Keep This In Mind

The Rapture, as describe by several Bible verses but unnamed as such, is a somewhat recent concept of a very ancient promise. I won’t go into the history nor the different view of pre-, mid-, post- or not-gonna-happen Rapture. There’s sufficient material available for years of discussion, and scriptures are used by all concerned with the subject.

What I will say is – it may not be as we expect. But, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Mankind has a tendency to explain and plan the inexplicable over which God has control. I need to keep this in mind.

The Bible is filled with God’s promises. Seldom did they match mankind’s expectation. Beginning with
His statement of fact:

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Genesis 2:17 KJV)

This set up the scene for temptation:

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: (Genesis 3:4 KJV)

The moment she bit into the fruit, she did not drop dead on the spot – but she began to and eventually did, as we all will.

God told Abraham he would have a son. Sarah laughed in disbelief and set out to give him one on her own, with disastrous results.

God told Moses to go to Egypt and bring Jacob’s descendants into a land promised to them generations before. Of those who left Egypt, they only saw the land, did not live on it, because they were not expecting the work it would take to live there.

King David was promised a descendant who would sit upon the throne forever, yet within three generations the kingdom was split in two, eventually going to others. He was not expecting an eternity.

Israel was promised a Messiah who would do a number of things for them simply because they were God’s chosen people. Somehow they forgot why they were chosen – to be an example to the world. They were totally unprepared to accept a child born in Bethlehem who would die thirty-three years later:

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Isaiah 53:3 KJV)

My focus needs to be what God has laid out for mankind to do:

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? (Micah 6:8 KJV)

Jesus spent three years, witnessed and written down by the four gospel writers,  speaking of laws wrapped up in two we all fail to keep:

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40 KJV)

Though we fail miserably at keeping laws, there is one statement of faith we can understand and accept:

That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:15 KJV)

My preconceived notions of how God will fulfill His promises are not important. The simple fact that He has done so in the past is fact and is sufficient for me to believe in Him and His ability to do so in the future, even if it is not as I or others expect. My faith is in God, not in how He achieves His will. I must take care to keep this in mind.