Billy Graham's Daughter on Missing Malaysia Airlines Plane and the Rapture: 'Glimpse of Things to Come?'
Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of Christian evangelist Billy Graham, recently drew a connection between the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 and the Rapture, as described in Thessalonians 4:16-17.
Lotz, founder of AnGeL Ministries, made the connection on her personal blog just after the plane went missing. Lotz suggested that the feeling of unknowingness and helplessness that has affected the world since the flight disappeared on March 8 will be the same feeling experienced by mankind when the Rapture happens and God comes back to Earth to claim His followers for heaven. Nonbelievers will be left to wonder: "Where have all the people gone?"
"… I can't help but wonder … Is this worldwide sense of shock and helplessness, of questions and confusion, of fear and grief, a glimpse of things to come? Is this a small snapshot of what the entire world will experience the day after the rapture of the church?" Lotz posed.
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"Because the Bible is clear. There is coming a moment in time when Jesus will come back to gather to Himself all those-dead and alive--who have put their trust in Him. And on that day, the world will be asking, Where have all the people gone? Not just 239 of us, but millions of us."
Friday marks the 14th day since the Malaysia Airlines MH370 Boeing 777 passenger plane went missing. The plane, which had 239 people on board, had departed the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in the early hours of March 8, and made its last communication with ground control an hour after takeoff before it went missing somewhere over the Gulf of Thailand.
The plane was destined for the Beijing Capital International Airport, but what was supposed to be a routine six-hour flight has now turned into an ongoing mystery after the plane vanished completely. Numerous theories regarding the plane's fate continue to swirl, including suggestions that the plane was hijacked, or that the pilots partook in a suicide mission and crashed the airliner.
Satellite images taken by an Australian-based commercial company earlier this week detected two large masses of debris floating in the remote area of the southern Indian Ocean, about 1,000 miles off of Australia and halfway to the Antarctic. Authorities have called the satellite images the "best lead" yet in the search for the missing plane, and although rough winter weather continues to hamper Australian pilots from reaching the debris, officials said Friday that they will continue dispatching search planes and a merchant vessel to the area to locate the possible wreckage.
Shortly after the incident occurred on March 8, the Africa-based Emmanuel TV network suggested that a self-styled Nigerian preacher, T.B. Joshua, reportedly predicted the plane's disappearance in a July 2013 sermon, when he said that a "large aircraft, carrying over 200 people would develop a fault on the tarmac" in "an Asian nation." The preacher said the problem could have been resolved on the tarmac, but due to the "fault of impatience," it was not addressed and the plane disappeared while in the air.
Joshua reportedly felt so confident in his prophecy that he even said he would possibly write a letter to the embassy of the unnamed Asian country, requesting officials check all planes before takeoff.
