Matthew 24:44 Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.
Mark 13:32 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
Matthew 24:36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. 37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
No one knows the day or the hour? We are already told what "day" will be mid trib when the anti Christ sets himself up in the temple and we know the exact day Christ will return to earth to defeat the armies of the anti Christ.
Daniel told us that the anti Christ will sign a covenant or peace treaty which is supposed to have a duration of seven years but half way through will break that covenant.
Daniel 9:27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
So 3 1/2 (1260 days) years after that treaty is singed the anti Christ sets himself up in the temple as God. Then we know it's exactly 1290 days to Christ's return.
Daniel 12:11 From the time that the daily sacrifice is abolished and the abomination that causes desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days.
Christ warned of it.
Matthew 24:15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)
No one knows the day or the hour? That can't refer to mid trib or post trib could it. We know the exact day of each of those events.
Rather then make this any longer I'll simply not address the passages that address the rapture. You need to explain how Jesus is not lying with the statement "no on knows the day or the hour" if you believe either mid trib or post trib.
The mystery, 1 Cor. 15:51, “Behold I shew you a mystery,” being the rapture, or “catching up,” the saved rising/resurrected then “caught up together” in the clouds, meeting Jesus in his descent from heaven, 1 Thess. 4:16,17. THIS ADDITIONAL DETAIL NOT DESCRIBED BY JESUS IN HIS PAROUSIA (Matt. 24:29-31), BEING THE "MYSTERY" THAT PAUL REVEALS. Paul’s parousia (coming) not a different Parousia from Jesus’, but the same one..
Were Paul’s parousia additional to Jesus’ post-trib parousia in Matt. 24:29-31, then you would indeed have the “two- stage” I was talking about, which you deny you have. If your pretrib parousia is a separate parousia from Jesus’ post-trib parousia, separated by the seven years of the tribulation, then you have two parousia’s.
If the parousia in 1 Thess. 4 and 1 Cor. 15 is indeed an additional parousia from the post-trib one in Matt. 24:29-31, then where is the language in these passages by Paul to describe such a thing? Are we amiss by expecting Paul to have said something like this:
“Behold I shew you a mystery, I reveal to you a new and separate parousia from the one at the end of the tribulation that Jesus spoke about. There is actually going to be two parousias, one before the seven year tribulation, and another one after it. The one I am revealing is what we will now call the “rapture,” that’s the name it will henceforth be called. This rapture, you must understand is entirely different from the parousia after the tribulation. That one, you must understand is Jesus coming WITH the saints he had previously raptured some seven years before. My rapture is Jesus coming FOR his saints, the one after the tribulation is Jesus coming WITH his saints. My new revelation, you must understand, is two-stage, not just one event as you may have previously thought.”
As important as this is to us who believe, this is our hope, for heavens sake, we would expect SOMETHING LIKE THIS said. But we find no such thing. Where’s the name we are to call this separate and distinct parousia? Does Paul call it the “rapture?” Are we amiss in expecting Paul to designate a special name for this separate event that comes seven years before the other one? No, he doesn’t call it the “rapture,” THAT IS PART OF WHAT HAPPENS, TO BE SURE, BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT HE CALLS IT. He uses the same word that Jesus uses throughout Matt. 24, “parousia,” in the Greek, our English “coming! “
The fact that Paul uses the same word, parousia, Jesus used (NOT calling it “the rapture”), and the fact that he used no “two-stage” or “two parousias” language to describe the mystery he is revealing, should lead us to the conclusion that Jesus and Paul were talking about the SAME event, the same parousia.
And that using the term “rapture” to define this supposedly separate parousia, is but a modern construct, nobody before Darby, in all of church history, ever used such “two stage” language. Prior to Darby, it was just the 2nd coming, the parousia, and one event, not two.
This has gotten long, sorry ‘bout that. And I haven’t even got to your comments about Matt. 24 yet. Actually, I haven’t even finished with what needs to be said about these two passages by Paul.