Dear 1 Cor 10:31,
In response to your letter last week. http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/nov2020/1cor1031-111-2.htm
I wanted to respond and make a couple of points.
First you are not alone in how you feel - I think that there are many of us out there feeling the same way and wrestling with it. I wrestle with these feelings as well. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty because there are Christians suffering and persecuted for their faith. I am not.
There are Christians with health issues looking for their deliverance from this body of death- not me. I mean obviously I am getting older and have a lot of aches and pains I’ll be glad to be rid of, but otherwise I am pretty healthy and can’t compare myself to a Christian dying of cancer for example.
There are those Christians looking for deliverance from financial troubles, who have lost jobs due to the intentional implosion of our economy and are struggling to pay the next bill. Again, that is not me. I am not wealthy by the world’s standard of wealth by any means, but I am contented and comfortable. I own my own home, am totally debt free, and have a job that has not been affected by Covid, so what do I have to complain about?
Yet for all the good I have in life, my soul is vexed as I see society breakdown and get worse and worse and the wicked growing in power everyday.
I am reminded of the scripture:
2 Peter 2:7 (kjv) And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked:
However the difference here is that the Lord delivered Lot, because of His great mercy, out of a place that he probably should not have been in the first place and could freely leave at any time.
The difference with me and you and those like us is that this world is NOT our home and we are living in an age where no matter how “good” one has it, it’s pretty hard to content oneself with living here, with all the evil, and unlike Lot, I cannot just leave it if I want to but am forced to wait for my Deliverer to deliver me.
And if I’m being honest with myself and my feelings, sometimes that vexes me a little too because after studying the Bible for many years and reading it in full many times over, one of the greatest rewards of this is to get the feeling that to some extent we “know God”.
And then our eyes behold the evil that we don’t understand how God can continue to tolerate and why we have to continue to be subjected to; and despite all the platitudes or saying we know that God is long suffering not willing for any to perish and just wants more sinners to be saved, if we are honest with ourselves we have to admit we don’t know God as good as we thought we did. I know that’s how I feel sometimes anyway.
I don’t have the answers to how to cheer up or be more patient in the wait or anything like that, but one thing you said I do want to respond to, you said: “I’ve waited for the rapture for SOOO long that I’ll honestly feel cheated out of it if I don’t make it!”
I can relate to that, but let me submit this, something that has been revealed to me lately that helps give some perspective.
We as the church have made such a big deal out of the rapture over the years that we have in a sense mislabeled it and misrepresented what it really is, the resurrection. That great day that saints have waited upon for thousands of years.
This may be controversial, but I happen to think resurrection day will include not only the church, but the Old Testament saints also. They are all waiting for that last great day when the voice of the Lord will raise the dead. Even if it’s just the church, think of Peter, Paul, John, the early martyrs- all waiting as eagerly for resurrection day as we are waiting for the rapture.
This is why 1 Thessalonians 4:16 puts this in the correct perspective that we who are alive and remain will not precede those who have gone before us but that the dead in Christ will rise first.
So I try not to look for the rapture anymore but I eagerly await “Resurrection Day” the day when all the saints will arise (and yes the living will be raptured)
Potato, poh-tah-toe, tomato, toh-mah-toe, splitting hairs, I know.
But the point is, when we refocus this event for what it really is, it draws us back to the point Paul was trying to make in 1 Thessalonians.
Paul was telling the living in Thessalonians not to worry that the dead have not missed out on this great day and glorious event, but now in these last days, we have to let Paul tell us, the living, that we will not miss out on this great event that we have longed for either!
It is one and the same day, hang in there weary saints, I’m weary too, but whether we make it to the “rapture” or pass on in this tumultuous time of turmoil WE DONT MISS OUT!
This doesn’t help me understand why God hasn’t sent the Son yet, as from my perspective it seems like He should’ve been here already, but if God handled everything according to my perspective He wouldn’t be much of a God, so I might grumble a little along the way (and I trust He understands that’s a result of my frame being made of dust and will forgive me of it) but I still know Whom I have believed in, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him until that day.
Great statement of faith. Wish I could take credit for it, but that’s Paul too (2 Timothy 1:12)- maybe he was longing for the rapture, like us, when he wrote it.
Hang in there doves,
He is faithful!
Your brother in Yeshua,
Derrick Drew