WHAT WILL HAPPEN ON EARTH
AFTER THE CHURCH HAS BEEN
TAKEN INTO HEAVEN?
(The article have 12 pages)
For heaven it is:
Col. 3:1-4, NASB,
“1 Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
2 Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.
3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
4 When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.”
Eph. 4:30, NASB,
“Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”
In the two only Church epistles of Paul, we find that there shall come a day, “The Day of Redemption” – on which there shall be a physical separation between the Church on earth from the so-called ‘wicked world’ we live in. Goodbye earth, welcome heaven.
The verse tells that on ONE PARTICULAR DAY UP AHEAD the Church shall be having its final day on earth, we are leaving it behind for good, and are lifted up or ‘transferred’ into the heavens up above to meet Christ in glory.
We are to be revealed with Him in glory, in heaven, not on earth.
Those who died in the faith in Jesus Christ, they will on that day of redemption be resurrected in heaven in glory, and we who live when that day arrives, we shall also have that same experience of glory together with Christ.
Here, in the Church epistles, it is not speaking of any ‘rapture’ up in clouds to meet the Lord, like Paul wrote to the Thessalonians – 1 Thes. 4 – for that is when Christ’s Parousia (His physical visible coming to earth) happens. Paul was pointing to the Kingdom-hope for Israel as they expected Him to come in their life time.
When Paul later, in 63-67 CE wrote his two epistles, it had become a new dispensation, Greek: oikonomia, the stewardship of the Grace of God for us Gentiles. Like told in Eph. 3:1-3, NASB,
“1 For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles -
2 if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace which was given to me for you;
3 that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief.”
We are since then, 63-67 CE, in a dispensation which has left the previous dispensation behind: the time when the apostles offered Israel to have the millennial Kingdom of God on earth, with Jesus as the Messiah King. This was abandoned in 60 CE as Paul was opposed by the Sanhedrin counsel in Rome, Acts 28:25-28. This shift of dispensations was one hundred percent definitive, when in 70 CE Rome destroyed Jerusalem, burnt the temple and laid most of Judea in ruins. Thousands of rebelling Jews were crucified along the main road from Jerusalem to Caesarea. In 71 CE Rome had sent several sea vessels filled with war-prisoners, down to Alexandria to be sold as slaves to the mines in Egypt. Josephus testifies of this huge deportation of Jews in his book “The Wars of the Jews”. Thus the prophecy of Moses was entirely fulfilled, Deut. 28:68, NASB,
"The LORD will bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the way about which I spoke to you, 'You will never see it again!' And there you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer."
Consequently we thus find TWO distinct moves of dispersion of Jews: the first one was when the Emperor brought them to Rome, and used them both for prey in the Gladiator tournaments, for not to mention the huge project of building Colosseum in 70-80 CE. The start-up was in 70-72 CE under Vespasian’s rule, using almost 70 000 ‘workers’ (mostly Jews and other enemies of Rome). There exist a great TV-series on this gigantic project of Rome, and I have seen it. Titus completed the great arena in 79-80 CE, and arranged a Gladiator tournament lasting for 100 days. And the other dispersive move of God, was that with the fiasco of sending Jewish war prisoners to Egypt to become mining-slaves. They were not really turned loose, - but were badly treated and exploited. It is estimated around 20 000 war prisoners were sent to Egypt…plus or minus. If we divide this with 250 prisoners for one shipment, this means that Rome sent a huge ‘armada’ of vessels to Alexandria: 80 ships. No wonder that the slave-market was over-inflated and doomed to fiasco. It was the Roman Prefect Tiberius Julius Lupus who presided over Egypt as the slave ships arrived in 71 CE. His entering to the office coincided with the arrival of slaves, so it seem like Lupus was sent there because of this huge operation, relieving the previous Prefect, who was Lucius Peducaeus Colonus. The arriving slaves were cast right into ‘hell-on-earth’ peril. Just think of the peculiar name of the Prefect: Lupus, meaning WOLF! The Jewish sheep had rejected the Good Shepard, Jesus Messiah, and now they had to face His adversary, the evil WOLF…who devoured them. Quite an imagery if you are asking me! And a Prefect was an officer directly under the Emperor, who was Vespasian, and only the Emperor stood in higher rank than a Prefect.
An AI-generated historic résumé has the following information, and you are not going to love this:
The 1st-century Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus provides a direct eyewitness account of this event in his work, The Wars of the Jews (Book 6, Chapter 9). When Titus captured Jerusalem, the Romans were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Jewish prisoners and flooded the Mediterranean slave markets.
Market Saturation: Because Titus captured over 97,000 Jewish prisoners, the supply vastly exceeded demand. The price of slaves plummeted to next to nothing, and eventually, Roman soldiers simply could not find buyers.
Mass Starvation: While waiting to be sorted or sold, the Romans neglected the prisoners. Josephus records that 11,000 captives died of starvation in just a few days because the Romans lacked the resources to feed them, and some prisoners refused food out of despair.
The Egyptian Mines: For those over the age of 17 who could not be sold on the open market, Titus sent them in chains to forced labor in the Egyptian mines (such as the emerald and granite mines in the eastern Egyptian desert).
Abandonment or Execution: Captives who were too old, frail, or young to work the mines or fight in arenas were simply executed or left to die, as keeping them alive cost the Roman legions money and rations.
Summary
The phrase "no man shall buy you" from Deut. 28:68, did not mean the captives were turned loose to live freely in Egypt. Instead, it meant they had become so dehumanized and worthless in the eyes of their captors that they were denied even the meager "value" of a slave, leading directly to mass slaughter, fatal neglect, and deadly forced labor.
The earthly Kingdom for Israel thus has been laid ‘on ice’, to use a careful language – for a remote future…which now is coming near, since almost 2000 years have passed.
SO WHAT SHALL HAPPEN HERE ON EARTH
AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF THE CHURCH?
Both the Biblical truth that we, the Church, the ‘One new man’, shall be transferred into heaven (and not Jesus coming down here first) – as well as the mysterious and perhaps a bit scary thing…regarding what may happen on earth right afterwards, seem to be such a gigantic move of God.
We can hardly fathom this. Almost no pastor talks about it from his pulpit. Very few believers manage to investigate and study the Bible in this regard. But with that in mind: Paul never the less wrote what he wrote! We are going to heaven, and the Lord brings us there by His mighty divine power and methods. As shown in the quotes above.
We will not be disturbed by what eventually may happen down on earth. God has His hand into this, and He will not let the world go under. He will see to it that His mighty angels makes certain moves to enlighten the entire peoples on earth, so they will not get frightened beyond what they can manage.
Often we can hear speeches, whether on YouTube or otherwise, when the preacher or pastor ‘threatens’ the unsaved people who eventually are in the audience, shouting…now is the time to say yes to Jesus, for soon it will be too late. Jesus is coming soon! Repent and believe on Him now…
And all the variants of this topic and message from pulpits around the world.
But is this really true? Is it too late after the Church has been taken into heaven by God?
I shall now try to explain that there is never too late for salvation, as long as there are human beings on earth and the earth still stands.
The only difference will be that people, after the departure of the Christian Church, cannot expect to be offered the exact same kind of salvation as the Church was offered, the heaven up above.
But people will have to take whatever the Lord offers them, and that is to follow His instructions and believe on Him as he speaks to the world from the day He takes the throne in Jerusalem, like found in Isaiah 2.
Let me just quote verses 3 and 4:
“3 And many peoples will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, To the house of the God of Jacob; That He may teach us concerning His ways And that we may walk in His paths." For the law will go forth from Zion And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
4 And He will judge between the nations, And will render decisions for many peoples; And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, And never again will they learn war.”
The Great Tribulation in Israel has now been stopped, as we read Isaiah 2, and Jesus is ruling and dealing with the nations. The world has to hear the …word of the Lord from Jerusalem (v. 3).
Not the word of the Lord, from local meetings and campaigns around the world. They must listen to Jesus and what He will tell them, and they must by faith in Him, prove this faith by following His prescribed law and ordinances for the millennial Kingdom dispensation. It will not be the Law of Moses, but the New Law of Grace by Christ. The only ordinance from the time of the Law will be the Sabbath. Some symbolic rituals will be held in the new temple in Jerusalem, but will probably not be practiced elsewhere during the millennial reign. Symbolic memorial offerings will be held, in order to have the nation remember what God did for them in times past. That future temple is found in Ezekiel 40-48 chapters.
The Lord Jesus’ influence by Him being physical present in the world, will be immense, as we see in Zec. 8:22-23, NASB,
“22 So many peoples and mighty nations will come to seek the LORD of hosts in Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of the LORD.'
23 "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'In those days ten men from all the nations will grasp the garment of a Jew, saying, "Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you."
Here we find that it is a special power and blessing lying over Israel which makes the nation stand out before other nations, and people want to be in Jerusalem to receive same glorious blessings…we have heard that God is with you (understood: and not so much as the regular nations). It will again be ‘Jews first, then Greek’ as Paul wrote in Rom. 1:16.
In our time, when Israel is not the nation of God and Christ, but just one among other nations, nothing special has been laid upon them like we can see from Zec. 8:23. This special power shall appear as Jesus comes from heaven to set up His Kingdom in Jerusalem.
Great parts of Christianity are lacking knowledge about these Biblical facts.
There will be salvation for all believers in Christ after the Church is gone, but no longer according to Paul’s Grace Gospel and a heavenly salvation. There exists NO ‘Left Behind Syndrome’ in the Bible! It will be in the terms of the earthly Kingdom in Jerusalem – and believers of Jesus shall experience to get power for living one thousand years on earth. That salvation takes its effect here on earth, and not in the heavens up above. But salvation none the less!
WHAT OF MAYHEM AND PERILS ON EARTH
DURING THE GREAT TRIBULATION?
First of all: The Great Tribulation is not hitting against the entire global world as such.
The hysterical ‘Armageddon Paranoia’ which grabbed hold of American Christianity, is because false Bible teachers (like for instance Hal Lindsey – and his book “The Late Great Planet Earth” from 1970) was successful in the market. Lindsey’s book was sold by the hundreds-of-thousands over the years if I am not mistaken. The Armageddon-syndrome was emphasized inside Christianity due to the mentioned book, for not to mention Lindsey’s other books following this trend; plus of course his appearances in TV-medias. But the idea of the Great Tribulation hitting all over the world is sheer nonsense and chit-chat of immature self-made ‘prophets’ – like as with Lindsey. IMAGE: The plain of Megiddo (Armageddon).
Hal Lindsey’s 1980s Countdown: In his follow-up book, “The 1980's: Countdown to Armageddon”, Lindsey heavily implied that the end-times events, a global rise of a European confederacy, and the battle of Armageddon would occur during that decade. Those events did not take place. Lindsey thus proved himself as a false prophet! No Armageddon occurred in the 1980-1990 period, and not at all…as we now has 2026, and yet, no Armageddon. Lindsey held forth that Armageddon would be world-wide…a nuclear shoot-out between USA and Soviet Union mainly. No wonder that people who believed his false predictions sat scared to death in their homes, praying that no nuke would blow up their town!
It shall be a ‘local’ tribulation coming upon Israel…however, there might happen some collateral damages to the neighbor countries in the eastern Mediterranean Ocean. Turkey to the north and Egypt to the south. Armageddon is a plain up near Golan, now named ‘Megiddo’ – and has the size of 141 square miles. Commonly known as the Jezreel Valley – stretching a little over 30 kilometers, and 20 kilometers at its widest. It equals 380 square kilometers…or the mentioned 141 sq. miles. And this little piece of land parcels has been made into a ‘full world-wide disaster’ by false end time prophets, like Lindsey and others. Shame on them!
Revelation 8 has a prophecy of great tsunamis coming, caused by asteroids falling. Luke 21:25-26 tells of signs in sun and moon and stars, fear from oncoming roaring of waves and seas…which has to be the Mediterranean. He prophesied of Israel’s tribulation, and their coast is in the eastern Mediterranean.
25 "There will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves,
26 men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”
People in the land will be grueling and fainting from fear of what is coming: This because the two witnesses in Rev. 11 will prophecy of the disasters before it happens. They shall prophecy for 1260 days, which is the first 3 ½ years of the seven years of tribulation. In verse 26, the word “world” is from cosmos, which also means place, land, earth, etc. – and thus it will be ISRAEL in this scenario. It is the tribulation of Israel.
Rev. 8:7-12 and the asteroids falling:
“7 The first sounded, and there came hail and fire, mixed with blood, and they were thrown to the earth; and a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.
8 The second angel sounded, and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood,
9 and a third of the creatures which were in the sea and had life, died; and a third of the ships were destroyed.
10 The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of waters.
11 The name of the star is called Wormwood; and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the waters, because they were made bitter.
12 The fourth angel sounded, and a third of the sun and a third of the moon and a third of the stars were struck, so that a third of them would be darkened and the day would not shine for a third of it, and the night in the same way.”
The verses 8 and 9 tell of the asteroid falling into the Mediterranean, causing these effects which Jesus foretold in Luke 21:25-26 quoted above.
What I am saying is, - there is no prophecy of likewise things to come upon the world. Not in the USA, nor in Australia or India, Canada, British Isles, Scandinavia, Europe, Africa, China, and so forth.
We are told in Jer. 30:7 that this tribulation is “the time of Jacob’s distress…” – which is exactly the same message Jesus spoke in Mat. 24:21-22, - "For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will.”
The departure of the Church will not cause wars and judgement in the world! God’s angels will see to that, and shall work to stabilize the population on the planet. They can certainly do enormous things and establish a calm and restful atmosphere so that panic can be avoided.
Some chaos, yes, probably – but I think more of that the world with its leaders and kings and governments will hold back, and rather try to find out what have happened to the millions of missing people ?? Where are they?
Houses are left empty. Millions don’t appear on jobs they have. Cars are left – sitting on parking lots everywhere. Even Christian officials within governments, hospitals, big factories, TV-stations, - you name it. People from all walks of life are just gone. They are not to be found anywhere.
Angels will perform miracles and so not allowing airplane crashes (if the pilot is a Christian) and likewise with cars and trains…there will not be crashes and destruction. God, taking His believers up into heaven, is not doing this to punish sin in the world. He will do this because this is the salvation promised to the Church, the One new man (Eph. 2:14-15).
THE DAY OF REDEMPTION IS NOT
THE DAY OF DEATH
Besides: there is a much overseen detail in Eph. 4:30 which will count in the end time scenario, as the Church is taken into the heaven up above. Notice what it says,…Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. That day lasts for 24 hours. What cannot God and the Holy Spirit perform in this world within a 24 hours ‘window’? A whole lot of events can happen, indeed.
It may very well be that God’s angelic forces manage to let an airplane land at the airport, before an eventual Christian pilot is taken into heaven! Same as with cars on the highways… the 24 hour window will be enough for God to take home all Christians, from whatever the situation at hand, thus to avoid harming bystanders. There will be no plane crashes, no car collisions with lethal outcome, no trains hitting the station at 80 miles/hour, killing bystanders, and so forth and so on. No one can outrun God’s power and endless wisdom as He moves according to His divine salvation plan.
It is also obvious that it will be the power of the Holy Spirit within us – with whom we ARE SEALED FOR THE DAY OF REDEMPTION – that will have us transferred into the heavens and meeting Christ in glory. As what regards empty houses and the trouble the banks shall experience when there is no one to pay the regular monthly installments, I cannot say much. Banks will have to put the properties on the market for sale…resulting in a much inflated market, since so many Christians are gone to heaven. I cannot say if God has an ailment for this trouble cast on the banks. He may have some solution, but I cannot at this time point to any specific Bible passage for this. Neither can I do in regard to the problems with hospitals getting short of doctors and nurses, and employees in businesses and shops having disappeared without a trace.
Use your own imagination of these things. The world will have an experience of mystical dimensions never seen before. But it will be a joyful affair for us Christians, I can say that. We are all looking forward to that specific ‘Day of Redemption’, when we wave goodbye to the world for good, physically.
But the world and its leaders will soon be hearing of what takes place in Israel, with all the disasters rolling over the nation. And they will see these two witnesses of Rev. 11 in TV broadcasts as they talk to Israel’s leadership. I am sure.
This is all I feel I can say about these things. It is up to you to use your own ability to think logically and find out what the Bible says about things. I have just tried to give you some tips in this issue…hoping it will be of some help and encouragement.
Paul willfully and intentionally kept all sort of end-time eschatology out of his two Church epistles, Ephesians and Colossians. We cannot find the Second Advent of Christ, the anti-Christ, the Great Tribulation, or other things pertaining to eschatology. Likewise, neither can we find any of the miraculous sign-gifts seen in Acts, and things like that. This is simply because of the fact that such things are of no concern to the Church dispensation.
My mention here of eschatological events is only to bring to light the issue of the ‘Day of Redemption’ for the Church. And, at the same time, telling people that the departure of the Church is NOT a judgement or punishment upon the world.
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