Author’s note: We continue with the series first posted in 2007.

Believers are translated, changed in an atomos of time–in a fraction of an element of time that cannot be divided. They now look into the holy, omniscient eyes of their Lord that are fathomless in the depths of God’s love. He leads them through the portals of glory, to the city called Heaven.

On earth, millions have vanished into nothingness before the stupefied eyes of billions of others. All earthly things that belonged to the departed ones remain behind, including clothing, jewelry, and prosthetics of every description.

I once heard a nationally known reverend–so-called– (I don’t like the word “reverend” in reference to anyone on this fallen planet, because there is only one Reverend, and He has just whisked all who are His into Heaven for their eternal rewards) say something like this: “A rapture—if it were to be something that really happens—would mean that there would be unbelievable carnage upon the earth. God won’t let that happen.”

Hello, reverend, but what about the judgments for the end of days given by the Old and New Testaments? What about the Book of Revelation? The seals, trumpets, and vials don’t exactly give us the warm, fuzzy feeling that the era of apocalypse will be a tiptoe through the tulips.

The Kingdom-Now folks, with their replacement theology, however, see these things written in the areas of biblical judgments and God’s wrath as allegory or symbolism. They spiritualize these prophecies or treat them as already fulfilled. They preach and teach that the Church (Christians) will make this earth a better and better place until Christ can safely return to occupy His earthly throne. My dear Rapture Ready visitors and family—they are simply not looking at the same headlines as yours truly. And the headlines I’m hearing every day coincide precisely with what God’s holy, inerrant Word has to say about the end of days–again—as the secular media like to call the end time.

“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13).

Jesus Himself prophesied for the very end of the Tribulation: “And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but for the elect’s sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days” (Mark 13:20).

This world is in for a very rough ride, and the reverend was and is wrong in pronouncing that God would not allow carnage, thus a Rapture is not in the future of humankind. Nothing could be more ludicrous.

The “thief in the night” prophecy is aimed particularly at the people who will be left behind after the Rapture. That great event will certainly take most willfully ignorant Christians by total surprise, but it will not be like a “thief in the night” experience to them. We can know this from Paul the apostle’s words, when he writes to the Thessalonians–to all Christians of the Church Age (Age of Grace):

“For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness” (1 Thessalonians 5:2–5).

Note Paul’s use of the pronouns “they” and “them” versus “you,” “ye,” and “we.” He is differentiating between unbelievers and believers during this Church Age. The Rapture, for all Christians who are alive at the time, will be an entirely different experience than the “thief in the night” experience of those left behind. We see this in John 14:1-3, and in Paul’s following comforting prophecy:

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

So, getting back to our earth-bound scenarios that we speculate will immediately follow the Rapture, let us look at some dark probabilities.

The most immediate things that assault the senses, while people look around them, are the clothing and other things that fall to the ground, the pavement, the floors. The only evidence that those who suddenly vanished were ever on Earth are the clothing and other personal items they no longer need. The prosthetic devices, too, of every sort, give the news pundits something to talk about on the programs that are dominated by one subject: the disappearance of millions.

But, in my speculative view, the most frightening, then, as the knowledge sets in, the most agonizing thing that will grip the world will be the fact that every single child who hasn’t reached the age of accountability for his or her soul will be gone from the planet in that millisecond of time. Every womb of every left-behind woman who was with child at the time of the disappearances will be instantaneously empty. God, in that astonishing moment, will make a monumental and unmistakable statement about His opinion of when life begins in the conception process!

Can we even begin to imagine the excruciating emotional explosion that will take place all over the world?

With the intimately personal cataclysms still raging, other just as staggering considerations flood the fear-filled thoughts of men and women left behind.

Again, in America, martial law is immediately invoked. But, before the much-denuded military and law enforcement personnel can regroup to enforce martial law, looters of every sort move freely throughout decimated society, pillaging, destroying, and raping whatever and whomever they find in their rampaging paths.

The consciences of man are no longer under the governance of the Holy Spirit, as in the time just before the disappearances occurred. Homes, empty of their vanished occupants, are open game, and the looters don’t stop to give a second thought to the horrendous future mankind now faces. They think, as I heard Dr. Charles Stanley say, they have died and gone to their warped picture of Heaven.

Well, we are again at the limits of our space allotment for the Nearing Midnight section. And, we’ve only begun to explore, through our Bible prophecy postulations, what the left-behind world will be like, and the likely dynamics that will rearrange planet Earth for Antichrist’s appearance.

Author’s note: We continue with the series first posted in 2007.

We’ve seen that Jesus warned that the time of His coming again to planet Earth will be “as it was in the days of Noah.” That is, the characteristics of the end-time generation will be like they were in the days presented in Genesis chapter 6. When we look at that chapter, we conclude that it was surely a terrifying time. This must have been true, especially for Noah and his seven family members while the time just before the Flood surrounded them. But the whole generation of earth-dwellers lived under threat of violence; violence filled the whole earth, God’s Word reports (Genesis 6: 11, 13). Even though business was moving along at a good, even accelerated pace, violence–terroristic activity—filled the earth.

Does this sound familiar? What did the president call the war declared upon an almost unidentifiable enemy following the 9/11 attacks? That’s correct, he called it “the war on terrorism.” And now the whole international community is uptight about the possibility of ramifications of the terror–the violence—that threatens to ignite war in the Middle East.

Every time such sparks begin to fly, members of the media begin to contact Todd and me, as well as others who have studied and expounded upon Armageddon and the “end of days,” as media like to frame the end time. Violence of the deadliest sort fills the world with terror, and the cry for peace and safety from media and government diplomatic types proves it.

Jesus also said in His Luke 17 prophecies that things of society and economy would be pretty much business as usual at the time of His return at the end of days. People will be eating and drinking. Men and women will be marrying and divorcing, just like nothing fearful was going on in their world. Daniel the prophet said that great progress would be made in technology, travel, and communications at the time of the end (Daniel 12).

Again, does any of this sound familiar? As we can see from the strength of the American economy, things are booming, despite the fact that we are now a debtor nation at an unprecedented level. The United States is inarguably the most materially blessed nation-state in the history of the world. The greatest king of Bible times lived nowhere near the level of luxury and comfort that even lower-middle-class Americans have today.

So, in that sense, business is going along, in this country at least, better than merely business as usual. It is just at such a time as described that Jesus will step out on the clouds of glory and shout, “Come up hither!”

Bible prophecy tells us that the day of the Lord will come (will begin) as a thief in the night. A thief suddenly breaks in. He doesn’t say, “Hey! I’m coming to break in!” That’s how we can know that the thief-in-the-night analogy is for another coming, not for the Second Advent–the time when Jesus’ foot will touch down on the Mount of Olives, which will then cleave in half and create a rift all the way to the Mediterranean. Nearly two-thirds of the world’s population will have perished in God’s full-blown wrath by the time of that Revelation 19:11 return to Earth. Everyone on the planet still alive will see Christ coming.

The coming as a thief reference is to the Rapture. It will be sudden, it will be stunning, and it will be catastrophic.

Let’s look at the potential calamitous things that will likely immediately follow the twinkling-of-an-eye intervention into this humanistic, last-days world of earth-dwellers.

In the United States, a young mother pregnant with her second child and with a small daughter riding in the basket, will be walking down an aisle in a supermarket.

A truck driver will be steering a semi-tractor/trailer rig onto a superhighway to merge with the heavy traffic flow.

A 757 captain will push the throttles to full power, headed down a runway at JFK in New York.

A surgeon at a major hospital in Minnesota will begin to make the initial scalpel cut that will open a heart patient’s chest for a bypass procedure.

A funeral director will straighten the collar of a starched white shirt worn by a corpse, whose funeral is next on the services schedule.

In less than the time it takes for a neuroelectric synapse firing in the brain to take place, the young mother’s womb is empty. She sees her little girl vanish as she, herself, starts her fall to the floor from the shock of the physiological changes taking place in her body.

The 18-wheeler is careening into the traffic, driverless, out of control, crushing and demolishing vehicles and their passengers while raging ahead in its ungoverned course.

The 757 on the JFK runway is at full take-off speed, but the pilot and copilot are not at the controls, while the right wingtip dips toward the runway and catastrophe.

The surgeon in Minnesota finds the scalpel cutting air rather than flesh because the patient is gone.

The funeral director staggers backwards, astonished because the burial apparel he has been making just right for presentation has collapsed, and the corpse is no longer in the casket.

We will have to leave until next time those scenario snippets as still-frame snapshots of the paradigm-changing dynamics of the Rapture. Those will geometrically burgeon from the instant this stunning event takes place. It will be the most powerful occurrence of human history since Christ’s First Advent intervened into the affairs of humankind.

—Terry