We’re living in an evil and Christ-rejecting world. I don’t know any true believers who are happy with the current state. Political corruption, child-killing, sex trafficking … choose ANY area of human activity and you’ll find deeply-entrenched sin. The world lies in the evil one and rejects the written Word of God. Jesus said the gospel of the kingdom had to be preached to all the world, as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end would come. So we have it on the authority of Jesus Christ Himself that when we leave, the world will have gotten the message. Those who reject that message will be left on earth when the trumpet sounds.
The preceding is accepted pretty much without question by those who believe scripture and are paying attention to what is going on in the world. So my question is, on what basis are we to believe that after the rapture, when the evil in this Christ-rejecting cesspool is unrestrained, we should expect to see a “great revival” in which “… a great multitude, which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues” will be won to Christ and received into heaven? Is this really what the Bible teaches?
We believe in miracles, but this miracle is not in the Bible. Rather, some Bible teachers have invented a fantasy that the 144,000 Jews who are sealed in Rev. 7:1-8 become a global evangelistic task force and there is a huge revival after the rapture. This false conjecture is usually based on the fact that the account of their sealing is immediately followed by Rev. 7:9 where this great, innumerable crowd is seen in heaven. What follows is the incorrect assumption that there is a chronology and cause/effect relationship between these two events. And it is buttressed by the thoroughly unbiblical belief that man is basically good, and somehow worthy to be saved.
To suggest that the crowd seen in heaven is actually the recently raptured church violates the “popular narrative” because the phrase “great tribulation” in Rev. 7:14 is seen as post-rapture. That is, the church would be raptured, and THEN the Great Tribulation transpires, and these people come out of that post-rapture period of Great Tribulation. However, the phrase “great tribulation” is a highly accurate description of what we commonly call the “church age” (see https://stevekerp.wordpress.com/2017/08/24/the-pre-tribulation-misnomer/) and in addition, there is NO MENTION in the scriptures of these Jews evangelizing anybody. (There is also no mention of “church age” in the Bible.)
Let’s think this through: You go to your neighbor, to whom you’ve preached and for whom you’ve prayed for years. It’s always the same response: “Look, Steve, I appreciate your passion. But I’m a good person. I follow the law, I pay my taxes and my debts. I’m just not interested in Jesus. God loves me anyway and my good deeds will outweigh my bad deeds. OK?” The rapture will leave him behind and he’ll find himself in the Dragon’s 42-month Global Reign of Terror (Rev. 13:5). The banking system collapses and his money is worthless (the supply chains have also collapsed, so there’s nothing to buy), the Chinese start shooting, and there’s beachfront property available in Nevada and West Virginia. Then some Jewish evangelists show up … and THEN your neighbor repents?
This is not going to happen. Even if a couple of Jewish evangelists arrived, your neighbor would do what he’s always done: harden his heart just like Pharaoh did. He would think, “I’ve been a good person all my life, and this is the thanks I get! Well, I guess this is where God and I will have to part company, unless He repents and starts taking better care of me.” Your unbelieving neighbor would “accept Christ” if Jesus apologized. Otherwise, no deal.
The neighbors you left behind are not the same people after the rapture. According to scripture, something else happens:
And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. For this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
2 Thess. 2:8-12 NKJV (emphasis added)
We know these are not people who were ignorant of God and His gospel before the rapture, because we know from Jesus’ own words that the gospel of the kingdom would be preached in all the world as a testimony to all the nations, and THEN the end will come. So everyone gets as much gospel as they are willing to receive. The vast majority of those people who find themselves in a post-rapture world are people who have rejected the gospel. God has been very good to them, as He has to us. The goodness of God leads them to repentance, but they aren’t interested (Romans 2:4). God’s law leads them to Christ so they can be justified (Gal. 3:24) but they reject God’s law. So God sends a delusion, and they believe “the lie.”
Rev. 9:20-21 paints a frightening picture:
But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
Rev. 9:20-21 NKJV (emphasis added)
These are folks who get a five-month taste of hell. In His mercy, God allows these people to live. They may think death is preferable to the miseries of the 5th Trumpet, but as we know, hell is a whole lot worse. God is loving, patient and gracious to these people right up to the rapture. No repentance. Then He gives them a taste of His wrath and that does not lead to repentance either. You just can’t help some people.
So at this point, I must part ways with the “popular” (and unbiblical) narrative that lots of people get saved after the rapture. There is a small believing remnant, referred to as “the rest of her offspring” in Rev. 12:17 who go INTO the Great Tribulation but they were saved before the Tribulation started. God gives authority to Satan to prevail over them, but their names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life (Rev. 13:7-8).
This group of believers includes the Revelation 2:22 crowd who refused to repent of their spiritual adulteries. These are our Christian friends who choose to not believe Jesus when He promises to deliver (Rev. 3:10). These are the “carnal Christians” (1 Cor. 3:3-4). These are the ones who have enough faith to be saved but refused to grow. These are the ones who do their own thing instead of abiding in the vine (John 5:15). They are alive but do not “remain” (1 Thess. 4:15). They “keep their husks on” to use the wheat metaphor. They cling to their flesh and need to have that husk removed. That’s what tribulation does.
The only gospel preached after the rapture seems to be Rev. 14:6-7 and that is identified as the “everlasting gospel.” Its content is simple: “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.” This is NOT a salvation message, and it appears that it is not obeyed anyway until close to the end of the wrath of God, described in Rev. 11:13 where it says, “… there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. In the earthquake seven thousand people were killed, and the rest were afraid and gave glory to the God of heaven.”
God is always gracious, but I think the root of this question is a misunderstanding of the nature of man. The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. We wear a veneer of civility and reasonableness, like the candy shell on an M&M — but that’s not chocolate inside. When the veneer is removed, what’s left is worse than awful. Words really can’t describe what sin has done to all of us. I strongly suspect that the post-rapture world will be populated by people with their veneers largely removed. It will not be pleasant.
Suffice to say, Revelation says over and over again that when God gave rebellious men what they asked for – a world without Christian influence, centered on creature comforts and mammon – that men blasphemed God and refused to give Him glory. Over and over again. There is no indication at all in Revelation that people repented.
There is no “plan of salvation” for tares: they are gathered in bundles and burned, not improved, transformed or recycled. Rebellious men may not want Christ, but they want what He has. That option does not exist. The grace of God and the blessings of God are all in Christ. What we’re seeing with this post-rapture “plan of salvation” is the hope that sinful men can avoid the results of their rejection of Christ. “Poor guys, they are suffering SO MUCH. And hell will be even worse! God wouldn’t be fair if He didn’t save them, too.” So we try to impress on the Word OUR ideas of fairness and justice. We try to set a standard that God must reach in order to be God.
I don’t think so.
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