For years I’ve had Jesus’ prophecy of Luke 17:28–30 at the center of the message I believe our Lord wants delivered at this late hour of the Church Age:

Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. (Luke 17:28–30)

Well, that message hasn’t changed. It still resonates as the one prophecy I believe is most directly meant for this sin-darkening planet that’s on the cusp of receiving God’s wrath because of humankind’s rebellion against Him.

Jesus said when He next intervenes into the evil affairs of earth’s inhabitants, the “righteous” will be removed. In the “days of Lot” in Jesus’ prophecy, it was Lot and his family who were removed because Lot was considered the only one in Sodom who was righteous. In the case of Christ’s next intervention, He indicated that another righteous entity will be removed to safety. This, of course, will be all who believe in Jesus for salvation–collectively called the Church.

I always preface what I say about that moment of Rapture with Jesus’ statement that, at the time, people of earth will, as in Sodom of Lot’s day, be buying, selling, planting, building, and marrying—in other words, going about business as usual.

Even with all the evil going on now–and it’s probably worse than it was in ancient Sodom and Gomorrah—it is still business as usual, as I view it. Despite the evil–the wars and rumors of war, the deception, the ethnic upheaval all over the planet—there isn’t yet catastrophic disruption of life on earth.

So, in this sense, our time is exactly like Jesus predicted in Luke 17:28–30.

The one thing that has puzzled me to an extent is what Jesus said about the sudden destruction that will, like in Lot’s day, happen immediately upon the removal of the righteous.

As we know, the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. And the destruction apparently came immediately following Lot’s removal. The cities were decimated; for millennia, scientists and archaeologists thought the Bible’s account of the destruction to be myth. But in most previous decades, there is evidence that indeed these cities were destroyed, and even sulfur residue of the region at the south end of the Dead Sea proves that something devastatingly powerful blasted the area. Pottery shards and other evidence that humans once inhabited the region are still being extracted from beneath the earth’s surface there.

Jesus, again, said: “But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.”

My dilemma in this prophecy is wondering how the Rapture of the Church will be followed by the destruction of all inhabitants, because we know the world will be filled with unbelievers during the seven-year Tribulation (Daniel’s seventieth week). So, this must mean the destruction that will take place will have to be different than that which instantly and completely obliterated those ancient cities.

I’ve sort of resisted the idea that there will be nuclear war, or at least an all-out nuclear World War III, prior to the Rapture of the Church; otherwise, it could not be business as usual leading up to that call of Christ to all believers, living and dead.

Many observers, even some I hold as good teachers in the pre-Trib view, have been saying we are already in the early stages of World War III. That is, the world is now in the throes of everything it takes to begin a worldwide conflict, as in the times preceding World Wars I and II. Dr. Robert Jeffress of First Baptist of Dallas was one I heard say this just the other day.

He said, if I heard him correctly, he believes the Rapture will occur at the time of some other world-shaking event. He believes, he said, it might be a nuclear exchange that introduces World War III, or some such conflagration. This might cause many of the left-behind to miss the full prophetic implications of the disappearance of millions.

In thinking on this, and based upon the build-up toward conflict involving such nuclear powers as Russia, China, North Korea, and, of course the United States, I believe this might be the case. The Church might be snatched (harpazoed) into the clouds of Glory just as nuclear missiles begin raining down around parts of the globe.

This would certainly be ”sudden destruction,” but would not constitute total devastation as in Sodom and Gomorrah.

The devastation would quickly expand across the world, causing unbelievable chaos–eventuating in total destruction by the end of Armageddon when Christ returns. However, I don’t see in any way how this expanding destructiveness could negate attention paid to the disappearance of millions of earth’s inhabitants.

As you know, I believe all children below the age of accountability, even those just conceived, will be instantly absent from earth when Jesus calls the Church. This alone will cause panic and chaos unlike any situation one can truly imagine. Undoubtedly, the news pundits of the planet will somehow attribute this to being a phenomenon, either of unprecedented, unfathomable nuclear exposure, or to, as we’ve talked about before, some action by so-called extraterrestrial space brothers who have been observing human tendencies toward nuclear war since the advent of the atomic bomb.

Paul, following his words about the Rapture in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18, prophesied the following that seems to lend credence to such a sudden-destruction scenario.

But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. (1 Thessalonians 5:1–3)  

Jesus, Himself, told of this coming moment when sudden destruction would forever change things on the earth:

And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man. (Luke 21:34–39)

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