There are many views of end-times theology. I’m in the “pre-everything” camp, but I’m friends with lots of people who hold to other views.
One of the truths I love about the pre-tribulation view of the rapture—which is the belief that Jesus returns on a cloud to rescue His people before seven years of increasingly devastating judgment poured out by God on the earth—is the readiness that it demands of believers in Jesus.
What the Bible Says About the Rapture
Jesus put it this way in Matthew 25:13:
‘So always be ready, because you don’t know the day or the hour the Son of Man will come.’
Paul the apostle explained it like this:
For the Lord Himself will descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
After watching the so-bad-it’s-good A Thief in the Night movie of the 1970s when I was a kid, I saw every cloud in the sky as the possible chariot Jesus might use to take His church home. When I saw an especially billowy one, I’d assume it was big enough to hold His whole church, and I’d tune my ear for the trumpet blast.
It produced in me a holy restlessness and readiness and urgency to share Christ and live for Christ.
Over the years, that practice of cloud-watching has slowed way down.
Shame on me.
The Key to Being Rapture-Ready
Regardless of our eschatology (pre-, post-, mid-, confused, or whatever), we all need to be readying ourselves and everyone around us for the return of Christ.
We need to share Jesus with urgency, because God doesn’t desire anyone to perish in the coming judgments, but all to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9-10).
We need to live holy lives for God’s glory (2 Peter 3:11-12), so that when He returns we receive the rewards of following Him and hear the words “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21).
And, if you happen to not be a Christian, you need to put your faith in Jesus before it’s too late. Jesus died in your place for your sin to rescue us from “the coming wrath” (1 Thessalonians 1:10).
All who put their faith in the resurrected Jesus for the salvation of their souls will be saved. All those who don’t will face some gruesome judgments (see the book of Revelation).
Trust in Jesus now.
May we all be rapture-ready.
May we all focus our eyes on the clouds and tune our ears for the trumpet blast.
May we all put “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” by Larry Norman in our Spotify playlists today.
Are you rapture-ready?
Hey, look, a cloud!
