Tish B'Av Rapture?

If you’ve followed my writings over the years, you know I have never gotten overly excited about any (if ever) of the numerous Rapture theories floating across the Internet. That means I intentionally missed out on the 2011 Craze (2018 - 7 years), 2012 Mayan Calendar hysteria, 2014-16 Blood Moon hype, 2017’s September 23rd Revelation 12 frenzy, et cetera. Maybe I’m just jaded like that, but when one holds to a doctrine of imminence (as I do), I’ve learned early on not to get swept up with the latest and greatest hysteria that comes and goes with increasing frequency.

But it’s in our nature to want to know when the Lord will return. Perhaps the increased frequency of trying to figure out when the Rapture will happen (or anything peripheral to it), is in itself a sign of the end. Let me add that while I don’t diminish anyone’s earnest desires to look into these things, we must always exercise caution as to being dogmatic about a specific day or date because Jesus Himself said that its specificity (i.e., the day or hour) cannot be known (Matt. 24:36).

Now, I’ve never held to the idea of “strict imminence,” i.e., that a) we cannot know anything about His return (we can), nor b) to the idea that Christ could have returned a hundred, five hundred, or a thousand years ago which doesn’t seem to fit with the prophetic model He’s laid out for us in Revelation 2-3. Imminence, in my definition, simply means we can’t know when exactly/precisely/definitively. However, imminence should not mean arbitrary or random. And apologies for the length of this article, but this is why I’m publishing it on a Friday so you have all weekend to ponder the things discussed here.

Furthermore, I personally have never been one to link the Rapture of the Church to any of the seven Feasts of the Lord either. To me, those were always prophetically significant to Israel, and not the Church. However, the ONLY one I’ve ever even really considered as a possibility (if the Rapture were to fall on a feast date), has been Pentecost (Shavuot). The only reason I think that is, since the Church was conceived at Pentecost, it makes some degree of sense that it will be born (Raptured) on Pentecost. I mean, if the Church Age does exist in the ‘pause’ between the 69th and 70th Week of Daniel, starting and stopping on the same feast makes sense.

If Israel’s rebirth is the super sign of Bible prophecy, and Israel/Jerusalem/Temple are the timepieces to which God’s prophetic timeline is synced, and the Rapture is not synced to her, then what does that leave us with? Randomness? Arbitrary dates? The last Gentile convert?

I don’t know.

Both Jesus and Paul alluded to the idea that although we can’t know the specific date, we would know the season, and I’ve considered some past seasons/years more prophetically interesting than others. Nevertheless, I’ve had a good track record thus far of being pretty even-keeled when it comes to this sort of thing.

That said, I’m not opposed to people presenting well-thought-through theories either.

Take, for example, a recent article that a reader from here (h/t Dan H) informed me of by Greg Lauer. As Greg would note in his article, this idea wasn’t even original to him, but it was presented to him by someone else to “do something with it,” to which he does a fantastic job. However, before you continue here, please go to his link (already hyperlinked below) to see why I am very intrigued with this idea of the Rapture’s connection with the Jewish holy day of Tisha B’Av because, frankly, it makes a lot of sense. In fact, I’ve never seen a theory presented before that makes as much sense as this one does. And before anyone rolls their eyes and thinks, oh brother, here we go again, I can promise you four things.

1. This is not linked in any way to any astrological or cosmological signs

2. It’s not linking the Rapture to any of the seven Feasts of the Lord

3. It’s not setting a specific date (as in a specific day/month/year)

4. It’s not dogmatic either. Greg honestly admits this is just a theory

With that said, please do not proceed any further until reading the linked article.

Ok, I’m moving forward assuming you’ve read the article by now, hopefully, because if not, you’re going to get confused and I’m not really wanting to answer a thousand questions about it. Go back and read the article! Ok, I think I’ve beaten this dead horse enough; let’s get on with the review.

Review

So the article itself is a little long for my taste, but I understand why he does go to the lengths he does. It’s a theory that needs to be placed in its proper context, and to do that requires a certain degree of historical and prophetic perspective. I can respect that. But for this article’s sake, I’m going to tie in his comments on the ‘Song of Moses’ and get down to his summary at the bottom.

And He said: ‘I will hide My face from them,

I will see what their end will be,

For they are a perverse generation,

Children in whom is no faith.

They have provoked Me to jealousy by what is not God;

They have moved Me to anger by their foolish idols.

But I will provoke them to jealousy by those who are not a nation;

I will move them to anger by a foolish nation.

Deuteronomy 32:20-21 (my emphasis)

Start Quote

***************************************************

Let’s review this round by round and see if we can spot it:

ROUND ONE

1. The Jews’ great sin is rampant idolatry, plus failing to trust in God for their protection and instead making a foolish deal with their enemies.

2. The First Temple is destroyed.

3. A major round of judgment falls upon Israel via the Babylonians.

ROUND TWO

1. The Jews’ great sin is turning God’s Word into legalism, and rejecting their promised Messiah and having Him crucified like a common criminal.

2. The Second Temple is destroyed.

3. A major round of judgment falls upon Israel via the Romans.

ROUND THREE

1. The Jews’ great sin is dismissing with anger and jealousy the salvation Christ offered them as they watched it go out to the Gentiles. They should have understood Moses’ prophecy and repented, but they refused to do so. Not only that, but they will divide God’s land.

2. ? ? ? ? ?

3. A major round of judgment falls upon Israel via the Antichrist.

Not to be overly dramatic or anything, but I think you can see the problem. There is a hole in the pattern this third time around, and that’s where God destroys or removes the physical, visible representation of His presence on earth, following a great sin of Israel and prior to His unleashing of a round of judgment on them.

• Round One: In 586 BC, it was the destruction of the First Temple.

• Round Two: In AD 70, it was the destruction of the Second Temple.

And that begs the question:

Is there something that fills this hole
in the pattern the third time around?

I believe there is:

19What? know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own? (1 Corinthians 6:19 AKJV / emphasis added)

As I’ve already mentioned, born-again believers may be the body of Christ, but we are also the temple of the Holy Spirit—the physical, visible representation of the presence of God the Holy Spirit on earth, starting on the day of Pentecost two thousand years ago and ending the moment we are caught up to be with the Lord in the translation of the Church.

As a result, I believe it is the Rapture—the removal of the physical, visible representation of God the Holy Spirit’s presence on earth—that fills that hole and completes the final round of this pattern. And although I believe the Rapture fills that hole regardless of what day it actually occurs...

IF the Rapture were to occur on Tisha B’Av, just like the destruction of the First and Second Temples, it would dot the last “i” and cross the last “t” of a pattern established by a God who doesn’t do random.

KA-BOOM!

If the Rapture were
to occur on Tisha B’Av,
it would shake Israel
to its spiritual core.

Generally speaking, we as believers have utterly failed to grasp something of critical importance, and that is the simple fact that the Rapture has tremendous significance for Israel—almost as much as it does for the Church itself (some might even say more). The Rapture represents the point in time when God no longer has to focus His attention on His Church on earth and will turn His attention back to dealing with His Chosen People. And it grieves me to say it, but it won’t take long for His dealings with His Chosen People to involve purging them in this final round of judgment at the hands of the Antichrist—a round of judgment that is going to make the Holocaust pale in comparison.

The Rapture is going to be an earth-shattering, supernatural event that will shake the world to its core, and make no mistake:

If the Rapture were to occur on Tisha B’Av,
it would shake Israel to its spiritual core.

It would certainly set them thinking about what it all meant; and as they attempted to put the pieces together, I believe it would play right into what God is going to do to re-establish His relationship with His people.

Incidentally, one other rather striking parallel is the following:

• The First Temple was intimately connected with God the Father—the only form of God the Jews understood.

• The Second Temple was intimately connected with God the Son, who presented Himself as the Jews’ promised Messiah in the midst of that temple. Not only that, but its veil that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple was torn from top to bottom at the moment He was crucified.

• The Church is intimately connected with God the Holy Spirit since we are His temple on earth for the duration of the Church Age.

The bottom line is that, given everything we have discussed, it is virtually impossible to ignore the compelling connection between the Rapture, the destruction of the First and Second Temples, and Tisha B’Av—the day they were both destroyed. It all fits.

Connecting dots

Of course, I don’t have to remind you that there have been numerous people with really swell theories about the Rapture where everything fit together s-o-o perfectly, and they were all dead wrong as those dates came and went, ruining some really cool charts.

Just so you know, like many Jewish feasts and celebrations, Tisha B’Av occurs over the course of two days and occurs every year sometime in the mid-July to mid-August time frame. This year, it falls on August 6–7. In 2023, it falls on July 26–27, and in 2024 it falls on August 12–13.

So...could the Rapture occur this year on August 6 or 7? Sure. How about next year on July 26–27? You betcha. August 12–13, 2024? In a heartbeat.

And it could happen today—I’m ready and waiting.

End Quote

****************************

So my takeaway from all of that was not that he was saying it will happen this coming August or next July, but how it makes a lot of sense that it could happen on Tish B’Av, primarily because of a) historical precedent, b) theological connection, and c) it would be the divine motivation to begin waking up the unbelieving Jewish people. Now, I drafted my own visual presentation of Greg’s article simply to help me make sense of it.