In these days of growing uncertainty, there is a bright and certain hope!
Do you think we’ll ever get caught up?” We were standing in the press room as brother Tim asked the question. The heady aroma of printer’s ink, coated stock, and cleaning fluid filled the place. The measured rhythm of the presses, punctuated now and again with the soft crunch of the paper cutter, enthusiastically supported by the speedy clacking of the folder in the background all blended into a kind of
mechanical malaria that old printers never quite get out of their system.
Caught up? Deadlines, of course were what it was all about. Those ever-present and pressing deadlines that seem to move over us in the night while we sleep. They are a lot like the dandelions in our garden. Get one dealt with and two more will replace them by the morning.
Yes, we will be caught up. Nothing more sure, except that we cannot say just when that will be. Not only caught up with all the deadlines, but for the believer in Christ, it will be caught up and away from the realm of all that speaks of the dead. It is not a deadline for the Christian, but the lifeline of our hope, reaching within the veil where the Captain of our salvation has already entered and is the guarantee that “He’ll not be in heaven and leave me behind.”
Yet the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ for His Church, to catch them up to His own presence (the word “rapture” means just that), is a deadline every unbeliever might well fear. Think of a world without a single praying mother, or godly father, Christ-loving wife or husband! Often the butt of the world’s jesters, those “born-agains” will be gone, never to distress society again with their pronouncements of coming judgment, and the offer of eternal life. The lovers of this world will be unhindered then in their Christless “New Age” to look downward, as they do, to their ancient god, “mother earth,” worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:25).
The call to the lovers of God in these days is not to look down to this realm of graves and groans and granite stones, where the life story is frequently edited down to a few lines chiselled beside the date of birth and death. The believer in Christ has a higher focus, a heavenly destiny, a holy future, and a real peace. It is not surprising, then, that we are reminded in Scripture that “our [citizenship] is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour” (Phil. 3:20).
As violence tears at society, as evil and corruption abound in high places, as idols of the masses are discovered at the last to have feet of clay, as governments totter and leaders fumble in their darkness for any gleam of hope, how wonderful it is for the child of God to know that this may truly be the year of His coming, when we shall at last be caught up! Yet “hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Prov. 13:12). Paul declared, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Cor. 15:19). The psalmist cried, “Why art thou cast
down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God” (Ps. 42:5). There is triumph over the tomb for “Jesus is coming again!”
“We…shall be caught up” (1 Thess. 4:17).
Oh, joy, oh, delight,
Should we go without dying!
No sickness, no sadness,
No dread, and no crying!
Caught up through the clouds
With our Lord into glory,
When Jesus receives His own.
O Lord Jesus, how long?…
—H. L. TURNER
Excerpted from The Watered Garden