Be a Berean who searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.
Test all things; hold fast what is good.
John 12:15, “Fear not, daughter of Zion; Behold, your King is coming, Sitting on a donkey’s colt.”
1 Corinthians 1:18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”
Be Gathered
Those expecting a pre-tribulation rapture have always spoken of it with joy and excitement, “Come, Lord Jesus, Come!” I have found that speaking of the coming reality has brought quite a different response than expected. The thought is generally not of His coming, but of a sudden “catching up” that brings many sobering thoughts and fear. I can see it in the eye immediately. Not the least of these fears is, “He can’t come yet, I have unsaved family,” or the heart rending admission, “My children are not ready.” The most common response I have heard when confronted with the idea of an imminent rapture is, “I think I am supposed to stay here for those left behind.” “I can’t leave my own.” Luke 14:26, Jesus says, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.” This is under the passage heading, “Leaving All to Follow Christ.” All the words of Christ are true and an ever present reality. Be encouraged dear sisters and brothers, Jesus is coming, not to leave behind, but to gather. Yes, He is coming for His faithful ones. He is coming for His persecuted ones looking to their blessed Hope. He is coming for His Betrothed, looking for the Bridegroom. He is also coming to call and gather the lost sheep without a shepherd. He is coming for His remnant from the the North, South, East and West, from the ends of the earth, from the nations., lame, outcast, hungry, thirsty, poor, anyone with desperate need of Him. He is giving every son and daughter of Adam opportunity at His coming to incline the ear, seek Him while He is near, to call out for His salvation, believing on Him. He desires nothing more than, that your children, your family, and you would all be gathered to Him now. You must be gathered to Him immediately! There is no second call. Just one. You can not run back into the house or go back to the plow or grindstone. When you receive the knock, open immediately. When you hear the voice of the Shepherd, follow. When you see the Bridegroom, go out to meet Him. When He gives the invitation to the hungry and thirsty, run to Him!
Jesus wants you to be prepared for His coming. His purpose is for the gathering of His children. He tells us to gather our children, we who know of His visitation.
We are to discern the times and know of our visitation.
Luke 19:41 Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, 42 saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, 44 and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
Matthew 16 Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing Him asked that He would show them a sign from heaven. 2 He answered and said to them, “When it is evening you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red’; 3 and in the morning, ‘It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times. 4 A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” And He left them and departed.
Did we have such a sign? August 21st, a total solar eclipse spanned a nation just like Ninevah, a modern day Gentile nation, at the time of sundown on the 1st day of Elul 5777. From the 1st of Elul to Yom Kippur the shofar blows for 40 days for calling a Jewish nation to repentance in preparation for the Day of Atonement, the day that the Jews remember the story of Jonah. Should this nation have attended to that call? Jonah went to a watery grave, the belly of a fish for three days and then was spit out on dry ground to live again and warn of God’s coming judgment in 40 days upon the beautiful, rich Assyrian city. Luke 11:32“The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.” The Day of Atonement brings into the remembrance the day of darkness when the sun was fully eclipsed from the 6th to the 9th hour; the day the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom; a day the earth shook and the graves were opened; (Matt 27:45-54) the day the atoning blood of Christ finished the work of salvation for whosoever believes in Him; the day that points to the fulfillment of the prophet Jonah with the resurrection on the third day, and the repentance and belief of a church born again. Did the Lord give us a sign for today? Does He want us to wake up, repent, and believe? Was He giving a sign to watch and pray?
Luke 1:16 And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,’ and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
Micah The Great Day of God
4
“For behold, the day is coming,
Burning like an oven,
And all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble.
And the day which is coming shall burn them up,”
Says the Lord of hosts,
“That will leave them neither root nor branch.
2
But to you who fear My name
The Sun of Righteousness shall arise
With healing in His wings;
And you shall go out
And grow fat like stall-fed calves.
3
You shall trample the wicked,
For they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet
On the day that I do this,”
Says the Lord of hosts.
4
“Remember the Law of Moses, My servant,
Which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel,
With the statutes and judgments.
5
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet
Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
6
And he will turn
The hearts of the fathers to the children,
And the hearts of the children to their fathers,
Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.”
Joel 2:16, Gather the people, Sanctify the congregation, Assemble the elders, Gather the children and nursing babes; Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, And the bride from her dressing room.
The Lord has gathered, is gathering and will gather us together as one, one Church, One Bride, One nation.
John 11:51 Now this he did not say on his own authority; but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, 52 and not for that nation only, but also that He would gather together in one the children of God who were scattered abroad.
Ezekiel 37:21 “Then say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Surely I will take the children of Israel from among the nations, wherever they have gone, and will gather them from every side and bring them into their own land; 22 and I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all; they shall no longer be two nations, nor shall they ever be divided into two kingdoms again.
Two nations, Israel and Judah, Jew and Gentile, will no longer be two nations, nor shall they ever be divided into two kingdoms again.
Hosea 1:10
“Yet the number of the children of Israel
Shall be as the sand of the sea,
Which cannot be measured or numbered.
And it shall come to pass
In the place where it was said to them,
‘You are not My people,’
There it shall be said to them,
‘You are sons of the living God.’
11
Then the children of Judah and the children of Israel
Shall be gathered together,
And appoint for themselves one head;
And they shall come up out of the land,
For great will be the day of Jezreel!
Isaiah 27:12
And it shall come to pass in that day
That the Lord will thresh,
From the channel of the River to the Brook of Egypt;
And you will be gathered one by one,
O you children of Israel.
13
So it shall be in that day:
The great trumpet will be blown;
They will come, who are about to perish in the land of Assyria,
And they who are outcasts in the land of Egypt,
And shall worship the Lord in the holy mount at Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is left desolate. The heart of the Father is to gather her children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. Jerusalem was unwilling! This is why He has the gathering of the Gentiles, the gathering of you and your children under His wing as a preserved remnant, sons and daughters. He has the heart of a Father, gathering His children as well as the heart of adoption, as He comes after the adopted sons and daughters.
Matthew 23:37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! 38 See! Your house is left to you desolate;
Luke 13:34 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing! 35 See! Your house is left to you desolate; and assuredly, I say to you, you shall not see Me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ”
Romans 8:14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.
Deuteronomy 4:9 Only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and your grandchildren, 10 especially concerning the day you stood before the Lord your God in Horeb, when the Lord said to me, ‘Gather the people to Me, and I will let them hear My words, that they may learn to fear Me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.’
11 “Then you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire to the midst of heaven, with darkness, cloud, and thick darkness.
Hebrews 12:18 For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest, 19 and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore. 20 (For they could not endure what was commanded: “And if so much as a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or shot with an arrow.” 21 And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I am exceedingly afraid and trembling.”)
22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, 23 to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, 24 to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.
Acts 2:38 Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.”
Acts 3:25 You are sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ 26 To you first, God, having raised up His Servant Jesus, sent Him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your iniquities.”
Acts 7 - This is our story. This is what the Lord has accomplished and is accomplishing now. Read every single word of it.
5 And God gave him no inheritance in it, not even enough to set his foot on. But even when Abraham had no child, He promised to give it to him for a possession, and to his descendants after him. 6 But God spoke in this way: that his descendants would dwell in a foreign land, and that they would bring them into bondage and oppress them four hundred years. 7 ‘And the nation to whom they will be in bondage I will judge,’ said God, ‘and after that they shall come out and serve Me in this place.’
17 “But when the time of the promise drew near which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt 18 till another king arose who did not know Joseph. 19 This man dealt treacherously with our people, and oppressed our forefathers, making them expose their babies, so that they might not live. 20 At this time Moses was born, and was well pleasing to God; and he was brought up in his father’s house for three months. 21 But when he was set out, Pharaoh’s daughter took him away and brought him up as her own son. 22 And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds.
23 “Now when he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren, the children of Israel. 24 And seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended and avenged him who was oppressed, and struck down the Egyptian.
Note that verse 17 is the verse of promise. The revelation 12 sign, 33 days after the 1st Elul eclipse is the sign in the heavens of PROMISE, a spiritual child of Israel caught up to the throne of God to be preserved as the dragon comes to devour. The 24th verse is the avenging of the oppressed Israelite. Revelation 6:9, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” I believe He does 7 years later, as in 7 verses later.
The gathering of the remnant of the Gentiles, representational people that grew and multiplied in Egypt as adopted sons and daughters of Israel, Abraham’s inheritance, are being brought out of Egypt and the greater second Exodus will be our story of being gathered to the wilderness, living in temporary shelters for a few days as in the Feast of Booth, and then crossing the spiritual Jordan to the high hills of heaven to be in the Lord’s sight forever! We are also the baby Moses being preserved in the basket and caught up to the King’s palace! Only the Lord of Heaven and Earth can do this. This will be a work of His Hand. We will only believe it in hindsight!
Micah 7:15
“As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt,
I will show them wonders.” We are in the fulfillment days!
Acts 13:33
32 And we declare to you glad tidings—that promise which was made to the fathers. 33 God has fulfilled this for us their children, in that He has raised up Jesus. As it is also written in the second Psalm:
‘You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.’
34 And that He raised Him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, He has spoken thus:
‘I will give you the sure mercies of David.’
35 Therefore He also says in another Psalm:
‘You will not allow Your Holy One to see corruption.’
36 “For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep, was buried with his fathers, and saw corruption; 37 but He whom God raised up saw no corruption. 38 Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through this Man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins; 39 and by Him everyone who believes is justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses. 40 Beware therefore, lest what has been spoken in the prophets come upon you:
41
‘Behold, you despisers,
Marvel and perish!
For I work a work in your days,
A work which you will by no means believe,
Though one were to declare it to you.’”
Why does He come to gather?
The Bride of Christ, as one body, is justified and raised up with Jesus. The pre-tribulation rapture of the Church is the gathering by Jesus, gathered on the basis of His atoning blood, Him sanctifying and cleansing His bride as one assembly with the washing of water by the Word, being presented to Himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, holy and without blemish, entering into the vows and promises, the everlasting covenant with Jesus, members of His body, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, being rejoined with Him forever, in the resurrection, the resurrection of the living, on the third day to the Father’s house, the throne of God. Eph. 5:24-32, Hosea 6:1-3
The gathering, washing and purifying of His bride is a spiritual truth that has been going on for 2000 years. I believe it will be a manifest climax in the pre-tribulation gathering of the believers in this generation that have not passed away.
Gather your children and be gathered to Him.
This part of the post is for those not in the catching up. Not for now.
There will be those that are not gathered, that are not expecting Him, that are not expecting a knock on the door, a Shepherd’s call, or that they must go out to meet Him. There are many that will not be watching. They have not discerned the time or understood His coming. They will be too busy, too absorbed in the cares of this world, or simply unwilling to leave their temporal home. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, cut off from the sheepfold, but they are not cut off from the Kingdom. There will be a great falling away with the departure of the Bride, the Body of Christ, but there will also be a “multitude which no one could number of all nations, tribes, people, and tongues standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”
Revelation 7:14, “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15 Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will dwell among them. 16 They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat; 17 for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
Members of the six churches that did not repent before His coming, may come to repentance and overcome, rejoicing in the crowning glory of suffering with Jesus, dying with Him for His name’s sake. These are those that overcome by the blood of the Lamb.
Hebrews 2:9 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone.
10 For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. 11 For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren,
1 Peter 4:12 Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; 13 but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. 14 If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. On their part He is blasphemed, but on your part He is glorified.
Revelation 12:11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.
The work of evangelism will advance, and the gospel of Jesus Christ will be heard in every tongue before the end will come.
Matthew 24:9 “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. 10 And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. 11 Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. 12 And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But he who endures to the end shall be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.
You are not abandoned. You are not left as orphans. You are not forsaken. John 14:15 “If you love Me, keep My commandments. 16 And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. You have the Word of God, the sword of His Spirit, the comforting words through the brethren and apostles that went before you. The Scriptures are all written for you to be fulfilled with you to the very end. There is a great cloud of witnesses that have gone before you and so many have suffered unbelievable tribulation. Hebrew 12:1-3, Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.You can overcome by the blood of the Lamb. You must live and breathe His Word to keep yourself pure and undefiled. There will be signs and wonders, great delusions to deceive many. Keep the faith and endure to the end. The Spirt says to “Overcome.”
Revelation 22:17 And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.