Rethinking the Rapture with J.D. King

0:00:00  Steve Gray: Hey, don’t miss the next podcast with my guest JD, Pastor JD King, where we’re going to talk about the rapture. We had a huge eclipse. What happened with that? Nothing. You don’t want to miss it. Hello, everybody. Welcome again to a more faith, more Life podcast. And we’re going to have a great time today. Very timely, most of you, everybody in the world, but especially in our country, has been hooked on the solar eclipse and the sun being darkened and wow, on the Internet then it was loaded. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people were interpreting.

0:00:33  Steve Gray: It’s going to be the end of the world. It’s going to be the rapture of the church. Jesus will return. It means judgment is coming to America, all that stuff. And so we’re going to discuss that. I got my guest today is Pastor JD King, and he’s put a lot of time and effort into understanding the end time, much more than I have. But the only prediction I made last week, everybody’s predicting and I did it on Facebook. The only prediction I made is I said, it’s really, really bad. It’s really bad because you’re going to have to get up and go to work on Tuesday morning.

0:01:07  Steve Gray: And was I right? Were we right? Nothing. Nothing. I said nothing’s going to happen. So anyway, so JD’s here. Pastor JD’s here. And we’re going to go quickly now through this. And I often set it up. Some of the die-hard rapture, really, people, JD, you can lose friends fast.

0:01:28  J.D. King: I learned absolutely, because they’re so like.

0:01:30  Steve Gray: And what I’d rather do for everybody, even those that are. Cause I used to teach it and you learned it and taught it. The original rapture. Theater. Theater teaching, which some people expected that God will come and desert earth and take the church out and leave all the sinners. And that’s where you get the phrase left behind. I used to teach it. I don’t believe it anymore. There are days when I wish I believed it, when everything’s going haywire in our country and thought, well, that would be just so good. And Kathy, my wife, Kathy, maybe we should just reconsider that because as we taught it too, we’ve spent time and JD has really spent time and you need to open and use evidence in scripture and history.

0:02:21  Steve Gray: So I guess that’d be a great place to start. Let’s do like a couple minutes worth of rapture history. I mentioned it before on the podcast, but you know the dates better than I do.

0:02:31  J.D. King: Yeah, it’s surprising for some, but you really won’t find evidence of the rapture teaching before, say, like 1830, you know, if you were to go back and look at, like, the early church creeds, you know, the apostles Creed, Chalcedon Creed, even like the Westminster confession, that’d be like the 1600’s. Even the Baptist faith and message, which is like the 1800’s, the rapture’s not there. It really, a lot of people point to a particular experience a woman had in Scotland, where she felt like she had this visionary experience where the saints were taken up before the resurrection.

0:03:05  J.D. King: And some people, like John Nelson Darby, who invented the dispensational teaching, apparently heard her teach this and a few others. So that’s kind of the origin on a certain level, of the history of it. I mean, it kind of got some traction. John Nelson Darby was very interested in trying to figure out how to separate the church from Israel excessively. And so the rapture gave him an idea of now how you could separate the earthly church.

0:03:36  J.D. King: I’m sorry. Take the church up to heaven, and now you’d have the Jews here on earth, and they would separate the two.

0:03:43  Steve Gray: Right.

0:03:43  J.D. King: So that was kind of the missing key for his theology.

0:03:45  Steve Gray: Yeah, I’ve shared recently, too. Really, if you look at it, can’t be with, it’s not everybody, but originally it’s a little bit anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic, because they’re obviously, they’re the left behind. Okay, so let’s go. When I share that, that I shared it recently with someone who is really into it and told me that we might be right now beginning the last seven years of the tribulation, and they believe a lot of things.

0:04:10  Steve Gray: And I said, listen, I’m not a die-hard either way. You can believe anything you want. I’ll listen to what you have to say. Nobody can prove it. It’s just my opinion that it will not happen. That’s it. Okay, so let’s go to some scriptures real fast. So you got one here from one Thessalonians. It’s a little longer, but one of the lines that people ask me, well, what about this? For the Lord himself will come. Well, wait a minute, back up a little bit. When we look at here, taking the church out, and it says directly, we who are still living when the Lord returns will not meet.

0:04:43  Steve Gray: We who are alive and remain. Somebody’s going to be here. But the next line is, what gets people. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. And then that continues. And then we who remain alive, on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever.

0:05:09  Steve Gray: And so that’s a tough one for people because it just seems so plain. Oh, that’s what’s going to happen. Let’s talk about that for a second.

0:05:15  J.D. King: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, obviously I believe the scriptures and I know you do too. We agree one, Thessalonians 413 through 17 is telling the truth. I think the area where people get this wrong is this is an actual resurrection passage, not a rapture separate.

0:05:33  Steve Gray: Yeah.

0:05:34  J.D. King: And what’s very important, it says right.

0:05:35  Steve Gray: Here about, about believers who have died. This is the subject.

0:05:39  J.D. King: Yeah, the subject is they don’t want people, you know, who are, who are still alive concerned that they’re being left out of the general resurrection. And more importantly, there’s nothing in this passage that says anything about going to heaven. It does talk about us meeting the Lord in the air and we’ll talk a little bit about, I know you might want to comment on that, but like nt. Wright, some other New Testament scholars believe that that’s describing like a welcoming party, receiving the Lord as he descends and like, going up to him and then coming back down with him.

0:06:10  Steve Gray: Yeah. And that’s the whole, I mean, if you just read it and take it, then the Lord himself will come down from heaven. No mention of anybody else going up to heaven. And it’s because it’s at the end where the new heaven, new earth, and this is really it. And it definitely is about the resurrection that people thought, well, what’s going to happen to me if I don’t die and I’m still alive? He says, well, you’re covered, too.

0:06:30  Steve Gray: We’re going to do this. But it goes up, but he comes down, and that’s the key to it, and heaven comes down. So if you just reconsider, it’s not that hard. And I just believe this is the end of the age and he will come down, but it doesn’t say anything about the up and down. You go up and then you come back down again. So anyway, so we’re not going to spend, when it says with the Lord forever, as we know, we’re not going to spend it in heaven other than the new heaven and new earth. So it’s there together, but it’s not the one that, where people go now.

0:07:03  Steve Gray: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So this is a real strong one, too. From Matthew 24. About two men will be working in the field. One will be taken, one left, two women will be grinding flour at the mill. One will be taken, the other left. And that’s a scripture that’s used real heavily about. Some are left behind and some go up. So let’s just clarify that a little bit.

0:07:24  J.D. King: Sure, sure. Well, in the context he’s talking about, like, the days of Noah, you know, and in the days of Noah, obviously, Noah and his family were left behind in the ark, and then all these other people were taken in judgment.

0:07:35  Steve Gray: Right.

0:07:36  J.D. King: So the context of taken here is not being taken up to heaven, but it’s someone dying or losing their way. So the one who remains, the one who gets left behind here is the one who survives, who’s blessed.

0:07:49  Steve Gray: Yeah. So in other words. Yeah, Moses and his family in the ark, they were the ones who were left here, and where’s the rest of the people? They were taken away. So it’s really a backwards thing and they’re making it say what they want it to say, in my opinion. But they used that one a lot. This is another good one. Oh, yeah. This is super heavy, especially in evangelism. Behold, I go to prepare a place for you in my father’s house, as we know many rooms, dwelling places. And I go to prepare and a place for you, and I will, but I will come again and receive you to myself.

0:08:25  Steve Gray: And really, it follows what we just said on these other ones. But let’s talk about that one because it’s. So I go to prepare a place for you as actually used in evangelism.

0:08:34  J.D. King: So funerals.

0:08:35  Steve Gray: And funerals. So that when you die, you get to go to heaven. Yeah, right. Comment on that.

0:08:39  J.D. King: Yeah, yeah. If you read the rest of that’s John, chapter 14, the context, the word there is actually abiding and dwelling. And the context is I’m going to make way for the disciples in us to be able to have a close connection to the father, you know, through salvation, through the deeper work of the spirit. So the place he’s preparing is not. Not heaven, but it’s the abiding close to God, the same way he had.

0:09:07  J.D. King: If you really read it all in context, it makes sense. He says, I’ve been close to the father. I’ve been listening to him. Now I’m going to make it possible for you to enjoy that as well. So it’s not a heaven reference, it’s a connection to the heavenly Father reference.

0:09:23  Steve Gray: Yeah, yeah. And particularly, if you think about it like that in context, even just a little bit of history, the Jewish history, a little bit, when there was a bride and bridegroom and marriage, and we talk about the marriage and the Bible like that. The new husband to be that would go away, but the bride stayed there and then he left and came to her. But now they don’t necessarily gonna go off. A lot of times they would just move in and extend the family on the earth, build the neighborhood together.

0:09:59  Steve Gray: It’s a little history on that. But since we still have some time, let’s talk about a little bit about that. You mentioned nt Wright, but a great idea of how when it talks about coming in with the shout and the Trump and all that, what’s that a picture of historically did, in other words, they didn’t make this up, like it’s only going to happen one time. This was a cultural thing that they would understand.

0:10:24  Steve Gray: Yeah.

0:10:24  J.D. King: The idea was, of course, like a conquering king in the Greco-Roman culture would go and beat an enemy in another place and then come back home. All the dignitaries of the city would go out, meet the, you know, the returning armies, they’d bring them new clothes, everybody get cleaned up, and they’d get refreshed. And then all the dignitaries and important people of the city would come in with the conquering king and celebrate the victory and spread the spoils of the war.

0:10:53  J.D. King: It was like a, and so the, it was important to kind of receive them outside the city, get ready, and then come back in with them. And so this is the kind of language that Paul is using here in this passage. It’s not a going off to heaven, it’s a receiving the king in his triumphal entry, in a sense.

0:11:11  Steve Gray: Yeah. Well, as we know, on Palm Sunday, we talk about that. Most people I’ve talked to don’t get that picture you just said, but that’s what it is. And the same thing, if you put it in terms of end time, rapture, all that thing. Jesus came into the city and the people came out to meet him, but they didn’t leave the earth. He came in and declared that he’s basically the messiah of that temple because he said, my house.

0:11:37  Steve Gray: So he established his house and he was still on the earth. Yes, he ascended to heaven, but the picture is meeting him and they’re on the earth. And then the other, the conquering king is a great, great, great teaching. So just a lot of clues on that. I’m trying to think of some other things that other people get confused on.

0:11:56  J.D. King: Sure, sure. Well, how about, you know, the passage like of us having citizenship in heaven, but in the roman empire, you would be a citizen of the Rome, but you might be actually sent out to a new territory, you would never go back to Rome, even though you still had your identity from Rome. And so having citizenship in Rome didn’t mean you ever went there. It just meant that was your connection, that was your authority, that was your significance.

0:12:23  J.D. King: And so we have citizenship in heaven, but I’m not saying we don’t ever go there, but that’s not really the goal is for us to inhabit heaven. Our goal is to inhabit the earth in the glory of heaven.

0:12:34  Steve Gray: Yeah. And, you know, with all the things about the eclipse and all that, people were expecting to end of the world, which I mentioned that in our church, there is no end of the world because he’s got to make the new earth out of the world. So the world could be changed, there could be trouble, could be some things go off, could be nuclear blasts, but the world will not be destroyed. And then with the eclipse, two is all over the Internet for some pushing, and mostly Christians pushing, that this is a sign.

0:13:05  Steve Gray: This is a sign of something, of his return, of that. But as you know, in my opinion, well, he mentions Noah, and then, of course, you know, in the whale and say his name. Jonah.

0:13:21  J.D. King: Jonah. Jonah, yeah.

0:13:21  Steve Gray: Yeah. And he says that’s this. There’ll be no other sign but the sign of Jonah, who was put in the belly of the fish for three days and then spit out, which is after the death. So that’s our sign. So if there’s no other sign, then I don’t need a sign, because I already got a sign, is the resurrection. And if they’re not going to believe that, then what kind of faith can we get by looking up at the sun?

0:13:44  Steve Gray: We’re looking almost like the children of Israel. You know, when they came out of Israel and Moses is up and he’s going to come down, what’s that a picture of? And while he’s gone, though, they go back to the gods and really probably the sun God and the others, and they started worshiping the gods of others, but it was the wrong one. And the one that’s the real one is Moses basically coming down with the Ten Commandments and what they needed to hear. So the direction there is the same.

0:14:14  Steve Gray: So it’s complicated. Nobody knows. I often, as you know, tell people, let’s call it the theory, the rapture theory, because you can’t prove it, for one thing. Sure. And the weakest part of it is it’s relatively new. It’s only in the1800’s. And like I said, you go back to the early, early church, first century, there’s no evidence of it at all. The only thing they believed in, exactly what we said, restoration.

0:14:41  Steve Gray: And when they said, what do I need to do to be saved? Meaning, what do I need to do to be rescued so that I can spend eternity with you in the kingdom here on earth. And of course, they believed Israel would be the center. Okay, I get it. And restored, but still, it was all here on the earth. And then comes along the 18th, and all of a sudden everybody’s heaven bound and they’re going to be taken out and those left behind. And so I don’t like, as you heard me say, God being described. Like, we know dads today disappear. Deadbeat dad who deserts what he created. So there’s just so many things. We got a couple more minutes, I guess, Zion, and we can tend. Oh, we’re still going. All right.

0:15:20  J.D. King: Yeah. Well, let me comment on this here for a minute. You know, you and I both love revival. You know, we’re revival guys. And if you were to go back to revival history and you look at people like John Wesley, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, none of them had a kind of a dark, futuristic view. They believed that Christ was breaking into history in revival then, and they believed that there would be success and Christ would come at the end of the church being successful in its mission.

0:15:52  Steve Gray: Yeah.

0:15:52  J.D. King: And that actually drove a lot of revival activity. Finney and are you saying basically Jesus.

0:15:58  Steve Gray: Returns to success, correct. In their minds, whether whoever believes and they believe. Yeah.

0:16:03  J.D. King: That revival was, was the means and he would.

0:16:06  Steve Gray: Of that success, he appears because of success, correct. Because of desire.

0:16:10  J.D. King: And that’s what the American church believed pretty strongly, up to maybe late 1800’s.

0:16:17  Steve Gray: Yeah. So it’s. I get the formula. I know they got it. It sounds really tight. But you have to go back history and look, what did, you know, what.

0:16:27  J.D. King: Does John Wesley believe.

0:16:30  Steve Gray: As you continue to go back? John, who wrote Revelation, what did he believe and what did they believe? And other people that knew him after, because he was older went on and said what to believe, and there’s just no evidence that they believed any of that. The Book of Revelation fools a lot of people. It was quoted on the Internet on the eclipse day.

0:16:51  J.D. King: Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Part of it is the book of Revelation. We don’t understand the type of writing it was, and here’s why I like to describe it. We all get it. There’s a lot of pictures and symbols, but I like to think of it a little bit like the old blues music. You ever listen like old Robert Johnson or John Lee Hooker or those different bluesmen. And a lot of their songs sounded kind of sad or filled with lament, but they were actually songs about hope and a longing for justice to break into their world.

0:17:21  J.D. King: The Book of Revelation is like a blues song. It sounds like death and destruction, but it’s actually about God remaking the world. And it obviously was written during a time when even the Romans continued to control Israel. And there was a longing for God to break into history and time to begin his transformation, which John the revelator is saying that is happening now. Even as we see trouble and death and even as we’re seeing all kinds of things like that, God isn’t breaking into time and history, and we have hope.

0:17:53  J.D. King: So it’s actually supposed to be a book about hope and triumph, not cataclysm and disaster.

0:17:5 9  Steve Gray: I’m going to grab a scripture here real quick, heading toward the end. I just let me find it. I looked at it a few minutes ago. So in the meantime, so there was eclipse. Nothing happened. It wasn’t an earthquake. The end of the world didn’t come. We weren’t attacked by enemies. What should people be? What should our sincere people and those do? So I like this. It says, for, you know that we dealt with you, and this is, this is Paul writing again to a church. Okay.

0:18:32  Steve Gray: You know that we dealt with each of you. As a father deals with his own children. Keep that. This is what you should be doing, in my opinion. Okay. As a father deals with his own children. Here’s the three things. Encouraging and comforting. Okay? I get that you can go over our city, every city, and go to a church and get some encouragement and get some comfort, right? But here’s what’s missing, that almost everybody, even in the churches, and he’s got a third one that’s even more important.

0:19:03  Steve Gray: Encouraging. Comforting and urging you. Urging is a strong word, more than comfort, urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory. Now, the calling is now. He’s calling you now, not in the sweet by and by, but. So this is what I would tell you to do. My own kids or my own family. This is what we need to do. I want to encourage you, you know, I want to comfort you in your troubles and what you’re doing, encourage you to go for it. But most of all, I want to urge you to live a life worthy of the Lord. And that’s what we should be doing, rather than scaring each other, you know, and trying to get people to make a decision out of fear.

0:19:43  J.D. King: Right.

0:19:43  Steve Gray: But we want to urge them to want to serve the Lord and get apart and live. I love that phrase in the kingdom of glory. And so that’s what’s happening now. And we have the sign. Jesus was raised from the dead. That’s the sign. And that’s what’s coming. And even if the world does crazy things and goes crazy, it doesn’t take away from the kingdom of God glory that he’s calling us to now. Right on. So anyway, I appreciate it so much. I hope that you tell your friends about this. You want to go online and donate or check out our books, and you got plenty.

0:20:19  Steve Gray: Where do they go if they want to see your books? And you have books on this, you got a book about the beast anyway, right? Yeah. Right.

0:20:26  J.D. King: Right. You could go on to https://christopublishing.com and check our store there. I got some of the books available there.

0:20:32  Steve Gray: Yeah. And that’s good. They’re good. And he’s spending a lot of time, a lot of scholars, it’s hard to find that kind of work. And so if you want to do that, but otherwise understand if you’re in the rapture, it’s a theory. Maybe you think it’s a good one. But let’s listen to our forefathers and go back to scripture and then reconsider. Maybe some of the teaching going around that’s keeping people scared. They scared you with it when you were a kid.

0:20:54  J.D. King: Definitely.

0:20:55  Steve Gray: So we don’t want to do it out of fear. We want to do it out of loyalty and love. All right. Thanks for listening to us. I hope that stirred you and encouraging you to go for God. Until next time. Bye.