So glad you're here, Grergor. Warning, this is one of my long babbly things. It's hard to jump back and forth, I know, but this is very important we all get this straight. It literally is a matter of life and death, and makes all other preoccupations seems almost vaporous and without meaning. About the only thing I used to worry about is could I take the dogs with me. Now I'm down to one, and the Lord loves him so much he'll probably take off too.
I have a very special pastor in Eureka, the man named Patrick. We have not always agreed on everything, and have even grieved each other deeply over treatment of a rowdy drunk that I was working on and every one else just lost patience with and locked out of church.
It got worse, and the guy ended up blowing his brains out less than 3 months later. So, all things are not perfect anywhere. And the judgment is still out on that one, believe me.
But as far as the closest you can get to the pure truth, Pat is there.
Including the love he has for Biblical Isreal, and being l/4 Jewish, he has a perfect balance of how far the O.T. should be taken, and with him it is not far, and Pat is as far under Grace as you can get.
So Pat is the one that almost took us all out of our seats and through the roof when he said he felt it would be fitting and wonderful for the Lord to come and get us on the day of the Feast of Trumpets, or Booths, whichever was the symbolic one for wrapping everything up. There is one that really fits. Actually there should be two feasts that are perfect. The one for what we call the rapture, and the when everyone comes back with him in triumph, where Jesus will now take Him place as rightful ruler of Earth.
In l993 I was so totally and completely sure the Lord was coming to get us I wondered if I was getting a little off. The feeling was almost paralyzing that it was all coming to an end for the inhabitants of earth. I do not believe that I was nuts, but very possibly at that point in time, where the winds had stopped above the earth and that is what caused the huge floods in the midwest that staggered the world, almosst, that at that point the Fifth Angel in Rev. 7 was dispatched to stop the beginning of the destructon of the Earth, as John saw, and no matter how many times I post it anywhere, no one seems to care to discuss it, so I have given up.
So I wondered for 5 years if I was just nuts in Spring of 1993. No, I don't think I was. Therefore, I am very open to any discussions of
Jesus taking the one out of the field and leaving the other one standing there with their mouth hanging open, and being left behind. This has no correlation intellectually, scripturally, or logically with "The Day of the Lord" on horseback with a vast multitude on horses with him. John sees Jesus literally coming back from the cloud bank, which I believe He will and can almost see it in my mind as it draws nearer, with all those dead saints and so many people we just won't believe He ever got that many over the course of time, and that is to claim the Earth once again as His own. A final and complete act. It is about as separate from the warning to have oil in your lamp, and leaving others in confusion because they didn't have oil in their lamps, and all of it happening like a thief in the night. These are two events, and how they ever got mixed up into one I don't know.
So, for this thief in the night event, in which one will go, but the one beside him/her won't, which we are warned to pray earnestly as in with everything you've got, to be accounted worthy to escape the things everyone else who is Christian and is not prepared in faith or prayer to be part of, that this would
all happen on a preordained day of great importance before Christ, and pointing to Him in the first place, seemed to Pat to be perfect and wonderful. And we all agreed, and I remember the Presence of God joyously flooding the room as he spoke. And at this point in time I do recognize the Presence of God, as opposed to the oxygen rush of jumping around, or the soulish fun produced by jest and entertainment. And I take the Presence at all times as a witness.
So, I believe there was a witness from Himself that this could indeed be possible. And on the year of Jubilee. Well, that is a spiritual no-brainer, and certainly one to hope for.
Where the Tribulation arguments started, I don't know, and have never been much a part of them. I just see scripture as it was written, and when told it means something else, I only accept it as something else if it in fact does say something else. If I see the same thing I always saw, I stick with that. But to argue about it seems a waste of all our time. We will see what the Lord wants us to, and at this point it seems that some are going to go and some are going to stay, and this is all determined by the Lord beforehand anyway. But apparently it has something to do with wanting to get out, as Jesus instructed us to begin to pray we would be found accounted worthy to escape. So, I have this terrible habit of trying to take the Lord absolutely as literally as I can at all times.
It was the 350 year calculation I was wondering about. I was wondering if there was anything else interesting in history that went along with God's calendar of "Release" or whatever the Jubilee symbolizes. I have found so many parallel universes here on earth where God was working and we don't know about it because it has been buried in history, I like to look and see what might have happened, if it did happen at all.
I know that you believe in the getting out of here, and I see that it has not affected your walk in any way. The danger is that to believe in getting out of here, it has been interpreted by someone in the past and passed down that such a belief will leave us wide open to apostacy if we DON'T get out of here. Just don't see the correlation myself, and that's why it should not be an area of debate that can ever separate us from another believer. Nor should those of us instructed by the Lord to begin to pray to get out of here stop doing so at the instruction of another believer. As Paul said, don't accept another scriptural teaching other than that in print now, and in the King James, and after going to the Strongs, I do believe that is necessary at this point of confusion.
It is all very interesting, no? |
