MY DREAM OF THE RAPTURE

Sometime in 1992, I had the most marvelous yet frightening dream. And until I woke up, I didn't know it was a dream.

In my sleep that night, I saw myself in the ‘realms of eternity’. I was conscious of self in eternity but I was at the same time able to view events as if I was an onlooker.

Why I call it 'eternity' is that time stopped ticking in that realm for me. I’m assuming with God’s enablement: You can view the history of the whole world in eternity and yet never be conscious of time. And that was what happened to me. My life now appeared to me and I began to review and preview it as I wished. Where I was in the realms of eternity, there was no hurry for anything.

However, I realized that life for me in eternity started the day I gave my life to Jesus Christ ... to God that was what counts. So the vision of my life started from that day onward.

I saw the day God visited me and I didn't know He was visiting me at that time. It was a dark night in 1989, and I wept and asked God: “If truly Hell exists and Heaven exists, let me not be thrown to such a wicked place like Hell. I can’t control the rate I am sinning, and if there is any way I can make it to Heaven … since You are my creator … please make the way for me.”

And a still small voice spoke to me thrice: "Your prayers have been heard", after which I had perfect peace and the turbulence of guilt left my soul.
  

Any other thing that happened afterward was just mere formality, because God was there with me that night and I saw that it was the event that triggered my salvation. I saw when I gave my life to Christ; when I got filled with the Holy Ghost in 1991, and many other things which I won’t go into details here.

I noticed in the vision that unfolded before me in my dream that my life seemed to be divided into three stages:

1: I was a very serious and a devoted Christian during the first stage -- roughly a timeframe of up to ten years or even more.

2: After that I became spiritually lukewarm and cold during the second stage; my life became entangled with worldly, selfish and sinful things.

3: Then during the third stage, I suddenly made a resolve to serve God faithfully and even though it wasn't easy for me, due to the magnitude of negative things happening in the world then, I continued being faithful.

Then the very unexpected happened suddenly! One day, the rapture occurred. The people left behind in the rapture heard noises; some heard the earth quaking; some didn't hear anything; but the magnitude of the event was too awesome to me who saw it in eternity.

The second and first heavens were filled with the brightness of God; all the host of heaven, without any warning of any sort, suddenly galloped down to the earth; there was pandemonium amongst the demons even in the kingdom of Satan. Hell shook; all the devils on earth fell down like dead men, until the event was over as quickly as it had started.

Firstly, graves of dead saints in Christ were opened and they flew up into the sky like rockets; Jesus stood there in the sky, hovering over the earth with outstretched arms. And then the saying was fulfilled which says: "Wherever the carcass is, there the eagles shall be gathered together". (See: Matthew 24:28  KJV).

Then we who were alive and in Christ were caught up together with those who rose from the grave. This was done with no human or angelic intervention, but by the power of God … which was so awesome that day!

In the dream, in a twinkle of an eye, I saw myself changed and put on a glorified body, while I flew up and was joined together with the rest of the saints around Jesus Christ in the sky, just above the earth. Jesus looked around Himself as if He was able to take stock of all the millions upon millions of people that stood around Him in white clothing. Being satisfied that all the saints that God the Father gave Him were complete … He began to smile.

At that stage, as we stood in the sky around Jesus, not being in a hurry to move away from there, I couldn't help but admire those around me, and to marvel at what was happening. The thought that was going on within me was: "So I made the rapture? So this is the rapture spoken about? How easy I could have missed it like others who were left behind! Did I really do anything to merit this? My God - I am changed forever! Had I known that this would be like this, I would've served Jesus with all my being every second of my life on earth."

Then the unthinkable happened. I saw many people I would have assumed to be sinners while on earth – they made the rapture. In fact they even appeared to outnumber those who I knew as “Christians” while on earth; because so many of the "so-called Christians" I had known weren’t serving God with their hearts at all, but just mere half-hearted lip service! Just mere show and pretense – man made religious activities of sorts. They had various stages of knowledge of God, but had no real, personal one-on-one intimate relationship with Jesus Christ the Judge -- obeying His clear commands in scripture to obey Him had been lukewarm at best, if at all. So many were spiritually deceived and in their deception, deceiving others … “practicing lawlessness” as Jesus referred to them as in Matthew 7:21-23. These were all left behind to suffer.

This all instantly unfolded before me as I stood there in the sky: Those who made the Rapture (particularly those whom I once thought were sinners) had given their lives to Christ at a certain juncture in life, and even became faithful to God to various degrees; yet in time they chose to live completely without compromise by the absolute standards of God's Word: Righteousness, Holiness and Truth. These were the ones who were taken instead of the "so-called Christians", who were left behind to face the mighty wrath of the devil, an emissary of no little kindness that helps to convey the Father’s sore displeasure to sinners.

"But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly.  For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. 

"Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy [walking in uncompromising righteousness (right relationship with God) - uncompromising obedience to God's Word] to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man."  - Luke 21:35-36 (NKJV)

Then in eternity, I suddenly looked at Hell and my heart stood still. Many of my friends, including my neighbors and even my relatives and those long dead and forgotten … were in Hell!

Generations upon generations of people were in Hell. Even if one had thrown a thermonuclear bomb to wipe out all the people that are currently alive on planet Earth out of existence, it wouldn't have measured up to the magnitude of horrors which I saw the generations of people experiencing in the eternal damnation of Hell’s fire.

It is a shocker of the worst kind for you -- a saved soul -- to know that even one of the souls that you had known on earth is in Hell. Same thing for those in Hell: It brings possibly the best consolatory knowledge to those in Hell to know that one of the souls they knew while on earth made it to Heaven. Nobody in Hell wishes anybody on earth to join them in Hell -- that was how bad a knowledge the vision of my dream revealed to me.

Surprisingly, there in the rapture I was like God and could view and get answers instantly to all my questions and even about those people in Hell! THEREFORE I AM ETERNALLY GRATEFUL TO YOU JESUS FOR REDEEMING MY SOUL -- OUR SOULS!

Then I woke up to find out that it was just a mere dream! And what a dream indeed ... except the Bible says it is actually going to happen!

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God.  And the dead in Christ will rise first.  Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.  And thus we shall always be with the Lord.  Therefore comfort one another with these words.  - 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (NKJV)

By Dennis Ejeh Glenn