Raptures, Eagles, and Dead Bodies (Cont’d)
Questions Concerning Those Who Will be Left Behind (Cont’d)
NOW THAT I’VE conveyed a scriptural foundation for my belief that there’ll be a Rapture and that it’s to take place before the Great Tribulation, some of you may still be wondering: Then why don’t you believe Jesus was talking about the Rapture when He stated that certain ones would be taken, while others would be left behind?
Well, as usual, I do so because of my acute awareness of the three laws of disinformation I keep harping on. How do they apply in this case?
First, take an idea that’s firmly rooted in Scripture. In this case, we clearly have evidence for an event that sounds like the Rapture. In fact, Paul couldn’t be more explicit if he tried. To the Thessalonians he said, there will be “a meeting of the living and the dead in Christ with the Lord Himself in the air.”
Second, take a verse that seems to fit the pattern of Rapture references but which doesn’t—as we’ll shortly demonstrate—and then isolate it from all the others.
Third, having removed it from its context, repeat it ad nauseam as if it were the only verse in The Bible that has anything to say about said event.
And voilà, the result is a supposed warning to mankind about the irrevocable abruptness of the Day of the Lord, punctuated by a glorious Rapture of the faithful. Right?
Well, sure, that’s what you’d think were you to never take the time to read The Bible for yourself. Because if you did, you’d notice in Luke’s account, when Jesus told this story to His disciples, they asked Him: “But where are they being taken, Lord?” Then Jesus replied, “Wherever the bodies are, that’s where the eagles will be gathered.” (Luke 17:37)
And that’s when anybody with a lick of sense will say, “Whoa, wait just a darn second here? Bodies? Eagles? What happened to the part about meeting the Lord in the air?”
Then things get even more bizarre when we look into the original language from which The King James Bible is deriving this phrase. According to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, the words for “bodies” and “eagles” turn out to be nowhere near what most think of when they hear those words. According to every biblical translation other than the King James Version, this phrase actually reads: “Wherever the carcasses are, that’s where the vultures will be gathered.”
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Raptures, Eagles, and Dead Bodies: Questions Concerning Those Who Will be Left Behind
“Really grabs your attention… Wild how he shows the roots of this idea… The big takeaway is, context really matters…”
To hear Academia’s essay chat about Raptures, Eagles, and Dead Bodies, CLICK HERE.
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Two things instantly strike me in light of this added dimension to the story. First, the fact that The King James Bible provides a clue that this “catching away” is an earthly event, where “bodies and eagles are gathered,” should be enough to cause people to discard it as having anything to do with Paul’s description of what’s clearly an otherworldly event, where “we’ll be meeting the Lord in the air.”
And second, add to that our modern understanding that these bodies and eagles are really carcasses and vultures, and it becomes even more laughable that this event would persist in being associated with the Rapture of the Church, even by the most tolerant-minded of Christians.
No wonder the unbelieving world today, in our Internet age of instant information, considers the belief in an honest-to-goodness Rapture to be sheer madness. More tragic still, though, is how this new take on what was once considered rocked-ribbed Scripture has undermined even the Church’s view of what Paul intended for God’s people, when he first uttered these words concerning that day: “Therefore, encourage one another with these words.” (First Thessalonians 4:18)
So tell me: How encouraging are his words in light of the fact that the event spoken of in Matthew and Luke can no longer be understood in the same vein as Paul’s message of being caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord?
Fortunately for us, though, because there’s more than one book in it, The Bible’s overall perspective rescues us from such pessimism and doubt when we look beyond what the latch-isolate-and-repeat crowd insists is the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help them God.
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To hear Kent and Zen Garcia talk about correcting biblical misconceptions, from October 28, 2021, CLICK BELOW.
Story Continues From Above
IN CONCLUSION, we only have to ask a few questions to slay one of the most voracious of all disinformation monsters in the history of the Church. This monster insists that the story of certain ones being taken and others being left behind is a story of the Rapture, and because of the obvious contradictions stemming from such a belief, even the Church has succumbed to the notion that there might be no such thing as the Rapture.
In response to such monstrous ideas, we ask: If Jesus is predicting the Rapture of the Church, what are carcasses and vultures doing stinking up the place?
The answer, in light of new evidence, is: It’s clearly no Rapture at all, and in one fell swoop, that monster is vanquished.
As for the next question: So, if this event described by Jesus isn’t the Rapture, then what is it?
Oddly enough, the answer, in my view, is really quite simple. Simple, that is, if one has appreciated and accepted our previous train of thought regarding God’s habit—if we may call it that—of laying down predictable patterns throughout the history of the redemption of mankind. I say, oddly enough, because just as God is predictable in His way of doing things, Satan, as it turns out, is often just as predictable. But whereas God’s ways are predictable because He is, by nature, faithful and true to His word, the devil is predictable for very different reasons.
Satan is predictable because he’s nothing but a cheap, lowdown counterfeit artist who doesn’t have an original idea in his devious mind. As such, his age-old modus operandi is to take everything he sees God doing and to mimic it in a way that his behavior is a kind of mirror image of God’s. This mirror image, of course, is but a wretchedly dark imitation of God’s vibrantly bright image, much in the same way that modern scientific research has discovered the existence of dark matter, which co-exists with what could be called bright matter. While we can see one form of matter, the other form is invisible to the naked eye. So, just as scientists can only study dark matter by looking at the effect it has on the matter we can see, we’re able to detect Satan’s activities by interpreting the patterns of his covert behavior as they crop up throughout human history.
Examples of this have already been discussed in Reel One of Fish Tales. Wherever we’ve seen some of the most important activities of God, in revealing His faithfulness, the devil has been shown to have invaded the territory so that what was once understood as God’s revelation has become so confused that mankind is now convinced it’s the furthest thing from it. We’ve seen this with the story of Christ in The Zodiac, where what was intended to convey the celestial drama of divine redemption is now seen as either a fool’s game or a heretic’s playground. We’ve seen it in the case of Christmas, where what was supposed to teach mankind about the significance of Christ’s birth is now nothing more than a muddled confusion of that original truth.
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Raptures, Eagles, and Dead Bodies: Questions Concerning Those Who Will be Left Behind
“A pretty big deal, reshaping a massive story… A monumental nudge to reflect on how we interpret sacred texts… An enlightening journey…”
To hear Price’s essay review of Raptures, Eagles, and Dead Bodies, CLICK HERE.
Story Continues From Above
And now, we’ve come to yet another example of this kind of camouflage tactic, in that while God speaks of His gathering together of His saints with Christ in a spectacular catching away, the devil, as that perennial angel of light, has made sure to conjure up his own version of a catching away. But whereas God’s catching away is to a place of light, restoration, and life, Satan’s is to a place of darkness, destruction, and death.
So, having come to the realization that Jesus isn’t talking about God’s gathering, in Matthew and Luke, but, rather, Satan’s gathering, we ask: To where are the people who’ve been taken being gathered?
To answer that, we must do some detective work, with our first clue being found in the very word being used in The King James Bible as “bodies,” which in every other translation is “carcasses” or, in some instances, “corpses.” According to certain scholars, these aren’t just any dead bodies. These dead bodies are those that have fallen in battle, which would explain why they’re attracting vultures. Had these been the bodies of most people, they would’ve been buried in a timely manner, according to the custom of the land. In this case, however, they’re not recovered before they become the targets of vultures, thus lending credence to the idea of their being casualties of war.
This leads to our final question, then: Where, exactly, is this field of battle to which these fallen ones have been gathered?
For that, we turn to our final clue, which comes by way of the word used for “gathered.” According to Strong’s, the Greek word meaning “to gather” comes from sunago, which not only provides the root word for the gathering described in Luke 17, but it’s also the word used in Revelation, as it is written:
These are the demonic spirits that perform signs and go out to all the kings of the Earth, to gather them for battle on the great day of God, the Almighty… And they gathered those kings in the place that in the Hebrew is called … Armageddon.
