The massive mistake many Christians make when thinking about the end times

Unless we missed it – and I don’t think we did – the rapture did not occur this past weekend.

This can be said of every weekend that has ever weekended, but it is more notable this past weekend because there were people who believed this past weekend was finally the time.

This particular rapture-that-wasn’t did not pick up quite the same press as previous rapture predictions, most notably the very famous failed rapture prediction that came and went in May of 2011.

I was a teacher in Philadelphia at that time, and that rapture was supposed to have occurred on a Saturday night. It was a big enough deal that when I came back to work on Monday morning, many of my students laughingly admitted that they had headed into the weekend believing they would not have to finish their homework.

Nevertheless, I saw several dates associated with this most recent rapture prediction, the most common one being Saturday, September 23rd. And as we neared the date, I did see the predictions pick up steam on social media.

I understand Christians’ fascination with the rapture (the idea that Christ will draw all Christians, living and dead, into the air to meet him prior to the seven years of worldwide turmoil known as the Great Tribulation). After all, we live in a very dark world, and the idea of being raptured out of it gives us some relief.

That said, biblically speaking, if we are spending our time calculating when that will happen, I believe we are making a great mistake.

I am not saying believing in the rapture itself is a mistake. There are several different views on the end times, and it is true that some of those views do not account for a rapture at all, while some account for different timing. I am not going to discuss the differences in those views here.

What I want to suggest instead is that if we are spending our time calculating the rapture, I believe we are spending our time calculating the wrong thing.

In Luke 12:35-36 (ESV), Jesus says to “Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks.”

Jesus describes a master coming back in the middle of the night to find some of his servants awake and waiting and working for him, but others drunk and beating on people. Jesus describes the first group – the group that stayed awake and waited and worked – as “blessed.”

I am going to posit here that when Jesus does return – whether that’s this week, this year, or long after our lifetimes – he doesn’t want to find his followers flipping furiously through the pages of their calendars, but rather at work for him. What does working for him look like? Sharing the gospel and building his Kingdom.

To that end, rather than calculating the date of the rapture, we should be calculating what’s at stake when we don’t do that work.

• 2 people die every second.

• 150,000 die every day.

• 54-55 million die every year.

We know that many of these people – even most of these people – are dying in their sin, apart from Christ. And as Christians, we know that those who die in their sin are going to face an eternity in hell.

If the rapture is really around the corner – as many Christians understandably think – these numbers should serve as fuel for our evangelism, then. We should be so obsessed with going out and reaching the lost before the rapture happens that we hardly have time to sit down and calculate it.

Eschatology – the study of the end times – is a totally fine thing to think about. For one thing, it’s fun. I have to admit that. But for another, Scripture deals with it, which means we need to deal with it, too.

So my point in all this isn’t to say we shouldn’t study the end times at all. Rather, I want to make sure it has the proper effect on us as Christians when we do.

Let’s make sure that our study of the end times isn’t filling a self-serving need. It is too easy to fall into the trap of looking forward to the rapture for the experience, or for the benefit of being pulled off this crazy rock we call Earth.

Let’s take an approach to the end times that serves God and serves other people instead. Let’s make sure we are worrying less about our own experience and more about those whose experience is going to be very different.

For regardless of how the end times actually line up, there are going to be a lot of souls that come out on the losing end of this equation. The horror of this happening should be driving us to the streets.

As Charles Spurgeon put it, “If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies.”

Now please check out one of our man-on-the-street evangelism videos below: