Sunday, November 26, 2006

Rapture Mania

Commentary by Jack Kelley

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. (2 Timothy 4:3)

As a management consultant I was often asked how much employees should know about the workings of their company, especially in financial matters. My advice was always the same. If you don't tell them the truth, they'll make up their own version and it will be detrimental to the company's profits.

For example, after taxes your neighborhood super market may only get to keep as little as 1/2 of one penny for every dollar's worth of sales. That means it takes $200 in sales to net them one dollar of profit. Admittedly, this is one of the lowest returns on sales in the business world. The average is 3-5 cents on the dollar. But according to surveys, the public thinks the average business makes a 35% profit on sales. They think it would only take $3 in sales to generate one dollar of profit. So would an employee be more concerned about wasting (or stealing) a dollar's worth of inventory or supplies if he believed it only took $3 in sales to make up for it, or if he knew that it takes $200?

"People can't tolerate a vacuum of information" I said, "Better they should know the truth than be susceptible to fantasy."

History Written In Advance

"I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols. See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you." (Isaiah 42:8-9)

The Lord has always used advance disclosure to validate Himself. We call it prophecy. Knowing the end from the beginning, He told His people things that hadn't happened, so that when they did, they would know that He is Who He claims to be. Since we know the truth about Him, we're not susceptible to fantasy.

But there's one area where the Lord has not been crystal clear where End Times events are concerned and that's the timing of the Rapture. For this reason the most outlandish formulas surface whenever world events take a significant turn for the worse, as people look for reasons to believe our time here is nearly up. Many of these formulas can be easily debunked with only a tiny bit of knowledge and discernment, but for some reason they gain traction in the Christian community because of our desire to believe what our itching ears want to hear. Not knowing the truth about the timing of the Rapture, we're susceptible to fantasy.

Full article: http://www.gracethrufaith.com/selah/prophecy/rapture-mania

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