Gathered, Not Snatched Away

A knife in the cockpit

On Wednesday of Chol HaMoed, flydubai flight 1073 took off from Dubai for Tel Aviv. On board were about 174 passengers, nearly all of them Israelis, including 27 children.

About two hours into the flight, the co-pilot, a citizen of Oman, pulled out a knife and stabbed the captain, a citizen of India. Then he grabbed the controls and pushed the plane toward the ground. In less than thirty seconds the plane dropped about 14,000 feet. People screamed. Many thought they were about to die.

But the wounded captain managed to open the cockpit door, and Israeli passengers rushed in. One of them, Yaniv Hayun, said he grabbed the attacker, threw him aside, and “pushed the steering control up.” Others tied the man’s hands with headphone cords. A doctor on board worked to keep the bleeding captain alive. Two off-duty pilots who were flying as passengers took the controls and landed the plane safely in Tabuk, in Saudi Arabia. Every passenger lived.

As the plane touched down, the passengers sang and cheered. Their song was Am Yisrael chai: “The people of Israel lives.”

Israel’s Defense Minister called it what it was: a jihadist terror attack. A man tried to murder 180 people, most of them Jews, in the name of his religion. This story raises a question that sits right in the middle of today’s class. When the end of days comes, who does the fighting?

Who fights the last battle?

The Islamic story of the end

Islam also has a story about the end of days. In Islamic tradition, a leader called the Mahdi, “the guided one,” will appear. Then Isa, the Muslim name for Jesus, will come down from heaven near Damascus (Sahih Muslim 2937). In Islam, Isa is not the Messiah of Israel. He comes back as a Muslim, and one tradition says “he will break the cross and kill the pigs” (Sahih Bukhari 3448). He and the Mahdi lead the Muslim armies to victory. In that same tradition, Isa hunts down the Dajjal, the Islamic false messiah, and kills him “at the gate of Lud” (Sahih Muslim 2937). Lud is the city of Lod, right next to Ben Gurion Airport, the very place flight 1073 was headed.

In these traditions, the end comes through war, and the believers are the ones who fight it. The most famous example is this one:

The Hour will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, until the Jew hides behind a stone or a tree, and the stone or the tree says: “O Muslim, O servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him,” except the gharqad tree, for it is one of the trees of the Jews. (Sahih Muslim 2922)

This saying is quoted in the founding charter of Hamas (1988, Article 7). The Islamic State named its magazine Dabiq after a town in Syria where, according to another tradition, the final battle will be fought (Sahih Muslim 2897). And some leaders in Iran speak of preparing the way for the return of their hidden Mahdi.

To be fair, not every Muslim reads these traditions as a call to violence. Many Muslims leave the end in God’s hands, and many live as peaceful neighbors. But wherever these sayings are taken literally, the believer’s job in the last days is to fight, and the enemy is often the Jew.

The Biblical story of the end

The Bible tells a very different story. In the Bible, the last battle is fought by heaven.

As we saw in our class on Gog, the nations will gather against Jerusalem. But who defeats them? “Then shall Hashem go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle” (Zechariah 14:3). Against Gog, Hashem says, “I will rain upon him… an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone” (Ezekiel 38:22). Israel’s job afterward is to bury the dead and burn the weapons (Ezekiel 39:9–12).

Daniel saw the kingdoms of this world as a great statue of gold, silver, bronze and iron. What destroyed it? “A stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces” (Daniel 2:34). Without hands: no human being cut that stone. “The God of heaven” sets up the final kingdom (Daniel 2:44).

The Brit Hadashah says the same. John saw heaven opened, and the Messiah riding out on a white horse:

“And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations” (Revelation 19:14–15).

Look closely. The armies are dressed in clean white linen. They carry no weapons. The only sword is the one that comes out of his mouth: the word of Hashem. Paul says the lawless one will be destroyed “with the spirit of his mouth” (2 Thessalonians 2:8).

Jewish tradition does say that the son of David will “fight the wars of Hashem” (Rambam, Hilchot Melachim 11:4). But look at who fights: the King, and the armies of heaven. Nowhere are believers told to start a war in order to bring the end. Yeshua told Peter, “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:52–53). And at the Red Sea, Moshe told Israel:

“Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of Hashem… Hashem shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace” (Exodus 14:13–14).

Saving life is not forcing the end

But wait: the passengers on flight 1073 did fight. Was that wrong? Not at all. The Torah commands, “Neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour” (Leviticus 19:16). The Talmud teaches, “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first” (Sanhedrin 72a). And the Mishnah says:

Whoever destroys a single soul, Scripture counts it as if he destroyed a whole world. And whoever saves a single soul, Scripture counts it as if he saved a whole world. (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5)

Defending life is a mitzvah. Those passengers saved 180 worlds that morning. But defending life is very different from starting a war to force the end of days. Israel learned this the hard way. The sages say that Israel was made to swear an oath “not to force the end” (Shir HaShirim Rabbah 2:7, on “that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please”). They tell of men from the tribe of Ephraim who counted the years wrong and marched out of Egypt thirty years early, and they were killed (Sanhedrin 92b; Targum Yonatan on Exodus 13:17). And when Rabbi Akiva declared that the warrior Bar Kochba was the Messiah (Yerushalmi Taanit 4:5), the revolt ended in disaster at Betar.

So here is the difference. In the jihadist story, the believer must kill so the end will come. In the Bible, the believer saves life and waits, and Hashem brings the end in His own time: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith Hashem of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6).

Two questions

That airplane was, quite literally, “caught up in the air” in a time of great trouble. No one on board was snatched away to safety before the danger came. They went through it, and Hashem brought them down safely, singing.

Hold on to that picture, because it leads us to our two questions. Will there be a Rapture? Will there be a Tribulation? Today we will look at what many Christians believe, then open the Scriptures and the Jewish sources and see where they lead.

King David wrote:

“For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock” (Psalm 27:5).

The Hebrew word for “pavilion” is sukkah: Hashem will hide me in his sukkah. Notice what David does not say. He does not say Hashem will take him out of the time of trouble. He says Hashem will hide him in the middle of it. Keep that picture in mind. We will come back to it.

Question one: Will there be a Rapture?

What many Christians believe

The popular Christian teaching goes like this. One day, without warning, every true believer on earth will suddenly vanish, taken up to heaven. Cars will crash without drivers, and clothes will lie empty on the ground. Those “left behind” will suffer seven years of Tribulation under the antichrist. At the end, Jesus will come back with the believers to set up his kingdom.

This is called the pre-tribulation rapture: the Rapture comes before the Tribulation. It became popular through a British preacher named John Nelson Darby in the 1830s. It spread through the Scofield Reference Bible (1909), Hal Lindsey’s book The Late Great Planet Earth (1970), and the Left Behind novels and movies of the 1990s and 2000s.

Not all Christians agree. Some place the Rapture in the middle of the Tribulation. Others say believers are gathered after it, at the one visible coming of the Messiah. For most of Christian history the church did not teach a secret rapture at all. Catholic, Orthodox and many Protestant churches still do not, and Seventh-day Adventists firmly reject it. The “secret rapture” is less than two hundred years old.

Where the word comes from

The word “rapture” is not in the Bible. It comes from the Latin word rapiemur, “we shall be caught up.” That is how the old Latin Bible translated this verse:

“For the Master himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the shofar of God: and the dead in Messiah shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Master in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Master” (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17).

Is it secret? There is a shout, the voice of an archangel, and a shofar blast. It is one of the loudest verses in the Bible! And look at what is missing. It does not say the believers go to heaven. It says nothing about seven years. It says they go up to meet him.

“To meet” the King

The Greek word for “meet” here is apantesis. In the ancient world it had a special meaning. When a king or an honored guest came to a city, the people went out on the road to meet him. Then they turned around and marched with him back into the city.

The New Testament uses the word this way. When Paul came to Rome, the believers there “came to meet us as far as Appii forum” (Acts 28:15), and walked with him into the city. In Yeshua’s parable, the cry goes out at midnight: “Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him” (Matthew 25:6). The young women go out to meet the groom, and then go back in with him to the wedding.

So picture it. The King is coming! His people rush out to greet him. Then they escort him home. And where is he going? The prophet tells us: “And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east” (Zechariah 14:4). The angels told the disciples on that same mountain that “this same Yeshua… shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). He is not coming to take us away from the earth. He is coming down to it.

The great shofar and the ingathering

Paul’s shofar is not a new idea. Isaiah heard it first: “the great shofar shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria… and shall worship Hashem in the holy mount at Jerusalem” (Isaiah 27:13). Jews pray for it three times every day in the Amidah:

Sound the great shofar for our freedom, raise the banner to gather our exiles, and gather us together from the four corners of the earth. Blessed are You, Hashem, who gathers the dispersed of His people Israel. (Amidah, tenth blessing)

Moshe promised it long before:

“If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will Hashem thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee: And Hashem thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed” (Deuteronomy 30:4–5).

Now listen to Yeshua: “And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a shofar, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Matthew 24:31). “From one end of heaven”: Yeshua is quoting Moshe. The gathering of the elect is the ingathering of the exiles.

This is our view. When Yeshua and Paul speak of being “gathered” and “caught up,” they are describing the great ingathering that Israel has prayed for every day for two thousand years. Hashem gathers His people from every corner of the earth and brings them home to the Land of Israel and to Jerusalem. The destination is not a place far away in the sky. The destination is home.

Flying like clouds

The Jewish sages also had pictures of people flying in the clouds. Isaiah asked, “Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows?” (Isaiah 60:8). The Talmud explains:

Rabbah said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: In the future, the Holy One, blessed be He, will raise Jerusalem up three parasangs high… And lest you say it will be hard to go up, the verse says: “Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows?” (Bava Batra 75b)

The sages also saw people flying like clouds at the redemption, but they were flying to Jerusalem. They even taught that the righteous who died outside the Land will roll through tunnels under the earth to rise in the Land of Israel (Ketubot 111a). Through the clouds or through the ground, everyone is heading home.

We saw in our class on the son of David that the Messiah comes either “with the clouds of heaven” or “riding upon an ass” (Sanhedrin 98a). We believe both are true, in order: Yeshua came the first time on the donkey, and he will come the second time with the clouds.

Being “caught up” also has a spiritual meaning. When the flood came, “the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth” (Genesis 7:17). Noach was lifted above the storm, not taken out of the world. At Sinai Hashem said, “I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself” (Exodus 19:4). Rashi explains:

Other birds carry their young between their feet, because they fear a bird flying above them. But the eagle fears only man, who might shoot an arrow at it. So it carries its young on its wings and says: “Better the arrow should strike me and not my children.” (Rashi on Exodus 19:4)

So both are true: a real gathering to the Land, and a spiritual lifting, where Hashem carries His people above the storm, not out of the world.

“One shall be taken”

Many people point to these words of Yeshua as proof of the Rapture: “For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noach entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left” (Matthew 24:38–40).

The popular teaching says: the one “taken” is raptured, and the one “left” is left behind. But read it again. In the days of Noach, who was taken? The flood “took them all away.” Who was left? Noach and his family, safe in the ark.

In Luke, the disciples asked Yeshua where the ones who are taken would go. He answered: “Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together” (Luke 17:37). The Greek word for “eagles” also means vultures. The ones “taken” are taken in judgment, to the place where the vultures gather.

So it is better to be left behind! The righteous remain, like Noach, and inherit the earth: “For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it. But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth” (Proverbs 2:21–22).

Question two: Will there be a Tribulation?

What many Christians believe

Many Christians teach a seven-year Tribulation, taken from Daniel 9:27, where a ruler “shall confirm the covenant with many for one week” (a “week” of years) and breaks it in the middle. In the pre-tribulation view, believers are gone before it starts. Other Christians see it as the suffering of every age, or as fulfilled when Rome destroyed the Temple in the year 70.

What the Bible and the sages say

Yes, the Bible teaches a time of great trouble before the redemption. Daniel was told:

“And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered” (Daniel 12:1).

Jeremiah called it by a name: “Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it” (Jeremiah 30:7).

The sages have their own name for this time: chevlei Mashiach, the birth pangs of the Messiah (Sanhedrin 98b; see Hosea 13:13). Why birth pangs? Because labor pains come in waves. They get stronger and closer together. But they do not last forever, and they end with new life. Yeshua used the same picture. After listing wars, famines and earthquakes, he said: “All these are the beginning of sorrows” (Matthew 24:8). The Greek word means birth pains.

The Mishnah describes what the world will look like just before the Messiah comes:

In the footsteps of the Messiah, chutzpah will increase and prices will soar… The government will turn to heresy, and no one will rebuke it… The wisdom of the scribes will rot, those who fear sin will be despised, and truth will be missing. Youths will shame the faces of elders… The face of the generation will be like the face of a dog… And on whom can we lean? On our Father in heaven. (Mishnah Sotah 9:15)

The Talmud even speaks of a seven-year period before the son of David comes:

The seven-year cycle in which the son of David comes: In the first year, it rains on one city and not on another. In the second, arrows of hunger are sent. In the third, a great famine… In the sixth year, there are voices. In the seventh year, there are wars. And at the end of the seventh year, the son of David comes. (Sanhedrin 97a)

So Jewish tradition and many Christians both speak of seven hard years. But the sages never gave us a countdown clock, and neither did Yeshua: “But of that day and hour knoweth no man” (Matthew 24:36). We do not set dates.

Will believers be spared?

Pre-tribulation teachers often quote Revelation 3:10: “I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation.” But Yeshua used the very same words in his prayer for his disciples: “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil” (John 17:15). To “keep from” means to protect, not to remove.

John saw a great crowd in white robes and was told: “These are they which came out of great tribulation” (Revelation 7:14). They came out of it, which means they went through it. Yeshua said that “for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened” (Matthew 24:22). The elect are still there.

This is the pattern of the whole Torah. Israel was still in Egypt during all ten plagues. But Hashem said:

“And I will sever in that day the land of Goshen, in which my people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there; to the end thou mayest know that I am Hashem in the midst of the earth” (Exodus 8:22).

Noach was not taken out of the world before the flood; he was carried through it in the ark. Chananyah, Mishael and Azaryah were not snatched away before the fiery furnace; Hashem “sent his angel” to walk with them in the fire (Daniel 3:28). And Isaiah sounds like he is describing a sukkah: “Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast” (Isaiah 26:20).

The sages were not eager for the birth pangs either:

Ulla said: Let him come, but let me not see him. Rabbah said the same… Abaye asked Rabbah: Why? If it is because of the birth pangs of the Messiah, we were taught: The students of Rabbi Elazar asked him, “What should a person do to be spared from the birth pangs of the Messiah?” He told them: “Let him busy himself with Torah and with acts of kindness.” (Sanhedrin 98b)

That is the Jewish answer. The way to be safe in the storm is not an escape plan. It is Torah and kindness. We are hidden in His sukkah, in the middle of the storm, the way David said.

Our “rapture plan”

So what do we believe?

We do not expect to vanish. We expect to be gathered: at the sound of the great shofar, from the four corners of the earth, to Jerusalem.

We do not expect to escape the storm. We expect to be sheltered, hidden in His sukkah in the middle of the storm, like Israel in Goshen, Noach in the ark, and 27 children in a plane falling out of the sky.

We do not expect to bring the end with a sword. Heaven fights the last battle. Our part is to save life, keep Torah, do kindness, and “stand still, and see the salvation of Hashem.”

And what do we do until then? We follow Rabbi Elazar’s advice: busy yourself with Torah and acts of kindness. We build our sukkot. We invite in our guests. We pray three times a day for the great shofar.

When flight 1073 touched down, the passengers sang Am Yisrael chai. One day the great shofar will sound, and the whole people of Israel will come home together, singing the same song. Until then, we listen to Paul’s last words on the subject, right after his verse about being caught up in the clouds:

“Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18).

Chag sameach.