Rapture: Ready Or Not?

I have noticed that when I have had times that I wasn't ready to receive a truth because of my religious traditions (doctrines of devils), many times the Lord will just let it drop until He sees that I am ready to receive.

One of the doctrines of devils that had me bound for a long time was "The Rapture." I had a problem with this defeatist theology after I read and studied the New Testament. The Lord tried to show me that it was a false doctrine back in the late 80's, but I wasn't really spiritually mature enough to receive what He had to say.

The problem that I kept coming across was that there was no evidence of any "Rapture" or "catching away" that I could see, and everything pointed to past events that happened in 70 AD. Immediately, the devil came at me with the scripture in 2 Thessalonians 2, saying that these things had not happened. What I was blinded to was that the scripture was written prior to 70 AD.

I still couldn't fit the traditional escapism into what the Bible said, so I ended up believing in a "conditional" Rapture, where the Bride must be ready, not just sitting around waiting. In order to be ready, the Bride must have put on the garments of immortality and incorruption prior to being taken away. That would leave behind the ones that weren't ready to preach during the "Tribulation." (And they would lose their balloon, if you remember that old scare movie!)

It's easy to get caught up in escapist theology when everyone you know believes in it. Fortunately, or unfortunately for most Christians, it is a false doctrine! We are the over-comers! We are more than conquerors! We're not waiting for a great escape, we're here to make this world "On Earth as it is in Heaven!" That's good news!