Can you see now why Satan has instructed the churches that they must fly out of here, that the Lord is coming to take us to Heaven? Wouldn't you teach the same thing if you were Satan? Do you think he wants Jesus and His brothers to come and ruin everything he has built?

This is why we are practicing for the rapture, with Satan's encouragement. He wants us out of here so he can continue to "eat the dust" of human flesh, just as God has forced him to do.

I think Satan would like to give us all a swift kick to help us up to the great retirement home in the sky.

For myself, I don't intend to leave my turf, my inheritance. How about you? Let Satan leave. This is our place.

The Bible tells us that when the Lord appears to take over His (and our) inheritance, we are going to appear with Him.

In several instances in the Old Testament and the New the coming of Christ and His saints is pictured as the attack of an invincible army.

Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming. It is close at hand—A day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness. Like dawn spreading across the mountains a large and mighty army comes, such as never was of old nor ever will be in ages to come. (Joel 2:1,2—NIV)

I know some claim the second chapter of Joel is talking about grasshoppers. Don't you just know the Day of the Lord is the coming of grasshoppers.

Well, if some hold fast to grasshoppers, let's go to another place.

Then you will trample down the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I do these things, says the LORD Almighty. (Malachi 4:3—NIV)

The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. (Revelation 19:14—NIV)

No grasshoppers here!

It looks like we are going to be busy when the Lord returns. Some are teaching that we are going to be caught up to Heaven, go through a judgment in which every person who has taken the four steps of salvation hears "Well done, good and faithful servant" (even though he or she has been neither good nor faithful), and then return seven years later as fierce as Genghis Khan, ready to rip up the earth.

Can't you picture it? After we have spent seven years sitting around talking small talk with the neighbors, eating ice cream by the gallon and never getting fat, barbecuing steak night after night without having a heart attack, suddenly we are going to mount our white war stallion and come thundering down through the clouds to confront an amazed Antichrist, the kings of the earth, Satan, the fallen angels (some of whom are as large as a continent), and self-willed religious people.

To be continued.