The Rapture

Fact or Fiction?

By Dr. David Reagan

Book Review by Terry James

I guess I’m name-dropping. Dr. David Reagan, host of the Christ In Prophecy TV program, is a personal friend of mine, as well as a much-admired colleague. However, I need infuse no such friendship or admiration to express with powerful praise what I have to say about this book. It is simply close to if not the very best book I have read on the Rapture.

It is simply the best, because it is presented so simply.

Let me explain.

The topic of the Rapture is presently under extreme persecution, if I may use that term to express the assaults being made on a biblical doctrine. I and others who teach the pre-Trib Rapture are frequently inundated with invective that accuse us of leading people to fail to recognize the Antichrist when he comes on the scene.

Our antagonists use every scriptural gymnastic move imaginable to try to obscure the fact that the Bible plainly teaches the pre-Tribulation call to the Church by Jesus Christ. The eschatological waters are sometimes so muddied that the individual searching truth on the matters involved can’t see beyond the muck.

This is why I say Dr. Reagan’s book is simply the best because it is presented so simply—i.e., the writer’s style and language in describing this most glorious event in the Christian’s future seems to indicate that he has at his authorial, cerebral fingertips some sort of purification filter. His presentation makes sparklingly pure the scriptural, spiritual water. The doctrine of Rapture thus is made crystal clear for the reader.

There is no fluff in Reagan’s book—just a marvelously plain explanation of all one ever needs to know about that “twinkling of an eye” moment.

The author says the following in explaining his purpose in writing the book:

I have tried to prove that the Rapture is an imminent event—one that could occur any moment without any warning—whereas the Second Coming is an event that will be preceded by many signs.

I have tried to demonstrate that although the Rapture is a phase of the Lord’s return, it is an event that is definitely separate and apart from the Second Coming.

I have also tried to show that the Rapture will occur before the pouring out of God’s wrath in the Tribulation because God has promised to deliver the Church from His wrath.

I must interrupt him at this point to say: “No, Dr. Reagan, you haven’t just ‘tried’ to do these things with this book. You Have ‘done’ it!”

The author goes on to make the most important points about what the doctrine of Rapture means to the life of a believer:

The promise of the Rapture not only provides blessings we can look forward to in the future, it also provides some very real blessings in the present.

This is a point I emphasize over and over to pastors who see no relevance of Bible prophecy to the here and now. Instead, they tend to view it as just pie-in-the-sky promises related to the distant future.

Our churches are filled with people who believe in the Second Coming intellectually, but not with their hearts, and therefore, their belief has no impact on the way they live. It is only when you convict Christians in their hearts of two prophetic truths that you will transform the way they live:

That Jesus really is going to return.

That this event could occur at any moment.

These life-transforming convictions can only come from a belief in a Pre-Trib Rapture because it motivates people to live with a sense of imminence, expectancy and urgency. Or, to put it another way, it promotes living with an eternal perspective.

This brief volume is so power packed and wrapped in such easy-to-read presentation that it gives one the immediate sense of comfort found in Paul’s inspired words: “Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:17–18).

The Rapture: Fact or Fiction?

Author: Dr. David Reagan

Price: $15

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Also available at amazon.com

Every presidential election in recent times has been talked about as one of the most crucial in America’s history. The 2020 election season has added to it, however, anxiety among voters the likes of which I can’t recall.

Not everyone is so concerned, of course. Those I’m referring to who are so concerned are those who truly see the nation as on a pathway of rapid decline in most every aspect of society and culture. From the issues of the debauching of morality like instituting same-sex marriage and same-sex public toilet facilities..to a whacked-out leftist opposition party that seems to have thrown the U.S. Constitution out the window of common sensibility…to the deliberate creation of an economic morass that has built to the point that the American people have no idea that they are in a portentous economic predicament their circumstances plainly indicate. intensive fear is building.

There is genuine worry within the heartland of America that we have a government that is no longer recognizable as founded. And, the even greater worry is that this condition has been deliberately brought about by leftist elected leaders and deep-state elitists entrenched within government whose primary concerns is feathering their own personal and political power nests.

Certainly, looking across America’s landscape of the present hour, it isn’t easy to find a glimmer of hope to offer those with these concerns. The cajoling of voters for their votes by the politicians and their great, swelling promises of the campaign stump suddenly disappear when they win elections. They join in or revert to their old Washington ways once put into or returned to office. It would be foolhardy to expect that this election will see accomplished a different result.

Tremendous pressures exerted upon newly elected members of Congress to join the insider network or else be marginalized and rendered ineffectual has been made blatantly observable over the last number of mid-term elections in particular. Once the candidates have been within the D.C. Beltway for a certain period of time, they melt into the system. They seem to disconnect from their constituency until time to get out and shore up their support at home.

The politicians’ promises, almost without exception, fade into the canyons of lost memories, the destination for which they are intended all along by the Washington power brokers. Yet to so many amongst the citizenry, the government has come to demand god-like reverence. The largess that the power brokers provide from cradle to grave has replaced reliance upon provision by the true God of Heaven in the mainstream of life in America–this swiftly taking our nation in the opposite direction intended by the founding fathers.

With the exception of President Donald Trump and others who are trying to bring about governmental sanity, each succeeding election proves again and again that the politicians’ promises were never intended to be kept. Yet we the people continue to place trust in those who, in many cases, have been in those positions of power for decades. It’s a form of insanity, I think–reprobate thinking brought on by our sinful ways and activity. Again, the definition of insanity is trying the same thing time after time to solve problems even though it fails every time.

This brought to mind for this commentary the distinctly defined difference–the contrast–between those promises given by the politicians and the promises made by our God in Heaven.

The same politicians who make us promises election after election and quickly forget them once they’ve been voted in office tell Israel that, in effect, God’s promise to that nation is not valid. Yet while the politicians prove election after election that it is their own promises that are not valid, the God of Heaven, through the very nation of Israel, which is at the heart of so much worldwide anger and controversy, has proven beyond any doubt that He keeps His promises.

He has said that Israel, once established in the land, will never be uprooted again. He said it would be made a nation again in a single day. He said that Israel will never stop being His people. He has kept every promise. We can know therefore, beyond any doubt that while the politicians of this nation and world almost never keep even one promise, the God of the Universe never will break a promise.

That God has said to His people Israel regarding Jerusalem, “For thus saith the LORD of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye.” (Zechariah 2:8)

The Lord has also promised that because the politicians of this world will “divide my land,” He will bring the whole world into the Valley of Jehoshaphat–to Armageddon (Joel 3:2).

That’s why we watch Israel so closely in the observation of the unfolding of history in view of Bible prophecy. Israel is absolute proof of the veracity of God’s Word. He keeps His promises–and Israel is the proof! To apply this to the fear and trepidation that so many Christians are expressing today about the upcoming election and what lies beyond, I urge that we consider our Great, Promise-Keeping God.

He has told us that we will be completely kept out of the time of the soon-to-come era of horror termed the Tribulation–out of His Judgment and Wrath (Revelation 3: 10). He will take the Bride of Christ –the Church– off this condemned planet when all of the troubling signals begin to come to pass (Luke 21: 28).

When God promises, it is as good as accomplished. This promise, I hope you will sense in your spirit as do I, is about to be kept.