General Articles

Ready For The Rapture, Part 1: Searching & Finding :: By Lynda Janzen

Published on: by RR7

Hi there! Are you one of those who has wandered onto the Rapture Ready website, wondering, “What’s this all about?” If so, this post is for you!

First of all, “Welcome!” Second, let me ask you a couple of questions. First, “Have you been so overwhelmed with fear about COVID – all the news coverage, people talking about nothing else for months, lockdowns, masking, the jab — that life is wearing you out? Second, “Are you ready to let all of this go and imagine that life could be so much better?”

If the answer to both of those questions is yes, please allow me to introduce you to the One Who can change your life forever – not only for the better but for the best! His name is Yeshua Ha’Maschiach. Surprised? Were you expecting me to say “Jesus Christ”? Well, I did, actually. Yeshua is His Jewish name; it is what His family and friends called Him when He walked on earth two thousand years ago.

All right, I can hear you. “Oh great – another Jesus freak trying to tell me I’m a sinner and need to repent because the end is near.” Yeah. You’re right. We’re all dedicated to the LORD Jesus, and guess what? We are all sinners! Every last writer on this website will confess that he or she is a sinner who is in need of healing from the wounds of this world. My friend, Jesus is the only One Who can do that. But here’s the thing: He CAN do that! He has done it for all of us here, and He can do it for you, too.

When this writer was searching, as I believe you are right now, my reaction to all invitations to meet Jesus was always negative. Been there, done that!

Having been raised Catholic, I was a pious little girl who wanted to be a nun when I grew up. Hah. Somewhere in my teens, I rebelled and fell heavily away from anything that smacked of God, Jesus, or His Holy Spirit. I also fell heavily on my face for many years, living a life soaked in alcohol.

Then came the day when everything was gone – my family, my friends, everything I had once owned. It was then that I met the real Yeshua for the first time and knew Him to be a real person, not a myth as I had decided previously.

A doctor had referred me to a Christian minister who did counseling as part of his ministry. It was a turning point. Not an instant cure, mind you, but a turning point.

From that time, life became bearable again, but I still wasn’t Rapture Ready.

Years later, even though I had already met Yeshua, I turned to New Age-ism as being a more modern approach to the journey of the soul. In fact, these ideas so intrigued me that I began teaching courses on the writings of people like Eckard Tolle, Deepak Chopra, Teilhard de Chardin, and others. But even while teaching these things, there was always that hole in my soul that wasn’t being filled up.

So, what brought me firmly to Jesus? Well, one day, I decided to finally read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, which I had never done before. And, I would read it with a New Age perspective! Aha! I would finally dispel any notion that Jesus Christ was Who He said He was – God incarnate.

But the day I came to the Gospel of John, Chapter 3, verse 16, everything changed, not only for the rest of my life but for eternity.

I read: “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Something about that verse stopped me cold. I read it again, and then a third time. When I looked up, the air was shimmering. A conviction deep down inside me told me this was true and that if this one verse was true, then the whole of it had to be true, no matter how incredible.

At that revelation, I began to laugh and cry at the same time, falling to my knees and shouting, “Thank You, God! I get it! The Bible is Your Word! It’s all about Jesus.” That day I dedicated the rest of my life to Yeshua Ha’Maschiach, Jesus Messiah, the Christ of the Most High God. That was the day I became RAPTURE READY.

Now, all these years later, I am old. Several times over the years, I have been close to death, and each time Yeshua has been with me in the most tangible way, holding me safe, reassuring me that He has my best interest at heart.

Each time, I responded with this prayer, “LORD, if You want me home with You, I’m ready to go. If You want me to stay, if You have more work for me, I’ll be happy to do that.

Not my will, LORD, but Yours.” Each time, He has given me another assignment, and I have stayed on earth. My assignment in my old age is to write and let others know that He is more real than the people who live in your house. And He is God, the Second Person of the Trinity, fully man but also fully God.

Make no mistake, my friend. Yeshua, Jesus, is Who you have been searching for. He is the answer to every question you have ever asked. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and by His own Word, He is your only Saviour, the one Redeemer Who has paid the price for all your sins and Who washes you clean by His crucifixion, death and resurrection. And while this all sounds mysterious and otherworldly, my friend, it is the best news you will ever hear.

If you are ready to learn more, please keep visiting Rapture Ready. Every writer here has a similar story to tell, and, oh friend, there is so much more to learn about Jesus, the Son of God.

Before you click off, please join with me in a short prayer:

Our Father, Who are in heaven, blessed and honoured be Your name. We pray for Your kingdom to come to earth. We also pray for Your Will to be done here on earth, as it is in heaven, where You are. We thank You for our daily bread and ask that You will provide it daily. And, LORD, please forgive us our debts and trespasses, as we, too, forgive those who trespass against us. And, LORD, let us not be led into temptation today. Please lead us in paths of righteousness instead, and keep us from the Evil One. For Yours IS the kingdom, and the POWER and the Glory, for ever and ever.

Amen.

If anyone reading this devotional has not yet received Jesus as their Saviour, but God has touched your heart by His Holy Word, please email me (amadea649@gmail.com) or find a Bible-believing local church and ask the Pastor what you must do to be saved in Grace. In the meantime, please consider the ABCs of Salvation:

A – Admit

Admit what you have done wrong and ask forgiveness.

Romans 3:23 “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Romans 6:23 “The wages of sin is death.”

I John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

B – Believe

Believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose again as payment for your sins.

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

1 Corinthians 15:3-4 “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”

Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

C – Confess and Choose

Confess and choose to allow God to be in charge of your life.

Matthew 16:24 “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”

Romans 10:9 “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Romans 10:13 “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

MARANATHA! Come soon, LORD Jesus. Come!

Please watch for Ready for The Rapture, Part 2: What Is It?

Lawlessness and Other Proof :: By Terry James

Published on: by RR7

My daily emails and conversations usually include a statement similar to: “With everything going on, we must be very near the end.”

This usually means that this generation of anti-God rebels alive on the planet must be about to get their comeuppance; God must be fed up much like He was with the likes of the inhabitants at the lower end of the Dead Sea during the days of Lot.

It was a time of evil, debauchery, and violence, as we read in Genesis 19. Jesus gave condemning words by saying that the time He returns (that is, when He is next revealed to an unsuspecting world) will be just like it was in Lot’s day in Sodom and during Noah’s day. (Lot’s day in Sodom was a microcosm of what the entire world was like during Noah’s day.)

In both instances—Noah’s day and Lot’s day—God found mankind so repulsive in the way they were acting that He had to destroy all but the very few He found to be righteous. The biblical account says the destruction in both cases was complete. To the believer in biblical truth, that is proven to be the case as we look around.

The antediluvian world is no more. There’s not a trace of it, except perhaps in geographical sites, etc. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah can’t be found, either. We do have proof that they existed and were destroyed, however, as we will look at a bit further on.

First, it’s interesting to consider that Noah’s day and Lot’s day bore similar characteristics. We will, in this case, look basically at only one similarity: violence was rampant. Jesus said, by inference, that the time He is next revealed will be in a period of extreme violence.

This is because Genesis chapter 6 said that violence filled the whole earth during the time just before the Flood that destroyed all but Noah and his family. It must have indeed been a murderous time, one when everyone did what was right in their own eyes, with little or no attention paid to God’s prescription for living.

So we are looking at “proof” for the lawlessness—the violence that stems from throwing off God’s Law and instead doing what is right in our own, sinful eyes. Is there any evidence that this generation is coursing toward violence of such significant levels? Are we in the time like Noah’s day and Lot’s day that Jesus was talking about in the Olivet Discourse? (Matthew 24:36–42 and Luke 17:26–30). Are we at the very end of God’s holy patience, as were those earlier generations?

The following excerpt of an article may give us a clue.

Our violent, blood-soaked culture has produced a violent, blood-soaked reality in our streets. The final numbers for 2020 have finally been released by the FBI, and they are stunning.

Prior to last year, the largest one-year increase in the murder rate in the United States was 12.7 percent, and that came all the way back in 1968. Needless to say, many of you that are reading this article were not even alive in 1968. Well, we didn’t just break the old record last year. We more than doubled it. According to the FBI’s annual report on crime, the nationwide murder rate was up about 29 percent in 2020…

The United States in 2020 experienced the biggest rise in murder since the start of national record-keeping in 1960, according to data gathered by the FBI for its annual report on crime.

The Uniform Crime Report will stand as the official word on an unusually grim year, detailing a rise in murder of around 29%. The previous largest one-year change was a 12.7% increase in 1968. (“The Largest One-Year Increase in Murder in the History of the United States,” by Michael Snyder, Prophecy News Watch, 9/24/21)

In our book, LAWLESS: End-Times War Against the Spirit of Antichrist, a number of authors delineated the exponential increase in every sort of anti-God activity. Just since the recent release of that book, we witness even greater increase in violence in every direction as we look across the prophetic horizon. Thus, we must conclude that the answer to the consistent comments in the emails and the conversations have proof to back up the near-consensus. We are living at the very end of this Church Age (Age of Grace).

Proof that God is dealing with absolute evil from which people refuse to repent now confronts the eyes of mankind, if we will believe what we see.

Archaeologists have unearthed physical proof of what points to the destruction of Tell el-Hammam in the Jordan valley, the region of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament, and what they found was really wild. They found evidence of an incredible explosion that occurred in the skies above ancient Sodom, an explosion so intense that buildings down below were destroyed and things were literally vaporized…

FROM THE JERUSALEM POST: Tell el-Hammam in the Jordan Valley might have inspired the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, according to a new study that has spanned 15 years. In the study, published in the journal Nature on Monday, archaeologists researched the remains of Tell el-Hammam in an attempt to discover what destroyed the ancient city during the Middle Bronze Age. During the period, there were roughly 50,000 people living in the area of the Jordan Valley in three cities: Tell el-Hammam, Jericho, and Tell Nimrin, with Tell el-Hammam the biggest of the three, implying that until its destruction, it would have been the political center of the area. Radiocarbon dating dates the destruction to within 50 years of 1650 BCE.

Examination of the remains revealed evidence of a destructive event that involved high temperatures, such as pottery pieces that were melted and boiled on the exterior, but normal on the inside. The buildings of Tell el-Hammam were made of mud bricks, some five stories tall. In the upper part of the city, the destructive force demolished the buildings to the height of their foundations in the walls, and little mud-brick remained. Of the palace that was in this part of the city, the first-floor walls and the upper stories are missing, and most of the mud-brick was pulverized. (“Archaeologists Discover Physical Proof for Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah,” Jerusalem Post and NTEB, 9/23/21)

It is more evident by the hour that we are in a time similar to those in which the Lord said “enough is enough.” Judgment is coming. But for those who believe in Jesus Christ for redemption from sin and rebelliousness, the moment of God’s next catastrophic intervention into man’s history will be a glorious one, not one to dread. Christ’s shout from above, “Come up here!” will instantaneously take all believers into His magnificent presence.

Here is how to make sure your eternal soul is prepared to leave this wrath-bound planet when the Lord calls.

“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).