Dr. Dave Breese was my personal friend, but he was much more than that to the believers who were blessed to be beneficiaries of his monumental spiritual and intellectual dissection of God’s Holy Word. In his scholarship and understanding of biblical prophecy–particularly from the pre-Trib, premillennial view, he had no superiors and few peers.
He was on-air host of The King Is Coming television ministry viewed weekly throughout the US and abroad. You may remember that, until his recent death, Dr. Ed Hindson was Dave’s successor to that program. Both were great servants of God, and I’m thankful to have had them in my life as mentors and friends.
Here we continue with Dr. Breese’s answers to the many questions on the Rapture he received throughout his many years of ministry.
Questions and Answers about the Rapture
Why is the Rapture not mentioned in the Old Testament? The prophets of the Old Testament were not given the revelation of the Church, the Body of Christ. Neither were they told of the Rapture of the Church. This is particularly a New Testament revelation. The Scripture speaks of the message of salvation by grace, given to the Church to preach to the world, and testifies of the concern of the prophets. It says,
“Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into” (1 Pet.1:10-12).
So, the Church and its message was a mystery in the Old Testament. Paul says,
Does Israel then have a different calling and destiny from that of the Church? The Scripture teaches that Israel is the heir of the world (Rom. 4:13). But it teaches that the Church is the heir of the universe. “All things” are the inheritance of the Christian, of the Church (1 Cor.3:21-23).
If the Kingdom is now, why the Rapture? Why can’t the Church just grow and take over everything? There are various kinds of “kingdom now” teachings in the world. The fact, however, is that the Kingdom was rejected by Israel and will not be instituted in the world until Christ comes in power and great glory. The Kingdom in its external form is not promised to the world in our time. In this day and age, God represents Himself in this world via the unseen body of Christ and through the seen, observable lives of individual believers. The program of God becomes “visible” in Christians who testify for the Lord Jesus and live holy lives before the watching world. The Kingdom, by the way, will not “grow in the world,” but it will come suddenly, imposed upon the world by its King, the Lord Jesus Christ. [Read Dan 2:44-45]
Where does the Rapture fit into the “big picture” of history? The Rapture ends the day of grace and begins the day of the Lord, which begins with the Tribulation. It will end a day of grace, the time of divine forbearance, and begin a time called the day of the Lord, in which God is at liberty to work with His promised program of judgment upon the world.
I recommend a book called The Two Futures, which will give you a presentation of “the big picture.
The Glory to Come
Let each of us be finally reminded that the story of the future is not simply that of one day after another, ad infinitum. No indeed! There is a glorious future for the Church, and there is a dismal future for the world. The sojourn of the Church in this world will come to an instantaneous end, at which time every believer will be taken from this dark planet to the glory which is to come.
At the moment of that transition, each of us will receive a new body, a glorified body that is not unlike the body of Christ himself. We will, at this point, be given the capacity to feel, to appreciate, to enjoy all of the unspeakably wonderful things that will be ours in eternity. The Scripture says, “In thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11).
So great will be the delights of heaven that they are impossible to describe under the constraints, the limitations of human language. It may, therefore, be well to exercise a sanctified imagination, to ask the question, “What will it be like when Jesus comes?” The answer, of course, is that it will be like nothing we can imagine in all of life. There is no human experience that resembles in any but the palest fashion the ecstasy that will be ours when we step across the great divide into the fadeless light of heaven.
What is heaven like? The answer must be that heaven is not exactly like anything that we know in this world. We do well to take the greatest joys of earth and multiply them by a thousand times. Only then do we have even the beginning of the joys that will be ours in heaven.
The Christian is invited to use his “sanctified imagination” to think of golden streets, ivory palaces, a city where there is no night, and endless “pleasure forever more.” In heaven also, we will have the opportunity to meet the saints who have gone before and, of course, loved ones who have, in earlier days, moved from the Church militant to the Church triumphant. How wonderful to contemplate that golden moment when the Church will be translated from this world to the world to come. What a moment that will be!
The real point is that we be prepared for that moment. The preparation is that we must be Christians. A Christian is one who believes the gospel of Jesus Christ, who has accepted the Son of the living God as personal Saviour. Because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ, the sufficient sacrifice for sin, each person in all of the world is invited to receive the free gift, the gift of God, which is everlasting life. The single requirement is faith alone. By believing in Jesus Christ – who He was and what He did for man on the cross – by that act of faith, I receive the gift of God, which is life eternal.
Meanwhile, in these days, let us gather together at the cross, recognizing Jesus Christ as the Saviour whose sacrifice made eternal life possible. While laboring for Him here, let us also anticipate the sound of the trumpet when we will be caught up to be with Him.
To follow up on Dave’s call to heed God’s invitation to become part of His eternal family, we again present here God’s formula–the only way—to bring you into that relationship with the Heavenly Father forever.
“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).