Why Not Sept. 29?

Q

In your current article you seem to say the rapture can’t happen on Sept. 29. Couldn’t God arrange to have the full number of Gentiles come in by Sept. 29 to have the rapture happen on the Feast of Trumpets?

A

In the first place, I didn’t say it couldn’t happen on Sept 29. Here’s what I said in the second paragraph. “While Sept. 28-29 are the scheduled dates for Rosh Hashanah this year, and while the rapture could happen on any given day, Rev. 12 definitely can not be fulfilled on Sept. 29, nor on any other day this year or the next or the one after and here’s why.”

And in the last paragraph I said, “And above all, don’t let the current fixation on the Feast of Trumpets distract you from the fact that the rapture of the Church could happen on any given day, including all the days before and after Sept. 29.”

Everyone who knows what’s happening in the world hopes the rapture will happen as soon as possible and many have picked their favorite day for it to happen. (The two most popular are Pentecost and Trumpets.) But hoping and interpreting Scripture are two different things, and in my opinion any interpretation using the phrase “no one knows the day or hour ” to place the rapture on the Feast of Trumpets is invalid because that phrase is never used in connection with the rapture. It always applies to the 2nd Coming. Based on that alone, the 2nd Coming is a far more likely fulfillment of the Feast of Trumpets.

The problem with pinning the rapture to a particular Jewish Feast is when that day comes and goes many people assume the rapture can’t happen for another year and lose hope. I don’t think this is what the Bible teaches us. And in the Jewish wedding tradition, when the bride was waiting for her groom to come “like a thief in the night”, there was no particular day on which he had to come. He came when his father judged the time to be right and told him to come for her, and it happened at a time she could not have predicted in advance.

The rapture can happen on any given day, and will happen when the Father judges the time to be right. According to Romans 11:25 that will be when the full number of gentiles has come in. In other words when the Church has reached it’s predetermined membership the Father will tell the Son to come for us. It will happen on a day none of us could have predicted in advance.