RE: To: Steve (To Rapture or Not to Rapture--that is the question)
 

Steve, 

Maybe we could look at this another way?  I disagree with the different groups of Christians theory in the fact that those who didn’t obey enough or have enough “agape” love won’t get raptured and those who did will.  How do we know where the top of the barometer is?  How do we know HOW much agape love is required in order to get raptured?  How do we know HOW much obedience is required?  WE DON’T!  Doesn’t Jesus say that ALL who truly believe in Him, will see the Kingdom of Heaven?  Either you are IN Christ Jesus or NOT.  Either you are a true believer or you are not a believer at all.  There is no in between.  God doesn’t grade on a curve.  He grades on the cross and the finished work of Christ Jesus.  Jesus did it all, PAID it all and He said, "It is FINISHED!"  There is nothing that we can do of our own accord that will buy us a ticket to our rapture to Heaven.  We as believers need to BELIEVE, REST, TRUST AND ABIDE in Him.  

I believe that the barley Christians are ALL those who believed upon the name of Jesus prior to the rapture will go in the first rapture.  We had softened our hearts and like the barley, it is soft.  Harvesting of Barley is much easier than harvesting of wheat.  Barley is thrown into the air and the wind separates the outer skin from the inner.  That is a picture of us believers going up in the air to meet with Jesus.  The outer skin represents our old bodies which will transform in the twinkling of an eye.  The inner part of the barley represents our spirits, the soft part going up in the air.  

Those who accept Jesus during the tribulation are the wheat harvest.  It takes the tribulum to separate the wheat kernel from the chaffe.  It takes time to harvest wheat and takes work and effort.  It is also violent and harsh in the way that the separation of the outer skin and the inner skin occurs.  This is a picture of the tribulation saints who have to go through the tribulation, which is not pleasant.  Because their hearts were hardened before the rapture, they have to endure some or a lot of the tribulation, which IS violent and harsh.  They are being sifted like wheat.  I do believe that there is a second rapture, thus illustrating the wheat harvest.  Two harvests.  Two threshing floors.  One non-violent (barley harvest/pre-trib rapture  of believers), the other violent (wheat harvest/mid trib rapture of tribulation saints/believers).  Thoughts?

 

Maranatha,

Merianne