Daniel's 70th Week and the Harpazo

UPDATE 01 September 2015: It's always a very disturbing thing to see such rampant deviation from the doctrine to be found within the Word of God coming from people who self-identify as believing Christians. It is everywhere one casts his or her gaze these days. It is beyond me to understand why such people will go to other men or women for religious doctrine instead of to Living Word of God, and the Holy Spirit which the Lord sent to be among us, to instruct, convict and assist us. But, you know what, all of this apostasy is yet another 'sign of the times', a sign of the great apostasy that is as much a part of last days eschatology as the battle of Gog/Magog or the 70th Week itself. These things are all synonymous indications and warning of precisely what time we live in.  

28 August 2015:  It's time once again for an update regarding the Harpazo of the bride of Christ due to the fact that there is now an in-progress effort by some false teachers who are going to try to convince as many of you as is possible of a couple of things. One thing is that everything you know about the 'end times' is wrong, and the other is that Harpazo will not occur prior to the 70th Week, but during it. 

I will not name these false teachers because it may well be that their names might not be written in the Book of Life, so why should I name them in this space? (Matthew 7:21) They also wish to make a large sum of cash money TO COME DIRECTLY FROM YOU for their effort to instruct their unbiblical nonsense, so you will learn of their names soon enough. These are not Christian brethren that constantly argue against us in our belief as led by the Holy Spirit. They are clearly identified as last days 'Laodiceans' in Revelation 3:15-19.

These false teachers will attempt to instruct that the bride of Christ will be subject to the wrath of God during the 70th Week; that the cataclysmic effects upon the whole earth as the Lord Jesus Christ opens the seven seals will also befall the bride of Christ as much as it will those who would believe the lie of Satan and his beast and false prophet.

I will use the word of God, as given to the apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians (link embedded in the text for context), to preemptively destroy everything these false teachers have to say to us and to the as yet unsaved masses.  The Harpazo of the bride of Christ will occur prior to the 70th Week, and Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit to tell us why this IS the fact of the matter:

"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish."

Let me repeat: We, the bride of the LORD Jesus Christ, God incarnate, are beloved by Him, He gave Himself for us, and He washes us and cleanses us by the power of His word, so that He will soon present us to Himself as a glorious bride, without so much as a single spot or wrinkle, completely holy and without blemish! 

Does this sound even remotely like the bride of Christ will be subject to the wrath of God loosed upon the world during the 70th Week? Is any of the bride of Christ to be subject to death, disfigurement, disease, dismemberment, tortured, raped, pillaged, bloodied and bruised? Of course not! So as you come to see the assault from the false teaching of disreputable men, stop them in their tracks and refute them with His word that washes us and makes us glorious for Him to present us to Himself.


29 September 2013: It has been suggested by a couple of those Christians who do not believe there can be any pre-70th Week wars because God would not allow them prior to the Harpazo/Rapture because that would be tantamount to judgment befalling the Bride of Christ. It is those Christians then that the key question of this addendum is addressed: How do you reconcile the current and ongoing wholesale extermination of Christians in the Middle East by Islamic Jihadists? The rampant martyrdom of our brethren across the whole of the Middle East and and Southwest Asia, excepting only the State of Israel, has reached epic if not Biblical proportions. Therefore and within your own eschatological view, how do you deal with this most uncomfortable truth?

UPDATED and REVISED 23 September 2013: Following some fairly intensive study I feel there's a need to update this post with some additional information which is directly relevant to where I left off with the 19 July update. As stated in the second-to-last paragraph, I believe there is a direct prologue correlation of the coming Harpazo of the Bride of Christ with the Harpazo of Enoch prior to the Flood.

However, that is not the most appropriate prologue to cite according to what I believe God has informed us of in Genesis 6 and 7.  Noah, his sons, their wives and the building of the ark itself as an avenue of escape from the judgment of the Flood is an exceptionally poignant and prophetic prologue.  The enigmatic verses of 2 Thessalonians 2:1-6, which many pre-70th Week dispensationalists do an eschatological tap dance around, is resolved fully and to the literal letter of Paul's inspired declaration on the subject.

Make no mistake, I am definitively of the pre-70th Week dispensational view, however it is entirely due to what God says in His Living Word of Genesis 5, 6 and 7 that I no longer can accept that there will be any gap of time between the Harpazo and Day 1 of the 70th Week.

This is really so simple I feel I should head-slap myself as NCIS' Jethro Gibbs would head-slap Tony DiNozzo for some unprofessional silliness simply because I did not see this sooner. 

Genesis 5:32 and 6:10 tell us Noah was 500 years old and to him were born after his 500th year three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth.


Genesis 6:3 and 6:13 and 6:17 provide the details that the Lord's judgment was announced in advance and would come upon the earth in exactly 100 years time from Noah's 500th year on the earth. Noah and sons were found to be pure in the generations from Adam; that is to say their DNA was pure and uncorrupted by any fallen angelic corruption, and so they were excepted from the wrath to come, to be saved from the coming judgment of destruction upon the earth. 

Then Noah receives his precise instructions from the Lord on how he is to construct the ark and he does exactly as commanded. Clearly to be assumed from the text here is that Noah's sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, were all born and raised to a working age during the 20 years following Noah's receiving this instruction from God. Therefore, since Shem, Ham and Japheth are not known to us to have been triplets, at the minimum their ages would have been 20, 19 and 18, respectively, when the laborious task of constructing the ark was begun in earnest.

Then at Genesis 7:1, 6 and 11 come the very interesting details. Here the Lord informs us that the construction of ark was completed. Noah and his family are told to enter into the ark and the Flood commences on that same day. 

This day is specified in Genesis 7:6 to have occurred when Noah was 600-years old -- and Genesis 7:11 gets very specific that this occurred on the 17th day of the 2nd month of that 600th year. No reason is given for this specificity, but my sense in literally interpreting this is that it somehow relates directly to the future Harpazo (end of the Age of Grace - start of the 70th Week) occurring within the exact same template of a certain specified or appointed day and hour known only by God the Father. 

This, obviously, brings us to the point wherein I am sure some of my fellow dispensationalists will object to what has been written here thus far. They will say, "Ah, but you have violated the the inviolable, you have violated the "Doctrine of Imminence. This cannot happen." Really?  What is the "Doctrine of Imminence?" Is the "Doctrine of Imminence" given to us in the plain text of His Word, is it demonstratively inspired of the Holy Spirit, or is it something that has been interpretively inferred by fallible men based upon what the Lord has said, both in text and in-person? Obviously, this doctrine has been interpretively inferred in relatively recently times by men, and therefore it suffers from a weakness that must be defended.

What is provided here is based upon the God-breathed narrative about the Flood of Noah, and this includes the prophetic template or foreshadowing that the very elect of God were saved from certain destruction via Divine judgment of a kind that had never before occurred on the earth. Also included here is the direct albeit figurative reference from the angel Gabriel to the prophet Daniel that the end of the present age will come "the end thereof shall be with a flood" (Daniel 9:26c) and the very specific reference given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ in the Olivet Discourse found in Matthew 24:36-39 (emphasis added):

"But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be."

Need any more be stated?

13 July 2011: This time we're back into the "meat and 'taters" of eschatological study. I say "meat and 'taters" because this is some truly heavy fare that will require significant Berean study, commentary, and probably some editing in the process. I am not really teaching anything with this post, but rather I'm as much learning in this process as are those who are reading this for the first time.

To begin with, a verse from Daniel that we should all be quite familiar with. It is this verse which I believe is indicative of both the revealing of the Antichrist and the commencement of Daniel's 70th Week and the imminent Harpazo of the Bride of Christ which meany teach is a signless event.

"Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; But in the middle of the week he shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering." (Daniel 9:27a NKJV)

How does this verse relate to Paul's exhorations to the Thessalonians who were very concerned that Daniel's 70th Week had commenced.

"Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." (2 Thessalonians 2:1-4)

If 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3 is definitively referring to the Harpazo of the Bride of Christ, then clearly that event is not signless event with spiritual apostasy and the revealing of the Antichrist being definitive temporal signs that the Harpazo must occur after the restrainer is moved out of the way. As Paul strenuously exhorts - let no one deceive us in any way about this.

So, if I understand this correctly, and I think I've done my homework here, what Paul is teaching to the Thessalonians, and to all Christians up to the present time, is that the apostasy (falling away) precedes the revealing of the Antichrist and the revealing of the Antichrist precedes the Harpazo.

Here is where I, as a pretribulationist believer, found that I must assume in reading these verses that Paul had taught the Thessalonians about a pretribulation Harpazo. Indeed the assumption is correct because Paul so states in the very next verse (2 Thessalonians 2:5) that he had previously taught the Thessalonians exactly that.

However, in spite of the teaching they had received the Thessalonians thought they were living in the tribulation, during Daniel's 70th Week. They were extremely concerned that they had missed the Harpazo which in turn made Paul's correction to them in these verses absolutely necessary; he had to prove to them in no uncertain terms that the Harpazo had not occurred and thus gave them specific signs with with to prove his teaching and alleviate their fears.

UPDATE 19 July 2011: I believe the restrainer is the Bride of Christ empowered by the Holy Spirit.

In my study I realized that knowledge of who the restrainer is has been the fact of the matter since the Day of Pentecost (read: Paul in Romans 5:5). The restrainers role will end on the Day of Harpazo. This finite period of time is also referred to as the Dispensation of Grace, and is referred to by Paul in Romans 11:25 as "until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in."

As for Daniel's 70th Week, we all know those literal 7 years have two 42-month long halves. It is the second half which is a Great Tribulation like nothing ever experienced on the earth in the past or ever again in the future. The near annihilation of all life on the earth if those future days are not cut short by the direct intervention of God.

Those months are foretold in the Old Testament.

Isaiah 26:19-21 (Isaiah refers to this period as "the indignation" and also prophecy's the Harpazo will "hide" us in certain chambers until this period of time is past. Those chambers (literally "dwellings") were revealed to us by the Lord Himself in John 14:1-3. Zephaniah also speaks to our being "hid" in "the day of the LORD's anger (i.e. the day of the LORD's wrath). The same is said in Psalm 27:5.

As a template for the Harpazo of the Bride of Christ, I think the Harpazo of Enoch prior to Noah's Flood serves us very well. Genesis 5 tells us that Enoch lived 365 years and was Harpazoed straight to God. It is interesting to note here that by counting the years between Enoch's harpazo and day one of Noah's Flood we can see that he was caught up 531 years prior to the flood. Now while that's a serious amount of years prior to the end of that dispensation, it's all relative because people prior to the flood were on the average living for just under a millennium of years (circa 9 centuries give or take a decade or two). Now Psalm 90:10 tells us we live (on average) for 70 years or 80 years with strength.

The point is the Bride of Christ will be Harpazoed as was Enoch, prior to the wrath of God being poured out. And since Daniel's 70th Week is not relative to the Bride of Christ, but to Israel, we're gone prior to the commencement of those 7 years, and which our Lord said would be inclusive of the lifespan of the generation alive at that time. Given that the prophetic re-birth of Israel (Ezekiel 37) occurred 65 years ago, I would tend to think we're on the tail end of the timelime that's left prior to Daniel's 70th Week commencing.