Today, I want to just take a few moments and tell you how I became post-trib, because when
I was growing up as a little kid, I'll be honest with you, I believe in the pre-trib
rapture.
I mean, I was taught that Jesus could come at any moment, and I believed that.
When I was a small child, I expected him to come any day, and I didn't know if he was
coming today or tomorrow or when.
But when I was 12 years old, I decided to read the New Testament cover to cover for
the first time.
And I can remember it like it was yesterday.
I was sitting in the living room, and I was reading through the book of Matthew.
I got to chapter 24, and I read that part where the Bible says, after the tribulation,
Jesus comes in the clouds, the trumpet sounds, he gathers up his elect.
And when I read that, it was just obvious to me that the rapture comes after the tribulation,
not before.
And right then and there, I rejected the doctrine that I'd been taught previously of a pre-trib
rapture, and I can honestly say I've never believed in it since.
Now I remember later on, I started to dig into it more, especially as a teenager.
I really dug in and started studying it, and I started drawing out a lot of charts and
timelines and trying to put it all together and figure out where everything from Daniel
matched up with Revelation and so forth.
So when I was 12, obviously I didn't understand the whole doctrine the way that I understand
it now, but I understood one thing for sure, the rapture came after the tribulation.
I got that when I was 12.
Now I remember later on when I was 15, my teenage Sunday school class was going to do
a series on studying the book of Revelation.
Well I wanted to get the most out of it that I could, so I decided, it was announced on
a Sunday morning, hey, this is what we're going to be starting next week.
I went home that afternoon and I read the book of Revelation cover to cover twice, and
I just became really interested in it.
And like I said, I drew a lot of charts and studied it.
And really I formulated the timeline of end times events pretty much the same way that
I believe it now by the time I was about 16.
I had it all laid out, I had it all charted, and obviously there have been little tweaks
here and there since I was 16 as I've studied and learned more from the Bible.
The basic skeleton of that timeline was developed when I was 16.