One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing.

By Elon Moreh

This is abridged from an article that originally appeared in the Moriel Bulletin of Aug. 2014.

Globally speaking I cannot remember within my own lifetime, the world being so unstable and in such a rapid state of flux. Even democratic nations that appeared bastions of stability are in turmoil within. Everyone is wondering, what next?

It is at times like these in history, that prophetic speculation runs wild. Scripture counsels us to be aware of the signs of the times, to have a weather eye open to what is happening around us. Observation and analysis of current events, and even prognosis based upon them is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. To those Jews in Austria and Germany in the 1930's who read the signs of the times and got out, it meant the difference between life and death. Where speculation becomes a problem however, is when it becomes unhinged, unanchored in scriptural reality, or it even becomes a substitute for Scripture itself.

Perishing Needlessly

I have always been interested in military history, engineering and old-technology. During WW2, there was of course no GPS as there is today. Navigation was based on Maps, Dead-Reckoning, Observations of Landmarks, Instrument Readings and Radio-Beacon Direction-Finding. When navigating over unknown or featureless terrain, in poor visibility, or electrical storms, some of these would not be available, so ability to use all of these correctly were crucial. Particularly sad are the stories of aircraft which simply disappeared through causes other than enemy action during WW2 and were found much later. Many of these aviators perished from a combination of disorientation, disbelief in what their instruments were telling them, inability to operate them properly, or disagreement with the radioed guidance from airfields who answered their distress calls. In most of these cases the tragedies were avoidable. There is a lesson we can learn from this.

Every Error Has Its Price.

Sometimes people ask, “Well does it matter what we believe about the Tribulation and the timing of the Rapture? Surely it's just an academic exercise and everything will pan out in the end, won't it?

When you are out over the Pacific heading for a small island or aircraft carrier, or flying over the Libyan desert in a sandstorm a small error quickly becomes the difference between life and death. Knowing your heading, position, and how to operate your navigational equipment properly and obeying instructions from the home airfield means the difference between life and death. We not see the full import of these things immediately, but if the Lord has taken the trouble to expressly state certain things in His word we must sit up and take notice, because at some point we are going to need it.

Losing Our Course.

I came to the Lord in 1980 when the Charismatic Renewal was going strong. Though there was much good, and many real genuine works and signs wrought by the Spirit, but there was also much error. There was a tendency to handle the Word of God in an uninformed and de-contextualised way, a seeking after signs and wonders like a child desires sweets, and a definite drift towards experiential theology and subordination of the Word of God to extra-biblical revelation. It wasn't so clear back then where these things would end, but over time these trends merged with others, like the Manifested Sons of God, Latter Rain and Word of Faith teachings. We can see now that these errors are coming together and paving the way for the Harlot Church, and people who clung to these things are being sucked in to every deeper deception. Thirty years ago, most of these people would never have thought that they would have been nodding with approval at the blasphemous babblings of Rodney Howard Browne and Kenneth Copeland or laughing at the granny-booting antics of Todd Bentley, thinking them to be of the Spirit of God, and now they can't even hear anything to the contrary. How did they get there? Well, it's just like those aircraft that wandered off course perhaps a degree or two, didn't check their instruments, didn't listen to instructions, and as time and distance passed they got out of radio range and completely lost contact with home base.

It's Going To Become Disorientating.

Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of travail.

While to some extent these have been a feature throughout Church history, I believe that Jesus is also saying that in the last 3 ½ years, the time, times and half a time, the 1260 days; these things will be especially true; the final week of Daniel, particularly its last half will be a time of tremendous spiritual deception, because Satan acting through his agents the Beast and the False Prophet will have free reign, but the end is not yet, for later on he says:

And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened. Then [i.e. I those days of tribulation] if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

It will be like flying through very bad weather, where what we see around us becomes very disorientating, so we need to know beforehand that our navigational instruments are properly calibrated and functioning, and that we know our course. The Abomination of Desolation marks the beginning of the most tumultuous period ever in the history of this age and the most awful period of persecution the people of God will ever endure, but it is also one of the great way-points or landmarks that tell us the End is about to begin.

It is near at the very doors.

He says most unequivocally that His return will be preceded by certain visible signs. He describes His Parousia in very specific terms, because if we know clearly what it looks like we will not be misled by satanic counterfeits. You might be asking “Well how would anyone get Jesus' Return mixed up?” Well apparently it's quite possible, because the Thessalonians did, because of the influence of false teachers, and Paul had to write and correct their wrong thinking.

Now we beseech you, brethren, touching the coming [Gr. Parousia] of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to him; to the end that ye be not quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled, either by spirit, or by word, or by epistle as from us, as that the day of the Lord has arrived; let no man beguile you in any wise: for it will not be, except the falling away [Gr. Apostasia] come first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God or that is worshipped; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things?

It is clear from any honest reading of this text that Paul linked the gathering together unto him and the Parousia with the arrival of the Day of the LORD, which is precisely why he reassures them by telling them that the Day of the LORD has not arrived. How do we know this, says Paul,--because the man of sin has not been revealed and proclaimed himself as God in the Temple. Jesus drew our attention most specifically to this same sign that must precede His return, only He called it the Abomination of Desolation; and He very explicitly exhorted us to understand what it meant. The revelation of the Antichrist and the setting up of the Abomination, are the opening events of the 31/2 years of unprecedented tribulation of Daniel 11 and 12, but Jesus also gave us another two clear signs that would herald the end of those days and his approaching return.

But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

Jesus is drawing on a number of prophecies here: the mourning of the Tribes is a clear reference to Zech. 12, (Jesus was thus associating His return in glory with the Day of the LORD) and from Joel 2:31 and Acts 2:20 we see that celestial phenomena just as Jesus described are associated with that Day. Thus God has given us a clear starting and end point for the Great Tribulation; viz. that it begins with the Abomination of Desolation and its close is followed by Jesus's return and the Day of the LORD.

At one time the navigable channel for a harbour approach was marked with buoys. At night time however, these were not visible, so on the shore were placed two lights, positioned to line up, one exactly above the other, to any inbound ships that were in the deep channel and safe. If the lights began to move out of alignment, the mariners would know they had wandered off course, and need to correct. In the same manner the events Jesus gives us to mark the beginning and end of the Tribulation are two of the great fixed points, or beacons with which all other tribulational prophetic enquiries, speculations or extrapolations must align. Scripture also provides us with another two on top of this: namely the Coming of Elijah and the Gathering of the Gentile Armies at Armageddon; both of which are explicitly said also to precede the Day of the Lord.

We can conclude from this then, all claims of that the Rapture can come "at any moment" or that Jesus will come again "in secret unpreceded by signs" are pure falsehood.

The Worst Thing We Can Do.

None of us is completely free from error, there are some things at present that we know at best in part. However, in Daniel 12 it says that knowledge [I believe he was referring to prophetic matters] would increase. This is because as time progresses and events unfold, things become revealed to us that were mysteries to those earlier in history. For example, much in the book of the Apocalypse still remains mysterious and indeed much of it reveals future miraculous exercises of divine power; however there are certain things that would have appeared as only possible by supernatural means in earlier centuries, but are now humanly possible through modern technology; such as the death of the Two Witnesses being globally visible, a cashless society, Mark of the Beast, moving images etc. So also Israel's reconstitution as a nation in unbelief is another event that opened up prophetic vistas unclear in previous centuries. Consequently we should never hold on to speculations about what is presently mysterious too tightly, but be prepared to modify them as history unfolds, or in navigation terminology, be prepared to make minor corrections in order to stay on course.

On the other hand however, those eschatological events that are clearly, specifically and exegetically revealed to us in Scripture should be clung to ever more tightly.

Most of the Christian life involves a progress in understanding and grasp of God's word and will. Many of us at some point have had deficient or erroneous notions, but as our grasp of Scripture and how to handle it grew, our wild ideas drop away, providing we are teachable and correctable. But when confronted with disharmony between our ideas and the scriptures, just about the worst thing we can do, is to start adjusting the Scripture instead of our ideas, and unfortunately this attitude is particularly prevalent in the area of eschatology. The following are three (out of many more, but space does not permit) examples of this.

Redefining the Day of the LORD.

In 1937 Alexander Reese published, “The Approaching Advent of Christ.” Before this, earlier pretribulationists put the day of the Lord at the end of the tribulation. They also put the resurrection of the OT righteous at the time of the pretribulation rapture until Reese pointed out that the Old Testament righteous do not rise until the end of the tribulation at the last day (Job 19:25-26; Isa 26:19, 20; Dan 12:1-2; Jn 6:39-40, 44,54; 11:24; 12:48). 

It is a little known fact that in reaction to the inconsistencies pointed out by Reese’s book, pretribulationists began to teach that the OT righteous would not be raised with the church at the rapture (as formerly believed), but would continue to ‘sleep in the dust of the earth’ until the ‘last day’ at the end of the tribulation (Dan 12:1-2). 

At the same time, Reese pointed out that Paul had instructed the church to be on guard for the day of the Lord (1Thes 5:2, 6-8), as also Peter exhorts believers to be always “looking for and hasting to the coming of the day of the God” (2Pet 3:12 ASV). This would hardly make sense if the church has been removed from the earth seven years before a post-tribulational day of the Lord. The force of Reese’s argument induced some of the earlier pretribulationists to rethink their placement of the day of the Lord.

After the publication of Reese’s book, pretribulationists moved the day of the Lord forward to the beginning of the seven years. The day of the Lord would now be seen as starting with the imminent, unsignaled, pretribulation rapture. In this way, both the rapture and the day of the Lord could be seen as coming suddenly, unexpectedly, and without preceding signs. 

In the years following Reese’s landmark rebuttal, pretribulationists taught that the day of the Lord should be understood to begin with the any moment rapture. This would soon change, at least in academic circles. In 1973 Robert Gundry wrote, The Church and the Great Tribulation. Gundry pointed out the simple fact that regardless of where the day of the Lord is thought to begin, if we say it starts with the rapture, then the rapture cannot be maintained as an imminent event, simply because Paul says that ‘that day’ shall not come until after the man of sin has first been revealed (2Thes 2:2-3). This is decisive, because if the rapture is held to be imminent and un-signaled, it cannot start the day of Lord, since the day of the Lord must be preceded by the revelation of the Antichrist. It is not the rapture, but the day of the Lord that comes as a thief (1Thes 5:2; 2Pet 3:10; Rev 16:15) and this cannot mean, as previously believed, that the day of Lord comes as a thief because it is imminent and un-signaled, since it is clearly preceded by the revelation of the Antichrist (2Thes 2:1-3). Gundry’s logic sent shock waves throughout the pretribulational camp, but another strategic adjustment was soon to follow. 

No longer could the day of the Lord be held to be an imminent event that starts suddenly with the rapture, or immediately after the rapture. Pretribulationists would now admit that the day of the Lord does not come on the world as thief because it is imminent, since it was now admitted that the thief like day of the Lord must be signalled by the prior identification of the Antichrist. The answer for the difficulty posed by Gundry’s argument was to propose an additional gap between the rapture and the day of the Lord in order to provide time for the Antichrist to be revealed sometime ‘after’ the imminent, un-signaled rapture, but ‘before’ the start of the day of the Lord. (Thanks to Reggie Kelly's useful paper, The Rapture Question Decisively Answered by the Timing of the Day of the Lord by for the above extended quote.)

Redefining the Apostasy of 2 Thess. 2 to equate it with the Rapture. (First appeared late 1890's, and recently disinterred.)

Some of the more recent attempts to market this idea were partly based on the rendering of the Greek word apostasia as 'departing' instead of 'falling away' in early English Bible translations such as Tyndale & Geneva; the Pretrib presupposition being, that these English translators understood it as a spatial departure, i.e. the Rapture. A simple reading of Tyndale's prologue to 2nd Thessalonians, or the Geneva Bible margin notes would have disabused them of this notion. For example:

“In the second [chapter] he sheweth that the last day should not come till there were first a departing (as some men think) from under the obedience of the Emperor of Rome and that Antichrist should set himself up in the same place as God...” (From Prologue to 2 Thess. Tyndale's 1534 Edition).

"A wonderful departinge of the moste parte from the faith." (Geneva Bible Marg. 1560 Edition).

Attempting to redefine or eliminate the clear prophetic precursors to the Day of the LORD contained in Joel 2:31:, Mal.4:5 and 2 Thess. 2:3.

There is insufficient space to deal with all of the precursors here, but to briefly comment on one of them. In a paper entitled The Day Of The LORD And Its So-called Precursors. by Stephen McAvoy of the Pretrib Research Centre, it was claimed (amongst other things) that the Hebrew construction translated "before the coming of the Day of the LORD" in Joel 2:31 (the same construction occurs in Malachi); should read, "before the completion of the Day of the LORD" (Such a rendering being necessary to support the Pretribulational contention that the Tribulation and the Day of the LORD were more or less synonymous). Not only is a compelling lexical or contextual reason for such a change lacking in the Hebrew, but the originators of this novelty overlooked that Joel 2:31 is quoted in Acts. 2:20, with the clear and undisputed meaning of "before the Day of the LORD comes."

Why All The Adjustments?

These 'adjustments' (which I have only briefly touched on and omitted much detail for brevity's sake) arose as a response to, well-founded objections that the 2nd Coming of Jesus and the Rapture of the saints were closely associated with the Day of the LORD which was clearly preceded by certain prophetic precursors. However instead of repentance and recantation of error, there arose a desperate scrabbling and intensified spin of contextually evacuated verses, faux hermeneutics, redefinition, revisionism and misrepresentation of historical sources to bend and distort scriptures and biblical terminologies to accommodate the "Theory". This kind of feverish theological plate-spinning is the inevitable consequence of trying to defend an eschatological viewpoint that is solely based on inference and not exegesis. Irving and Darby's original basis for a Pretrib Rapture was on a typological application of the Man Child in Rev. 12. The fact that Pretrib advocates don't use this (preferring a de-contextualised Rev. 3:10 instead) as their basis nowadays is very illumining. If something is exegetically based, and revealed by the Spirit of God, then that doctrine and the interpretation of the text underlying it will stand the test of time and there will be no need for "economies with the truth" and theological propaganda to prop it up. The fact that the cardinal doctrines of the faith are supported on the same standard scripture texts that they have been since the days of the Early Church Fathers is very telling. These doctrines can be demonstrated exegetically as logical conclusions from the texts on which they are based; consequently these cardinal doctrines are part of the "deposit of faith". To accept a doctrine based only on inference however, is to lower the evidential standard for what is acceptable as part of that deposit. When we start do to this, the gap between the faith once delivered to the saints, and what we accept as orthodoxy will ever increasingly widen, as it did with Romanism. It is the navigational equivalent of throwing out the map and compass and trying to fly our way through the storm using "Hello" magazine and a kiddies plastic torch. It's time to get our instruments checked! Happy Flying.