Great disservice has been done to the pre-Trib Rapture truth of God’s Holy Word. People such as Harold Camping and others have, by setting dates, thrown disrepute on the fact that Christ will call all believers into the clouds of glory before the dark and terrible time of the Tribulation (Daniel’s seventieth week).
By making predictions of the exact date when the Rapture will happen, such as found in the book by Edgar C. Whisenant titled 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988, some have contributed to fulfilling the Apostle Peter’s prophecy:
“Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation” (2 Peter 3:3-4).
We seem to have a growth of pre-Trib skeptics within Christianity today. That’s because the erroneous date-setters have skewed truth in the Bible that Jesus said no one knows the time except His Father.
Now, some might say these skeptics are doing little or no harm. All believers, if the pre-Trib view is biblically correct, will be raptured. The only prerequisite for going in the Rapture to be with the Lord is to be saved–that is, believe in Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross at Calvary. It isn’t necessary to believe in the pre-Trib Rapture to be saved. Those who believe in another view of prophecy are “in Christ,” so will be evacuated from this fallen planet when Christ shouts, “Come up here!”
This is, of course, true. One doesn’t have to believe in the pre-Trib Rapture to be saved.
However, the first thing I would say in answer to that reasoning is that we who are in God’s family–are saved—are to strive to understand things God wants us to understand:
“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).
The pre-Trib Rapture of the Church is built upon an extensive body of Scripture. The Rapture is a clearly presented doctrine, and even most pre-Trib naysayers admit that the Rapture is in God’s Word. However, they, in most cases, adamantly deny that it is a pre-Trib Rapture that the Bible presents.
They give all sorts of arguments for when it will occur, all pointing to the Rapture taking place during the Tribulation, the time when Antichrist will be ruling as history’s last, most despotic dictator.
But these ignore—or convolute through twisting—God’s promise to keep believers out of that terrible time of God’s wrath:
“Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth” (Revelation 3:10).
This promise to spare believers of the Church Age, or Age of Grace, is seen while Jesus, in His ascended form, is revealing prophetic truth to John, who wrote the Revelation. Jesus here is talking to the seven churches. That’s the churches now in the dispensation of the Church Age. Jesus is telling believers of the Church Age that He will keep them out of the Tribulation.
Most who come against the pre-Trib timing of the Rapture refuse to accept that God deals with humankind in dispensations. And therein lies much of the problem with them not being willing to “rightly divide the word of truth,” as found in 2 Timothy 2:15. Unless this concept of dispensations is understood, the pre-Trib Rapture cannot be easily discerned.
And this matter of not understanding dispensational truth, I prayerfully hope, brings this article’s title into proper focus. Looking at prophecy yet future through the pre-Trib prism procures discernment. The pre-Trib viewpoint provides accurate perspective on issues and events as they might pertain to things to come. For an example, we only have to look at the prospect of nuclear war at this moment in history.
As I mentioned above, we, as a generation alive on the earth, are in the Age of Grace, or Church Age dispensation. Within the pre-Trib view, a nuclear war or even a World War III that would decimate the planet just isn’t foretold in God’s Word.
Yet rumors of nuclear war are abounding at present. Even writers on Bible prophecy are warning that nuclear war is about to break out at any moment. These writings are coming from those who are, in some cases, avidly against the pre-Trib Rapture viewpoint. These also, in most cases, deny that God deals with humanity in dispensations, as I’ve mentioned.
As of this writing, I have before me several articles proclaiming that China is on the verge of attacking the United States. The drone sightings, the huge balloons shot down some months ago, the sightings of Chinese subs off the coasts of America…all of these things indicate that China is scoping out our defenses in order to launch nuclear attacks.
I heard just hours ago a U.S. representative voicing that all of the illegals pouring into the nation, many of them young Chinese men of fighting age, portends an attack from the Chinese war machine that is about to take place.
And these kinds of warnings have been going on for several years.
I can say with authoritative confidence based upon God’s Word that such war-making by China is not in view for this dispensation. Here is what I mean.
Any such massive nuclear attack would bring equally massive retaliation by this nation. America has submarines under the ocean waters of the world–including waters near China. Each of the subs has as its nuclear repertoire MIRV ballistic missiles, each with multiple warheads armed with nuclear ordnance. These would obliterate the Chinese mainland when launched upon America being attacked.
So the world would be drastically and profoundly damaged if this scenario was played out.
Jesus told us (Luke 17:28–30) that when He next catastrophically intervenes into earth’s evil, all will be going along as it was in Sodom at the time Lot and his family were removed. There would be no destruction preceding that removal. People would be, as we are at present, conducting the business of life as usual–buying, selling, planting, etc.
Massive nuclear exchanges involving Earth’s military powers simply are not scheduled this side of the Rapture.
We can logically understand that China will be a power as part of “the kings of the east” found in chapters 9 and 16 of Revelation. At that time, they will indeed destroy one-third of all humankind, the prophecy says. So they won’t have been destroyed but will be greatly enhanced militarily.
So looking dispensationally at the fearful things to come through the pre-Trib scope of the Bible’s prophetic radar, we get an accurate—even precise, in some cases—picture from God’s great and perfect perspective.