Jesus did not die on that cross and suffer the wrath of God in all its fulness to make sure you could be happy here, He died to make you holy.
We are to be associated with grief and sorrow, we are to be in a constant desire to be with the Lord, we are to have a fervent hatred of evil, that is the calling of all who have been crucified with Christ. You may say, and I would agree, that in these last of days we are to be as Jeremiah was, warning in tears, not continuously seeking for the day so that we can escape the evil, but reaching out to the lost world with the same exact message that we have been commanded to give since we offered ourselves to Him.
Those who accept Jesus Christ as Lord will enjoy His presence in their lives for all eternity, those who do not, those whom the wrath of God abides on, (John 3:36) will spend the same eternity in the Lake of Fire. (Rev. 21:8) Eternal torment or eternal pleasure, these are the only two options.
I see the fervency of some who claim Christ as Lord, most though are just hoping to escape for their own personal satisfaction, they do not want to be as Jeremiah was. It is condescending to what was done that day on the cross to look for nothing but personal pleasure, whether it be in the hope of the rapture, or in the lack of following the will of the Holy Spirit, to “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.” (2 Tim. 4:2) It is no different of a fixation than those who need dreams and visions, and it as self-centered and sinful as the religious organizations that tell those that attend they must perform some form of work, or salvation will be denied them.
We were put here for a purpose, one purpose only, to glorify God, and we are to allow the Holy Spirit within us to do that by reaching out to others with the message of salvation, not how bad the days are, not how the evil and depravity of man has begun to overrun the planet, they already know that, what they do not know is the Savior, and you are the responsible party, you are to be the messenger, and if you will not give that message, then you are in the possibility of being an unprofitable servant. (Matt. 25:30)
Your life and the way it is lived, in the most strictest of terms, is between you and God, and He will require an account of it , (Romans 14:12) but if you are not reaching out to the lost, last days or not, if you are not warning them of their sins, then warning them of the wrath to come, the tribulation period, will place you in the same venue as those in the media, information only with no viable course of action is useless information.
Think on this, and use it as conjecture only, but if you were to see someone in the fires of hell that you knew here on earth while you are standing there in heaven, and they scream at you through hatred and pain, “Why didn’t you tell me!” What are your plans? Just to turn around and continue in the eternal bliss? It is not your fault that they are there. “When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.” (Eze. 3:18) This was specific to Ezekiel, but what will you feel?
If you will not envision this, if you do not have a heart for the lost because you know for a fact that they are going to suffer horribly in hopelessness for all eternity without reprieve, then you can stop looking for the rapture.
“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” (James 1:27) When you stand before Jesus He is going to want to know what you did for Him, He will want to know what you did for those that He came to die for, and if you cannot say in all surety today how will you answer that question, then you have no need to be concerned with the rapture, you need only to contemplate the one thousand year period of time that you will have to think up your excuses.
