creation in the natural world, there exists an unbridgeable gap between the idea of humanistic progress through purely naturalistic means…and the divine creation of a Spirit-born Christian instantly becoming a new creature “in Christ” through salvation faith.

We do not evolve into becoming Christians over long periods of time through good works, self-effort, or self-realization.  Survival of the fittest does not produce Christ-like character traits.

Christians are born-again by the Spirit of God into becoming new people “in Christ” (John chapter three).  The new birth in the Spirit is a divine creation of God.  Born-again Christians become sons and daughters of God, and thereby take on the nature of God through the gift of the indwelling Spirit of God.

A biblical-quality journey of faith composed individually for every follower of Christ is a highly specified life-script that accomplishes the plans of God and beneficially transforms the believer.  The biblical-quality, journey-of-faith life-scripts composed by God are discontinuous from the horizontally conventional, conforming-to-cultural-norms life-plans conceived through agnostic self-autonomous individualism.

The key point here is that God-crafted journeys of faith occur through intelligent design and not random chance.  To become who and what we were created to be…requires the active participation of God in our lives, completely and totally contrary to the random chance model of humanistic naturalism prevalent in our present-day, cynically skeptical culture.

Random-chance processes do not work when attempting to produce function in complex systems of any type…a college research paper, an outboard motor for a small boat, or a detailed schedule for new building construction.

A random-chance search strategy likewise does not produce optimum function for exceedingly complex purpose, direction, and meaning in life…while we are autonomously sitting on the decision-making thrones of our lives.

Evolution by blind, mindless, indifferent, random-chance is the diametric opposite of intelligent input.  Just as there is a huge discontinuity between the non-living world and the living world of plants and animals, there is an unbridgeable discontinuity between a self-directed life and a God-directed life.

Today’s Christian must grasp the enormous importance of stepping into our predestined, God-composed journey of faith.  The New Covenant promise of Jeremiah 31:31-34 says that every believer from the least to the greatest will all know God personally.  A personal walk with God through this life via precisely crafted events and circumstances beyond our capacity to imagine…is the God-blended solvent that dissolves the destructively subtle mixture of cynical unbelief allied with philosophical naturalism.

If science itself is discovering evidence for the existence of intelligent design in our natural world, then the materialistic basis for a liberal, hyper-critical, non-supernatural interpretation of the Bible no longer has a rational leg to stand on.

This purely philosophical approach of naturalism…based upon unbelief in God…is then unhooked from its undeserved false connection to the prestige and authority of the empirical scientific method.

If Jesus Christ lived a perfect life as the spotless Passover Lamb of God sacrifice for our sins, this then means that the expression of unselfish love through the cross is at the very pinnacle of the precision of design in the moral realm of truth.

The cross of Jesus Christ in the moral realm is the equivalent of the creative precision found in a solar eclipse in the natural realm.  Like a solar eclipse is perfectly crafted to open up the discovery of the cosmos, the cross of Christ is perfectly crafted to open up an understanding of eternally valid moral themes.

If our journey of faith leads us toward becoming more Christ-like, then the cross is in actuality a positive component of this imaginative moral engineering…just like the positive aspects of the fine-tuning of the laws of physics and chemistry are perfectly designed to support complex life.

The cross in our lives is therefore not something to avoid or to be afraid of.  In Jesus Christ the cross is the divine expression of the utter lack of any self-centeredness, in pure and perfect love for us.

The good detective work of recent scientific investigation, revealing the presence of intelligent design and the mathematical improbability of random- chance as the cause for our existence, restores order and sense to our universe.

It reinstates the legitimacy of a biblical journey of faith following the capable leadership of God.  This has enormous consequences for Christians, the gospel message, and evangelism.  It has the potential for partially or completely overturning the present naturalistic worldview responsible for the modern-day cynicism towards life.

If people can see that God is as close to us as His design of a perfect solar eclipse, as well-intentioned as the precise placing of our earth in the “habitable zone” in our solar system, has the capacity to create the indescribable precision of the activities we see inside a living cell, and has clear purpose behind our optimum location in the Milky Way Galaxy for both survival and to be able to view deep into outer space…this means that once again our world has meaning and purpose. 

Like the scientific acceptance of the evidence for the Big Bang beginning of the universe, at some point in the near future the accumulation of evidence for design may also establish the existence of a Creator God as a given.

A naturalistic world without meaning, purpose, and hope…based upon the arbitrariness of relative truths without any connection to absolute truth…gives way to the true reality of a universe managed by a brilliantly creative God.

To our amazement and admiration of God…as Christians…we now discover that this recent concept of a world designed both to support complex life and to encourage scientific investigation, also dovetails beautifully with the biblical idea that God has also set up a perfectly orchestrated way to discover eternal moral truth in this broken world.

This comes to us through the investigative lens of a biblical journey of faith following Jesus Christ our Savior.

Darwinism and a Biblical Journey of Faith

Darwinian macroevolution might more accurately be labeled as the philosophical conjecture-of-the-gaps.

Line-up similarly related mammals, birds, insects, reptiles, or plants in sequential order in their respective groups, and no matter how closely similar they match, the gaps between each living thing in terms of physical characteristics, internal organs, behavior, molecular protein variance, and uniquely beneficial survival features…are distinct and discontinuous enough to support the exercise of a useful taxonomic, classification grouping system.

The historical term used to describe the distinct uniqueness of each living creature within a similar group is “typology”…that living things stay true to type…the immutable law of the inheritance of similar characteristics from parent to offspring.

If typology did not visibly predominate in the natural living world, there would be no clear differentiation between living creatures on which to base a system of classification, for use in the fields of comparative anatomy and taxonomy.

But the naturalistic scheme that would connect all living things using continuously unbroken graph-lines presupposing gradual development from common ancestors to radically branching new species evolving over long periods of time…called common descent…is entirely hypothetical, speculative conjecture.

This concept is broadly termed macroevolution…the idea that species can put out variant traits chosen by natural selection for enhanced survivability and thus reproductive advantage…that will over time change fish into amphibians, reptiles into birds, and primitive mammals in modern human beings.

Neither Darwin…at the time of the writing of his classic book On The Origin of Species…or any other evolutionist has ever produced empirical evidence for the existence of the radical changes required for macro evolution to occur.

Macro evolution is a philosophical extrapolation…an extension of microevolution.

Micro evolution is scientifically established and uncontroversial.

The horse series in the fossil record demonstrates microevolution…a gradually developing adaptive sequence of variant traits…remains for eons of time always horses and nothing but horses.

This is evidence for genetic variability to produce micro evolutionary adaptation to changing, ecological environments…through variant traits chosen through natural selection…which supports typology…not common descent.

The boundaries that define of the limits of genetic variability are evidenced in the human enterprise of artificial selection in the breeding of 125 different types of dogs…yet this also illustrates the strict constraints of typology in our inability to breed dogs that are as large as elephants…or to breed dogs into something else entirely.

The empirical facts about each living creature, no matter how similar or how different from other closely related creatures as classified by the human system of taxonomy, cannot justifiably be connected in a continuous series of gradual development without first articulating the hard empirical methodology of scientific fact-based evidence…of how a duck and an eagle can both come from a common ancestor, or on a more general level how a reptile can change into a bird, or how an amphibian can change into a fish or vice-versa, or how a small-sized, ancestral land mammal can change over time into an elephant or a hippopotamus.

A philosophical worldview does not normally take the place of factual scientific evidence when critical thinking is in play.

Pure speculative conjecture alone cannot be used as the filler-material between the discreet and discontinuous gaps separating living things…to hypothetically connect the dots…when there is no scientific reason to connect the dots…outside of the philosophy of naturalistic materialism that supposedly requires us to do so…and still credibly be labeled “science.”

Naturalism is already the commendable working hypothesis in all branches of science.

But naturalistic materialism…and scientific fact-based evidence…are not interchangeable in the hypothetical extrapolation of Darwinian micro evolution into macro evolution.

Discontinuous “types” based upon characteristic differences are still the criteria in-use today in modern taxonomy…as it was 160 years ago…because the hard scientific reality shows distinct mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, and insects that do not blend together in overlapping, indistinguishable continuity in our present world…or in the historically ancient fossil record…unless we artificially piece them together using the intelligently designed program of common descent…like we piece together disparate images on to an art poster collage.

The idea that one species can radically change wholesale into another entirely different species…requires clear word definitions and the clearest of understanding.

Darwin’s finches on the Galapagos Islands radiate over time into distinct types of finches, but they are still finches and they are still birds.

The genetic constraints on variability in Darwin’s finches…that validate the concept of typology in the natural living world…prevail.

The concept that all of the diversity in nature is connected by continuity…by common descent…must be supported by the strongest observational evidence.  Scientific investigation must supply the empirical evidence for this notion.

After nearly 160 years of intensive research, it has not.

The discontinuity in nature observed by the leading naturalists and biologists prior to 1859, and the contrasting universal continuity required by any purely naturalistic scheme like Darwinian evolution, both differ at this fundamentally critical point of continuity or discontinuity.

Why is this important for Christians today?

Darwinian evolution would be easier to prove if it described a reality in nature that consisted of overlapping relationships that blurred the uniquely distinctive features of living things to the point of making taxonomy and comparative anatomy…a totally subjective exercise.

Just as continuity and discontinuity are at polar opposite ends of the spectrum, a biblical-quality journey of faith is discontinuous with worldly conventional thinking.

The same God who created animals and plants having uniquely distinctive features allowing for clear-cut, objective classification, also created God-composed journeys of faith that are divinely discontinuous with humanistic philosophies and man-made religions.

Borrowing from scientific terminology, a God-composed journey of faith is coherent and functionally integrated…in a world that has purpose and meaning.

Our innate, differing human abilities…like genetic variant traits put out for natural selection to choose…in a biblical-quality journey of faith are co-adapted to interact with life events and circumstances in a coherent manner.

By contrast, an autonomous, self-directed life is partially a random, trial-and-error search strategy that is dysfunctional…that veers off in a non-productive, distracting trajectory…in terms of our ultimate direction and purpose.

In this present age in history there are a multitude of career and personal options.  Only our Creator God knows the one right, fulfilling life-script for each of us.

Darwinian evolution by random chance is the worst possible program as our guide to life.  Our optimum life-course cannot be found by chance.

The narrative stories of faith recorded in the Bible are beyond human invention and contrivance to begin with, and are too complex and directional to be the result of random chance discovery.

They require the direct participation of God to imagine, initiate, orchestrate, and to finally bring to a positive outcome.