Imminency: Key to
Understanding the Rapture; James 5:8
James 5:8 NASB
“You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is
near.”
Underlying this is a hint of motivation.
It is that because the Lord is coming we need to wait in a proper manner. This
has been the understanding of the thrust of the doctrine in imminency
throughout the next Testament, that this has been a great source of
encouragement and challenge to the believer because at any moment the Lord can
comeback. If the Lord returns for the church at the Rapture
in the next five minutes then that means that in six minutes we are
going to be standing at the judgment seat of Christ. So if the return of the
Lord is imminent, so is our evaluation at the judgment seat of Christ, and that
should challenge us to be ready, to be living in fellowship, producing divine
good, advancing in our spiritual life so that at any moment we are ready for
that evaluation by our Lord.
“You too be patient.” There
is a repetition of the aorist imperative of MAKROTHUMIA [makroqumia],
and then the words “strengthen your hearts,” again an aorist imperative from STERIZO [sthrizw] which means to establish, to strengthen, to make strong.
Then KARDIA [kardia], translated
“heart” refers to the innermost thinking part of the soul. The way we do that
is through taking in the Word of God. It is the Word of God, Bible doctrine,
alone that strengthens or edifies our soul and it does that through the
development of the soul fortress. That is the concept: as we abide in Christ
(John 15), walking by means of God the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5), then as a
result of that our soul is strengthened; God becomes our power, our fortress,
our shield, our bulwark, so that we can withstand the onslaughts of adversity
and we can go forward in the spiritual life. And the motivation for developing
patience is eschatological. The concept is that what motivates the believer
today, what moves us to obedience, is because we know and have a confident
expectation that there is accountability at the judgment seat of Christ.
Another term we use for this is a personal sense of our eternal destiny. We
know what our eternal destiny is, that at the Rapture we are going to be face
to face with the Lord and we are then going to stand before Him at an
evaluation judgment called the bhma seat of Christ, and described in 3:13-18. So we are
exhorted, commanded, mandate, to be patient “because/for,” and the word in the
Greek here is the causal HOTI [o(ti] which indicates
the reason or basis for the command. The basis for the command is the immediacy
of the Lord’s coming. Because of this immediacy and the use of the word here, EGGIZO [e)ggizw], the
key word for understanding imminency, we will look at
the doctrine of imminency.
The doctrine of imminency
1)
The word imminent
means at hand, impending, about to occur, and ready to take place. It is a
technical term in the Scriptures and in theology which refers to the
at-any-moment or soon-coming of the Lord at the Rapture of the church. It
doesn’t means immediate, it means something that is impending, something that
is overhanging, something that we can expect but we just don’t know when it is
going to take place. The timing of the Rapture has not been revealed in the
Scripture. The doctrine of imminency is the impending
return of Jesus Christ in the air for all living and dead church age believers,
according to 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17. It does not include Old Testament saints, it only includes church age believers. Since no
biblical prophecies are to be fulfilled before the resurrection of the church
occurs this event has been expected since the time of the apostles. Today the
hour of that event is unknown to any human being and not revealed in the
Scripture but is to be eagerly anticipated.
2)
Terms:
a)
Rapture refers to the resurrection of all dead church age believers and the
removal and translation (instantaneously receive a resurrection body) of all
living believers from the earth at the end of the church age, immediately
before the Tribulation begins. Qualification: What begins the Tribulation is
not the Rapture? It is the signing of a peace treaty between the Antichrist
(the prince who is to come, Daniel 9) and
b)
The Tribulation is a technical term which refers to seven literal years which
completes the age of
The
timing of the Rapture: The pre-Tribulation Rapture position puts is at the
beginning of the Tribulation; the post-Tribulation position puts it at the end
of the Tribulation; the mid-Tribulation position puts it at some time during
the Tribulation. The pre-Tribulation Rapture is the resurrection of the church
immediately preceding the seven-year Tribulation. The mid-Tribulation Rapture
usually places the Rapture at the mid-point or some three and a half years into
the Tribulation. The post-Tribulation Rapture is the theological position that
the Rapture of the church does not occur until the end of the Tribulation
immediately preceding the second coming of Christ.
c)
The Millennial kingdom refers to the thousand-year rule of Jesus Christ as the
greater son of David, in fulfilment of the Davidic covenant, from the throne of
David in
3)
Greek
terminology. The verb is EGGIZO (GG when translated into English is pronounced NG, e.g. ENGIZO) which
means to be near, to be proximate in either space or time. It has a wide
variety of meanings and you have to look at the context. Romans
4)
The word Rapture
derives from the Latin word rapio.
There are a lot of words that we use to describe doctrines in the Scripture
that aren’t found in the Scripture. First of all, we use English words and the
Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek, do that means none of them were found in
the original text. But it is the purpose of theology to put together the
concepts of the Scripture and to coin new vocabulary to express that. That is
not wrong. We do that with words such as Trinity and Rapture. Rapture comes
from the Latin rapio which was found in the Vulgate version, the translation of
Jerome of the Greek New Testament, and that Latin word means to snatch away,
and it translates the Greek word HARPAZO [a(rpazw] used in 1 Thessalonians
4:17, which means to seize, to catch up, and to snatch.
5)
The doctrine of imminency is significant for demonstrating the
pre-Tribulation Rapture. Dr. Ryrie makes a very
important statement in his book What the
Bible Teaches about the Rapture: “If the pre-Tribulation Rapture is correct
then the Rapture could take place at any time and is clearly imminent.” What he
is saying is that if the Rapture is correct it must be that is could take place
at any time with nothing preceding it. That would mean that it is imminent.
“If, however, will live through the Tribulation and be raptured
at the end then only in the last part of the Tribulation could anyone truly say
that the Lord’s coming is imminent.” What he is saying is that in Matthew 24
the Lord clearly laid out a number of signs to look for preceding the second
coming. If those signs take place before the Rapture then we can’t say it is
imminent until we see those signs taking place. So the fact that the Scriptures
teach that it could happen at any moment and that nothing need precede it is an
indication that the rapture must come before those end-time signs and
prophecies begin to be fulfilled.
6)
Central passage
on imminency: John 14:1-3 NASB “Do not let
your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.
a)
Just as Christ
literally went to heaven after this event, He will literally return to take His
disciples to the Father’s house. “I will come again” must be in the same
literal sense. It is translated in the future tense there but in the Greek it
is a present tense. Many times the present tense is used with a futuristic sense, it is called the futuristic present because an event
is so certain to take place in the future that it is spoken of as a present
reality. So Jesus uses and emphatic futuristic present to describe His future
coming.
b)
We need to see
what exactly takes place in these verses. First, it explains that Christ will
return to an earthly scene to take His disciples: “I will come again and
receive you to Myself, that where I am [heaven],
{there} you may be also.” Contrast that with what happens at the second coming
when Christ is coming to the earth to establish His kingdom on the earth. There
is clearly a difference between John 14:3 which views taking the disciples to
heaven and Revelation 19 which sees Jesus coming all the way to the earth and
staying on the earth and the church age believer is ruling and reigning with
Him.
c)
This verse contrasts
with the disciples’ expectation of an earthly kingdom. Acts
d)
There is a
different hope. Their hope is earthly but Christ is
giving them a heavenly anticipation.
e)
We see here that
the object for the church age believer is to be with Christ forever, it is not
an earthly destiny in an earthly
f)
There is no
prerequisite given here for fulfilment. Jesus does not say that certain things
have to transpire before he will return.
7)
Preterism. In the debate over the pre-Trib.
Rapture pre-Tribulationalists have always emphasized imminency and the post-Tribultionalists
have always said it is not imminent because all these signs in the Tribulation
have to come first. But now we get this new position—really an old position
that has been resurrected—called Preterism. In
position the view is that these prophecies all took place in the past and were
all fulfilled in 70 AD. So Christ even returned spiritually at 70 AD and now we
can say if all prophecy was fulfilled then we really don’t know when the end of
the age will be, so it is imminent, isn’t it? They are twisting the doctrine. 1
Thessalonians 4 makes it clear. The purpose of 1 Thessalonians 4 & 5 is to
encourage believers with the doctrine of the Rapture in relationship to the
death of their loved ones. In
James 5:8 NASB
“You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.”
Why are they to be patient? Because the Lord could come at any moment and they
need to be ready. The judgment seat of Christ is right around the corner. If
the doctrine of the return of Christ is imminent, so is the judgment seat of
Christ. So we need to be ready for that evaluation judgment.
James 5:9 NASB “Do
not complain, brethren, against one another, so that you yourselves may not be
judged; behold, the Judge is standing right at the door.” The scene is, get ready, the judgment seat of Christ is around the corner.
This is not that their sins are going to be brought up at the judgment seat of
Christ but that if they are in carnality they are not producing divine good and
they are at risk of ending up at the judgment seat of Christ with no gold,
silver and precious stones, just wood, hay and straw. So the command here is to
straighten out their life, to be patient, to advance to spiritual maturity
because judgment days is coming: “…behold, the Judge is standing right at the
door.”
James