I’m Confused

I am confused when I compare two of your teachings. In “Signs of the Times … Times of the Signs” you indicate that the antichrist will rise as a charismatic leader in the aftermath of Ezekiel’s war. In “The End Times According To Paul” you teach the rapture must occur before the antichrist is revealed.

Q. I am confused when I compare two of your teachings. In the article “Signs of the Times … Times of the Signs” you indicate that the antichrist will rise as a charismatic leader in the aftermath of Ezekiel’s war. This makes Ezekiel’s war a pretrib event.

In your article “The End Times According To Paul … Part 3, 2nd Thessalonians” you teach the rapture must occur before the antichrist is revealed.

I cannot determine an order of occurrence for these two events. If the rapture occurs before Ezekiel’s war and this war must be fought before the antichrist is revealed then it is not the restrainer preventing the revelation of the identity of the antichrist. He must still wait for this war to be fought.

On the other hand, if this war must be fought, then the rapture reveals the identity of the antichrist, how can the rapture be taught to be imminent?

A. I believe that the Battle of Ezekiel 38 and the Rapture of the Church may happen at about the same time.

The important issue here is that when God reinstates His covenant with Israel, as He does at the end of Ezekiel’s battle, I believe the Church has to be gone, since God’s dealings with Israel and the Church seem to be mutually exclusive. The re-instated covenant will kick off Daniel’s 70th week at which time the anti-Christ will emerge as a peace maker to enforce his 7 year treaty.

One of the provisions of this treaty will be the permission to build a Temple in Israel, which the anti-Christ will later defile in his official revelation. (This is why I don’t think the Oslo Accords are the same as the covenant of Daniel 9:27. As far as I know there’s no provision for a Temple in the Oslo Accords.)

But please remember, the Rapture doesn’t reveal the anti-Christ. It just makes his revelation possible. It doesn’t officially happen until the middle of the 70th week, several years after the Church is gone.