Why The Rapture Must Happen
Much has been discussed and written about speculation leading up to this calendar date. That the Rapture must happen during this year’s Jewish Feast of Trumpets observation is the central subject of the frenzied conversation.
To be honest, I’ve not looked very deeply into the Feast of Trumpets observation, as to its meaning and all attendant to that observation. I do have a general working knowledge of that tradition and others held by the orthodox Jewish community, but have come to believe and accept through my study and seeking to know Truth Imparted by the Holy Spirit that the Rapture is not linked to any Jewish day of observation, so far as its timing is concerned.
Some, who are much more in-depth scholars in these Jewish holy days say the Feast of Trumpets this year was to be September 16-17, not September 23-24. But here we are at this posting, on September 22.
In my deepest contemplation and heartfelt desire I would love, despite my skepticism, for the speculation that the Rapture will happen at this time to be correct. I, like most of us who believe the preTrib Rapture to be the correct view from what the Apostle Paul and Jesus Himself has Foretold, always am “looking up” (Luke 21:28) and ”looking for the blessed hope” (Titus 2: 13). We are “watching” Mark 13:37. We believe the Rapture of the Church –all born-again believers—can happen at any moment. It is an imminent event.
So, do I believe it can happen on September 23 or 24 of 2025? Yes, absolutely. I definitely believe it can happen on this much-talked-about date.
Do I believe it “will definitely take place” on this date? No, I do not. It could happen as I’m writing this almost a week earlier!
If the Rapture does occur on the date being speculated by many, then it will make no difference to believers who have been Raptured about whether it happened on the date predicted. –Other than that, we who name the Holy Name of Jesus will be Eternally Celebrating Joyous Bliss! But if it doesn’t happen on that date so many are invested in, I’m concerned that the Faith of some will be shaken.
This has always been the deleterious results of past date settings regarding the Rapture. Many have gone into deep crises of their Faith in God’s Promises over such failures.
So with that as preface, I would like to spend the balance of the commentary somewhat examining why it is necessary for God to Rapture the Saints of this Church Age. –Why He will be absolutely True to His Word and will do so –I believe very, very soon.
The tremendous ramping up of evil taking place today as humanity proceeds further toward God’s Judgment against sin and rebellion is most relevant to the premise implicit in the title of this commentary:
Why the Rapture must happen.
When looking at the black-and-white films the Allies shot within the Nazi death camps following victory over Hitler’s Germany in World War II, it is difficult to comprehend that level of evil. The images of walking skeletons that were the Jewish “survivors” of those camps remain etched in the memory of anyone who has seen those videos.
Upon viewing those films, one instinctively senses that there has to be eternal punishment for anyone who perpetrates such absolute evil.
The same level of pictorial record doesn’t exist for the genocidal rampages inflicted on their own people by Josef Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and the murderers of the other despotic regimes in modern times. However, eyewitness accounts and some photographic evidence make it hard to fathom that those beastly tyrants were restrained in their butchery.
The Bible nonetheless bears witness that God the Holy Spirit governs the consciences of human beings. In biblically prophetic terms, this truth is most evident in Paul’s second epistle to the Thessalonians: “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:7-8).
Paul the apostle was saying in this prophecy that evil was at work in a big way, even at the time he was writing the letter. Still, the Holy Spirit was then restraining and would continue to restrain that evil until the Holy Spirit removes as restrainer of evil. Then all hell will break loose as the Antichrist is revealed. The spirit of Antichrist is already present in the world–and was manifest even during John’s day (read 1 John 4:1-3). The mystery of iniquity about which Paul prophesied and this spirit of Antichrist are intertwined and interlinked in the ancient web of lawlessness we call evil.
Jesus foretold what will happen once the restrainer (the Holy Spirit) removes from governing the wickedness that is in the hearts and minds of people of the post-Rapture world: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21).
The Lord prophesied just how bad things would become: “And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened” (Matthew 24:22).
God will shorten the days of that time of great Tribulation, because if He let things go on to their ultimate conclusion, without the return of Christ, every being of flesh and blood on the planet would be destroyed. Such is the mystery of iniquity that exists today, and will become exponentially worse once the restraint on evil is no longer in place. Then, the ultimately evolved man–as evolution would have it—will step to the forefront of fallen human history. Antichrist will inflict horrors on the people of earth in ways Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the rest of history’s madmen could not have even imagined. His regime will be the most bloodthirsty of all time.
Lawlessness is everywhere we look today. Whether considering the Middle East and the unspeakable evil of satanic forces like Hamas, the absolute wickedness of mutilating children fostered by the so-called Trans Movement, or thinking on America and the devil-inspired anti-Semitism of youth groups indoctrinated by U.S. universities, the evil the Bible deems the mystery of iniquity is swelling like a great caldera that is about to explode across the world.
Evidence of that growing global-wide lawlessness is compiled hourly through such reports as follows.
As recent as 2019, The Economist’s Safe City Index placed Amsterdam at the top in Europe and fourth worldwide, behind only Tokyo, Singapore, and Osaka, but a new debate hosted by local broadcaster AT5 has revealed that seven in ten panel members avoid certain parts of the city because they now feel unsafe.
That figure rises to 85 percent among women, while half of the women surveyed reported experiencing some form of harassment, with some subjected to intimidation, being followed, or assault.
The issue has gained urgency after several high-profile crimes, including the murders of two 17-year-olds: Rivaldo, shot dead on a soccer field, and Lisa, who was brutally murdered by a 22-year-old asylum seeker as she cycled home. Multiple sexual assaults have also rocked the city in recent weeks, and police were on high alert after recording three explosions in five days last week.
Headlines at the time read: explosions-rock-amsterdam-as-dutch-capital-continues-to-reel-from-recent-teen-girl-allegedly-murdered-by-asylum-seeker
[Source: Amsterdam used to be the safest city in Europe; now a majority of its citizens are afraid to go out at night, Rapture Ready News, September 12, 2025]
The youth, guilty of the majority of such lawlessness in inner cities across the world, have been taught by cultural inculcation that they have been held down by the affluent, so their actions are justified. It is no more than simply–the inference is–Robin Hood robbing the evil sheriff of Nottingham.
Can there be much doubt that if they will commit such bold acts now, when the Holy Spirit is no longer restraining such evil thinking and actions, even America will quickly become a hellish existence in which anything goes?
It is almost as if the U.S. federal governmental powers that be have taken Paul’s 2 Thessalonians 2:7-8 passage to heart. It seems they anticipate a time when draconian measures will become necessary to restrain the evil that is coming. Antichrist’s restraint will be even more draconian, but his own evil will far surpass all other iniquity of history, the Bible foretells.
Judgment of such rebelliousness awaits implementation by the God who must bring back the Righteousness lost in Eden. Our Holy Heavenly Father is the only One who can cleanse humanity of this satanically-borne infection called sin.
Only those who are born again through belief in the Lord Jesus Christ –God’s Son who has taken away the sins of the world—are not subject to God’s coming Judgment of those left behind on Planet Earth at the Rapture.
This is the purpose of the Rapture. To rescue all who are in God’s Family through belief in Jesus. We are “not appointed to wrath,” which the world of left behind rebels are about to experience during the Tribulation (Revelation 3:10).
God must remove all who are Righteous from the planet’s surface and those who have died while in Christ’s Saving Grace, before His Judgment and Wrath must begin cleansing this fallen world. He will then, at that time, again begin Dealing with His chosen nation, Israel, to bring a remnant to Accept their Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus will Return to the planet’s surface, destroy all enemies of God, and set up His Millennial Kingdom.
Ultimately, God will purge all sin, bringing His Creation called man , and all of his Creation back to Perfection that was lost when iniquity was found in Lucifer, and when sin and death entered through Adam’s disobedience.
It will all begin with the Rapture of the Church, which has been being Constructed by the Lord Jesus since His death, burial, and Resurrection and His sending the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
This is why the Rapture must Happen. It is about to do so. Here is how to be sure you go to the Lord Jesus and be Rescued from the coming Judgment and Wrath to come.
“That if you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and will believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart man believes unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).
–Terry
Is This a Foreshadowing of Revelation 11?
Although only ten at the time, I remember the shock of hearing about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Although the 1960s were hardly a time of righteousness in America, we were a nation united in mourning the death of our president. Even in my staunchly Republican home, we grieved as we watched Kennedy’s casket travel down the streets of Washington, DC, on a horse-drawn carriage.
Much has changed in the past sixty-two years, and the startling difference is yet another sign that we live in the last moments of human history as we know it.
Consider the response of many to the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk. Many continue to grieve his death, of course. Yet perhaps just as shocking as his murder are the abhorrent celebrations of it. It’s not just a few, but a great many people continue to cheer the killing of a man with a wife and two young children. It’s appalling and repugnant, but it’s also a reality of the time in which we live.
A recent story on the PNW website asks, Why Did So Many Teachers Cheer The Assassination? The article documents many incidents of public school teachers telling their class that Charlie Kirk deserved to die, along with other detestable expressions of joy over the martyrdom of a man who dearly loved Jesus.
Prophetic Implications
Do you know that the Bible tells of a future time of celebration over the killing of two of God’s spokesmen?
At the start of the seven-year Tribulation, two mysterious witnesses will appear in Jerusalem, and for three and a half years, they will proclaim God’s message to the Jews as well as to a lost world. We learn of their fate in Revelation 11:7-10:
“And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them, and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified. For three and a half days some from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb, and those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and make merry and exchange presents, because these two prophets had been a torment to those who dwell on the earth.”
Can you imagine people giving gifts to their children, spouses, and friends because the antichrist murdered two men on the streets of Jerusalem? They will watch video streams of the two dead bodies while throwing parties to celebrate the silencing of these spokesmen. Later, they will also watch the Lord raise the pair from the dead and bring them up to Heaven (Revelation 11:11-12).
What we see in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder is a world that’s well along the path to what we read about in Revelation 11. A shockingly high percentage of those on the left believe it would be okay to kill President Trump, Vice President Vance, and other political and Christian leaders who express opinions that oppose their beloved LGBTQ+ agenda and supposed right to kill the unborn. Is this not a foretaste of the world’s future response to the killing of God’s two witnesses?
How Close Are We?
With each passing week, we see more evidence that life as described in Revelation chapters 6-18 is ever so near. How close must we be to this dire time in human history?
Another prophetic aspect of the Revelation 11 account is the modern technology that makes it possible for the entire world to watch events unfold on the streets of Jerusalem. Today, we don’t question whether or not this is possible. But what did believers living at the end of the first century AD think when they read that the entire world would watch the Lord raise the bodies of the witnesses from the dead?
The conditions depicted in the seal judgments of Revelation 6 seem so close to reality that many say the riders of the apocalypse are already galloping across the earth. They are not, of course; the coming disasters will be much worse when these prophecies come to life after the Rapture.
Twenty-five years ago, the activities of the antichrist in Revelation 13 likely seemed like science fiction to many. I did not understand how he could exercise such total control over all buying and selling. Today, the global elite possess both the technology and the desire to make all that we read about the mark of the beast a reality. After Jesus takes us home and removes the restraining force of the Holy Spirit, the antichrist will rapidly move the world toward the scenes that John saw and recorded in Revelation 13.
One Last Thought
The celebrations over the killing of Charlie Kirk reveal the presence of what the Apostle Paul called a “debased” or “reprobate” mind in Romans 1:29-32. Although we don’t typically regard this passage as Bible prophecy, his words in verse 32 depict today’s world:
“Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”
As I wrote in last week’s post, we live in a day like no other. How much longer can it be before Jesus appears to take us home? How is it possible to miss the close parallels between the time in which we live and how the Bible described the last days?
Maranatha!
-Jonathan