Rapture? Been there, done that...and more

Yes, you got that right. I was raptured!

Not in the way (of course!) that most Christians take the word: Right before the "seven year great tribulation," all believers in Christ get removed from the Earth, including fetuses, babies, and children in general, afterwhich all hell breaks lose, "the" anti-christ appears, takes over the temple in Jerusalem, makes 3 and a half years of peace between Israel and the Arabs, and midway through exposes himself as the anti-christ, makes everyone take "the mark of the beast" and the rest of this "left behind" verbiage.

Have I mentioned this before? The final weekend of February in 1997, months before the "Republic of Texas" standoff a mile from my house led by ROT leader Rick McLaren, formerly a friend of ours (before he threatened me with death, that is), I was walking down our dirt road from our house and, at an intersection with another dirt road, put my life into the hands of Jesus Christ in a conversion experience. Prior to that I was a Christian but not a committed one.

I don't remember if I got on my knees or not. The road was dirt and plenty of rocks thereon, so I doubt it. My knees don't do well on rocks and stones.

The feeling I got in that moment of commitment was a rapture in the dictionary sense: overwhelming joy, tears of joy, and the knowledge that (knowing I would not go along with McLaren's nefarious plans for setting up a "republic" of Texas with his money-laundering buddies) he could, indeed, threaten to kill me if I "betrayed" him, or, on the other hand, the State of Texas could put me in jail if I would not testify against McLaren AS WELL AS TAKE MY KIDS AWAY (THE paramount issue!)...well, after that moment I had no fear.

I KNEW Christ would take care of not only me, but my kids and husband as well.

Now, the State of Texas did depose me for about 8 hours (with a lunch break) in June, 1997. I was fearful only because I could not remember an event that I had been questioned on, but I had an answer after coming back from lunch. The experience was nerve wracking but I was not really fearful. I knew that by doing this I would not be put into jail over this.

When I was sent by mail McLaren's death threat, I was not fearful. Even though he did have fanatical adherents who could be of the mind to carry it out.

But in the sense that I felt "caught up" (Greek harpazo) with Christ "in the air" as if I had momentarily spiritually "left" the earth, yes, I was raptured.

I had been thinking about this issue for a long time. No issue has brought me as many comments and controversy as "the rapture" issue, which (in terms of the "left behind" version) I have debunked. In John 17:15 and 20, Job 14:12 and other places, the Bible does not give suppport to the notion that Christians will be removed from the Earth (dead or alive), physically, until perhaps a new age (for instance, the "1,000 year reign" of Christ, or the "new heaven, new earth" time period) happens. But, as has happened to me, spiritually, there is no reason to think Christians couldn't get spiritually raptured by the Holy Spirit.


As for "and more"...it has been several months since my last post, but only when I can resist the Holy Spirit no longer.

D. Lagarde

Son of Hamas Leader Now Christian!

While looking for a website to send money to help Palestinian Christians in Gaza against Zionist Talmudic Israel's onslaught, I found the site http://www.barnabasfund.org, of the British-based Christian Charity, the Barnabas Fund. They list a page where the son of a Hamas leader in East Jerusalem (the West Bank, not Gaza), having been arrested by the IDF for some kind of "wrong place wrong time" connection to some Hamas meeting or protest, and sent to jail by the IDF, discovered while in the jail, filled with many Hamas leaders, that Hamas WAS NOT following the dictates of the Koran (helping the poor with money raised), but following their own selfish dictates of spending raised money for the poor on weapons and personal items! Thus he discovered the organization his dad worked with was NOT what Hamas pretended to be! He got very disillusioned with Hamas. Then when he was released from jail, he found himself inclined to go to a meeting of Palestinian Christians studying the Bible, and was given a Bible to read. So he went, he wrote, to this mountainside place and read the Bible and had a conversion experience!

Because he was threatened by the Muslims in the West Bank area and his family, he had to leave (this was back before Israel kept such a tight leash on the Palestinians and they could more freely leave then), and came to the US to live.

I put this in here to present this really wonderful calling by God, as an example that called by God could mean even someone who was likely to become a terrorist, and to show that "hating Muslims" is NOT the way! By "hating Muslims" we DENY THEM the opportunity to hear the Word, because honey if they don't hear it from us and our fellow Christians, they likely won't hear it and thus are condemned.

And if Zvi Kallisher can do it....

Who is Zvi Kallisher? He is only one of the foremost Messianic Jews in Israel today. His whole family is part of the growing Messianic Jewish community in Israel, a community that is as persecuted as Christian communities are in Islamic nations and places like China and North Korea. It is routine for Talmudic Yeshiva students and rabbis to spit on not just Palestinian ("Arab") Christians, but Messianic Jews in Israel as well, and to threaten them and to beat them up. I have posted links to such stories on other posts, mostly out of Israeli newspapers themselves. Zvi has self-published works including "The Best of Zvi" that can be purchased at Amazon. In this amazing book, he tells how (after coming to Israel from Poland after the Holocaust in 1948) he was called by Christ and has had many discussions with rabbis, neighbors, and even Palestinian Muslims. His son is now a major force in the Israeli Messianic Jewish community as well.

We need to be more like Zvi and think of those in the Muslim community as potentially like this Hamas leader's son.

God "Hooks" Israelis, Palestinians

Sounds like a New York Daily News headline. Oh, and, BTW, though the notion of hooks used by God is lightly referenced from Ezekiel 38 (Gog Magog War, also see Revelation 20), the Ezekiel reference has little to do with the Gaza war, because the Gog-Magog War (which is what this event is popularly called) takes place under the circumstance of unwalled villages in the vicinity of Jerusalem.

Folks, today, there are simply NO UNWALLED villages in the vicinity of Jerusalem! There are so many walls in and around Jeruslaem that it is nearly impossible for Palestinians to get from one end of East Jerusalem in the West Bank territory to the other in under half a day, because of all the checkpoints. So, what we aer witnessing in Gaza is not the beginning of the Gog-Magog War, Armegeddon, or anything other than just the usual insanity there...insane, because the Israelis and Hamas keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results!

But the other night my husband, staunchly pro-Israel, and me, staunchly pro-Palestinian Christian (meaning, for the dullards out there on your Megaphones, I am not pro-Hamas! Tell that to your local GIYUS goons), had an argument. May the Holy Spirit one day open his eyes as to the nature of what kind of Jews run Israel (will "Anonymous" sue me over this?), and who the Palestinians are really descended from, despite their almost mass forced conversion to Islam before the Crusades. But until then, my husband sees the "Arabs" there (don't Arabs come from Arabia?) as terrorists in general. Same as most American Christians, even those who do not call themselves "Christian" Zionist. May the Holy Spirit take the strong delusion from him and make him love the truth. That is, the Truth, as in "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life". But, until then, he will hate Islam and everyone who believes in it, and of course, those who don't but are associated with it. May the Holy Spirit one day shine the light of the truth of the nature of Talmudic Judaism, anti-Christ, on him. But, until then...

So, we argued, and, without going into all the gory details, we reached the conclusion that this Gaza war was God's Will. That God had put hooks into the Israelis and Palestinians to go to war. We don't need to approve or disapprove or like it or not like it. God's got His reasons. May the faith in Jesus Christ prevail in the Palestinian and Messianic Jewish Communities!