The Last Day
For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life; and I myself will raise him up on the last day. (John 6:40)
The last day is an actual day in the future. It is the day that Yahshua the Messiah will come back to this earth in the same way He left.1 He will claim His bride and will establish His kingdom, His rulership over the earth. He told His disciples He would do this when He was with them on the Mount of Olives, just before He went up into the heavens and disappeared in the clouds. On the day He returns, He will come down to earth through the clouds in flaming fire, accompanied by His mighty angels.
On that day He is going to give relief to His people on the earth who are all being persecuted and afflicted — to His strained and stressed ones who have endured to the end.2 He will give His faithful ones rest — those who have proved their love for Him by their patient endurance and their obedience to Him.
At the same time, He is going to deal out tribulation and vengeance to those who have suppressed the truth in their consciences (what they know about God), and also to those who have heard and have not obeyed the gospel of our Sovereign, Yahshua the Messiah. That is the day when He brings an end to this wicked and perverse generation.3
He is not going to give relief to His people by taking them up in the sky sometime before the last day. Relief to His disciples will come on the same day He deals out retribution to His enemies.4 When is this last day? It is on the last day of the seven years of the Great Tribulation5 when the last trumpet sounds.6 At this moment the Sovereign Yahshua will descend with a shout, and the dead in Messiah will rise out of their graves. Those who are alive and have remained faithful to Him will be caught up together with those disciples who come out of their graves to meet their Master Yahshua in the clouds. From that time on they will always be with Him.7
Who will He come for?
Our Master Yahshua made it clear in John 6:39,40,44,54 that the resurrection of His people would come on the last day of this age. This is the true “rapture.” This is the second coming of Messiah for His elect, His bride who is crying out for Him in the wilderness day and night.8 The bride who will be raptured is depicted in Revelation as a woman clothed with the sun, with a crown of twelve stars on her head, and with the moon under her feet.9
Midway through the tribulation period, she will flee to the wilderness to a place prepared for her.10 There she will be cared for during a period of 1,260 days.11 She will have been persecuted and forced out of society, because her way of life was a testimony against the world that its deeds were evil.12 She will be hated by all men, just as her Bridegroom promised.13 She will be hated by all nations and persecuted — not because she has committed mass murder (like the Crusades) or molested children (as some “priests” have done) or isolated herself in some far-away compound or armed herself (as doomsday cults) to fight against the evil empire of the Beast — but because she had the love of her Bridegroom, her Sovereign Yahshua, filling her, producing the unity and peace that qualified her as the true witness of God’s salvation.14
As a restored twelve-tribed nation she fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah 49:6. She becomes the witness of the kingdom15 that He is waiting for as the sign heralding His second coming.16 This woman in the wilderness is the Stone kingdom cut out of the mountain of the world in Daniel 2:34,45. There will be no more room for this Stone in this evil age. She will be in her final moments of crying out to Him, longing for His appearing,17 just before her Bridegroom calls for her and takes her with Him to destroy all the kingdoms of the world.
From the beginning, when she first fell in love with Him, she knew that she would have to go outside the camp of the established religion to be with Him.18 She could no longer be comfortably conformed to the way of the world. She lives only to please her Bridegroom. Soon He will come for her, and He will not delay long. She can even count the days: 1,260 of them.19 At that time, she knows when to expect Him. He will come on the last of the 1,260 days.20
So, who is the bride? The bride is the “we” that will be “changed in a moment … at the last trumpet,” and the “we” who will be “alive and remain [when we are] caught up in the air to meet Him in the clouds.” So, who are the “we”? Are you the “we” or are we the “we” … or are we both the “we”? Our eternal destiny depends on how we answer these questions.
