Exactly. Absolutely nobody believed this pre-trib nonsense until the last couple of centuries. There is one return of Christ and both Matthew 24 and Revelation teach that believers go through the tribulation. There is not a single verse that teaches that the rapture happens at any other time than the highly visible return of Christ. Believers are caught up in the air to meet the Lord and arrive back on earth with him as he continues his descent to judge the nations.
29 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
This short excerpt from Matthew 24 explicitly teaches that the rapture or gathering together of the elect is after the tribulation. It also shows that the return (singular) of Christ is not something hidden or secret but highly visible and impossible to miss. Tribulation is mentioned three times in the passage in reference to believers and not once does Jesus advise that there is a way to escape it.
I’m sorry you have to go through the tribulation. You could become a Baptist like me and escape it. haha
I'm fine with anyone believing whatever they want.
However, this teaching stretches back further than you claim.
A Brief History of the Rapture
best
Demonstrably false ...
The purpose of the tribulation has nothing to do with the church.
I read where a guy named Darby back in the early eighteen hundreds formulated that idea then a preacher named Schofield enhanced it and it became really vogue in the Seventies with the One Way movement.
Actually winslow, nobody believed in what is commonly called “covenant theology” or “reformed theology” until the last couple of centuries. True, covenant theology is older than dispensational theology but in terms of a church that has been around for 2000 years, all of these are relatively new systems.
Having said that, the modern preterist theory is the newest of them all.
Yes, winslow - the entire pre-trib nonsense dates to the 1800s.
The pre-trib proponents will draw out Montanis and Ireneus but they didn’t hold to the Pre-trib Darby fallacy that the first stage, the rapture of only the believers, with two future comings of the Christ.
Pre-Trib necessitates a split covenant — as was exemplified in a pre-Trib J Dwight Pentecost who wrote “There are two new covenants presented in the New Testament: the first with Israel in reaffirmation of the covenant promised in Jeremiah 31 and the second made with the church in this age. This would divide the references to the new covenant in the New Testament into two groups”
As Clarence Lakin wrote “the Sermon on the Mount has no application tot he christian, but only to those who are under the Law”
The pre-Trib idea fails especially when you consider the desperation in which it clings to pushing the dates — “oh, 40 years after the foundation of Israel - 1988 it will all end”, then “oh, until all of the folks living in 1948 are dead.
I.e., Jesus is going to beat His bride ...