Rapture Ready…Or Not :: By Terry James
Author’s note: I believe I am prompted to again present my book Rapture Ready…Or Not: 15 Reasons This Is the Generation That Will Be Left Behind, published in 2016 by New Leaf Press – thus because all indicators are pointing with flashing forewarning that the Tribulation (Daniel’s seventieth week) is almost upon this generation of those who reject Christ’s saving grace.
My article this week is the preface to that book (very lightly edited). It leads into the book by my telling of my clinical death.
I heard recently Dr. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas, cautioning in the strongest terms against believing accounts of those who claim to have died, gone to Heaven, then returned to tell of the matter. I agree. I have always been most wary of such accounts.
Dr. Jeffress says that the Bible is sufficient, and there is no need for any extrabiblical information about Heaven or what happens after death.
Again, I agree totally. However, I can do no other than testify as to what happened the moment my heart stopped that fateful day.
This book, I sense, is one of the most relevant for this late hour of the Church Age (Age of Grace) even though things described and reported are dated to the times ten years ago, and don’t account for the tremendous prophetic stage-setting taking place, especially since the influences of the second Trump Administration.
I think you will agree the book nonetheless is on point about Bible prophecy truth in every chapter. In-depth information about the pre-Tribulation Rapture and the reasons it’s about to happen is needed at this critical hour. My prayerful hope is that many reading this will, even if they have that volume already, want to get additional copies for pastors, teachers in the churches, and people in the pews, many of whom have no idea of just how near we are to moment when Jesus steps onto the clouds of Glory and shouts “Come up here!”
Information about how to get the book is posted below the article.
Instantaneously, I stood before a throng of cheering people who appeared to be in their mid-twenties. Young men and young women looked at me with expressions of absolute jubilation projecting from the most beautiful faces I’ve seen. Their hands were thrusting at full arm’s length above their heads while they looked into my eyes. I knew theirs was a cheer for some immense victory. They were bidding me to join them—or so I thought at that eternal moment.
But everything turned dark again, and I heard someone say, “I had to hit him with the paddles.”
“What paddles?” I asked.
“Your heart stopped and I had to use the defib paddles,” the young man’s voice said.
In what seemed mere moments, I heard a strange sound, the same one I had heard immediately before standing in front of that cheering throng. It was a blip sound, like that of going from one computer application to another.
I instantly stood for the second time before the same wildly cheering young men and women, their hands again thrusting upward, as if expressing victory. They laughed and gracefully jumped up and down while looking into my eyes with pure delight projecting into my core being, causing an inner warmth I had not known before that moment.
Things started darkening around me again, and I said—whether audibly or not, I don’t know—that I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay with them—wanted to join them.
But I was again on the gurney, or hospital cath-lab table. “What are you doing?” I asked the people who were working feverishly on me.
“They’re trying to save your life,” came the voice from the one who had said he had to use the defib paddles.
Then it happened again. I heard the electronic-sounding blip. Immediately, for the third time, I stood with the beautiful young women and handsome young men. This time I joined them while they continued to look into my eyes and wave their hands high above their heads.
This time we were running, and they were looking over at me while we ran. Toward what, I don’t know. We were moving swiftly, with no effort whatsoever, toward something wonderful—toward the reason for this “victory lap.”
The darkness came again, and I was again on the table. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be with the group I had somehow gotten to feel a visceral part of during my three trips to…where? I don’t know.
It was Good Friday, April 22, 2011, and I was said to be dead on arrival, and then was clinically dead—flatlined—on two other occasions. The interventional cardiologist told me that 95 percent of people with the “widow maker” never make it to the cath lab. Of those who do, he informed, only 50 percent live. Then he wanted me to look at the picture of my artery and what he had done to remove the blockage that had stopped my heart.
I told him I couldn’t see it. I’ve been totally blind since a hereditary retinal disease took my eyesight almost twenty years earlier.
“You should see where I’ve just been,” I tried to tell the doctor and the others who had just pulled off a medical miracle. They were too busy to listen.
My case was so unusual and the “miracle” of my recovery was so astounding that the cardiologist association of my state gave me the “Cardiologist Patient of the Year Award,” which still sits on a shelf in my office.
There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t think deeply on the reason for my experience—my trip into that realm, suspended somewhere between life and death, that could only be described as being on the periphery of Heaven.
Although there are reasons beyond my ability to know why I was allowed that Good Friday trip to be with those cheering, young, heavenly beings, I have been given over the months since some answers as to what the experience was about. I intend to share that knowledge here. Not only do I want to share what I know the experience involved, but I must tell you, because I am absolutely required to do so. It is my commission from God in Heaven. The purpose is that important.
My commission is to tell you that there is coming—and very soon—one specific tick of the clock’s second hand that is going to convulse every culture, every society, every individual on planet Earth. God has spoken it. It will happen. That instant of time will be the event that is one of the most derided, the most mocked, of all biblical truths. It will come without any immediate forewarning. But it will not happen without a great number of prophetic signposts that presage its occurrence.
As a matter of fact, those signals are literally pulsing all around us at this moment. The very atmosphere is electric with the heavenly siren call to be alert. Something of earth-shocking impact is about to happen.
Multiplied millions of people across the world will disappear in less than a microsecond. The aftermath of the sudden vanishing in America in particular will produce carnage that staggers the imagination. Those left behind will face problems that will make any situations they are presently experiencing seem nothing by comparison.
Beware and aware: Believe it or not, it is going to happen. According to the signals that warn of its horror-filled aftermath, the Rapture is about to rip civilization as no other event since the Flood of Noah’s day.
This is the distinct impression permanently engraved into my spirit on that Good Friday, 2011.
The crowd’s cheering—the young, heavenly beings which were, I believe the cloud of witnesses of Hebrews 12:1-3—my spirit-impression tells me, is for the message I have been disseminating for many years through books, speaking engagements, broadcasts, and articles on our website, www.raptureready.com. However, the young heavenly cheerleaders were mostly praising. They weren’t praising me or the others who present the message of the Rapture in all its truth—although that was part of the reason they cheered. They were praising God that this astonishing event is on the very brink of bringing the vast body of believers into the Father’s house, just as God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, promised.
Their jubilation was Heaven’s validation of the view of the Rapture that proclaims that believers in Jesus Christ—alone—for salvation will be brought instantaneously into His blessed presence before the most horrendous time of human history breaks upon a world ripe for judgment. Be assured: Rapture ready or not, these things are about to take place!
To order Rapture Ready…Or Not: 15 Reasons This Is the Generation That Will Be Left Behind, here’s the link:
https://www.masterbooks.com/rapture-ready-paperback-single
A Lamp Shining in a Dark Place
I love how the words of 2 Peter 1:19 compare Bible prophecy “to a lamp shining in a dark place.” Does that not fit perfectly with the day in which we live? I remember thinking the world was a “dark place” back in the 1990s, and it was, but it’s so much darker today.
Notice first how the verse begins, “And we have as more sure the prophetic word” (LSB). In the preceding verses, 2 Peter 1:16-18, Peter describes Jesus’ Transfiguration, where he witnessed His “majestic glory.” I’m sure that memory remained forever etched in the apostle’s memory for the rest of his life. And yet, he regarded the “prophetic word” of Scripture as a “more sure” guide to what lies ahead for us and the world.
Is that not a sharp contrast to many Christians who today trust their experiences above the words of Scripture? But not Peter. Although he witnessed firsthand Jesus’ future glory and a taste of His kingdom, he regarded God’s Word as a more reliable source of Bible prophecy.
For what follows, it’s the rest of 2 Peter 1:19 that I want to emphasize, “to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.” It’s more important than ever that we focus our hearts on the light that shines in “a dark place.”
The Dark Place
The text of Luke 9:28-36 doesn’t specify that the Transfiguration happened at night, although the drowsiness of the disciples suggests that it did. But I have always pictured Jesus’ dazzling appearance suddenly illuminating the dark mountaintop that evening. Perhaps that memory sparked the image of the “prophetic word” illuminating a dark place. Today, it would be like walking into a pitch-black room and turning on the light.
I have studied Bible prophecy for a long time. As a young pastor forty-five years ago, I preached through 1 Thessalonians, emphasizing the pre-Tribulation Rapture, and during the evening services, I provided detailed teachings from the book of Daniel. And yet, I never for a second thought that I would see such lawlessness before the Rapture as I see today:
- The Epstein files point to such a widespread participation in sex trafficking that the U.S. government seems skittish about disclosing the vile behavior of so many powerful people and elected officials involved in destroying the lives of countless children. (This alone brings to my mind the words of Psalm 75:6-8.)
- Massive amounts of fraud have come to light in the past couple of months, in the tens of billions of dollars, if not a whole lot more, that people and politicians stole from taxpayer funds.
- The arrest of violent criminals living illegally in America has sparked vehement opposition to law enforcement.
- Threats against President Trump’s cabinet have led to some of them living on military bases with their families. One high-ranking member of Trump’s national security team recently stated that he and his wife receive death threats every day.
This is but a sample of how much darker the world has become in just the past thirty years, and I know I’m missing additional evidence that verifies the rapid approach of the Tribulation period.
The Light
The present darkness highlights the great treasure we have in the prophetic words of Scripture.
God’s Word exposes the lawlessness of our time, but it’s so much more than that. It tells us that long, long ago, the Lord knew the world would look exactly like it does today. And along with that, the Bible reveals that after our departure, the Lord will deal justly with the lawbreakers of our world as only He can do.
Bible prophecy highlights Jesus as our deliverer; He is the “bright morning star” of Revelation 22:16. He is the substance of our hope. Is that not the reason why Satan hates Bible prophecy and, in particular, the pre-Tribulation Rapture? These things not only spell his doom, but they also glorify the Savior as the One who not only sealed his fate on the cross, but will also destroy both him and his kingdom at His coming.
The Lord knew what we would need to navigate through this murky world when He revealed the Rapture as an imminent expectation, something that can happen at any moment. This anticipation focuses our hearts on eternity, which we desperately need for the time in which we live.
In his book, New Morning Mercies, Paul David Tripp explains the necessity of such a perspective:
“When you forget eternity, you tend to lose sight of what’s important, you live for what is temporary, and your heart seeks for satisfaction where it cannot be found…. Living as an eternity amnesiac just doesn’t work. It leaves you either hoping that now will be the paradise it will never be or hopeless that what is broken will ever be fixed. So it’s important to fix your eyes on what God has promised will surely come. Let the values of eternity be the values that shape your living today…”
Sadly, many Christians live with hearts set on earthbound aspirations and thus remain blind to the signs that we live in the season of Jesus’ appearing.
People will continue to scoff at the biblically sound doctrine of the pre-Tribulation Rapture, but those of us who live with the imminent anticipation of meeting Jesus in the air can’t imagine living in this dark world without it. More than anything else, it turns our focus to our “bright morning star,” Jesus. He is the true source of light for what lies ahead.
It’s His light that enables us to remain hopeful as the walls of darkness close in on our world.
-Jonathan