The Fall Feasts are over for another year, Harold Camping’s latest date has passed, and the Comet Elenin has come and gone with no discernible effect. Hours of YouTube presentations, some very skillfully done, have been proven wrong and still no rapture.
When the rapture didn’t happen on Rosh Hashanah I got eMails from people expressing everything from disappointment to anger to a loss of hope altogether. One message summed up the feeling of most by saying, “I guess I’ll just go into hibernation until next year.”
These people all had their hearts set on the rapture coming on a particular date and when it didn’t they lost hope, at least for another year. By pinning their expectations on that one day they eliminated all other days and came away discouraged.
The only Scripture I’ve seen used to justify the Rosh Hashanah rapture is the phrase “no one knows the day or hour” from Matt. 24-25. Rosh Hashanah comes on a new moon, when it’s barely visible even on a clear night, so in Biblical times its actual arrival was very difficult to predict in advance. Over time it apparently became known as the feast where no one knows the day or hour.
Some folks equate this phrase with the rapture, but as we’ll see it’s only used four times in the Bible, and all of them are in reference to the 2nd Coming, not the rapture. It turns out that almost everyone who advocated a Rosh Hashanah rapture did so because they heard about it from someone else, not because of any legitimate scholarship on their part.
I’d like to suggest a different approach and that is to follow the directions Paul gave us in Acts 17:11. Complimenting the Bereans, he said they received his message with all readiness of heart but searched the scriptures daily to see if the things he said were true.
The Bereans neither accepted nor rejected Paul’s message out of hand but listened with an open mind and then studied the Scripture to see if God’s word confirmed what Paul was saying before making up their minds.
This means two things. First, any Bible teacher’s message must conform to Scripture, and second, it’s up to us to make sure it does before accepting it. We shouldn’t reject any reasonable teaching out of hand, but neither should we accept any teaching until we’ve personally confirmed that it’s consistent with God’s word. And that doesn’t just mean we see if they’re really quoting the Bible. We also have to make sure the verses they’re using actually apply in the way they’re suggesting.
The point of this is to remind us that whenever we hear a Bible teaching we’re to keep an open mind about it, but search the Scriptures ourselves to see if it’s consistent with God’s word before deciding whether to accept or reject it. It’s a great way to learn what the Bible really says.
Blessings,
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