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All right, CBear, you want to go to Matt. 24 now, and that’s understandable since my post was taken up mainly with the 1 Thess. 4:14-18 and 1 Cor. 15:51-55 passages. Where I was endeavoring to prove those passages were NOT Paul revealing the mystery of a new and additional coming, additional to Jesus’ post-trib one in Matt. 24:29-31, but were the SAME event.

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.