Posted on 06/12/2016 7:29:58 PM PDT by Lera
The scripture is vague as to what or who “the restrainer” is that should be taken away in order that the “son or perdition” should then be revealed. Pre-tribbers have historically speculated that this “restrainer” is the trans-corporate “church” consisting of all existant Holy Spirit filled believers including those dead in Christ who shall arise first! Yet the bible doesn’t specifically say that, now does it? Many great teachers have argued it and it certainly may be true, hence we should all be ready. Many great teachers (also proclaim Jesus is the Christ come in the flesh) have argued differently with equally compelling biblically reasoned treatises. The Restrainer could be the Holy Spirit or an angel such as the one that contended with the “prince of Persia”...the Bible really doesn’t say...and believe me I’ve looked! I’m not denying a coming rapture, the bible says it will happen.
Revelation mentions two coming harvests...one of the righteous and one of wrath. It mentions the children of Christ suffering for a time and being killed or imprisoned by the forces of the Beast system....at least for “a time, 2 times, and 1/2 time”. The Holy Spirit won’t have abandoned the Children of God during this time...indeed I suspect the Beast system won’t have as easy a time in suppressing the Christians and the 144000 chosen witnesses, especially during the ministry of the 2 Prophets who as part of their judgments that they can lay upon the earth, can push back on the Beast when he attempts too lay to heavy a hand! At some point during this time, I think the rapture may come. I don’t see it happening after the 3.5 year point but at some juncture before because when the prophets are killed and the Beast sets up his throne in the temple and calls himself God, that is when fullness of God’s wrath falls upon the Earth and the believers were promised to be spared that. Still, it may mean that believers will have their “lands of Goshen” as did the Hebrews as the plagues fell upon Egypt and that the rapture occurs before Armegeddon and the final ‘harvest of wrath”. Some have taught that as well.
Matthew speaks of the elect being gathered by the angels and the world in general will be conscious of it and be fearful....two women grind at the mill but one is suddenly taken up is what the scripture says.
The rapture will happen...events in Revelation will occur as written, the only unknown is the timing of the taking up of the believers....Christ did say “he comes as a thief”. Yet it could be argued that the “restrainer” may not be the corporate body of believers that keeps the Beast system in check but some other entity or work of the Holy Spirit quite separate from the Church. I think if it was the Church, there would be no reason not for the Bible to say otherwise. So the ID of the “Restrainer” is still somewhat of a mystery! Will the “great delusion” cause many to not hear the truth and to fall under the sway of the Beast...yes certainly but Revelation also seems to indicate many who come to know Christ even under heavy persecution...and since no one can come to Christ unless the Holy Spirit leads him, it indicates that the Holy Spirit is still mightily active during at least part of the Beast’s reign. There is nothing in the bible that says the Holy Spirit leaves the Earth during the Beast’s reign, only that the Restrainer is taken out of the way.
Now I only mention the above as points to consider...I was raised a pretribber and my sentiments, rooted in my childhood upbringing are generally in that direction. The issue I have is that God and specifically Christ, historically does things or performs in ways that sometimes goes against all that men were expecting or had translated or interpreted from scripture....yet when examined against the wording of scripture, the actions of God were prophesied truly! The Jews expected Christ to be something that he never was according to their expectation, yet Christ stated...”Before Abraham, I AM” and all his actions and persona matched that of what the Torah said he was to exhibit, not what the Jews had thought via their traditions that he should exhibit.
Based on that, I think coming events may go exactly what the Bible says will happen, not necessarily what we always thought the Bible was interpreted as saying what will happen! I believe that is also part of what Christ said when he says (in present tense as translated from the greek, interestingly enough)”I come as a thief”!
When God removes the Holy Spirit as He is functioning during the Church Age, birthing believers from above and placing His spark of God Life in them, we would not be delivered from the hour of testing if we no longer have the Holy Spirit of Promise with us, would we! The solution to that apparent dilemma is that when He is taken from His current ministry to built up the body of believers under pure Grace of God in Christ, when the Jews are the evangelizers during the Tribulation we will be outta here.
But I do enjoy your take on these interesting issues. Lest we forget, these are not beliefs which hold our salvation in the balance, merely comforting truths we should be studying ... for the comfort factor.
I hasn’t started yet .
What is happening in the middle east is a sneak peak while the beast nations sort their stuff out before they rise .
Prepping is good but if you don’t know what you believe and why you believe it you won’t survive.
Bkmk
I encourage you to keep preparing for the seven years ahead. You will need a whole lot of food, wel hidden, and much arms with ammo to make it to the view of the abomination that makes desolate. Perhaps THEN you will truly call upon the One God presents to us in three persons, for salvation. Joe Smith isn’t going to be of any help where he is now ... don’t go there!
Michael did confront Satan directly when they contended over the body of Moses(proving that Moses did die as some Christians mistakenly think he was taken up alive to be one of the two witnesses later...the Bible says he was buried in one of the valleys in the land of Moab). Michael just didn’t judge Satan ...from Jude:”9But even the archangel Michael, when he disputed with the devil over the body of Moses, did not presume to bring a slanderous judgment against him, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”
Now the verse in context>Jude 1:4For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into licentiousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
5I will therefore put you in remembrance, though you once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.
6And the angels who kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
7Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after unnatural lust, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
8Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise authority, and speak evil of the glorious ones.
9Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil as he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke you.
10But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.
11Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.
The angels of God do confront those of Satan and even Satan himself....they just don’t judge them for that is up to God himself. That is why I have questioned the ID of the “restrainer”. It might be the Holy Spirit directly, it might be a special angel or entity set up specifically to keep the entrance of the Beast in Check or it could be just the Church with the influence of the Holy Spirit that keeps the Beast in check. As for the Holy Spirit, he existed in the hearts and lives of believers even before God loosed him to be extant upon the earth....even if God should take him off the Earth, he would still exist in the hearts of the believing to empower and strengthen them as he did with Christ and the prophets of old.
The other scriptures that speak of end times issues and what happens to believers specifically don’t all dovetail nicely with the Pre-trib doctrines and Revelation seems to point of a time of severe testing for latter day believers, even to the point of being dominated by the Beast system for a time. Yes they could be believers who came to faith after the “big lift off” as it were but there seems to be a lot of teasing of needed scriptures to get to that point of belief.
I think as Christians, we need to be prepared that events may not go in the way we “always” expected them to go so that we don’t despair when we are tempted(and I use that word in its most active demonic meaning) to feel that God may have abandoned us or worse that we have believed in a lie.(that will be the greatest danger and it may be the ultimate point of the testing of many a person’s faith) God will not abandon us or his children no matter what scenario emerges! If the big “lift off” occurs as pretribbers expect...well wonderful and we’ll all certainly be rooting and praying for those who come to faith during the final 7 years!
The great apostacy has begun I believe but the great delusion has not yet been laid down(that they should believe a lie). Should the Son of Perdition be revealed before the rapture we should still not be disheartened but rather we should draw together closer in unity. Christ will be opening the seals and we will receive wisdom and grace, we will be instructed as to how to live and survive...we will not be alone! Revelation says that God will put his seal on his believers so that they don’t receive the same punishments as those who took the Beast’s mark. (Obviously the great delusion doesn’t effect everyone lest there be no one saved at all during the tribulation)
To sum up...Pre-trib rapture happens...great! If the rapture tarries for a time until after the rise of the Beast...then be as Shadrach, Meshak, and Abednigo who declared when facing the firey furnace” God is able to deliver us but even if he doesn’t we will still not bow down to the king’s image”!
Is that the ‘official’ Mormon position, from your Mormon Prophet? Or is it your personal take on the Bible message?
If you pay attention, Mormon, you notice that non-Catholic CHRISTIANS follow the Bible, like taking the advice which seemed good to The Holy Spirit. Your manufactured religion, on the other hand, doesn't even believe God's own words. YOUR religion of Mormonism has gross blasphemies at its heart, like the Lorenzo Snow couplet, where Snow (Prophets of Mormonism anyone?) states that 'as We are now god once was; as god is now we can be.'
The History of your religion ends any trust in the spewings from your 'prophets' or your 'other scriptures'. Run along, you have been outed as a false source for truth.
And here is where your reasoning fell apart.
Do you think John was referring to the Mediterranean Sea when he wrote the vision of the “burning mountain” or do you think it means that the ‘big dump” happens in the Pacific or the Atlantic? I’ve always assumed it was the Pacific or the Atlantic but perhaps it was just the Mediterranean Sea and a third of all the local shipping and the sea life is destroyed there. It would still be a horrible catastrophe!
First of all you are right in that no Christian deserves a magic escape ticket...matter of fact we all deserve hell fire! We don’t deserve any sort of salvation, period!
Next, the early church fathers and on down through the ages have spoken of a rapture....the Bible says there is going to be one. The argument is simply the timing of when it will occur. Perhaps Darby and Scofield exploded the concepts beyond the traditional orthodoxical confines in which the rapture was taught but they weren’t the first to speak of it.
Paul spoke of a time “at the last trumpet...”(whether it really meant at the last trumpet sounded by the angel in Revelation or whether it was a euphemism for the “last days” or the last trumpet in terms of wedding feast of Jesus’ era in which the Bride groom would suddenly appear to take his bride) 1 Thessalonians 4:1615By the word of the Lord, we declare to you that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will be the first to rise. 17After that, we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.…...
1 Corinthians 15:51Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For the perishable must be clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.…(hmm sounds like a certain Handel’s Messiah chorus.....)Yes they knew about the rapture back then!
When it occurs is the what the big fuss is all about...but not the “IF”.
Matthew speaks of the angels gathering up his children in the last days;the rapture or the in gathering of his children so to shield them from the wrath of God to fall upon the earth was promised by Jesus. He did not say we would be in gathered to spare us from persecution but from the wrath of God to fall upon the Earth! Horrible stuff happens in the first 3.5 years of the last seven years but the days of wrath are in the latter half ...and even they would be cut short lest there be no life left on Earth! So the argument is over the timing of his coming in the air to meet us.(with the dead in Christ rising first)
Well, I guess the hundreds of thousands of “Christian” Egyptian Copts, Syrians, Libyans, Iraqis who are being persecuted by Muslim monsters, (hell-on-earth martyr beheading, burned to death, rape til dead) must have poor timing.
Most likely they prayed fervently as their head was coarsely sliced off, and as their flesh seared on fire.
Likely all of the other Millions of Christians and Jews who were slaughtered during WWII, WWI, other conflicts fervently prayed for mercy and god’s divine intervention.
God’s will is a difficult mystery...
I cannot help but not accept modern day just-wait’in to-escape-any-day-now christain doctrine.
Nobody gets out of here alive.
And it seems like the most mistaken self-possessed modern interpretation of biblical script written in the 1600’s by the Church of England.
That some day in the future, much luckier believers with good timing will escape real bad end-of-days tribulation, than the countless other poor souls with bad luck and timing who died, martyred for their faith.
I don’t care to argue about scriptural interpretation minutia because there’s no absolute on earth authority to set the record straight once and for all.
We’ll just have to wait and see.
Be well, you and yours.
You only know of Paul because the RCC preserved his letters. There-fore what little Bible the Mormons choose to believe in comes from the RCC as well. Apparently you Mormons just can’t escape the RCC’s clutches as well...to use your own logic...Mormons are just as doomed then!(that is if you consistently follow your own logic)
1 Thess 4:13 But we do not want you to be ignorant ... 15 For we declare to you what the Lord has told us to say:c We who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who have died. ... 17 Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air.
So, 'Nobody gets out of here alive', REALLY? God refutes your assertion.
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