Expert: Mr. McClellan - 4/18/2006

Question
I have been studying rapture theories for over a year now and have come to the conclusion that the one that comes most closely to following the bible is the pre-wrath view.  Can you tell me which view (pre, mid,post trib or pre-wrath) in your opinion is biblically based?

Answer
Hello Deidre,
I think that you're asking, which one of the rapture theories is the correct one; which one is true.
I think that the best way to know what the truth is, is to disregard all the "theories" and simply let the writers of the New Testament tell us what the truth is regarding what they said and then be willing to accept it even if it is contrary to what we've been believing.
I am going to begin with Matthew 16:27-28. A popular view of this passage is that it refers to the "transfiguration" in Matt 17. The reason for this interpretation is based on a prejudice regarding the time of Jesus' return which can't allow Jesus to mean that he was going to return during the lifetime of those disciples that were right there with him so, its clear meaning is twisted and applied to the "transfiguration" and is supported with a necessary misinterpretation of 2Pet 1:16-18.
Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 are all expansions of what Jesus said in Matt 16:27-28 and deal with the destruction of Jerusalem which was the fulfillment of the judgement to come and his accompaning return as Judge that Jesus spoke of to his disciples and that he warned the Jews about. You will notice that in Matt 24, Jesus specifically states that the end would come when the gospel had been preached to the whole world, something that Paul said had been done by the time he wrote his letter to the church at Colossae early in the sixth decade AD, Col 1:23. So, it is clear that by the phrase "whole world," both Jesus and Paul, as well as the other NT writers, were not speaking of the earth in the global sense but only of the Roman Empire, especially those regions that were inhabited by Jews to which the gospel was to be presented first. Compare this kind of speech with Daniel's description of Nebuchadnezzar's world control. He, said Daniel, was king over all the world and everywhere birds fly. We know that this was not literally true just as well as we know that the gospel was not literally preached to the whole creation in the first century. Yet, "the end" was to come when that took place. The entire contexts of Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 are about "the end" and included the destruction of Jerusalem which was to take place at the return of Jesus as Judge and savior. Pay attention to Matt 24:29-36. Jesus, speaking specifically of the destruction of Jerusalem which he has just been describing, says that he is going to return "Immediately after the tribulation (suffering) of those days (the invasion of Palestine by Roman armies culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of Jews to become slaves). Then, he says that although he does not know the exact day and hour of that event (only his Father knew that), it will definitely take place in the lifetime of the very disciples that he has just been speaking to. This is just a restatement of his Matt 16:27-28 prediction of judgement to come.
Many people make a big thing out of a supposed thousand year reign of Christ not realizing that it was only a figurative way of speaking of the unknown amount of time between Jesus' resurrection and the Judgement to come.
That a final judgement did, in fact, come on the Jews in A.D. 70 can easily be established by the following facts.
1. The Jews could not have access to God without a Levitical Priest. 2. In order for a Jew to become a Priest, he had to be able to establish that he was a direct decendant of Aaron, the brother of Moses, and of the tribe of Levy. 3. All the records needed to establish a Jew's heritage were maintained in the temple in Jerusalem. 4. When the Romans destroyed the temple along with the city of Jerusalem, they destroyed all of the geneolotical records too. 5. There isn't a Jew alive today, nor has their been since A.D. 70, that can prove that he has a lawful and legitimate right to be a Jewish priest. That being the case, the Jews cannot have access to God, they are forever seperated from Him unless they repent and accept Jesus as Lord who is the only way, the only mediator between God and mankind. In addition to the fact that the Jews were eternally seperated from God in A.D. 70, they also lost any claim to the land of Palestine because no Jew could prove a right to any portion of it since the records had all been destroyed.
Rome, the ruler of "the world" was also judged in A.D. 70 because of it's idolatry and it eventually saw its own demise years later. The "Christianity" that eventually became the dominant religion in that part of the world was, and is, a false and apostate church whoes doctines and practices bear virtually no resemblence to the church of Christ that was established by Jesus and his apostles in the first century.
So, did Jesus return in the first century as he predicted that he would? The answer is yes, he did as long as you can recognize that his return was a figurative and spiritual return and not a visible one as many have understood and looked for. That the apostles taught a visible return and that the early church expected one does not necessarily mean that Jesus intended for them to believe that such would take place. The apostles often misunderstood Jesus and they sometimes disagreed with each other concerning what the truth was concerning certain things. This is a fact that can easily be shown from the NT scriptures. It is now clear that a final Judgement did take place in A.D. 70 and that, just as in the past history of the Jews, it was God that brought it by means of a foreign nation as his representative. So, in a figurative sense, the leader of the conquering army could be spoken of as God and the army as his angels that had been sent on a specific mission by the God of heaven. The prophets often used language like this to describe the actors in a judgement event.
I hope that this has been instructive. It may have been too brief to explain all of your questions regarding this topic but it should atleast give you food for thought.
Sincerely,
Mr. McClellan