What's going to happen 30 seconds after the rapture? Prophecy Pros answer
What will happen 30 seconds after the rapture?
Jeff Kinley and Todd Hampson, hosts of the popular "Prophesy Pros Podcast," said the pre-tribulation rapture — an End Times event many Christians believe will happen that involves believers, both living and resurrected, being lifted up into the air to meet Jesus — will have a “cataclysmic impact on the planet.”
Kinley and Hampson stressed that despite some Bible teachers claiming that the event is not in Scripture, they maintain that it is — the translated world harpazo — and the global event will impact geopolitics, culture, religions and the psychological state of humanity.
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“I think a lot of people have seen the rapture depicted in pop culture. Whether it’s the 'Left Behind' movies or other really poorly made movies, [the rapture] has become kind of a caricature of [those films]. Or the recent phenomenon where people who claim to be believers are literally saying the Bible doesn't teach a rapture,” Hampson said.
“It is a key aspect of the Lord's return. Just like the first coming had two parts to it, the birth and then the ministry and the death and resurrection. So, too, the Lord’s return has two parts and one of the ones that we wait for, Titus tells us, is ‘our blessed hope.’ It's the rapture. It's something we're supposed to be encouraged by.”
Hampson said John 14:1-3 are among the verses that highlight the coming rapture.
“[Jesus says]: ‘And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me so that where I am, you will be.’ Another translation says, ‘I will receive you,’ Hampson added: So, it's kind of clear. He's not coming all the way down to Earth yet. He's receiving us somewhere in between Heaven and Earth. And that is a tenant of our faith. It’s something we look forward to.”
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Kinley noted that before someone can study what happens directly after the rapture, they must understand that “the post-tribulation or rapture view that believes that Christians will all be raptured prior to the Second Coming of the Lord at the end of the tribulation period is not truthful.”
“We know believers are going to go into the millennial kingdom. [Unbelievers are] going to have babies. … And we know that in our glorified bodies, we can't do that. So, if all believers are glorified at the rapture, at the end of the tribulation, then who's having these babies in the millennial kingdom?” Kinley posited. “Certainly, unbelievers are not coming into the millennial kingdom. So, really the argument is between the pre-trib and the mid-trib. Will the church go through the wrath of God? And we just strongly believe that the Church will not go through the wrath of God.”
Describing how non-Christians might react to the rapture, Kinley said, for him, five words come to mind: “shock, confusion, panic, terror and chaos.”
“You're in a mall. You're at a football stadium. You're on an airplane. You're driving in a car. You're walking down the street, … school, wherever. And all of a sudden, scores of people just vanish from sight,” Kinley said, illustrating to listeners what that event might look like.
“Let's just say there are 100 million [Christians on Earth]. And those people instantly disappear from planet Earth. How is that going to impact the world?”
Kinley said that when the rapture occurs, he believes people will react by going on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram and news outlets to attempt to understand what has happened.
Hampson said he finds that it is “really interesting” to study and learn about some of the ways that unbelievers will try to make sense of the rapture when it happens. Perspectives outside of the biblical ones, he noted, are often riddled with “demonic deception.”
“In New Age teaching, for decades now, they have taught in various circles [and] in different forms … that there's coming a time when all the people who are holding back progress will be taken from mother Earth or the universe will take them,” Hampson explained. “[And that] the people that are taken are not taken to be with the Lord, but they're taken out of here so that the world can finally rise to the level that it's supposed to rise [and] that we're holding them back. And eventually, the universe is going to answer.”
Following the rapture, Hampson said, unbelievers are likely to experience “chaos, grief and panic.” And he said many people will try to use the aftermath of the rapture as an opportunity to capture the minds of other people through deceptive explanations outside of biblical truth about what has occurred.
“People are going to look for answers. … And I think there are evil people, globalists and other people who will not hesitate for a second and realize this is the moment they've all been waiting for. This is the crisis that's finally going to let them push everything over the edge,” Hampson predicted.
“But there are probably other excuses too. [Unbelievers might try to make sense of the rapture by saying] ‘there's probably wormholes and physics type stuff.’ … I can see people speculating, ‘Oh, they were taken up in a wormhole and all these people got sucked out.’ So there's going to be all kinds of wild explanations and initially, people will gravitate to it.”
Aside from unbelievers speculating and coming up with false assertions to try to understand why the rapture occurred, Hampson predicts there will be people who have heard the Gospel before the rapture and they will know that the rapture is a biblical event only after it has occurred.
“There will be some people who are close enough to Christian teaching who will realize right off the bat, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the rapture that my sister was talking about, or my grandmother was telling me about or that I used to make fun of,” he said.
For Christians, Hampson said, it's important to evangelize and not to boast about the rapture to unbelievers. It is a Christian's duty, he said, to inform unbelievers about the coming rapture, but in a loving way that would bring them to repentance and believe in the Lord.
“As we talk about this and the chaos that's going to be in the world afterward, we don't do that gleefully. … God [has] given the church 2,000 years already to realize this is the truth. … And that's our whole mission as the Church is to evangelize to the world,” Hampson advised.
“So, it's our job as believers now to keep telling people that because we don't want anybody to experience it. Unfortunately, we know that most of the world will go through it.”
Nicole Alcindor is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: [email protected].
