"World Now in the Tribulation!"

Email assaults my inbox these days, informing me that we are now in the Tribulation. The messages come not only from the usual Rapture antagonists, but from those who claim they have always held the Pretrib Rapture position, but now it is obvious to them that the world has entered that last seven years of God’s wrath and judgment. We have been wrong about the Rapture’s timing, as witnessed by things going on in our minute-by-minute, breaking-news reports.


Disdain for any mention of Rapture lies at the heart of the more-often-than-not caustic rhetoric.


I will serve up for your "Nearing Midnight" consumption some thoughts of one of the more irritable emailers. The writer has as the subject line: The Japanese earthquake. The email reads in part, as follows.


[The signing of the Daniel 9: 27 covenant]…happened last year in Cancun Mexico under the guise of a Climate Change treaty. Therefore, the pre tribulation theory of the rapture is over and done with, it is as dead in the water as the birds falling out of the sky recently. The Antichrist has confirmed that covenant just as the Bible said would be the instance, but don't take any notice of what he says; initially, he was acting under the directives of the Bilderberger group and that is why he always appears to be speaking in riddles, saying something at one time, and then later on completely reneging on what he had said earlier at a later date. Just as the Bible describes him as being, a master of intrigue. That was his position to begin with, but I am not too sure if that initial position may have changed dramatically and that he is now acting under the directives of Satan who is more than likely sitting on his right shoulder, is whispering in his ear and telling him what to say and do? There is one point though I must concur with, and that is the obvious popularity of the pre tribulation theory which can very easily be put down to the false self worth of some who are of the mindset that as the Lord has saved them he is never going to let them go through the worst time in the history of the world. How false the doctrine and mindset of those individuals who follow the rapture cult is.


I presume President Barack Obama is the person to whom this writer refers as filling the bill for being Antichrist. If so, this is not an unusual designation by those who declare that the Pretrib view is in error at best, and is a cultic abomination at worst.


Certainly with the constant stream of bad news coming from Japan, it is made to seem that we have entered apocalyptic times. The several nuclear reactors damaged by the 9.0 earthquake-spawned tsunami are fodder for those who offer evidence that the pretrib Rapture view is in error –or is heresy—and we now should look for Antichrist to begin working his dark, Tribulation magic. There is little doubt from this quarter that the son of perdition will have a full plate with which to deal once he steps into the end-times spotlight. A cursory scan of what these troubling times have already served up makes the point.


The world is in financial meltdown as portentous as the melting-down nuclear reactors on the island of Japan. The Middle East is in an uproar that is almost assuredly a precursor to alignment for the wrap-up of history leading to Christ’s Second Advent. Israel is being forced by the world of nations into a position of accepting the deadly covenant of false peace our anti-Rapturist emailer-friend declares to already be a done deal. Despite some scientists with blinders on declaring that nothing is unusual about the mega-magnitude earthquakes and other episodes of nature acting up, it is obvious to the most casual observer that something is up with the frequency and intensity of the geophysical upheavels.


Nonetheless, in the literary spirit of the Ides of March just past, friends, reviving Empire Romans, and countrymen–lend me your ears… the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is still here on planet earth, serving as salt and light. God the Holy Spirit continues to restrain the growing evil of this fallen sphere. He will do so until the church–all who are born again (John 3:3)—depart when Christ calls that body to Himself (John 14: 1-3; 1 Cor 15: 51-55; 1 Thes 4: 13-18; Rev 4:1-2).
I leave you with the same reassurance the apostle Paul imparted to the Thessalonians of his day, when they thought they were now in the Day of the Lord (Tribulation):

Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. (2 Thessalonians 2:1-4)




TAKEN FROM  --Terry RAPTURE READY