Re: Luke 21:36. Please tell me what this verse means “Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.” Again and again I see this verse associated with the Rapture but then that would imply if I don’t live a godly life I could be passed by, right? Or is this verse associated with the second coming? I do know I feel a great deal of stress inside every time I read it as I become afraid that I won’t be acceptable when the Lord comes for His Church.
The key to understanding Luke 21:36 is the word “about”. Jesus said these things in 32 AD. The rapture wasn’t about to happen, but the destruction of Jerusalem, of which He had just spoken, was (Luke 21:12-24). That’s what He was warning them about. There was no promise that they would be removed from harm’s way before the Roman armies came as there is for us at the end of the age.
Some might read this as a rapture passage due to the fact that not all translations have the word about, even though the Greek word literally means “to be about, to be on the point of doing or suffering something” and carries an air of expectation. In Young’s Literal Translation Luke 21:36 reads this way:
watch ye, then, in every season, praying that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that are about to come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.’