[editor-surveyor]

MM, you are exaggerating the meaning of that passage.

Paul, above all of the apostles, makes it plain that salvation is only at the last trump.

Your idea would have Paul contradicting himself.

[metmom]

Then what is the point of telling us that the Holy Spirit is our guarantee and that we are sealed?

Sealed for WHAT? then.

[MHGinTN]

God contradicts your assertion by placing His Life, His Holy Spirit in those who believed the Gospel. It is recorded in the Bible as happening at the Pentecost preaching of Peter and the house of Cornelius preaching of Peter. In both of those scenes we see God Saved them right then and placed His Spirit in them as His seal of their immediate transformation from unsaved to born from above.

Jesus is coming int he Air, soon, to REDEEM the living and dead who are in Him. Then, at the end of The Great Tribulation, Jesus is coming to set foot a second time upon the earth. The Rapture is not a 'setting foot upon the earth'. This coming in the air without setting foot upon the earth is clearly illustrated by Jesus speaking to Saul on the Road to Damascus, where He appeared to Saul but was not present On the earth.

Catholics do a sort of reverse of this by claiming their priest reaches into Heaven and brings Christ down to the catholic altar in the Mass, to be victim present for those taking the Eucharistic wafer.