I am a Christian apologist who defends the faith against false prophets. Christian apologetics (Ancient Greek: ἀπολογία, “verbal defense, speech in defense”) is a branch of Christian theology that defends Christianity.
This is why people do not believe in God.
David Jeremiah was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1941. He succeeded Tim LaHaye , the author of the Left Behind series, as the senior pastor at Shadow Mountain Community Church, a Baptist megachurch in El Cajon, a city in San Diego County, California. Jeremiah’s leadership has led the church to expand to nine satellite congregations. In 1982, he founded Turning Point for God, a multi-media broadcast ministry. The mission statement of Turning Point reads: “to deliver the unchanging Word of God to an ever-changing world.” This program has become an international leader in the world of broadcast ministry.
Jeremiah is considered one of the foremost evangelical authorities on the theological doctrine of eschatology, the study of the end times. Like his counterparts, he believes the Rapture is intimate.
In 2023, Jeremiah published a book outlining the scheduled events for the Rapture, titled The Great Disappearance. When Jesus returns there will be a “great disappearance” as Christians from the grave and those still alive will be lifted up to meet a visible Jesus in the clouds of heaven. Those who have nor accepted Christ as their savior will remain on earth awaiting the Second Coming. In this time period unbelievers will endure seven years of tribulation as the Antichrist rules the earth. During the “Tribulation Period” there will be unbearable suffering, literally it will be “hell on earth.” This period will end with the Battle of Armageddon, when Christ defeats all evil and establishes his thousand-year reign. During the Tribulation Period people will still have the opportunity to accept Jesus as their savor, at the end of this time the doors of heaven will be closed forever. This course of events is a verifiable fact according to Jeremiah who wrote, “the inerrancy of the Bible’s prophetic passages.”
There are multiple issues that I have with Jeremiah’s thesis, only one of which I will currently address. He allows three exceptions exempting those from doom at the time of the Rapture: Every single follower of Jesus Christ, as well as those under the age of accountability – all babies, young children, and mentally disabled – gone in a flash, along with those who have died in Christ.
Jeremiah maintains that every part of his synopsis is authenticated by scripture, though these three exemptions have no biblical reference. Why does the evangelical pastor exempt these three groups and none other?
I profess that beyond children and the mentally disabled there are numerous reasons that individuals don’t believe in the Christian message of salvation. The list would be too extensive to even begin to chart. It ranges from a trauma to an alternate view of religion. It ranges from preachers like David Jeremiah’s uncompromising judgment to Ralph Reed’s myopic vision of the exclusiveness of Christianity, that deters individuals with a mature conscious from believing.
Robert Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, is another Second Coming soothsayer. In his sermon series “How Can I Know?” that was preached in October of this year, he emphasized the wrath of God that will descend upon all who have not accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior. He did a mathematical computation determining how many people worldwide are not Christians, but adhere to an alternate religion. According to Jeffress, if the Rapture would occur this day, this hour, “that means nearly six billion people have embraced the wrong religion and will spend eternity separated from God.”
As my father has taught me since high school, “If that is your God, I don’t want any part of Him.”