Timing of the Rapture Pt. 3

If you’re ready to go home and see the Lord, praise God!  But you have to temper that with understanding.  God has a will for you today [1 Timothy 2:4].  If you’re ready and eager to learn (i.e., come to the knowledge of the truth) – that’s the will of God for you .

2 Corinthians 5:5-8

Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.  Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:  (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)  We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

To depart and be with Christ is far better than being here.  But do you know what Paul says?

Philippians 1:23-24

For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:  Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.

He says that to stay in his flesh and teach the word of God is more needful for the body of Christ.

Who wants to live in this lost, dying, Christ-rejecting, saint-rejecting world?  They reject us too because we are “in Christ’s stead.”

2 Corinthians 5:20

Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.

But like Paul, every day when I wake up without being raptured in my sleep, I see it as another day to serve the Lord.  I start praying for the saints, getting into the word and doing the work of the ministry.

Ephesians 4:12

For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:

I will keep doing that every day, Lord willing; and he is, as long as I’m willing. 

To be continued…