Reaching Out and the Rapture
Reaching Out and the Rapture
By Terry James
Recent news items and opinion pieces spark thoughts of fictional journeys by man into the heavenlies–thoughts of Star Trek television series and movies and of Star Wars films and their media franchise that continues to mesmerize moviegoers.
Mankind’s technological reaching out to grasp at the billions of stars that sparkle from the blackness above is unabated. Determination to travel to those faraway galaxies has even become a dream turned to necessity in the minds of a growing portion of earth dwellers.
We hear constantly and consistently from those who fear climate change threatens planet earth that we must begin thinking about colonizing the moon, Mars, or even distant planets not yet discovered. One multibillionaire, I think, is even planning a project that will take him to such a new heavenly body to inhabit.
Many among the Millennials believe their days are limited here on this doomed planet. They must grasp on to such–pardon the pun—high hopes. They are told by the likes of Congresswoman Alexandria Occasion Cortez that they have twelve years at most to live if something isn’t done to turn things around in the destruction of earth’s ecology, environment, etc.
Never mind that one well-known prognosticator said in the 1970s that, because of global warming, New York City would no longer have a harbor by the 1990s. There would be no New York City because the North Pole’s ice would have melted and the resultant rise in water levels would completely cover Manhattan. No matter that such expert scientists as former VP Al Gore proclaimed in the 1990s that, by the time in which we now live, polar bears wouldn’t have any ice to stand on and would perish.
The fear is still being spread by Mr. Gore and those who predict that climate change will exterminate mankind in the near future. Climate change is the number-one political issue for the political leftists in America and around the world. They, of course, have enlisted the autistic Swedish teenager, sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg, to sail around the world in a non-carbon-emitting boat to point out before the United Nations assembly and other forums that we’re all going to die if billions of dollars (particularly American billions of dollars) aren’t poured into changing things.
So, it is essential, you see, that man reach out to the stars to find habitable places where we can migrate in order to save the species. The Chinese, for example, are planning a space shot to reach Mars. It isn’t clear that they are necessarily reaching out to the red planet to see if they can later inhabit it. One is prone to be cynical. One is prone to consider whether their space shot might rather be militarily oriented. They, are, after all, building entire islands in the China Sea and loading them down with military stuff. Why would they be making this tremendous effort to build military platforms in the middle of a vast sea if they fear they must flee to distant galaxies to save themselves?
Boeing, the company that took big economic hits for the crashes of its new 737 commercial airliners, is expending great quantities of corporate wealth to create a commercial earth-to-space-station system. America is joining in, as NASA is looking for ways to get back into the space business on some level, since its fall from the glorious heights during the times of the moon missions.
And, for goodness sake, the Trump administration has just commissioned the United States Space Force! Even the right-wing types who believe the climate change hoax is…well…a hoax are into the desire to go where no man has gone before.
With President Trump’s signing of the National Defense Authorization Act tonight, the U.S. Space Force has officially lifted off. Senior defense officials and military leaders said that the law allows the new service to begin to execute on months of planning. But “thousands” of decisions have yet to be made. It’s not yet settled what missions, equipment, and facilities the new branch will take over from the Army, Navy, Missile Defense Agency and other Defense Department agencies. (“Space Force is go for launch, but ‘thousands’ of decisions remain,” Rapture Ready News, December 28, 2019)
It seems our need to escape the planet is a species-wide matter.
There seems to be Scripture to validate that man will indeed reach into the blackness of space. At least a certain level of success in the collective effort of mankind seems assured, scripturally speaking. And, remember, anything man can imagine, he can do–eventually—according to God’s own words as He looked down on the tower-builders at Babel.
But, just as in that Genesis 11 account, the Lord seems to tell us He will again intervene. The intervention will come before man has had the chance to ruin earth’s environment, and before he has been able to reach distant planets and colonize them while our planet perishes.
God’s Word says: “Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD” (Obadiah 1:4).
Man is destined to live on a majestically restored planet earth. Jesus, Himself, will remake this fallen sphere into the pristine orb it once was before Adam’s sin. Then, this old planet will be taken apart, atom by atom, and remade with a swooshing sound, at the end of that thousand-year reign of the King of all kings.
Planet earth and man’s destiny to inhabit it are absolutely God-guaranteed!
The only space shot the Christian today should be concerned with to any degree is when we will lift off in that atomos of time when Jesus says “Come up here!” (Revelation 4:1).
–Terry