One afternoon about four or five years ago -- definitely before 9/11 -- I passed a guy on a corner of Fifth Avenue near The Plaza who was passing out tracts and holding forth about salvation through Jesus Christ. He had on a crudely constructed wooden sandwich board that read, "The End is At Near." I had to laugh when I saw it, realizing the guy had commingled "the end is near" with "the end is at hand." Then I thought, "Well, he does have it right. You could definitely say were at the near stage. "It's kind of like when you're driving through the Smokies and the signs pointing you to the next Stuckey's no longer say 112 miles to go. They say, "Only 22.5 miles left!"

I was eating at the kitchen table of my mom's house when I first heard over the TV about this massive tsunami that hit Asia. About the first thing that popped in my head was how Jesus Christ warned of "earthquakes in diverse places" and unpredictable oceanic conditions ("the sea and the waves roaring") as being among end-times markers.

I thought, "I bet people are going to think this is end-times prophecy coming true."

One of the key things you learn studying the Bible in a church that teaches "right division," or looking at Scripture dispensationally with the knowledge we are to follow the Apostle Paul's distinct ministry today, is that the Jewish "prophetic program" of the Old Testament, the Gospels and the first part of the Book of Acts is on standby "until the fullness of the gentiles be come in." (Rom. 11:25) That means under our current "administration," headed up by Paul's authorship, God is pouring out grace and peace to the world, not wrath. He's purposely holding back His wrath in order to increase the membership ranks of the Body of Christ, the Church. Proof of this activity can even be seen right now in the tsunami-struck regions where there has been a reported influx of Christian missionaries and Christian aid groups.

It is only after the Rapture that the Tribulation Period associated with the end times and Israel's "prophetic program" will kick in. Bible scholar C.R. Stam defines the Tribulation as a "special period during which human civilization crumbles under the weight of the combined features of its ages long rejection of God."

Of course, the Rapture is another Bible event many people are either unaware of or are confused about. The gauge of its popularity as something to ponder, though, is found in the astronomical success of the "Left Behind" book series that novelizes the rise of the Antichrist and end-times prophecy. At least 11 of the books have made the top of the New York Times bestseller list. In the most simple terms, the Rapture is "a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump," (I Cor. 15:52) when Christians both alive and in the grave are sucked up into the sky to meet Jesus Christ in the air as their escort into Heaven (I Thess. 4: 13-18).

"There's going to be a group of Believers at the end of the Church Age who are going to be suddenly changed, and be from here to there in a split second," explains Les Feldick, an Oklahoma rancher and Bible teacher for 30 years, in an audio Internet study lesfeldick.org "I was mulling it over again just the other day and it's hard to comprehend. No wonder the unbeliever scoffs at it. I can understand why because it takes some faith to believe that all of a sudden Christ will leave Glory, will come to the atmosphere, the trumpet's going to sound, the archangel is going to shout and all the dead Believers of the Church Age are going to be raised from wherever they are. "This is hard to comprehend -- but what does the Book say? Exactly that -- this is a mystery, a secret, revealed to the Apostle Paul and now it's no longer a secret and we're to believe it."

While the exact timing of the Rapture will remain God's secret, Paul, the only Bible author to write about the event, details the key indicators signaling its approach. In II Tim. 3, for example, he writes, "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come." For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, "Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, "Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; "Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away."

Another set of signposts can be found in I Tim. 4. There's more, too, in the first chapter of Romans. "The longer God's grace is extended the more the hearts of men will produce perilous times," explains my pastor, Richard Jordan of Shorewood Bible Church in Chicago (graceimpact.org). "Self is going to be the measure of everything." As Paul makes clear in I Thess. 2:3, the "day of Christ," or the Rapture, "shall not come except there come a falling away first." This is a reference to the apostasy of the churches. I can tell you living here in New York City, there are enough apostate teachers in enough apostatized main-line denominational churches to usher in the Rapture this second. Their backs are solidly turned from any sound Bible doctrine. As my pastor points out repeatedly," The end of apostasy is always idolatry." It will become about the "creature rather than the creator."

I was sitting in a midtown deli eating some hot-and-cold-buffet dollops the other day when I heard over their stereo system the hit Joni Mitchell song from the '70s about how they "paved paradise and put up a parking lot." The refrain goes, "Don't it always seem to be, you don't know what you've got til it's gone." This is exactly the predicament unsaved people will be in after the Rapture, facing "travail in a protracted time of suffering that will increase in intensity to a great crescendo of climactic agony," as my pastor explains it. Just as war is the opposite of peace, judgment is the opposite of grace.