10.1.2025
The King is coming!
The man who falsely predicted that the rapture would happen last week has finally spoken up! What did he say?
He did one of the 4 things these false prophets always do. When these false prophecies of Christ’s return fail, they will either:
1. say that it was a test to see if we would really believe Jesus is returning.
2. say it was a “spiritual” return, and we just couldn’t see it (that was what the Jehovah’s Witnesses did in the 1800s).
3. say that their prayers were answered and God extended his mercy beyond the predicted date.
4. say they’re calculations were off and change the date.
But they will never just admit they were wrong. They have too much riding on it.
Harold Camping combined 2 and 4 after he predicted the rapture for May 21, 2011. When May 21 came and went, Camping said he believed that a "spiritual" judgment had occurred on that date, and that the physical rapture would occur on October 21, 2011. He died shortly after this prediction failed.
When William Miller’s prediction of October 22, 1844, failed, he went back to his charts and found another date . . . which was also wrong. This non-event was dubbed “The Great Disappointment." By the way, thousands abandoned Christianity after this, which is one reason these false prophets are so dangerous.
By the way, back in the [good?] old days, false prophets would be stoned. We can’t do that anymore, which lets them free to write another book and make another ton of money. Edgar Wisehant’s 88 Reasons Christ the Rapture Will Be in 1988 sold 4.5 million copies, then after the date passed, he published The Final Shout, giving a date of September 1, 1989, and later updated his prediction to 1993. Hal Lindsay, whose book Late, Great Planet Earth, kicked off interest in end times speculation in the 70s, not only continued to write books but somehow convinced people to make him a political commentator, and his influence continued until his death just last year.
So what about this latest false prophet? What did the South African preacher who falsely predicted the rapture for last week do? Number 4 - He changed the date! He’s decided he should have used a different calendar, so now he says the rapture will be next week, on October 7-8.
That will be next Tuesday/Wednesday. You can expect the newsletter next Wednesday, like usual.
But, the King is still coming! Just not when or how these false teachers say he is.
So what will happen?
Imagine, you’re living in Paul’s day. You get word that there’s going to be a parousia, a Greek word that means “royal arrival.” The word is used when a prominent figure, possibly the king’s representative or maybe even the king himself, is coming to your village.
When the trumpet blast signaled the parousia, the people rushed out of the city to meet the dignitary as a sign of respect and honor and escorted him back into the city. The Greek word for “to meet” was apantesis, but it’s not just any meeting – it is a word used for an official or royal encounter. In other words . . . the king is coming!
Paul takes that image and turns it vertical to describe the return of King Jesus. Here’s Paul’s description of Jesus’ return: “For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever” (I Thessalonians 4:16-17).
Instead of lining the roads outside the gates, believers are caught up into the air to meet Christ, welcoming him back into his creation. Paul is not describing an evacuation of the earth. This is not a vanishing act! His words carry an entirely different picture. It’s the ultimate arrival. The dead are raised, the living join them and together they are a cosmic welcoming party to greet the returning King.
The King is coming!
There’s no escape here. It’s greeting! The Christian hope is not rooted in rapture but in resurrection. Paul’s vision was never about escaping what is wrong! It’s about “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
I heard someone say during all this mess that the world is in such bad shape, surely Jesus was coming to rescue us from all of it. That’s not what this is all about. It’s not rescue, it’s reclamation. It’s not rapture, it’s resurrection. It isn’t revenge, it’s reconciliation.
It’s Good News! The King is coming! Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again!
Blessings,
Pastor Terry