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I’m amazed at people’s inability to listen. Such argumentative and dismissive attitudes. I long for my heavenly country and home, where we are all brothers and can listen patiently and kindly to one another.

In any case, addressing several of the repeated arguments here:

1. We can’t figure God out.

Obviously we cannot do this without God’s help, but we are making a single assumption, and that is that the Bible is God’s revealed word. If true then we can read and discern what God Himself has revealed.

2. No Christian groups taught the pre-trib rapture before Darby/MacDonald.

Did anyone bother to read point #2 in the original post and read through the references? The Darby/MacDonald pre-trib origination theory is patently and historically false. 18th century American authors and preachers were already teaching pre-trib doctrine. A CATHOLIC JESUIT wrote a book where he espoused the doctrine. Ephraem the Syrian in 373 AD explicitly taught the doctrine.

Also, is it really a fair/rational argument to say that because historic denominations did not adopt the pre-trib doctrine, then it can’t be true? Is everyone aware that historic denominations did not explicitly adopt mid-trib, pre-wrath, post-trib, or preterist views either? The only explicit eschatological end-of-the-age doctrine almost universally adopted throughout Church history was the physical, literal second coming of Christ at the end of the present age.

3. The rapture isn’t in the Bible.

Unless you want to demythologize everything and interpret symbolically without contextual support to do so, then YES it is. And emphatically so: 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 and likely 2 Thessalonians 2:3 (see points #1, #4, and #5 in the original thread).

4. Can’t know the day or hour/can’t predict the rapture.

Yet the Gospels and the Epistles are FILLED with admonishments to BE WATCHFUL FOR CHRIST’S COMING and TO KNOW the seasons. Why else would we be given signs if not TO USE THEM?

As an aside, the Greek word for “knows” in these passages is actually perfect past tense. Read a literal Biblical translation to get the real meaning (like Young’s). The literal meaning is “no one has known”. NOT “no one knows”.

Jesus explicitly says that when you begin to see the signs He mentioned to “lift up your heads”. That would be skyward!

God bless.