The Left Behind Collection

by Tim LaHaye

  “What does the first thirty days refer to?” Rayford said.

  “Well, the verse is talking about the temple sacrifice and the abomination, so I think it is fair to assume the first interval relates to the temple. I cannot imagine Jesus wanting to take the throne of David in a temple that has been defiled by Antichrist—at least not before He cleanses it. We know from Ezekiel 40–48 that the Lord will establish a temple during the Millennium, so I conclude that the first thirty days of the interval will be devoted to setting up the temple and preparing it for use.

  “The other forty-five days are more open to speculation, but notice that verse 12 says that those who make it through that time will be blessed. If that is a personal, individual blessing, it indicates that the person is qualified to enter into the millennial kingdom. Matthew 25:34 says, ‘Then the King will say to those on His right hand, “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”’

  “That makes it sound to me as if the seventy-five-day interval is a time for preparation for the kingdom. So much of the globe has been destroyed during the judgments of the Tribulation, I suppose it should not surprise us that the Lord will take some time to renovate His creation for the Millennium. The beautification of Jerusalem was done in an instant with the elevating of the city from the splitting of the Mount of Olives, but imagine the work that needs to be done around the world. The mountains have been leveled, filling much of the seas. Islands have vanished. Surely God wants to put the earth back into its Edenic state for the enjoyment of those who will share it with Jesus for the next thousand years.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Leah Rose had come a long way from nursing supervisor at Arthur Young Memorial Hospital in Palatine, Illinois. How was she to know what would become of her when she first encountered Rayford Steele and the fledgling Tribulation Force nearly seven years before? She and Rayford had spotted each other’s seal of the believer, visible only to others of like faith. Otherwise, she might not have given him the time of day.

  To think that since then she had been all over the world with the Force in a variety of roles, mostly medical but not exclusively. She had made new friends, seen them become loved ones, and then seen them die. There had been times when she wouldn’t have given two cents for her chances to make it to the Glorious Appearing. At least not until she was assigned duty at Petra, where in three and a half years, no one had died.

  Privileged, that’s what she called herself. Certainly nothing she had ever done had earned her the benefits she had enjoyed. It had not been an easy life. Hardly. No one who had lived through the Tribulation had it easy. That she had to live through it at all was her own fault—for having heard the message and ignored it for so long. She had not considered herself a rejecter. Leah had seen herself as an intellectual, a thinker, a ponderer.

  Evangelists and evangelistic-minded friends had told her and told her that a nondecision was a “no” decision. She had argued. She wasn’t saying no, she said; she was still thinking. Well, one of her well-meaning friends had said, don’t think yourself into hell. Or into being left behind.

  That had been a laugh. While Leah had seriously considered the claims of Christ on her life, that He had died for her sins—of which she acknowledged there were many—the idea of His showing up in the clouds someday, in an instant so quick you could blink and miss it, well . . . come on now.

  And then she had been left behind. Leah took care of that issue immediately. Then, while she floundered spiritually, looking for more, looking for truth, looking for answers, she believed God sent Rayford and the Trib Force into her life.

  They were all in the same boat, of course, latecomers to the kingdom. But among them were men of the Bible, lifelong students like Tsion Ben-Judah, from whom she believed she had learned more than she had in nursing school.

  And now here she was in Jerusalem, in the home of an elder. With friends who had become dear and who had experienced with her, firsthand, the fulfillment of prophecy in the presence of Jesus Himself. Leah had seen it with her own eyes, talked to Him, and met with Him personally. When He embraced her and called her by name and told her how much He loved her, she could not speak. And yet He heard her heart. He had been with her, known her since the foundation of the world, He said. Was with her all her life, at the high and low points, the turning points, loving her, waiting for her, longing to meet her.

  Leah was so full of Jesus she hardly knew if she could stand it. And while others cowered and hid their faces and grimaced at the awful reality of Satan and his lackeys getting theirs, she would not turn away. This, she knew, was justice, and she wanted to see it.

  Leah had been a victim of Satan, and of course she had suffered under the rule of Nicolae Carpathia. To be made an international fugitive simply because she loved the one true God and His Son was an unspeakable, unforgivable offense. Antichrist, indwelt by Satan, had exalted himself over God, and Leah’s lifelong sense of right and wrong—cultivated even before she became a believer—told her he would have to pay. And when the time came, gruesome and graphic as it was, to her it was fitting.

  Leah had seen the physical ravages of sin, what war could do to the human body. When she tried to repair dying comrades she couldn’t help but lay the blame at the feet of Antichrist and his False Prophet. She didn’t avert her eyes from that carnage, and so she didn’t when Satan’s demons were put to death by the words of Jesus. And when Nicolae and Leon were sent to eternal torment. And especially when Satan himself was locked away for a thousand years.

  Leah still didn’t understand that one. It was something she could ask Eleazar when he led the group in Bible study that night. Word was that the elders were all teaching the same stuff, wherever they wound up and with whom. She considered it another privilege to have landed in the lovely Tiberius home.

  Naomi’s late mother’s touches remained, even after all this time. The place had been taken over by the GC, just like any home of some worth. The result of that could have been disappointing, yet when the ten of them settled in, unloading their haul of fresh meat and produce in the generous kitchen, no one was more surprised than Eleazar at the state of the place. It looked as if someone had been hired to make it perfect for their stay.

  They had found their quarters—just enough space for everyone—and had worked together watching the children, setting the tables, preparing the food. They had prayed and feasted, cleaned up, and prayed some more. Jesus had spoken to them in three different languages simultaneously. Leah then helped Priss Sebastian get the kids to bed, and now it was time to study.

  She found the teaching on the next seventy-five days fascinating, having never heard of it before. What Leah appreciated most about Eleazar was his own bright, inquisitive mind and how he didn’t pretend to know things he didn’t. “Some things,” he said in his jolly basso profundo, “are apparently unknowable, at least for now. Other truths are fascinating to ferret out of the Scriptures.”

  Leah asked her question about why Antichrist and the False Prophet were sentenced for eternity while Satan would be released at the end of the Millennium.

  “The binding of Satan,” Eleazar said, “restricts him from what he does best, of course. Revelation 20:3 indicates that God’s goal in this binding is ‘so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished.’”

  “Yes,” Leah said, “but it goes on to say, ‘But after these things he must be released for a little while.’ Why must he?”

  “I once asked the same question of Dr. Ben-Judah, and I recently asked Dr. Rosenzweig,” Eleazar said. “Neither was entirely sure, and neither am I, but they suggested some remarkable things I had been unaware of, and I’ll bet you have been too.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me,” Leah said.

  “Here’s the way I understand it, based on what I have been taught. Look at it this way: If God did not allow Satan one more chance to deceive the nations, all the people who are born
and live during the millennial kingdom would be exempt from the decision to follow God or follow Satan. By releasing him one more time, all people are given equal standing before God.”

  “Interesting.”

  “But where it gets dicey is that those who reject Christ during the Millennium will all be young people, relatively. You will see when we dig into the Scriptures that anyone born during the Millennium who does not trust in Christ by the time he or she is a hundred years old will be accursed and die.”

  “I thought you said young people.”

  “Relatively. You see, those who do trust in Christ will live to the end of the Millennium.”

  “So someone born today, who becomes a believer, will live to be a thousand.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But the unbelievers, whenever they are born during this period, will die at a hundred?”

  “Now you’ve got it.”

  “I don’t know what I have,” Leah said. “But it is interesting. If I’m figuring it right, what Satan will have to do at the end of the Millennium is try to organize all the people who were born at the nine-hundred-year mark or after—who haven’t become believers—and get them to make one last-gasp effort to fight Jesus.”

  “There you go.”

  “Wow. And there’s Scripture for this.”

  “There is. Let’s read it together from Isaiah 65:17-25: ‘For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered or come to mind.

  “‘But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem as a rejoicing, and her people a joy.

  “‘I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in My people; the voice of weeping shall no longer be heard in her, nor the voice of crying.

  “‘No more shall an infant from there live but a few days, nor an old man who has not fulfilled his days; for the child shall die one hundred years old, but the sinner being one hundred years old shall be accursed.’

  “Let me just interject an explanation here,” Eleazar said. “This is saying that a person who dies at a hundred will be considered a child, because everyone else is living until the end of the Millennium. And that the ‘child’ who does die at a hundred will die because he is a sinner. Now, let’s read on:

  “‘They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

  “‘They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for as the days of a tree, so shall be the days of My people, and My elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.’

  “Again,” Eleazar interrupted, “here’s what I believe is being said here. We will not be serving landlords and despots. What we build we will enjoy ourselves. And what we plant and harvest will be for us, not a boss or an occupying government. Reading on:

  “‘They shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth children for trouble; for they shall be the descendants of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them.

  “‘It shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear.’”

  “I’ve already experienced that!” Leah said. “Haven’t you all?”

  “Yes!” several others said. “Jesus often answers a prayer before I have prayed it.”

  “Continuing,” Eleazar said. “‘The wolf and the lamb shall feed together’—we saw that in the street today—‘the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain,’ says the Lord.”

  Rayford’s brain was spinning. This was new to him, and he assumed it was to the people at Eleazar Tiberius’s home as well. He couldn’t wait to discuss it with some of them.

  Chang raised his hand. “Chaim,” he said, “where are all the people who died before the Rapture? The people from the Old Testament, the believers before Jesus came, and the ones who died during the Tribulation? Were they all in the army that appeared with Jesus in the clouds?”

  Chaim sat back and smiled. “You have raised an interesting issue,” he said. “Do we want to get into this tonight, or are you all ready to pull the shades and see if we can pretend it is dark enough to sleep?”

  Rayford was tired, but he was no more interested in going to bed than any of the rest of the men were. And they said so.

  “Fair enough,” Chaim said. “It all begins with the Bible’s teaching about resurrection day. I had always thought there was only one and that it coincided with the Rapture.”

  “Me too.”

  “Apparently, this is not the case, for the resurrection that took place at the Rapture was of what the Bible refers to as ‘the dead in Christ’ and did not include the saints from the Old Testament. When they died, Christ had not yet come to earth, so even though they were justified by faith, they technically cannot be referred to as ‘the dead in Christ.’ The resurrections in Scripture fall into two categories: the first resurrection, or the resurrection of life; and the second resurrection, the resurrection of judgment. John 5:28-29 quotes Jesus saying, ‘Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.’

  “The first resurrection includes the redeemed of all the ages, but the timing of the resurrection of these people varies, based on whether they are an Old Testament saint, a Christian who lived before or at the time of the Rapture, or a Christian martyred during the Tribulation. All of them will take part in the resurrection of life. The resurrection of judgment will include the unredeemed of all the ages, and this will happen at the end of the Millennium during what the Bible calls the Great White Throne Judgment. The unredeemed will be cast into the lake of fire.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Rayford said. “Christians who died before the Rapture were resurrected at the time of the Rapture.”

  “Right.”

  “Old Testament saints will be resurrected when?”

  “Soon. During this interval between the Glorious Appearing and the Millennium.”

  “And Tribulation martyrs?”

  “At the same time. Old Testament saints and Tribulation martyrs will live and reign with Christ in the millennial kingdom.”

  “What about people who become believers during the Millennium?”

  “They will be resurrected at the end of the Millennium.”

  “Even though they’re alive.”

  “Correct.”

  “And the unredeemed won’t be resurrected until after the Millennium either, for the Great White Throne Judgment.”

  Chaim smiled. “Now you know as much as I do.”

  “So,” Rayford said, “my wife and son, who were raptured, were in that army of heaven behind Jesus.”

  “Yes.”

  “But my daughter and son-in-law, who were martyred during the Tribulation, will soon be resurrected.”

  “Precisely.”

  “So, we’ll get to see our friends and loved ones soon.”

  Enoch Dumas and his people from the tiny The Place congregation, formerly of inner-city Chicago, began discovering a few tiny pockets of fellow believers here and there. Employees of Antichrist or his government, even in America, had died at the words that came from the mouth of the Lord, but apparently it was God’s intent that the Millennium start with a clean slate. All unbelievers would soon die.

  The group reunited, and immediately everyone had the same idea. They should head back into Chicago to reminisce at their old meeting place, see what the former Tribulation Force safe house—where they had been guests before it was compromised—looked like now. Most of all, they needed to see what living accommodations were available in the city. Were the hotels and flophouses and fleabag apartments still around? And what about the high-rent district not so many blocks from where they had plied their trades before they became believers? If everyone else was going to die, what would keep them fro
m living in the fancy hotels downtown?

  Chicago had been considered radioactively contaminated for years, and even members of The Place had believed it, feeling forced to live inside, underground. When Chloe Steele Williams had discovered them and convinced them that the nuclear readings in Chicago were phonies planted by a Trib Force mole at the GC palace in New Babylon, they finally ventured out.

  Once the GC discovered the scheme, the Trib Force and The Place members had to relocate—and fast. Since then GC operatives had determined Chicago was safe again, and the city had begun to rebuild. But if what was true in Palos Hills and the surrounding suburbs was also true in the city, Enoch and his people would virtually have the place to themselves.

  Enoch expected to see the grisly effects of the worldwide slaughter of Christ’s enemies, much as he had seen in his neighborhood when the GC car had hit the hydrant. Would there be bodies lining the streets, blood and flesh everywhere? Piles of bones? There were not. The global earthquake had apparently been a work of cleanup. Many skyscrapers had toppled, including the Strong Building, where the Trib Force safe house had been. But even these piles of rubble had been so shaken that they merely buried the ugliness of the bloodbath among Carpathia’s employees.

  Enoch had to talk with God about what to do. If only believers would be left in the United States, with scriptural prophecy seeming to ignore America, it was going to be one sparsely populated country. The various groups of believers might find each other, but what were they to do? Would there be enough of them to start rebuilding the country as, finally for real, a Christian nation? Was this why God was going to purge it of the unredeemed and had already leveled it, making the entire planet as flat as the state of Illinois? None of the believers had worked in public for years. Anyone responsible for any public service or utility would soon be dead. Maybe this was God’s way of drawing all His people to be with Jesus in Israel.