While Greg Laurie indicated earlier this week that the death of Iran’s supreme leader could be an indication that the rapture is near, he clarified in a social media post on Wednesday (March 4) that Christians “don’t want it to lead to Armageddon.”
“We want peace,” Laurie said.
Laurie is an evangelist, an author, and pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship, a multisite church in Southern California. He has often spoken about geopolitical conflicts through the lens of biblical prophecy, offering his interpretation of apocalyptic texts in the Bible against the backdrop of unfolding world events.
After the United States and Israel launched a joint airstrike killing Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Laurie expressed gratitude that Khamenei’s oppressive reign, under which Christians suffered systematic persecution, had come to an end.
Laurie also noted, “As far as I can see, the next event on the prophetic calendar would be the rapture of the church.”
The doctrine of the rapture is the belief that Christians will one day suddenly be taken to heaven. The doctrine is held by many evangelicals, though not all.
“You know, the events of the end times are closely stacked together, not unlike dominos. And once the first domino falls, the others will fall in rapid succession,” Laurie went on to say. “So again, I think that the next event to happen would be the rapture.”
Nevertheless, on Wednesday, Laurie wrote in a social media post, “Some people say Christians are happy about war in the Middle East because we want to see Armageddon happen. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
“We want peace. In fact, the Bible specifically tells us to ‘pray for the peace of Jerusalem,’” Laurie continued. “Our desire is not conflict, but that people across the region would experience freedom—especially the freedom to worship God.”
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“We pray for the people of Israel and the people of Iran alike—that there would be a genuine spiritual awakening and that many would come to Christ,” he said. “After all, so much of the history of the Bible unfolded in that very part of the world, and Scripture tells us that Jesus Himself will one day return to the Mount of Olives.”
