HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 19, 2024 – There are many ways to discern a false prophet. I’ve gone over some of them in earlier articles (if you’re interested, type “false prophets” into this webpage’s search bar in the upper right corner). As I’ve mentioned in several of the articles, false prophets can still preach God’s Truth, though they mix it with the devil’s lies. Is there a way, then, to know when a prophet is giving us good intel about the future?

Yes, thank God, there is. Jesus himself told us about it in various parables that stressed two key features about prophecies that deal with future events. These two features are:

1. Unexpectedness. The events will happen when you least expect them; and even if they do occur more or less when you expect them to occur, they’ll unfold differently than you anticipated. In some cases (like the coming of Jesus, the Messiah), they’ll be so unlike what was anticipated, many will doubt whether the event fulfilled the prophecy.
2. Urgency. Prophecies that give you the impression you still have plenty of time to get things right with God are not from God. They are false, as all prophecies about future events are fueled by a sense of spiritual urgency – an urgency that arises from the prophesied unexpectedness of their occurrence. The urgency also comes from our understanding that we as individuals must be ready at every moment of every day to face God for the judgement, because after we breathe our last (which could come at any time), it’s too late to make amends. At that point, what we’ve done, we’ve done, and what we’ve left undone, we’ve left undone, and that for all eternity.

These two characteristics – unexpectedness and urgency – are the hallmarks of prophecies that come from God regarding future events. In short, if the prophecy doesn’t highlight the quality of unexpectedness in the event’s occurrence and the urgency of our taking immediate steps to prepare for it spiritually, the prophesy is not from God.

With these rules of thumb in mind, let’s take a look at the most highly anticipated and publicized future event of all time – the second coming of Jesus Christ. In particular, let’s look at the ascension event that Jesus and Paul prophesied and which has been popularized recently as the “rapture”. As I’ve written here before, I’m not a fan of the rapture, as I believe it’s a false prophesy. The ascension event as foretold by Jesus and Paul is unquestioningly from God, but the rapture is not. Here’s why.

UNEXPECTEDNESS

Unexpectedness is a key feature in future event prophecies that come from God. We are to expect the unexpected; we are to prepare for the unexpected; but we should still anticipate being entirely surprised when it occurs. We won’t be sitting with a stopwatch, counting down the seconds or watching the power balls drop our lucky numbers one by one. Jesus mentions that people will be doing things as mundane as working in the fields or sleeping in a bed or lounging around waiting for the very late bridegroom to show up (some perhaps giving up hope that he’ll even come). I also believe that the unexpectedness of the ascension event will be supernaturally imposed by God – whoever’s still on Earth when it happens won’t know it’s about to happen, because God will prevent them from knowing, the same way he supernaturally prevented the disciples from knowing about Judas Iscariot’s planned betrayal of Jesus (so they wouldn’t try to stop him).

Unexpectedness will also play out in how the ascension event itself will play out – that is, what it will actually look like. Jesus said that he will return in glory with his holy angels, and that he’ll send his angels to all corners of the earth to gather his Church. At Jesus’ ascension 40 days after his resurrection, two angels told the disciples that Jesus would return the same way he went up – that is, via the cloud in the sky and accompanied by holy angels.  Paul mentions being “caught up in the clouds… in the air”, the same way Jesus is described ascending (and also the same way Elijah and the two witnesses are described ascending). This, then, we can assume is how the ascension event will play out, at least according to scriptural references.

The rapture, on the other hand, widely publicizes a type of disappearance that doesn’t align with scripture and is almost comical. The bodies of believers disappear, but their clothes are left behind either in a heap on the floor or bench or car seat, or neatly folded with glasses, watches, and jewelry on top. In every instance, the actual disappearance is not witnessed, just the aftermath is. None of the “left behind” people see the disappeared disappear; typically, they look away for a second, and when they look back, the person is gone. Or they come home to an empty apartment or an empty house, finding only the aforementioned heap of clothing on a chair or the floor. Nobody witnesses anyone rising up in a cloud or into the clouds accompanied by angels, as prophesied by Jesus and Paul and as relayed by the disciples at Jesus’ ascension. There’s just a “Now you see ‘em, now you don’t” moment, which is not scriptural.

There’s also a question of timing. Paul prophesies that the “dead in Christ” will rise first, after which the rest will ascend. Jesus states that he’s send his angels to the “four winds” to gather his Church, which seems to me like it won’t happen all at once but staggered over a period of time. Paul does mention that it will happen in “a twinkling”, or very fast, but I believe the “twinkling” refers to how fast the ascended will change from their earthly body to their glorified one. I don’t believe the ascension of the Church will happen in a twinkling.

Let’s look at Elijah’s ascension as an example of what might happen to Jesus’ Church. It was well-known among the local prophets of each region that Elijah would be taken to Heaven. God must have informed them all, because Elijah knew it, Elisha (the prophet who took over from him) knew it, and all the lesser prophets knew it. What they didn’t know was the exact time or exact manner that Elijah would be taken. First, they all thought it would likely happen on this day at this place, and then God sent Elijah somewhere else that took a few days’ journey to get to. So then they all thought it would likely happen at that place, but God sent Elijah somewhere else, until everyone involved just kind of slacked off a bit, thinking it wouldn’t happen for a while… until suddenly, chariots and horses of fire appeared in the sky and Elijah was taken up in a whirlwind. That was the last that anyone on Earth saw of Elijah until his cameo appearance with Moses at the transfiguration.

Eijah, Elisha, and all the local prophets were definitely not expecting chariots and horses of fire to emerge from the clouds in the sky. Nor were they expecting the chariots and horses to show up when they did. In fact, after the several false starts, the two prophets were just ambling along shooting the breeze when Elijah was unexpectedly whisked away. I think the ascension event for us will be just like that – both expected and unexpected, and in a manner that was unanticipated.

I also believe that the ascension of Jesus’ Church will happen one by one and that each of the ascendees will be escorted by angels. If we’re here when it happens and we’re blessed to be chosen, we’ll all see Jesus coming in the clouds in his glorified body, but it will be his holy angels who come for each of us individually to take us up into the sky to join Jesus. How that will play out? How will the angels will approach us and draw us up into the sky? I guess we’ll have to wait and see when the time comes. Tellingly, the angel escorts are glaringly absent from any rapture movie I’ve ever seen, even though Jesus pointedly mentions them in his ascension prophecy.

I have attended at the death of a loved one, and while I didn’t see any angels present, I definitely felt their presence (and the absence of their presence when they left with my loved one’s soul). At the ascension of the remnant Church, the angels will be in their glorified form, like Jesus, and fully visible to everyone on Earth. Just the thought alone of this glorious event makes me so excited and happy! Like Elijah anticipating going Home to Heaven, I can’t wait!

URGENCY

The overwhelming emotion that is expressed as a jubilant “I can’t wait!” fuels a sense of urgency that is the second main characteristic of a prophecy from God. God’s prophecies never leave us with the impression that we can settle on our lees or that we’ll always have plenty of time to prepare. The urgency characteristic contrasts sharply with the “If at first you don’t succeed…” feature of the rapture doctrine, which assures us that if we or our loved ones miss out on the first round of the second coming, we shouldn’t be unduly worried because we can catch up with Jesus at the second round (as if there will be such a thing). I believe, and again scripture backs me up here, that there will logically only be one second coming, not two or more, which means that anyone left behind after the ascension event prophesied by Jesus and Paul will not have another opportunity. It will be just one and done.

The whole point of the urgency feature in God’s prophecies is to prevent people from procrastinating spiritually. As I mentioned above, we should be ready at every moment of every day to come before God for Judgement. We shouldn’t be “rapture-ready”, we should be Judgement-ready, which incites in us an entirely different and deeper degree of spiritual readiness. I don’t want to lay my head down at night with unrepented sin on my soul, any more than I want to go through any part of my day with sin on my soul. I want always to be Judgement-ready and prepared to meet God at any time.

This is the sense of spiritual urgency that a prophecy from God inspires in us, and I don’t see that in the rapture doctrine, mainly because it promises second or even third chances to get right with God after the initial rapture event. I also don’t see it in the rapture-related doctrine of the tribulation period preceding Jesus’ second coming that insists that people will simply be able to call out to God right up to the last minute and be saved. I believe the cut-off time for conversion will occur at the end of the birth pangs period and just before the tribulation proper begins, and no-one knows the day or hour for that. The book of Revelation doesn’t describe any conversions – none at all – after the tribulation proper begins in Chapter 8. There’s horrendous suffering accompanied by copious cursing and blaspheming, but no conversions. Not one conversion is recorded in scripture after the start of the tribulation. What we do see recorded is that, for all their suffering, none of the unsealed repent.

This bleak outlook for the unconverted is meant to be bleak. It needs to be bleak. Its bleakness relays an urgency that is the hallmark of a prophecy from God. We should not be left with the impression that we’ll always have plenty of time to change our ways. The devil wants us to think that, but God doesn’t. We should also not be given the impression that our unconverted loved ones will have plenty of time to convert. Jesus says that anyone who loves his spouse, parents, children, etc., more than they love him is not worthy of him. A harsh statement, certainly, but necessarily harsh. We should pray for our unbelieving loved ones (who else will pray for them?), but we should never let their unbelief come between us and Jesus or between us and God. If we must choose between our family and Jesus and God, we must never hesitate to choose Jesus and God. The rapture prophecy, with its loosey-goosey approach to conversion and the promise of mid- and post-tribulation conversions for those who currently reject the Gospel, is clearly false.

God’s prophecies always have two key features: unexpectedness and urgency. The unexpectedness comes from the miraculous nature of the event, and the urgency comes from the necessity always to be Judgement-ready. Prophecies that don’t have these characteristics don’t come from God.