The Lord Will Not Call His Church from Heaven

Not really. He will not call from heaven for the saints to go home. He opens the door in heaven according to Revelation 4:1, and there is a cry, “Come up here!” It is one of the joys of scripture when we compare verses.

Not to do so gives only part of the picture, or even worse, the wrong picture.

Look at it this way. You have been invited to a very special event by the President; well, “a President, any President” (so you don’t go thinking of Joe Biden). You are told a vehicle will pick you up at 7 P.M. You wait expectantly, and the vehicle arrives but with one twist. The driver is actually the President, who is collecting you himself.

That is how the Rapture will be. We look at the opening words of 1Thessalonians 4:16 “For the Lord Himself will descend…” That is, “for the Lord HIMSELF will descend.”

There will be nothing impersonal about the Rapture, for it is the Lord HIMSELF who is coming. For what purpose is He coming?

Is it to call His Church to glory? Yes, mostly it is, but let us put it better. It is to TAKE home His Church to glory. He, HIMSELF, will TAKE to HIMSELF!

I think as we examine the Rapture passages, we often focus on the events and how they will happen, more focusing on the mechanics of the event. It is possible to miss the personal element.

The Rapture will be such a momentous happening – maybe the greatest in the history of the world – and the awe and power of it do occupy our minds.

Do you like being swept along in the crowd? Well, it is very impersonal, isn’t it? And we can get lost as well. Sometimes we may think the Rapture is like that, with billions of souls all being caught up together in one mass migration from earth to heaven.

But you know what? I really do not think the Rapture will be like that at all. When the Lord saved you, there was a transaction just between God and you when your life was changed forever and you became a child of God on this earth, a VERY personal transaction. It was so personal, so one-to-one.

In the Rapture, I do believe there will be an interaction, one-to-one, between the Lord and you. Yes, you are caught up with the multitude, but you are caught up “individually” by the Lord. That is the marvelous thing about God. His divine attributes allow Him to deal with the multitude but with the individual at the same time.

When Peter was sinking in the sea, the Lord miraculously lifted him out of the sea, and he was taken by the Lord to the boat. The sea in scripture, especially in prophecy, means the nations of the world (more the Gentile nations). Peter was, IN TYPE, taken out of the world and placed with the Lord’s people in the boat.

The Rapture will be like that. We all will be taken out of the world by the Lord HIMSELF, and then we’ll be found with God’s people in the presence of the Lord. What I am saying is that while the Lord Jesus comes for the universal Church, He is coming for each of us individually, and that will be our experience. He comes for me. He comes for you.

Heaven will not be an impersonal place. We will never be alone. Shy people tend to hold back and become obscured in the crowd. It will not be like that. The Lord Jesus Christ will be the center and focus of heaven, and I think it will be the Lord and me. That is not selfish. It will be the Lord and you. He will relate to ALL His children.

SO… when the Rapture happens, the Lord Himself comes for YOU. He does not leave it to another. He comes Himself. Are you thrilled about that prospect? We ought to be. I think there is a great sadness some Christians have, and they don’t know they have it! They don’t accept the Rapture, or they hold to the Apostles’ Creed that says Jesus will come back to judge the living and the dead, with no reference to the Rapture whatsoever. The Rapture is the blessed hope. It gives us hope in a decaying world. Churches for centuries have failed the people by dismissing the Rapture. They have cut a whole section out of people’s lives.

I have people write to me sometimes to tell me that they can’t get their pastors to speak on the Rapture or anything dealing with prophecy. That is so sad and so neglecting of the word.

It is bad stewardship. Very bad stewardship!

Here is a poem I wrote this morning at 5 A.M. when I was doing this message (could not sleep).

HE COMES FOR ME – THE BLESSED HOPE – HE COMES FOR ME

By Jesus Christ, my soul is owned.
Lift up your eyes to God enthroned.
I come to Him as his dear child,
Now spotless white, but once defiled.

To his presence, the door is mine;
Communion sweet that’s so divine.
To You my eyes are lifted up,
Away from earth that is corrupt.

We wait for Him to shout the call;
To call the dead to stand up tall;
To change us all before His face;
The ones who have been saved by grace.

He comes for me, to take me where
All is lovely and all is fair.
The Lord Himself will come for me.
Then His glorious face I’ll see.

O, come, Lord Jesus, come to take
Your precious Bride for your Name’s sake.
The blesse’d hope The Rapture is,
The blood-bought reward that is His.

R E Ferguson 12 February 2023 8-8-8-8

Revelation 22:20 “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming quickly.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”

2 Timothy 4:8 (AV) “Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing.”

ronaldf@aapt.net.au

“Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field, which the Lord God had made: and he said to the woman, Yea, hath God indeed said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

“And the woman said unto the serpent, We eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

“Then the serpent said to the woman, Ye shall not die at all, But God doth know that when ye shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

“So the woman (seeing that the tree was good for meat, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired, to get knowledge) took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also to her husband with her, and he did eat” (Genesis 3:1-6, Geneva Bible, 1599).

God’s prophetic truth has been the object of Satanic warfare since the days of Genesis 3. The fundamental goal of spiritual warfare, in general, is to keep humanity from faith in God. Key strategies employed by the Adversary include provoking doubt about God’s immanence, slandering His character, and denying the truth of His Word.

Paul’s articulation of humanity’s basis for relating with God in Hebrews 11:6 reveals the genius of these strategies: “…without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that God is, and that he is a rewarder of them that seek him.” Doubting God’s integrity, or—worse yet—doubting God’s existence, completely short-circuits faith. Since faith is the basis for relating with God, the Adversary does all he can to undermine it.

While targeting faith can be said to be Satan’s master strategy, the first instance of this fight in Genesis 3 describes a clear order of battle in this warfare. This might be seen as a “principle of first mention” sort of hermeneutic, but I am not using that narrative in the manner that many do. My description of the Genesis order of battle isn’t a matter of merely interpreting words, though that might be an interesting and fruitful study. What I wish to do, rather, is examine what was said and done in Genesis 3:1-6. I believe the passage reveals a readily identifiable methodology in Satan’s efforts to separate people from God. Furthermore, I think that methodology continues in use today. If you know what to look for, the Genesis 3 Gambit shows up everywhere.

The Biblical record marks the start of hostilities in Genesis 3:1 as the Serpent challenged God’s Genesis 2:17 warning—a prophetic warning—that Adam (and Eve) would die immediately upon eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

While there are by now thousands of exegeses of what I call the “Genesis 3 Gambit,” I want to describe five steps in Satan’s assault on our first parents:

Question what God said. “Did God really say that you cannot eat from every tree of the garden?” This initial question contained a lie (God said you can’t eat from any ^[1] of the trees), setting up cognitive dissonance.

1. Eve ^[2] could have stopped the assault at this point by rejecting that lie, but instead accepted the false premise and let herself be set up for Step 2.

2. Contradict what God said. Eve’s cognitive dissonance (set up in Step 1) provided a conducive environment for an even more egregious lie—”You shall not die at all.” The result was a dialectic, ^[3] i.e., a false equivalence between two irreconcilable ideas, that is, God’s Word on the matter versus Satan’s distortion of that. The manufactured truth—antitruth equivalence enabled the abandonment of truth altogether. We are about to step into very deep water at this point.

3. Assert a sub rosa motive for what God said—slander God’s character and establish a false division between God and Eve. Satan’s argument was that God was unfairly denying Eve a good thing; she had to take it for herself. The result was that Eve now perceived that God was lying and that she had to act apart from her vital relationship with God for her own good.

4. Assert a different outcome. Eve believed that she would, in fact, not die after eating from the proscribed tree. If death wasn’t to follow, reaching for the brass ring of being able to distinguish good from evil on her own made sense.

5. Promise an alternative benefit. Eve was convinced that once she acted independently of God, she would be like Him. What a masterful tactic—dangling the possibility of being a better person without God! It seems only slightly less insane of a leap when understood in light of Steps 1 through 4.

Interestingly, Satan created two “wedge” issues in Steps 2 and 3. The first, employed in Step 2, was the notion that what God said was untrue. That first wedge issue provided an opening for the follow-on wedge: “God is holding out on you.” It may be easy in hindsight for me to say that Eve could have shut the attack down by rejecting the Serpent’s assertions that God wasn’t truthful or that Eve could do better on her own, but this could have been done in Steps 1 (questioning what God said), 2 (contradicting what God said), and 3 (slandering God and setting up a false division between Eve and God). Let’s see how I fare the next time it’s used on me!

We are all left with the devastating outcome—the Father of Lies has only ever stolen, killed and destroyed, and the prophetic word from Genesis 2:16:17 all the way through Revelation 22:21 has been similarly questioned, distorted, denied, and diminished to the horrible detriment of humanity across the ages.

In summary, every prophetic forth-telling in the Word of God has been the object of this five-step warfare:

1. “Did God really say that?” (a question based on a false premise)
2. “No, what (I say) God said isn’t true.”
3. “God isn’t being transparent in saying that. God really wants something different. This is what you must do instead.”
4. “It’s not going to happen the way God said it would.”
5. “This is how you’ll benefit from doing what I say.”

It seems to me that every false doctrine—every perversion of Christian truth and practice—has its roots in this five-step attack. More germane to my overall point, though, is the importance of how the Genesis 3 Gambit has been used so commonly against the reception of God’s prophetic Word, especially concerning the end times, and particularly in our time. The stakes in this struggle over what to believe can’t be higher.

Returning to Hebrews 11:6 (Whoever comes to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him), it may be easy to understand how the Genesis 3 Gambit is designed to keep us from a vital relationship with God. The Gambit’s objective is this: We don’t come to God because we don’t believe He exists and/or are fundamentally deceived about His attributes. Moreover, we misunderstand what it is to seek God in faith.

Furthermore, if I’m not perceiving Bible prophecy on the basis of God’s truthfulness and of clear interpretability of what He has said, I can’t “ask without wavering” (James 1:6); I’ll be unstable in all my ways, and I shouldn’t expect to receive anything from the Lord.

But thank God for His Holy Spirit, the Spirit of prophecy, prophecy being the testimony of Jesus (Rev. 19:10)! God never gives up on us. As long as we have breath, He showers us with His Word; He brings us back with singing; His kindness leads us to change our minds; His mercies are always new; and His love endures forever.

If you’re in a James 1:2-8 bind, you can trust God to teach you; you can “let patience do its perfect work” as your faith is purified because difficulties in life lead you to trust Him more. He will forge you into a perfect and complete person who lacks nothing. The Genesis 3 Gambit won’t work on you because the Lord is your Shepherd, and you won’t lack any good thing (Ps. 23:1).

In Part 3 of this Prophecy Wars series, I will apply the Genesis 3 Gambit template to some key aspects of the Adversary’s warfare against Bible prophecy and its interpretation, especially during the Church Age.

Dear reader, if you haven’t yet trusted in Jesus Christ to save and transform you, there is still time and opportunity to do so at this moment. You’ve come to RaptureReady for a reason—call upon the name of the Lord, and you will be saved!

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Dr. Jeffrey Ady is a retired university professor, published author, and served as an ordained minister for 20 years. Email: KaweahKid@protonmail.com

^[1] The Hebrew עֵץ—”ates” (wood (plural sticks):— carpenter, gallows, helve, pine, plank, staff, stalk, stick, stock, timber, tree, wood) is rendered variously with a definite article and without, so both “every” and “any” provide important meaning in Satan’s question: Its premise was demonstrably false.

^[2] I use “Eve” in this narrative because she was Satan’s primary target in the Genesis 3 account. However, I doubt that Adam was out of earshot mowing alfalfa or milking cows. I am certain he had to be close enough to Eve to not be taken by surprise. She handed Adam the fruit after taking a bite. He could have stepped in at any point.

^[3] See my review of the evolving concept of the “Dialectic” in Prophecy Wars, Part 1: The War Against Prophetic Truth.