A Pattern With a Hole

Recently, a reader named Kim sent me an email in which she speculated about the possibility of the Jewish day of mourning known as Tisha B'Av (the Ninth of Av) being connected with the Rapture. She seemed pretty excited about the idea, and she just wanted to get my response.

Although I had seen mention of the Ninth of Av in regard to the First and Second Temples before, I confess that I was only marginally aware of the significance of the date to the Jewish people and the gravity with which it is observed. And needless to say, I had certainly never made any connection between this Jewish day of mourning and the Rapture. But after reading Kim's email and giving it some thought (and feeling a few firm pokes from the Holy Spirit), the first word of my response was:

KA-BOOM!

I happily responded to her encouragement to "do something with it," and so here I am, as promised. In this article, I want to explore an idea that had literally never occurred to me before, and that is the tantalizing connection between the destruction of the First and Second Temples and the translation of the Church—an idea that Kim socked me with out of the clear blue sky. First, we will take a cursory look at the events that led up to and that followed the destruction of both Jewish temples, and then discuss some of the reasons why I agree that there does seem to be a compelling connection between Tisha B'Av and the catching away of the body of Christ.

What I intend to show is that there is a pattern at work in regard to the events surrounding the destruction of the First and Second Temples, and the third and final round of that pattern that occurs in the end times appears to have a gaping hole in it:

A gaping hole that would be filled perfectly by the Rapture.

A word before we get started...

As some of you may know, there has been a significant flurry of Rapture-date speculation in the past few months that has focused on 2022. I'm not going to delve into the specifics of any of the theories currently being bandied about, but I do know that there has been speculation that highlights such dates and periods as June 15 (fail), July 23, June 15–September 28, and others.

On a number of occasions in the past, I have made my personal feelings about Rapture-date speculation known, and it boils down to this:

Although blatant, thus-saith-the-Lord date-setting for the Rapture is absolutely unscriptural and to be avoided, I don't cough up a hairball over Scripture-based speculation about the possible timing of the Rapture or its potential connection to or relationship with certain dates of biblical significance, as long it is done in the spirit of gaining a greater and deeper understanding of God's Word and His Plan for the Ages, and with the crystal clear caveat that the exact date of the Rapture is not for us to know with certainty because God has placed the timing of end-time events under His own authority (Acts 1:7).

In the simplest of terms:

News flash: Scripture says we're never gonna pin it down with certainty—so deal with it and carry on as if you actually believed that.

By the way, our Heavenly Father did that for our benefit. He knows that if we allow ourselves to become overly focused on (read obsessed with) one specific date for the translation of the Church, it is nigh unto impossible for us to live with the type of active anticipation we are commanded to live with in regard to the blessed, purifying hope of the Rapture. Sadly, a number of believers fell into that trap in connection with the stellar-planetary confirmation of the "great sign" of Revelation 12:1–2 on September 23, 2017, and I suspect that many of them learned this lesson the hard way. 'Nuff said.

OK, let's start off by taking a trip back in time to the days of King Solomon.

The First Temple

King David aspired to build the first permanent dwelling place on earth for the God of the Jews on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, but the God of the Jews had other ideas. God told David that he would not be the one to build His temple because he was a man of war and had shed much blood, and that He wanted His dwelling place to be built by a man of peace during a time of peace (1 Chron. 22:6–16). Well, in the early tenth century BC, God's people were at peace with their enemies, and that man of peace was David's son Solomon.

Construction began in the 960s BC, and it took seven years to complete. Solomon's Temple was a stunningly magnificent structure by anyone's standards, and it was Solomon who carried out the dedication ceremony—an event that was followed by an extended period of sacrifices and festivities.

One noteworthy item concerning the dedication of the First Temple, however, is that immediately following Solomon's prayer of dedication, the fire of God's glory fell on the temple so intensely that the priests couldn't even enter it (2 Chron. 7:1–3). This is referred to as the Shekinah glory, and it was certainly a theophany, or a visible manifestation of God's presence.

This theophany was short-lived, of course, because it wasn't long before the priests were able to enter the temple and do their God-ordained jobs (otherwise the temple wouldn't have been much use). But at least on the day of its dedication, the First Temple was ablaze with the overpowering presence of God's Shekinah glory to demonstrate His approval of their efforts.

Here today, gone tomorrow: There is scholarly debate concerning God's presence (or the lack or the degree thereof) in both the First and Second Temples during various intervals of time, and I found it to be a surprisingly deep, complex issue as I prepared to write this article.

For example, when the Second Temple was dedicated (Ezra 6:16–18), Scripture makes no mention of the Shekinah glory descending on the structure, as it had at the dedication of Solomon's Temple. Some Evangelical scholars argue that this means the presence of God never dwelt in the Second Temple, as it had in the First Temple. For them, it's an either/or issue—either God's presence was in the temple, or it wasn't.

Others argue it's not that simple. For example, they argue that if God's presence never darkened the door of the Second Temple, then who exactly is Jesus referring to when He rebukes the scribes and the Pharisees:

Oops...and there are a number of other clear scriptural clues that God's presence was indeed in the Second Temple—Shekinah glory or no Shekinah glory, as was believed by the vast majority of Jews.

Many biblical scholars agree that God's "presence" is a multi-layered, multi-faceted phenomenon that can take on a number of aspects, dimensions, and levels of intensity as God chooses, and it is well beyond the scope of this article. Many scholars agree that God did indeed dwell in the Second Temple, but not on the same level of intensity as He did in the First Temple. Luckily for me, however, I am only focusing on the literal, physical destruction of those temples, rather than on what kind of "presence" God had or didn't have in either one of them at any given point in time.

Israel enjoyed unparalleled peace and prosperity under King Solomon for the first few years of his reign, but disputes and divisions inevitably began to creep in and fester. It's a long story with many twists and turns, and I really don't want to turn this into a history book (a history book whose key facts and dates routinely vary from source to source). I just want to give you the broad strokes pertaining to the literal destruction of both temples.

It's a sad tale of sin, pride, and the lust for power, but one of the major events that occurred around this time was a nasty fistfight over who would succeed Solomon as king. The 12 tribes of Israel eventually split into two groups over this issue: the 10 tribes of the Northern Kingdom (who rejected Solomon's son Rehoboam as king and retained the name of Israel), and the two remaining tribes of Judah and Benjamin in the Southern Kingdom (who embraced Rehoboam as king and who would be known as Judah). Meanwhile, the Northern Kingdom ended up being ruled by a former member of Solomon's government named Jeroboam.

In the Northern Kingdom, Jeroboam gave the Levites their pink slips and promoted the worship of false gods (many of them gods the Jews had persisted in worshiping since their days in Egypt), and the Northern Kingdom fell deeper and deeper into idolatry. And things weren't all that much better in the Southern Kingdom. Although Judah would occasionally drift back into God's favor from time to time, they too would eventually become solidly entrenched in idolatry and spiritual decay.

In the eighth century BC, the Jews' major enemy was Assyria to the north, and the prophet Hosea foretold Assyria's subjugation of the 10 tribes of the Northern Kingdom (Hos. 11:5). However, the LORD intervened to save Judah from the same fate at the hands of the Assyrians, who eventually suffered God's judgment.

In the seventh century BC, Egypt was a major regional power. However, the Babylonians became the big boys on the block after the Battle of Charchamesh in about 606 BC, when the Babylonians defeated the combined forces of Assyria, Egypt, and a few others and effectively took control of both the Northern and Southern Kingdoms and began the first round of taking Jewish people into exile back to Babylon. According to some commentators, the prophesied 70-year period of judgment on the Jews began at this time when the Babylonians' complete dominance over them began and the first exiles were taken captive.

The Babylonians laid siege to Jerusalem in 597 BC, and Nebuchadnezzar appointed Zedekiah as king over Judah. But in 587 BC, Zedekiah rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar, and formed a shaky, ill-advised alliance with the Egyptians for protection. That alliance with their enemies failed to stop Nebuchadnezzar from attacking Jerusalem in 586 BC, and this time the Babylonians weren't messing around:

This time they destroyed Jerusalem, and with it the First Temple.

Although some may quibble about the exact year, very few quibble about the exact day. Traditional Jewish writings agree that the destruction of the First Temple occurred on the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av:

Tisha B'Av.

The missing years: Be aware that if you read versions of the above events written by Jewish people, many of them will have the First Temple being destroyed in 423 or 422 BC, roughly 165 years later than the bulk of reliable historians. There are several explanations for this gross discrepancy, but one of the reasons behind it is connected to the Jewish interpretation of Daniel's Prophecy of the 70 Weeks (Dan. 9:24–27).

In the minds of many Jewish rabbis over the last two millennia, the period of 70 weeks (490 years) that Daniel mentions refers to the time between the destruction of the First and Second Temples (which it DOESN'T). So, first they'll place the destruction of the Second Temple at 68 or 69 AD (as opposed to the widely accepted date of 70 AD), and then count back 490 years to arrive at 423 or 422 BC for the destruction of the First Temple. There are other reasons for these "missing years," but this quirky interpretation of Daniel 9:24–27 is often identified as being part of the problem.

Actually, it should surprise no one that the Jews would misinterpret Daniel's prophecy so egregiously, since it points to Christ being their Messiah with flaming arrows and a flashing neon sign. In the years following Christ's earthly ministry, it was a wee bit too obvious that Jesus was in fact the one being "cut off" after 69 weeks in verse 26, so Jewish rabbis had to break out the scriptural pliers. I won't be dogmatic about it, but a number of Evangelical scholars have put together a very strong argument that when Jesus made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem on what would become the first Palm Sunday, it literally represented the precise completion of the 69th week, thus setting the stage for the events of Passion Week and inaugurating the gap between the 69th and the 70th weeks. Of course, the 70th week is the Tribulation that commences with the confirmation of the treaty of Daniel 9:27.

Needless to say, Jewish rabbis over the last two thousand years have done everything in their power to scramble, obfuscate, and reinterpret the dates and details surrounding these events so as to make it as difficult as possible to connect any of it to their real Messiah, Jesus Christ of Nazareth:

The one they pierced.

Following the destruction of the First Temple, the Babylonians took most of the remaining Jewish population back to Babylon as exiles, as they had already done on a more limited basis on a couple occasions over the previous two decades. Thus began the longest and most severe portion of the 70-year period of judgment known as the Babylonian captivity that began in about 606 BC. This 70-year period of judgment was prophesied by Jeremiah (Jer. 25:1–14), and Isaiah also spoke of this coming period of judgment on Israel at the hands of the Babylonians (Isa. 39:5–7).

Key points:

1. Note that it was Israel's great sin that led to the destruction of the First Temple. The Jews had persisted in worshiping false gods, and had largely abandoned God, His laws, and His ways. It seemed that nothing could shake them from their spiritual stupor.

The last straw for God, however, was the fact that when they were under threat from the Babylonians, instead of turning to Him in repentance and trusting in Him to fight for them as He had done so many times in the past, they made a flimsy, politically expedient deal with their sworn enemies for a fleeting false peace—and destruction followed.

Hold that thought.

2. The First Temple—the physical, visible representation of the presence of and their relationship with God—was destroyed and effectively removed from their midst on the ninth day of the month of Av.

3. A major round of judgment followed on the heels of the destruction of the First Temple.

In fact, you may as well go ahead and hold all three of those thoughts.

The Second Temple

In about 537 BC, King Cyrus allowed the Jews to leave Babylon and return to Jerusalem, 70 years after Nebuchadnezzar began taking exiles back to Babylon in 606 BC. Although Cyrus issued a decree allowing them to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, the work was greatly hindered and finally put on hold due to fierce opposition from the local people. Later, in about 521 BC, King Darius authorized the work to continue, and the Second Temple was completed in about 515 BC.

To their credit, the Jewish people never again fell into idolatry to any significant degree after the Babylonian captivity in the sixth century BC and their subsequent return to their land. They stuck with their God and the Law of Moses like glue from that time on.

But...leave it to the Jews. The downside of this was the fact that over the next several centuries, Jewish religious leaders managed to turn the Law of Moses into the most burdensome morass of petty legalism the world has ever seen. They successfully stripped it clean of the grace and mercy that God wanted to show His Chosen People and ultimately the world through His Son, their promised Messiah whose blood sacrifice would provide atonement for sin—something the blood of bulls and goats only foreshadowed. Jewish religious leaders believed and taught that righteousness came only through obedience to the Law of Moses. End of story.

In other words:

Their spiritual pendulum had managed
to swing too far in the opposite direction:
from wanton idolatry to wooden legalism.

That was the situation that confronted Jesus when He began His public ministry in around AD 28–30. Jesus preached a radically different message from what the Jews were used to hearing, and many thousands of common people embraced the Lord's teaching, believed He was truly their promised Messiah, and followed Him—enough to threaten the religious leaders of the day to the point where they conspired to discredit and ultimately destroy Him.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem on the back of a donkey at the beginning of the last week of His earthly life and presented Himself as the Jews' long-awaited Messiah, throngs of common people showered Him with adoration:

Understand that "the prophet" wasn't a reference to any old prophet. This moniker was a highly specific reference to the prophet that Moses prophesied God would send them in the future—a prophet who would speak for God, and to whom God would require Israel to listen (Deut. 18:15–19). The Jews understood that Moses was referring to the promised Messiah, and so the people were clearly referring to Jesus as that Messiah.

But Israel's religious leadership recoiled at the sight of such public adoration being directed at this Nazarene trickster. They secretly plotted to have Jesus arrested in the middle of the night out of the view of the adoring crowds, have Him falsely tried in a series of illegal trials, and then goad the Romans into crucifying Him. On the third day He rose from the grave, and after being seen by over 500 people on the Mount of Olives over the next 40 days, He bid His beloved disciples farewell and ascended back to heaven.

Now, in early AD 68, Emperor Nero ordered Roman general Vespasian to put down a growing rebellion in Judea, and by July of AD 69 he had every area except the city of Jerusalem brought under control. But Nero had committed suicide in June of AD 68, and political turmoil ensued. Vespasian returned to Rome, ultimately became emperor after a few spins of the imperial revolving door, and sent his son Titus to join the waiting troops to finish the job.

What this delay accomplished, however, was to give large numbers of believers in Jerusalem a brief window of opportunity to escape the city before its destruction because they heeded Jesus' prophetic words—words that were spoken on the Mount of Olives a few days before He was crucified:

In AD 70, the four Roman legions that had been surrounding Jerusalem for some time finally attacked, and they burned and sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the Second Temple, and slaughtered approximately 1.1 million Jews.

There are historical records that suggest that the Romans had no desire to destroy the Second Temple and had ordered it to be spared, which is readily believable because the Romans, cruel and domineering as they often were, at least had an abiding respect for beauty. Some say they planned to turn the magnificent structure into a temple to one of their Roman gods.

But there are reports that a fire was started in the close vicinity of the temple during the general melee, set by Roman conscripts (conscripts who were almost certainly of Arab descent) acting against their superiors' orders—and the temple was quickly engulfed in flames and destroyed. In the days following the fire, Jesus' words that "there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down" (Mark 13:2) were fulfilled to the letter, because the large number of gold decorations and artifacts in the temple melted and the molten gold would seep into the cracks between the stones, waiting to be scraped out by anyone armed with a crowbar.

A-n-d guess what? Jewish and historical records confirm that the Second Temple was destroyed on the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av:

Tisha B'Av.

The Second Temple was destroyed on the exact same day as the First Temple, and ever since that time Tisha B'Av has been observed by Jews as a national day of mourning.

We shall be restored: One thing that struck me while preparing to write this article was the fact that Tisha B'Av, the Jewish day of mourning, is not 100 percent about mourning. Over the centuries, the Jews have incorporated a certain degree of joy and comfort into their observance of this day, and use it as an opportunity to look forward with joyful anticipation to the coming of the Mashiach. The Scripture reading for that day is the book of Lamentations, the next to last verse of which reads:

In other words, bring us back to Yourself, LORD, and restore us to our previous intimate relationship with You—which is something the Jews have come to associate with the eventual arrival of the Mashiach. Of course, the Jewish people have no idea how much joy and comfort the arrival of their Mashiach is going to bring for those who have trusted in His finished work of atonement for their salvation. You know, it always amazes me how the Jews can be basically right about something, but in the most upside down, backwards sort of way you can imagine.

The attack on Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70 initiated a period of time known as the Jewish-Roman wars, which ended with the Bar Kochba revolt in the AD 130s. After the Romans crushed that revolt, they finally decided to wipe out Israel as a nation once and for all, and the bulk of what remained of the Jewish population was either slaughtered, killed in battle, deported into slavery, or doomed to die of starvation or disease. The Romans renamed the region "Palaestina," according to some in honor of the Philistines, traditionally one of the Jews' most hated enemies (although some scholars take issue with this). Either way, this is clearly where the English word "Palestine" comes from.

So, the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70 saw the beginning of a major round of judgment on Israel that continued up until modern times. In the late nineteenth century, Jews began to return to what was once Israel, and the dream of establishing a Jewish homeland in the land God had given them began to burn more intensely in the hearts of Jews all over the world. Finally, on May 14, 1948, the nation of Israel was reborn. God has blessed and caused Israel to prosper, and He is preparing them for their final blessing of coming to know their real Messiah and being ushered into their promised kingdom.

But there are still a few speed bumps before we get to that point.

Key points:

1. Again, it was Israel's great sin that led to the destruction of the Second Temple. The Jews had turned God's grace and mercy into a burdensome yoke that enslaved the people in an endless cycle of legalistic futility.

But the last straw for God was when He finally sent them their promised Messiah—His one and only perfect Son, whose task was to put into effect the Father's plan of redemption on behalf of first the Jews and then the entire world. As a nation, Israel staunchly rejected Him and had Him executed in the most ignominious way imaginable. And to add insult to injury, they even enlisted the aid of their sworn enemies to do it.

2. The Second Temple—the physical, visible representation of the presence of and their relationship with God—was destroyed and effectively removed from their midst on the ninth day of the month of Av, just like the First Temple.

3. A major round of judgment followed on the heels of the destruction of the Second Temple, just as it had the First.

Nod if any of this is starting to sound familiar.

Third time's a charm

And that brings us up to the present day, so first let's get the lay of the land.

It is clear that God is rapidly placing the actors and props in position on the world stage, the lights are being dimmed, the music is starting up, and the Rapture is the cue to raise the curtain on the final scene of world history.

The world is almost uniformly arrayed against Israel, and Jerusalem has clearly become a "burdensome stone for all people" (Zech. 12:3). Israel is being pushed into a corner where they feel increasingly compelled to foolishly make a deal with their enemies to divide their land to achieve a false peace. I believe this is what is in view in Isaiah 28:14–22 and in Joel 3:1–2.

I believe that at least one element of Israel's great sin this third time around is dividing their land in some species of two-state solution. Many people underestimate what a big deal this is for God, who calls it "my land" in Joel 3:2. And as before, rather than trusting in their God to fight for them, in the process Israel is going to make yet another flimsy, politically expedient deal with their sworn enemies for a fleeting false peace, which, in addition to widespread idolatry, is what finally provoked God to unleash a major round of judgment on them after the destruction of the First Temple.

But there is something deeper and more profound to Israel's great sin in the third round of this pattern, and it began when the Church was conceived.

In fact, it began with Moses.

Just before the Israelites crossed over into the Promised Land, Moses received from God what is known as the Song of Moses (Deut. 32:1–43), and much of the song is prophetic in nature. The song predicts Israel's falling away, and was meant to serve as a witness against them when they did so. But one cryptic passage in the song refers a group of people who are "not a people" and who are a "foolish nation" that God will use to provoke Israel to jealousy:

So, who are "those who are not a people"? Who is this "foolish nation"? Paul refers to this mysterious group of people in his letter to the Romans:

Rev. John MacArthur explains this about as well as it can be explained:

God had told the Jews through Moses (and Christ reiterated it again and again to their face with thundering clarity) that because they would turn away from Him, He would turn away from them and show His grace and mercy to another group of non-Jewish people and that this would provoke them to anger and jealousy. And today, two thousand years later, all you have to do to see that ooze out of their pores is to talk to them about the idea of Jesus Christ of Nazareth being their true Messiah.

Baseless hatred: Of course, the Jewish people are keenly aware of the fact that they have suffered under God's judgment for most of the last two thousand years, and they are smart enough to know that God doesn't unleash judgment in a cavalier manner. As members of the body of Christ, we are keenly aware that the reason for their judgment is the fact that they crucified their promised Messiah—but the Jews are compelled to contrive ways to avoid that simple truth like a drunken dentist. So...in the minds of the Jews, why has God judged them for the last two millennia? It's gotta be something.

Well, according to Jewish rabbis over the centuries, God has judged them for what they call "baseless hatred." Yes, hatred in their hearts that's...uhm, you know, without basis. Yep, that's why God has judged them like gangbusters over the last two millennia—whatchya call yer "baseless hatred."

Right. You know, I catch myself thinking "You mean to tell me that's the best they could come up with??" But then I stop and remind myself that, yeah, that really is the best they could come up with—at least it beats admitting they had their Messiah executed in the most gruesome way imaginable.

Although God is certainly provoked by the Jews' dividing of their land in the treaty of Daniel 9:27 (after the removal of that foolish non-people), this is arguably the greatest "great sin" the Jews are guilty of during the Age of Grace while the temple of the Holy Spirit is on earth in the form of the Church. The miraculous conception and meteoric growth of the body of Christ was a unique revelation from God, and as a nation Israel rejected it. Never forget:

The rejection of God's revelation
always provokes His judgment.

We know this final round of judgment involves the Antichrist going after the Jews with a vengeance after a portion of them refuse to embrace him as their Messiah, and that believing remnant (about one-third, based on Zech. 13:8) will be protected in the wilderness throughout the Great Tribulation to be ushered alive into the kingdom after the Second Coming. The rest (two-thirds) will apparently perish at the hands of the Antichrist prior to that.

And understand that Satan couldn't care less which Jews worship his man the Antichrist and which ones don't—he wants them ALL dead because it is the Jews who trigger the Second Coming when they call upon the Lord to save them at the climax of the Great Tribulation. As a result, in his mind, killing every last one of them is the key to putting the Second Coming on ice and allowing him to hang on to his sorry excuse of a kingdom where he can practice his phony little God imitation.

Perish the thought: I've had people look askance at me for suggesting that the entire remaining two-thirds of the Jews, those who are not part of the believing remnant who reject the Antichrist and are protected by God in the wilderness until the end of the Tribulation, will perish at the hands of the Antichrist prior to the Second Coming. In other words, that "all Israel will be saved" means precisely what it says. I know...it sounds pretty grim. I get it, trust me. But instead of calling me names and accusing me of spewing hateful, anti-Semitic rubbish, go back and read what happened to the Israelites prior to entering the Promised Land, which was a foreshadowing of their entering the kingdom after the Second Coming (Num. 14:26–35; Deut. 1:34–36). Better yet, let me save you the trouble.

God had something to say about every adult member (over the age of 20) of the generation who believed and sided with the 10 spies who came back with bad reports...you know, the ones who carped at Moses about how they couldn't enter the Promised Land in spite of God's promises to the contrary? Yeah, the ones who whined for Moses to take them back to Egypt (Num. 14:1–4). God said every single one of them would die in the desert before He would allow Israel to enter the Promised Land. And they did. Say it with me:

Every. Single. One.

Me? Spew hateful, anti-Semitic rubbish? Perish the thought.

So in the end times (which in some contexts can include the entire Church Age), Israel provokes God with another great sin, and it causes God to unleash one last major round of judgment on them.

Hmm...something seems to be missing.

Let's review this round by round and see if we can spot it:

ROUND ONE

1. The Jews' great sin is rampant idolatry, plus failing to trust in God for their protection and instead making a foolish deal with their enemies.

2. The First Temple is destroyed.

3. A major round of judgment falls upon Israel via the Babylonians.

ROUND TWO

1. The Jews' great sin is turning God's Word into legalism, and rejecting their promised Messiah and having Him crucified like a common criminal.

2. The Second Temple is destroyed.

3. A major round of judgment falls upon Israel via the Romans.

ROUND THREE

1. The Jews' great sin is dismissing with anger and jealousy the salvation Christ offered them as they watched it go out to the Gentiles. They should have understood Moses' prophecy and repented, but they refused to do so. Not only that, but they will divide God's land.

2.   ?   ?   ?   ?   ? 

3. A major round of judgment falls upon Israel via the Antichrist.

Not to be overly dramatic or anything, but I think you can see the problem. There is a hole in the pattern this third time around, and that's where God destroys or removes the physical, visible representation of His presence on earth, following a great sin of Israel and prior to His unleashing of a round of judgment on them.

• Round One: In 586 BC, it was the destruction of the First Temple.

• Round Two: In AD 70, it was the destruction of the Second Temple.

And that begs the question:

Is there something that fills this hole
in the pattern the third time around?

I believe there is:

As I've already mentioned, born-again believers may be the body of Christ, but we are also the temple of the Holy Spirit—the physical, visible representation of the presence of God the Holy Spirit on earth, starting on the day of Pentecost two thousand years ago and ending the moment we are caught up to be with the Lord in the translation of the Church.

As a result, I believe it is the Rapture—the removal of the physical, visible representation of God the Holy Spirit's presence on earth—that fills that hole and completes the final round of this pattern. And although I believe the Rapture fills that hole regardless of what day it actually occurs...

IF the Rapture were to occur on Tisha B'Av, just like the destruction of the First and Second Temples, it would dot the last "i" and cross the last "t" of a pattern established by a God who doesn't do random.

KA-BOOM!

Generally speaking, we as believers have utterly failed to grasp something of critical importance, and that is the simple fact that the Rapture has tremendous significance for Israel—almost as much as it does for the Church itself (some might even say more). The Rapture represents the point in time when God no longer has to focus His attention on His Church on earth, and will turn His attention back to dealing with His Chosen People. And it grieves me to say it, but it won't take long for His dealings with His Chosen People to involve purging them in this final round of judgment at the hands of the Antichrist—a round of judgment that is going to make the Holocaust pale in comparison.

The Rapture is going to be an earth-shattering, supernatural event that will shake the world to its core, and make no mistake:

If the Rapture were to occur on Tisha B'Av,
it would shake Israel to its spiritual core.

It would certainly set them thinking about what it all meant; and as they attempted to put the pieces together, I believe it would play right into what God is going to do to re-establish His relationship with His people.

Incidentally, one other rather striking parallel is the following:

• The First Temple was intimately connected with God the Father—the only form of God the Jews understood.

• The Second Temple was intimately connected with God the Son, who presented Himself as the Jews' promised Messiah in the midst of that temple. Not only that, but its veil that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple was torn from top to bottom at the moment He was crucified.

• The Church is intimately connected with God the Holy Spirit, since we are His temple on earth for the duration of the Church Age.

The bottom line is that, given everything we have discussed, it is virtually impossible to ignore the compelling connection between the Rapture, the destruction of the First and Second Temples, and Tisha B'Av—the day they were both destroyed. It all fits.

Connecting dots

Of course, I don't have to remind you that there have been numerous people with really swell theories about the Rapture where everything fit together s-o-o perfectly, and they were all dead wrong as those dates came and went, ruining some really cool charts.

Just so you know, like many Jewish feasts and celebrations, Tisha B'Av occurs over the course of two days, and occurs every year sometime in the mid-July to mid-August time frame. This year, it falls on August 6–7. In 2023, it falls on July 26–27, and in 2024 it falls on August 12–13.

So...could the Rapture occur this year on August 6 or 7? Sure. How about next year on July 26–27? You betcha. August 12–13, 2024? In a heartbeat.

And it could happen today—I'm ready and waiting.

Honestly, if there were an office pool for the year of the Rapture where I work, I would take 2024—after all, the number 24 is connected to the Church (the 24 elders in the book of Revelation), so hey, why not? I mean, who needs all that number crunching when it really could be that boneheadedly simple?

(You'll have to excuse me for a moment while I picture watchmen extraordinaire Lu Vega at PostScripts and Gary and Jeff at Unsealed groaning as they read that last bit—and I certainly can't blame them.)

But whatever we do, think, or say, it is important for us to remember that our speculation about the timing of the catching away of the Church is limited by one critically important factor, and that is our inability to see future events coming. Our Heavenly Father doesn't suffer from that limitation, and so there is no reason for anyone to get on the nearest high horse about how they've got the inside track on the timing of the Rapture...

Because none of us do.

Especially yours truly. Ours is but to keep looking up and redeeming the time, knowing that He is coming for us "soon and very soon," to quote my new favorite earworm of a song.

But I will admit that I have thoroughly enjoyed writing this article for the simple reason that I was able to connect a few dots that I had never connected before, and I learned more about some important aspects of God's plan, God's promises, and God's people—and how He deals with His people when they go off the reservation. And I think that's worthwhile...

Because we all do.

Greg Lauer — JUN '22

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