Day 254

Today's Reading: Revelation 16

One of the scariest movies I have ever seen was not in a theater but in a church. It was called A Thief in the Night, and it was circulating in the 1970s about the end times. I knew I wanted to be ready for the rapture, the second coming of Jesus. I remember leaving that church service as an elementary student knowing full well in my heart that I needed to be ready for that day. I went on to read Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth. At that time, they had it in a comic book form, and it was the clincher for me that I was going to be ready for Jesus to come back as a thief in the night.

If things could get any worse for earth and humanity, Revelation 16 tells us it does in the great tribulation. As if seven trumpets of disaster were not enough for the planet, God unleashes seven bowls of wrath into the earth, from bodily affliction to polluting rivers and water. What’s interesting is that in the midst of these wrathful bowls of God’s judgment, one theme keeps being shouted by the angels inflicting the punishment: “Righteous art Thou O Holy One.” Their words remind us that God is not doing anything we don’t deserve—this is a day of wrath and judgment after millennia of mercy and patience.

These bowls are terrifying, as is men’s response to the outpouring of God’s wrath. Almost as many times as it says “God is righteous” after one of the bowls is poured out, it says as many times, “They did not repent so as to give Him glory.” How corrupt is man by this time in his history?

The chapter ends with a name many of us are all familiar with. As if things can’t get any worse, we are introduced to Armageddon, the place of the final battle on the planet. All that to say that in the midst of these horrific verses, a parenthetical statement shows up and stands alone in these passages because the verse speaks to the now and not to the future: “(‘Behold, I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his clothes, so that he will not walk about naked and men will not see his shame.’)” (Revelation 16:15).

Verse 15 is a parenthetical life preserver for humanity now, right now before this chapter comes upon the planet with the wrath of God. When I say parenthetical, it’s just a large word for parentheses, an insert of another thought, a little path from the original thought. But this is not a little diversion. This is deliverance from the wrath of God. It is as if John breaks from the vision and, in terror of what will happen, says to humanity, This doesn’t have to happen to you. Stay awake and ready for the rapture. The parentheses show us John being overwhelmed and wanting to help us all.

The parentheses bring us to the rapture, the second coming of Jesus. The apostle John says that Jesus will come like a thief in the night, but this is not only John’s description of the second coming of Jesus. Jesus says in Matthew 24 that this is the way it happens. In 1 Thessalonians 5:2, Paul uses the thief-in-the-night image. And in 2 Peter 3:10, Peter also says He will come like a thief. The thief-in-the-night day is the rapture. The rapture is Jesus coming physically a second time to the earth, not to redeem it but to start judging it.

The rapture has two important days attached to it: the wedding day and the judgment day. The wedding day is the celebration of the “born again” dead and living all going to heaven. It’s the final call, our reward of heaven. And the Bible calls it a wedding-day celebration. The second day is judgment day, and it is God making all wrongs right. No one gets away with anything because of this day.

Every person will be judged for what they have done. Hitler and Saddam Hussein will be there. Stalin and Castro. People from your city and my city and every place throughout the ages. Every person will stand before God.

In, Who Will Face the Tribulation?, Tim LaHaye vividly imagined what the unexpected suddenness of the rapture would be like:

When Christ calls His living saints to be with Him, millions of people will suddenly vanish from the earth. An unsaved person who happens to be in the company of a believer will know immediately that his friend has vanished. There will certainly be worldwide recognition of the fact, for when over one-half of a billion people suddenly depart this earth, leaving their earthly belongings behind, pandemonium and confusion will certainly reign for a time.

A million conversations will end midsentence.

A million phones . . . will suddenly go dead.

A woman will reach for a man’s hand in the dark . . . and no one will be there.

A man will turn with a laugh to slap a colleague on the back, and his hand will move through empty air.

A basketball player will make a length-of-the-floor pass to a teammate streaking down the court and find no one there to receive it. And no referee to call it out-of-bounds.

A mother will pull back the covers in a bassinet, smelling the sweet baby smell one moment but suddenly kissing empty space and looking into empty blankets.

Just as the Old Testament is saturated with prophecies concerning Christ’s first coming, which we call Christmas, so both testaments are filled with references to Christ’s second coming. One scholar has estimated that there are 1,845 references to Christ’s second coming in the Old Testament, where seventeen books give it prominence. In the 260 chapters of the New Testament, there are 318 references to the second coming of Christ. One out of every thirty New Testament verses speaks about the Second Coming. Twenty-three of the twenty-seven New Testament books refer to the second coming of Jesus. For every prophecy in the Bible concerning Christ’s first coming, there are eight that look forward to His second!

The first time He came, He came as an infant. The second time, He comes as the infinite. The first time He came in humility, deity in diapers. The second time, He comes in purple robes of royalty. The first time He came, men killed Him. The second time, every man will bow before Him.

The Parenthesis Is A Life Preserver