Israel's Link to the Rapture
Thousands expect Israel to play a major role in God's future plan for earth. What is the Biblical evidence?
Many people today consider the restoration of the Jewish nation in Palestine to be a direct and dramatic fulfilment of Bible prophecy.
Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth, a phenomenal best seller of the last few decades, and Tim Lehaye’s Lift Behind, declares that the end of the world will come within the lifetime of the generation that saw the founding of the Israeli state in 1948, hereby applying the words of Jesus: "This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." (Matthew 24:34)
Coupled with this fascination with Israel is a novel teaching regarding the return of Jesus, called the "secret rapture." These books and many other speaks for many today who expect God secretly to take the "church" to heaven prior to the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple on its old site where the sacred Muslim shrine, the Dome of the Rock, now stands. According to this position, after the "church" is "raptured" to heaven, there will be seven years of the worst period of famine, bloodshed, and pestilence ever experienced by man. During this great tribulation the focus will be on God's dealings with the Jews, who are again given the responsibility for the evangelization of the world.
According to secret-rapture preachers, the battle of Armageddon will climax the end of the seven-year tribulation as the nations of the earth take sides over the future of Israel. When mankind teeters on the brink of incinerating the world, Jesus will return gloriously and save man from self-extinction. At that time Jesus will set up a literal one-thousand-year reign on earth with Jerusalem functioning as the spiritual capital of the world.
Most evangelical periodicals and pulpits teach this view today, and to those who do not know better, it might appear that this prophetic scenario, known as pretribulationism, has been the traditional teaching of the Christian church since New Testament days. Nothing is further from the truth. Be not deceived.. Did the architects of the creation of modern day Israel have any thing to do with the development of the rapture theory? Where did the Rapture theology originate? Is the crisis in the Middle East and the war in the Iraq have anything to do with the erroneous rapture theory? Is there a master conspiracy at work? I will attempt to answer these and many more questions.. in my up coming blogs providing that I don’t get zapped from the web site..
rapture, israel, christian, zionism, prophecy, kabballah
