Anne Graham Lotz: 'Return of Jesus in the Rapture' Will Occur During 'My Lifetime'
In continuing with a warning she gave last week on her website that God will soon unleash his judgment upon America, Billy Graham's 66-year-old daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, further clarified on Wednesday that biblical signs are indicating that the rapture will occur during her lifetime.
Lotz, who turns 67 on Thursday, previously proclaimed by citing the book of Joel that God's judgement upon America is "going to be ugly." In a Wednesday Interview with CBN News, she explained that all the signs that the book of Joel points out as "birth pains" directly preceding the Day of the Lord have come to fruition.
"So the birth pains, the signs that Jesus gives, whether it is in the environmental world or national world, the wars, or the persecution of Christians, the persecution of Jews, when we see that ratcheting up and increasing in frequency and in intensity in the same generation that sees the Gospel being preached to the whole world and Israel reborn as a nation, that's the generation that is the last," Lotz stated.
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"I believe with deep conviction that is my generation," Lotz continued. "I was born just a week apart from the time when Israel was reborn as a nation [1948]. We are the same age. And I believe that if I live out my lifetime, a natural lifetime, I believe I will live to see the return of Jesus in the Rapture when He comes back to take us to be with Himself, which means preceding that there are going to be some signs. There are going to be some warnings."
Lotz has begun a prayer initiative called Mayday! Mayday: A Distress Call For Prayer, where she is calling on American Christians to pray one hour per day from May 15 until May 23. She says that the purpose of this prayer initiative is for Christians to pray for repentance so God might lessen his judgement on America.
"I picked these dates, the 15th through the 23rd because they are the days in between the ascension of Jesus and Pentecost on the church calendar," she explained. "And biblically, if you remember, the disciples went into the upstairs room, they prayed for those nine days, and one of the things I know they prayed for was that God would keep His promise and send down the Holy Spirit in fullness, which of course He did that at the Feast of Pentecost."
Although Lotz admitted that some feel there's no way of escaping God's judgement, she explained that Joel Chapter 2 states that if God's people repent and vow to maintain their focus on God's glory as He sends warning signs of his coming judgement, then God could instead send blessings.
"With the warning is the implied hope that if we would rend our hearts and truly mourn for our lives and put our focus back on Him, if we truly rend our hearts, then Joel Chapter 2 says 'who knows but that God is gracious and compassionate,' that he would relent, he would be relieved not to bring judgement and he would leave behind a blessing."
Lotz compared God's impending judgment to the 10 plagues God cast upon ancient Egypt. She added that even the Israelites were subject to the first three plagues that God cast upon the pharaoh and his land. Similarly, Lotz said the church is likely to face some kind judgement, even if God protects the church from his full wrath.
"Before Jesus comes back, He may allow the church to go through some judgment because it purifies us and helps us get our priorities straight and increases our focus and also our compulsion to share the Gospel with the people around us," Lotz argued. "Like the Israelites in Egypt when God sent the 10 plagues on Egypt to force the pharaoh to let His children go, Israelites went through the first three plagues themselves and they still came under some of the judgement that they were spared from in the last seven plagues."
Lotz continued by stating the biblical warnings that are being exhibited today, are similar to God's warnings in Romans 1.
"A judgement isn't necessarily a nuclear strike or ISIS popping up everywhere. Judgement is God backing away from us. When we tell God to get out. Then God, He gets out and then allows us to be subjected to things that He has been protecting us from for hundreds of years in this country," Lotz said. "He has blessed us, He has protected us and we have defied Him. So, He backs away. In Romans 1, everytime He backs away there is also the [notion] that if they didn't repent then He would further the judgement. The implied truth is that if we repent to Him then He would stay His hand of judgement."
