The Stage Is Set: Israel, the End Times, and Christ's Ultimate Victory by Bryant Wright

Author:Bryant Wright [Wright, Bryant]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL085000, Bible—Prophecies—End of the world, Eschatology—Biblical teaching, Providence and government of God—Biblical teaching, Bible—Prophecies, REL006140, REL067060, End of the world—Biblical teaching
ISBN: 9781493406425
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2017-01-16T23:00:00+00:00

13

The Ultimate Destination Wedding

Jesus Returns for His Bride

Let’s now shift our focus from the Antichrist and the time when all hell breaks loose to when the Holy Spirit is removed from the world scene. Is it before the Antichrist appears on the world scene? Is it while he is the dominant personality in the world? Or is it near the end of his power, before he is destroyed with a word by Jesus? Some even wonder if the church will be removed at all.

This leads us to the rapture of the church. Many say the idea of the rapture is a new theological idea that did not arise until the nineteenth century under the leadership of John Nelson Darby in the 1830s.1

Others speculated about it, like Puritan preachers Increase and Cotton Mather, but Darby popularized it. Because of this, many discredit it. When I began to see how clearly Scripture teaches the rapture, I had not studied Darby and had never even used the Scofield version of the Bible that had helped popularize it. I sure didn’t come by this from my theological education. I went to a seminary that held a condescending view of evangelical Christians and continually mocked popular evangelical views of eschatology (end times).

That’s the beauty of simply studying God’s Word to understand what each passage means—it allows any Christian or preacher of the gospel to enter the study without preconceived notions. This allows the Holy Spirit to speak to us in the spirit of “the priesthood of the believer” that Martin Luther talked about in his call for reform in the sixteenth century. Commentaries of multiple theological and hermeneutical views then help us critically assess if we have misinterpreted the obvious or misunderstood the leading of the Holy Spirit.

So I write this out of a study that I began in preaching through the book of Revelation about twenty-five years ago. I’m ashamed to say that for the first ten years of pastoring, I stayed away from anything having to do with the book of Revelation, biblical prophecy, and the end times. I did this for two main reasons: (1) it seemed irrelevant to everyday life; and (2) I was intimidated by all the symbolism of Revelation that had led to a multitude of difficult and speculative interpretations. I feel many young pastors in the millennial generation feel the same way today. But after finally becoming convinced that this is an important part of God’s Word, I moved forward with fear and trepidation.

Amazingly, Revelation came alive. I was enthralled and amazed. I finished that study realizing that yes, there are many different interpretations, but we can clearly understand many aspects of the events leading to Jesus’s second coming.

Then my wife and I took our first Bible study tour to Israel. We were expecting a mostly biblical historical study involving going to sites of biblical events. It was certainly that, but what stunned us was seeing the biblical prophecy that is unfolding right before our eyes today in Israel.

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