Grandpa Lake’s Weblog

I went public, very public, with a speculation that didn’t turn out as I thought that it might. Now, I’m asking myself (and you) whether I should have published a speculation where I was not sure of the outcome? In my publication, I said that I was not sure. The reason that I published my thoughts on the matter was that the stakes are high. Here’s a summary of the issue.

God has announced a coming period of seven years when He will play hardball with rebellious and self-centered humans to get their attention to His claim on their life and loyalty. He knows that many people will turn to God in desperate times that will not turn to Him when things appear to be going good. If that’s what it takes, that’s what they’ll get. During this time of trouble, some will turn to Him. Other people will harden themselves against the Holy One, blaming Him for their troubles. They will be hardened in their rebellion, so that their condemnation at the last judgment will be seen to be just. But there will be no need for those who acknowledge Christ during this so-called Age of Grace to go through the Great Tribulation.

There is the Biblical promise that Jesus will return to “rapture” His church. Some of us believe that this will occur just before the beginning of the Great Tribulation. But this coming will be so sudden and so quick that no one will have a chance to change his mind at the last second.

Skeptics like to point out that the word rapture doesn’t appear in the Scripture. What we are told is that those Christians who have died will be resurrected as immortals in preparation for what He has planned that is to include all who are Christians in their hearts. Then, those Christians who are alive will have their mortal bodies changed into immortal ones and we shall “be caught up together with” the resurrected Christians to be forever with our Lord. This phrase caught up is the meaning of rapture. It’s not an emotional thing, but a physical reality.

My wife and I have the desire to see as many people as possible turn to Christ before the rapture. Because we believe that this time is immediately upon us, we feel a sense of urgency to get the word out. But here’s the problem. If we wait until we are sure of when the rapture will occur to warn anyone, it will be too late to warn anybody. We’ll be gone. But, by warning people when we think it might be soon put us in the position of possibly being wrong. Technically, we weren’t wrong, because we only said that He might rapture the church at the time we speculated. But, I know that many thought we were nuts for even speculating about something that we weren’t sure of.  One thing we are sure of is that Jesus will return and that every knee will bow to His Majesty — even the knees of His enemies.

Because I thought that my Lord might return on Rosh Hashana of this year, and the stakes are so high, I put myself in a position where I might be ridiculed. My wife translated my speculation in the post “World’s Greatest Crisis – Next Week?” into Finnish because we live in her country. Other voices expressed the same ideas in English, but we saw nothing in Finnish, so we filled that gap. She, too, was ridiculed. A Christian radio network ignored our plea that they consider letting people know of the possibility. I understand that people want to play it safe. Had they known that He would come on the Feast of Trumpets this year, they’d have said something. But nobody knew for sure.

We let all of our contacts: family, friends, business contacts, everyone know. It was actually an afterthought to publish it on my blog, but then we sent SMS messages to everyone in our address lists here. Some people responded by suggesting that we see a doctor. One doctor told us that the Finnish translation was so poor that it looked as though it had been done by a machine. Finnish is my wife’s native language. She is college educated, licensed as an adult education teacher. I don’t read Finnish, but I’m sure that the translation was good. By believing as I do and supporting me, my wife was subjected to ridicule also. I feel badly about that.

Some folks said that by being wrong, even though we were conditional in our speculation, we damaged our credibility and cannot say anything any more and expect to be believed. But those who are not saying anything about a particular time, but are only saying “soon” in terms of our Lord’s return for His Church, are not communicating the sense of urgency that is appropriate for this time.

Had our Lord come on September 29 or 30, no one would have ridiculed us, whether or not they believed us. We still believe that His coming is imminent. It could still happen tonight. Oh, I’d like to be vindicated in my message of urgency, but this whole business is not about me, it’s about Jesus, His Word, and His desire that all turn to Him. He will receive those who turn to Him in the Great Tribulation, but I’m sure that He’d prefer that people respond to a gentle entreaty and a warning.

We feel that if only one person turned to the Lord with his or her heart as a result of seeing that blog post, the ridicule was worth while. I told my wife that I’m a little discouraged because I know of nothing positive from our sticking our necks out. She replied, “Yeah? So?” I think she’s right.

What is your opinion?