Rapture Jacks :: By Tom Clark

When I was a little kid, I used to watch my two older sisters play a game called Jacks. Sometimes they would deign to let baby brother play with them, and thus I learned this simple game from them. They would draw a circle (usually with chalk) on the ground and dump out a bag of jacks and one small red rubber ball. That was all the equipment needed to play. You’d draw about a 10-inch circle with the chalk, then grab all the jacks in one hand and drop them into the circle. You’d then throw the red ball down, and as it bounced up into the air you would snatch away as many jacks as you could, and with the same hand, catch the ball in midair. The winner was the one who would catch up the greatest number of jacks in one try.

It was many years later that I became a believer in the Lord, and early in my walk with him, I first heard about something called the Rapture. It was the most amazing thing to hear! After reading 1st Thessalonians 4:12-18, my mind took me back to the childhood memories of playing the Jacks game, and made the following analogy.

I saw God’s hand holding all the jacks reaching down from Heaven and sowing the jacks who are all the people who have ever lived across the surface of the circle. As the jacks fall through the air, they also fly through time & space. The ones landing first tend to bounce out to the edges of the circle, and the most recent ones cluster in the center. Then the ball drops out of the sky & lands in the circle, but only for a brief moment before it ascends up into the air.

The first appearance of the ball is Jesus coming to Earth to dispense the Gospel of the Good News to all the jacks, but he’s there only for a short time. He tells the jacks who have come to believe in him that he will soon return for them & that they are to look up and make themselves ready for his glorious reappearing at any time.

That day soon comes, and in an instant as the red ball hurtles down to the earth, the powerful hand of Almighty God reaches down to the circle of jacks and snatches the chosen ones away. The oldest ones first at the edge, and then the most recent ones in the center. All at once, they are caught up together to be with the red ball in the air, safely held in God the Father’s protective hand forever more.

Paul tells in 1st Thess 4:16 & 17 “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.”

Raptured jacks!

Tom Clark

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