September 1999 Personal Letter

Dear Friends,

The letter I wrote to you in April designated September 10 this year, the evening on which the Feast of Trumpets begins, as a possible date for the Rapture of the Church. I wanted to mention this again because, after all, it just may happen.

Now first, before I say anything else, let me clarify that I am not dictating the date of the Rapture. That knowledge is beyond any Bible student, and the Lord did not choose to reveal it. “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which my Father hath put in His own power,” He told His disciples when asked about His return (Acts 1:7). The Lord’s logic is clear if we look at the very relevant wedding analogy to the Gospel. In that case, He is the Bridegroom choosing a bride, and the date of the wedding would be determined by when the bridal chamber was finished. The father of the bridegroom was the sole judge of that, and so, asking the bridegroom would be violating a tradition. In my musical presentation, “Beloved Thief,” I use the line “Only my father knows” for the bridegroom to tell questioners about the date of the wedding. The Lord, of course, has promised us splendid accommodations in heaven and assured the entire church:

In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. (John 14:2-3)

With all that said, I am like any other prospective bride in this grand wedding, and I don’t know the date when I will see the Lord, my bridegroom, face to face. And thus, I cannot predict the Rapture.

So why do I say what I do about September 10? Well, here another factor enters the picture. As I pointed out in many previous letters, the Lord has honored the Seven Feasts of Israel in performing His most profound spiritual acts. He was crucified on Passover, buried on Unleavened Bread, raised on First Fruits, and sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. We have all wondered when the next event of such magnitude would transpire, and of course we look to the fifth feast, the Feast of Trumpets. The Rapture, of course, occurs at “the sound of the trump of God.”

In the case of the Rapture, the Lord does not have to do what He has done four times before, but in a peculiar way it seems that He really could. That is, even though He said, “… in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 24:44), very few people are thinking about the Seven Feasts in this connection. The Jews certainly have got the feasts mixed up, omitting First Fruits and calling Trumpets “New Year’s Day.” The church has not been seriously studying the Old Testament and is barely aware of the significance of the Biblical feasts and their prophetic schedule. Thus, as I’ve said before, the Lord can do what He has done four times before and fool almost everybody!

Now, where does this leave us in regard to the doctrine of imminency? That doctrine holds that the Lord can come at any moment, and correct Christianity holds that nothing needs to happen before the Rapture. It is “at hand” in theological terms. Won’t my saying that it may occur on the Feast of Trumpets run counter to the doctrine of imminency? After all, we can relax for the other 364 days if that were true.

Well, I leave it to you. The Lord did and said a number of activities and statements leading down both roads. Perhaps that is part of concealing the wedding date from the bride. The best I can say about this conundrum is that the doctrine of imminency is precious, and I believe in it wholeheartedly. But the Seven Feasts of Israel are just as precious, and I believe in them just as wholeheartedly.

I will say that I get nervous every Feast of Trumpets. I like to say that I want to sleep outside so I won’t bump my head on the ceiling should He come for His bride that night.

A poem by Rev. Travis Corder came to mind in this connection:

If Jesus Came Today

What if the Lord should come today
To catch His spotless bride away?

Would I meet Him up in the sky
In just a twinkling of an eye?

Would I be left on earth behind,
While they at His great supper dined?

Our blessed Lord is coming soon
It may be morning, night or noon.

It might be that He’d come today
And lift us from this miry clay.

He’ll take us to that golden shore
Where sin and sorrow are no more.

Then we’ll come back with Him to reign
One thousand years without one pain.

We’ll reign with Him this thousand years
And He will wipe away all tears.

Where will you be, my precious friend,
When fleeting time comes to an end?

What would you do, what could you say,
If Jesus were to come today?

Now, on this envelope, I presented the date 9/9/99, and that, too, was in our April letter. Four nines in a row, as I explained in April, mark the closure of a file or document on computers (I received letters quibbling about the point, but it is made clear in a book by Michael S. Hyatt, a key writer on computers, whom I quoted in April). And I presented logic to say that the last day of the “file” of mankind from Adam to the present could well be September 9, 1999, which would present the computer a succession of four nines. I thought that those facts had certain relevance since the Feast of Trumpets started the very next day, 9/10/99.

Another idea I presented in the April letter concerned the designation “http” and its meaning in Hebrew. I said that most Bible commentators agree that Adam was born about 6,000 years ago. “If we assume that he was born in exactly 4000 BC on our calendar, then we have spent exactly 5,998 years to the present day. (We deduct one year when adding AD years to BC years since 1 BC and 1 AD were the same year.) ‘Http’ in Hebrew is heh, tav, tav, peh, which would be in numerical values, 5998,” according to my Hebrew consultant. For full details, look back at the April Personal Letter, or drop us a line and we’ll send you one, as long as they hold out.

Now, that was the “prediction” I made. I really didn’t intend to set a date or cause undue concern, and I really don’t want to have 1,000 letters after the Feast of Trumpets if the Rapture doesn’t occur, telling me what a fool I am. I’m only trying to do my job as a teacher of prophecy in a world where churches have dropped the subject at this most crucial time. Seminaries are becoming confused with doctrines like Amillennialism and Progressive Dispensationalism (pretty much the same thing so far as Israel and prophecy are concerned) and I’m beginning to wonder if the whole phenomenon of our best Christian institutions turning away from the Word does not represent the “falling away” found in 2 Thes. 2:3–4. The “falling away” prophesied to the Thessalonians announces the revelation of the Antichrist, and, therefore, would occur in connection with the upcoming Tribulation period.

From Bill Koenig’s “International News,” he reports on the significance of September 11, 1999, the Feast of Trumpets (which begins at moonrise September 10 on the Hebrew calendar). The date Tishri 1, the first day of the new Jewish year 5760 (also the Feast of Trumpets, a Sabbath) appears to be one of the most special days in all history. There are 240 years (a period of occupation) that the Jewish people do not include in their calendar. Based on scholar’s research, if the 240 years were included with the 5,760 years, it would total the 6,000th Jewish year on September 11, 1999. On that day, scholars calculate from Bible chronology that it will be the exact end of 6,000 years since Adam’s birth, or the end of the sixth millennial “day,” and the beginning of the seventh day, or Sabbath Millennium. They also calculate that it will be the 2,000th birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ, the end of the prophetic “second day” of Hosea 6:2 and the beginning of the “third day” of that passage. Scholars believe that it will be the exact 3,000th year since King David took the throne in Jerusalem, with his regal year there beginning on Tishri 1. Ancient Jews believed that, since there were 3,000 years from Adam to David, there would be 3,000 years from David to the Messiah. To be sure, ancient dating is controversial, but these scholars are as credible as anyone.

To clarify all this prophecy, we have another prophecy conference, “The Feasts of the Lord,” scheduled for September 18–19 at the beautiful Biblical Arts Center in Dallas. I will be teaching along with our featured guest, Moishe Rosen, founder of Jews for Jesus. We’ll be joined by Dr. Tom McCall, author and consulting theologian, and our ministry theologian, Todd Baker. Children are welcome. We have a special program planned for them. You will find an enrollment form with all the pertinent information enclosed with this letter.

As you read this letter, please know that we are on our way to the Holy Land for our September Tour, and if the Rapture does come, we’ll meet you in the sky “here or there or in the air,” as some Christians say. But if the Rapture does not occur, we have tours planned for November and December in this one-of-a-kind year. Our November Kibbutz Tour is scheduled to include the Thanksgiving holiday, so teachers and students won’t have to miss very much school. The dates are November 19–28. It is an ideal tour for the budget-minded pilgrim, as the cost is lower than our other tours. We’ll visit the same Biblical sites as our usual Deluxe tour, with extra desert activities planned such as camel rides and a visit to a Bedouin tent. Our December Deluxe Tour (Dec. 11–21) will visit Biblical sites such as the ancient City of David, Jerusalem, the Israel Museum where we will examine the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Upper Room, Calvary, the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea, the site of the Sermon on the Mount, Masada, Jericho, the Garden Tomb, and you can be baptized in the Jordan River just as our Lord was. The Grand Tour (Dec. 11–26) adds an extension to the Deluxe Tour. We’ll stay at a luxurious resort hotel at Eilat on the Red Sea. We will tour the starkly beautiful Negev Desert, include En Gedi (where David hid from King Solomon); Ashkelon, ancient seaport and capital of Canaanite kings, harbor of the Philistines, the place where Samson slew 30 men; and Beer Sheba, birthplace of Jacob and Esau. You can choose to visit Petra, the ancient city carved out of a rose-red mountain. All pilgrims on the Grand Tour will spend Christmas Eve in the shepherds’ fields in Bethlehem!

We now have air dates for our upcoming one-hour prophecy special. Be sure to watch and, by all means, tell your church and your friends. The times are as follows:

• Monday, Sept. 6 — 9:00 p.m. PT (11:00 p.m. CT and midnight Eastern Time)
• Thursday, Sept. 9 — 4:00 p.m. PT (6:00 p.m. CT and 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time)

We’ve given you Pacific Times because TBN is headquartered in California. You can make your time calculations from Pacific Time, or check your local television listings. TBN agreed to air our “Is This the End?” and fulfilled our two requirements: prime time and before September 10!

And please remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Your messenger,