Can the “Rapture” be Triggered?

 And behold, one of those with Jesus extended his hand and drew his sword, and striking the slave of the high priest, cut off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place! For all who take up the sword will die by the sword.

Matthew 26:51–52 (LEB)

I received an email with the subject line, “Palestine just triggered the rapture”. It makes for a good email spam subject line, but can anyone “trigger” the rapture? What does that even mean?

The modern rapture doctrine is an adopted child of dispensational theology. It causes endless debate and feeds into the situation we have currently in western Asia. There are many complex explanations of dispensationalism and the “rapture”, but I am only going to generalize to keep things less confusing. I encourage everyone to learn about dispensationalism theology, where it originated and how it spread through the West in the twentieth century.

The basic doctrine of dispensationalism theology is that God divided the history of mankind into different dispensations affecting the way He dealt with humanity. In this belief system, the first dispensation was innocence, then conscience, eventually law, then the church and so on. “Law” supposedly started with Moses and ended sometime in the book of Acts. There are people that go so far as to say the gospels were not written to the “church” and we must only listen to the letters Paul wrote for our doctrine. This is one way modern Christianity dismisses the instructions of God. Because of this, we daily witness the debauchery that this doctrine has brought to the places where it has been preached the most.

2 Timothy 3:14–17 (LEB): ¹⁴ But you continue in the things which you have learned and are convinced of, because you know from whom you learned them, ¹⁵ and that from childhood you have known the holy writings that are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶ All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, ¹⁷ in order that the person of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

Timothy was born around 17 CE, so the only “holy writings” were the law, prophets and writings. This is not about debunking the lawless teachings of dispensational theology though. I want to demonstrate how Christianity at large has adopted their geopolitical world view through dispensationalism theology.

One of the belief systems incorporated into mainstream dispensational theology is that the end of the “church age” will happen with a secret rapture where Jesus will take away all of the people “who believe”. This is taught as being a separate event from the resurrection or second coming of Christ. In this belief system, Israel will be left to face off with the anti-Christ and will supposedly believe in Jesus as they are slaughtered by the “beast” of Revelation. I am not going to argue any of that belief system. The point is to give some background.

Once the political state of Israel was created in 1948, it fed into this belief system that the “Jews” would return to “the land” and that we are coming to the end of the church age. Now that Israel is in the land again the prophecies of Gog and Magog can take place. Russia and Turkey are usually the main suspects of being related to Magog.

The question is this: Have we been watching prophecy unfold in front of our faces, or have there been world leaders forcing events to look like this prophecy is being fulfilled?

Mark 13:4–7 (LEB): ⁴ “Tell us, when will these things happen, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?” ⁵ So Jesus began to say to them, “Watch out that no one deceives you! ⁶ Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and they will deceive many. ⁷ And when you hear about wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. This must happen, but the end is not yet.

Once one studies Zionism and Judaism, it is clear to see they are not the same thing. Zionism has been conflated with Judaism and “the Jews” to the point where if one points out the flaws of Zionism they will be labelled anti-semitic, yet the semitic people take in more of a population then those who practice the religion of Judaism. Are all Israeli’s, that is people who live in Israel, practising Jews? How can the government of Israel do the things it has done and justify it with the Torah?

The idea of having a homeland which Jewish people could call their own started as early as the nineteenth century, and the philosophy of Zionism was explained by people such as Theodr Hertzel. Many of these Zionists were not Torah observant, and the Torah observant Jews often were against having a man-made “homeland” created. In the Orthodox view, only a resurrected King David could facilitate such an undertaking.

I live in Canada, and recently the Conservative party leader proclaimed his party’s alliance with Israel. I do not believe in dispensational theology eschatology, so I can look at the conflict in western Asia more objectively. Why does the leader of a secular political party take sides in a war that really does not involve us? We should be able to point out the atrocities of either side. The politics of the United States are also interwoven with dispensational eschatology along with politicians pandering to the evangelical vote where people believe that they will be raptured sooner if Israel is attacked by its enemies. There is something suspicious about all of this. How can we know the truth?

The fingerprint of God is easy to find when we look at His words. How do we determine what is right and wrong? How do we know when the Creator is behind a movement, country, religion etc.? We have instructions, and we can plug in any of the commandments into “let us go after other gods” in the verses below because when we come up with theologies, philosophies and religions that go against God’s commands, we are “going after other gods”.

Deuteronomy 13:1- (LEB): 13 “If a prophet stands up in your midst or a dreamer of dreams and he gives to you a sign or wonder, ² and the sign or the wonder comes about that he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods (those whom you have not known), and let us serve them,’ ³ you must not listen to the words of that prophet or to that dreamer, for Yahweh your God is testing you to know whether you love Yahweh your God with all of your heart and with all of your inner self. ⁴ You shall go after Yahweh your God, and him you shall revere, and his commandment you shall keep, and to his voice you shall listen, and him you shall serve, and to him you shall hold fast.

Many of the people that heard Jesus were looking for someone to establish an earthly kingdom that would liberate God’s people from the Romans. Some thought he was the resurrected King David who was going to overthrow Rome, but he had a different message.

Matthew 5:43–48 (LEB): ⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor’ and ‘Hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, because he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust. ⁴⁶ For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not the tax collectors also do the same? ⁴⁷ And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing that is remarkable? Do not the Gentiles also do the same? ⁴⁸ Therefore you be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Was the hand of God involved in creating the modern state of Israel? Is God with the modern state of Israel today, where it appears to have an atheistic, anti-Christ and anti-Torah government? I guess we will have to wait and see. Modern eschatology, taught by dispensationalism theology, looks like it will be proven true or false very soon. If proven false as I suspect will happen, people that are relying on it to be true will have to reevaluate their faith.

Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash