Praying Down the Rain, 2 | Jim Hammond
Recap
If you didn’t hear Pastor Jim’s message last weekend, you missed out on hearing about one of the most fascinating subjects the Bible has to offer. The subject? The Rapture! Pastor Jim gave some startling details, like how approximately 70% of the body of Christ—people who believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ—do not believe in a literal Rapture of the church! They believe in something far different than what the Bible actually says. Will these people make it to heaven?
Dive Deeper
The subject of Pastor Jim’s message was the rapture! There are several scriptures that Pastor Jim went over that contain well-known phrases like, “He’s going to come as a thief in the night… No one knows the day or the hour… Two will be in bed, one is taken and the other is left… in the twinkling of an eye… He’s going to keep you from the hour of temptation.”
The word temptation in the Greek language means “tribulation.” God the Father is going to keep you from the tribulation.
The seven-year tribulation will take place after the rapture before Jesus comes at the battle of Armageddon.
The tribulation will go on for seven years. At the end of those seven years, Jesus will come.
The seven-year tribulation will be a “living hell” for all those on earth… not just for the Jewish people but for everyone that rejects Jesus Christ on the earth.
Jesus will take out the believers before the tribulation takes place.
The New Testament tells us to look at the people in the Old Testament for an example.
Pastor Jim said, “Lot was not a good guy. Even though Jude called him righteous, Lot was a doofus. But God pulled Lot out of Sodom and Gomorrah before judgment fell on the cities. Also, God pulled Noah out before judgment came on the entire earth. And just like Lot and Noah, God will pull us out by way of the rapture before judgment comes.”
“We are in the end times,” said Pastor Jim, “I sincerely believe it.”
Many people that study end times in the Bible, believe the same thing. We are headed for the seven-year tribulation. But God is going to take us out of the earth by an event called “the rapture.”
Unfortunately, approximately 70% of the body of Christ—people who believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ—do not believe in the rapture!
Those who do not believe in the rapture say these scriptures are simply allegorical.
They say, “When Jesus gave the parable of that guy who died and went to hell who was yelling at Abraham to just give him a drop of water because he was hot… that was an allegory for all the troubles that we go through on earth.”
So 70% of Christians have turned the Bible into a bunch of allegories.
These people are millennialists. They believe the body of Christ will completely take over the world. There will be a Christian government in every nation. There will be total Christian domination. And then Jesus will come after we have established world peace.
They believe the tribulation has already happened. They say, “The tribulation already happened back with a Roman emperor that made all the Roman citizens light an incense stick to a god if they wanted to buy anything. And that was the equivalent of the mark of the beast.”
Pastor Jim asked the question, “Are they going to heaven?”