Posted on 07/05/2017 5:32:05 PM PDT by grumpa
One way to prepare is to avoid becoming a scoffer like the author of this article.
Peter warned about scoffers who deny Christ’s return. (2 Pet. 3)
Paul warned about those who deny the resurrection. (1 Cor. 15)
Christ warned about false prophets and false Christs. (Mat. 25)
John warned about the mark of the beast. (Rev. 13)
Lot’s of other warnings which this false teacher is essentially telling his audience to ignore.
Christ’s sheep will listen to His voice and flee from voices like this false teacher. (John 10)
I’m confident in God. But this is Bo & Peep stuff.
In addition to rejecting scoffers, Another way to prepare for the rapture is to reject those who quote scriptures out of context. Only part of Matt 24 is about the rapture
Learn to be patient, ‘cuz you’re going to have to wait forever.
I too saw the Rapture in Isaiah. However, I've heard others preach that there is no Rapture reference in the "Old Testament." I believe Isaiah is clearly referring to a catching away.
(2 years in the USAF at Spangdahlem AB),......interesting, I was there, TDY in 1971, March - May. Used to frequent Mama's Gasthaus. Just did a Google an found this pic of Mama's.....just as I remember it. Second stool from the right was mine.
-—(If you are in Kansas, sorry, but you are in serious trouble.)-—
Hey Charlie, there is a Mount Sunflower in western Kansas. Granted, it’s more of a mound than a mountain, but get there early because if all the Kansans head there, it’ll be a might crowded!
Read your Bible daily. Don’t read exogesistic interpretation of the Bible, read THE BIBLE, yourself.
Rapture is about relationship, not knowledge. You cannot create relationship with second hand knowledge. Nor can you buy a stairway to Heaven with works.
The bullet list is perfect and ironic example of totally missing the point of scripture, substituting logic for spiritual wisdom.
I certainly hope you forgot the /s tag.
“For the Bride of Christ, The Body of Christ to be outta here when the wrath of God is poured out in ever increasing severity”
That is true, but the wrath of God does not occur until AFTER the Great Tribulation.
First there is the time called “the beginning of sorrows.” Then there is the Great Tribulation. Then the sun and moon will be darkened and the powers of heaven shaken. (This marks the end of the Great Tribulation and the arrival of the Day of the Lord.) And then Christ Returns simultaneously with the arrival of the Day of the Lord / Day of Christ / Day of Wrath.
All of the trumpet and bowl judgments of Revelation take place during this time period—i.e. the Day of the Lord, and NOT the Great Tribulation.
“the evangelizing of humanity will be done by a chosen 144,000 JEWISH evangelists”
Then who are the Christian martyrs in Revelation 6:9? The 144,000 are not sealed until the uncountable multitude of last generation Christians are caught up to the throne room of Heaven. See Revelation 7. Where do these come from? Out of the Great Tribulation. When you answer the question of how they get to Heaven, you will be a pre-wrath rapurist, also.
“The Tribulation is about Israel”
The Great Tribulation will come upon all the earth.
Revelation 3:10
Because you have kept My command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.
Here is the distinction:
1. Daniel’s seventieth week will begin with a false world peace. (See Revelation 6, and the Olivet Discourse in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.)
2. In the middle of the seven-year period, the antichrist will defile the third temple and set up his throne there, beginning the Great Tribulation. At this time there will be a great, world-wide persecution of Christians. And many who claim to be Christians (but follow the false Christ) will commit the same sin as Judas by betraying the real Christians. (The Jews will also be an immediate target for persecution by the antichrist at this time.)
3. Signs and wonders in the second heaven will demarcate the end of the Great Tribulation and will immediately proceed the Day of the Lord when God will pour out judgments of fire on the earth.
In 2 Thessalonians 1, Paul describes the rapture of the Church. We know it is the rapture because he says that it will be at this coming of Christ that they will receive rest and respite from their persecution and trials. However, he also describes this same event as Christ arriving with holy angel and flaming fire to take vengeance on the unbelieving world. But Daniel’s seventieth week clearly begins with peace, not judgements of fire.
The other issue is that there is going to be strong delusion. Israel will not come to national repentance at the beginning of Daniel’s seventieth week. Yet there are martyrs. How are they Christians if there is no one on earth left to preach the Gospel to them, and the 144,000 have not yet been sealed? How do they overcome the strong delusion that God is going to send upon the unbelievers? Christ said that the deception will be so strong that even the elect would fall for it if that was possible.
All of these things only fit together in order if Christ is coming after the Great Tribulation and just before the Day of Wrath.
The pre-tribulational rapture view arises from an incorrect understanding of the dispensations. This day of superabounding grace will continue until the Day of the Lord. There will be no going back to Old Testament dispensations of Law. Christ has already come, and died, and rose again. Israel will rebuild the temple and implement the daily sacrifices, but Israel will follow antichrist and not God. Only after Christ returns at the end of the Great Tribulation will they “look on Him they have pierced” and be brought to repentance. Peter identified the start of the Church as part of this final dispensation in which the Holy Spirit is poured out, and this time period clearly includes from then until the Day of the Lord arrives:
Acts 2:17-21
And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God,
That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh;
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
Your young men shall see visions,
Your old men shall dream dreams.
And on My menservants and on My maidservants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days;
And they shall prophesy.
I will show wonders in heaven above
And signs in the earth beneath:
Blood and fire and vapor of smoke.
The sun shall be turned into darkness,
And the moon into blood,
Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.
And it shall come to pass
That whoever calls on the name of the Lord
Shall be saved.
Peter and Paul both quote this last verse from the passage in Joel 2, and apply it to our salvation in this current dispensation. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to cause people to cry out to Christ and, from the heart, call Him “Lord.” This is part of the salvation process. And yet it originates from this passage in Joel about the end of the world and God’s wrath being poured out.
It is very important for the Church today to correctly understand that we are required to go through the Great Tribulation and persevere in our faith during these difficult days when they come. The hope of Christ’s return is not to escape tribulation but the wrath of God which will come on all of the earth after the church is raptured out.
Depends on one’s family tradition.
If one has not accepted Christ, one cannot be pure.
Perhaps, "Accept Christ as your savior" would be the best advice.
I will stick with the bible thanks, which states the Lord returns only once immediately after the Tribulation. Prepare for the Tribulation, faith through intimate relationship with the Father, the Son Jesus and Holy Spirit.
Notice these are believers doing the mocking here:
“Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” 2 Peter 3:3-4
unlearner: That is true, but the wrath of God does not occur until AFTER the Great Tribulation.
There is a reason the folks in Thessalonika needed the second letter. They had been persuaded by someone that the Day of the Lord had arrived and some of their number had already died and no gathering unto the Lord (See John 14, where no less than Jesus explains that gathering to His closest followers) had they experienced. Paul wrote to them reminding them of what he had previously told them when with them and in his first letter to them. In 1 Thess 1:10, Paul mentions in passing that Jesus 'hath delivered us from the wrath to come'. In 2 Thess Paul further explains why the folks should not think the Day of the Lord had arrived, that the persecutions they were experiencing were not the wrath of God because the Lawless One had not yet been revealed.
unlearner: First there is the time called “the beginning of sorrows.” Then there is the Great Tribulation. Then the sun and moon will be darkened and the powers of heaven shaken. (This marks the end of the Great Tribulation and the arrival of the Day of the Lord.)
The Day of the Lord refers to a 'season'. The Great and Terrible Day of the Lord refers to a protracted event.The beginning of a sorrows is a reference for the Jews, not the Bride of Christ being made during the Age of Grace. Conflating the two is a common source of error in end times study.
See Luke for the Temple Discourse, given by Jesus in the Temple, to Jews, in which He prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem. Later that same day His four closest Disciples get a deeper lesson on end times as the sun is setting from their vantage point on the Mount of Olives. That is more fully exposited in Matthew 24.
The sequence of the day is the Temple Discourse, as found in Luke which allowed more than a million Jews to know when to get out of Jerusalem due to the Armies of Tacitus and Vespasian surrounding the city and delaying their assault while Vespasian went to Rome to settle the Caesar issue then return to raze Jerusalem; then the walk from the Temple Mount down the trail over to the Mount of Olives, and during the leaving the Temple Jesus spoke of the total destruction of the Temple coming in 70 AD, tagging that to what is seen in Ezekiel when the Holy Spirit left the Temple before the Babylonians took the City; then the Mount of Olives Discourse as seen in Matthew 24 in which Jesus combined the Bride Prophecy of the end of the Age of Grace with the Jewish specific end times as it will be in Jerusalem and Judea.
unlearner: And then Christ Returns simultaneously with the arrival of the Day of the Lord / Day of Christ / Day of Wrath. All of the trumpet and bowl judgments of Revelation take place during this time period, i.e. the Day of the Lord, and NOT the Great Tribulation.
I cannot agree with that rendering of the Revelation of John. From the beginning of Chaper 4 through to chapter 19, this is the view from Heaven of what will take place on the Earth. It is called the Tribulation or time of Jacob's troubles. It is a time of seven years divided into two 3 1/2 year segments. During the first 3 1/2 years the wrath of God is present upon the Earth and int he middle of the seven years the Abomination of Desolation steps intot he rebuilt Temple and desecrates the Holy of Holies, and THEN the wrath increases exponentially, culminating at the end of the second 3 1/2 years with the Lord Jesus accompanied by the Host of Heaven, including the Bride of Christ, splitting the Mount of Olives in two and the battle of Armageddon slaughter, blood running in the Meggido Valley to the height of a horse's bridle, etc.What needs to be understood is what the Rapture of so many believers from the grave and from the living will do in an instant to the Earth of complex civilization. There is a technological reason why horses are used for the planned assault upon Jerusalem. God has left us numerous clues which can only be understood in our epoch of electromagnetic dependence.
me : 'the evangelizing of humanity will be done by a chosen 144,000 JEWISH evangelists'
unlearner : Then who are the Christian martyrs in Revelation 6:9? The 144,000 are not sealed until the uncountable multitude of last generation Christians are caught up to the throne room of Heaven. See Revelation 7. Where do these come from? Out of the Great Tribulation. When you answer the question of how they get to Heaven, you will be a pre-wrath rapurist, also.
The Rapture removes the real Christians from the graves and the living, leaving many many behind who were not part of the Bride of Christ, the 'foolish virgins' of Jesus's parable of the ten virgins. During the Tribulation, especially the first 3 1/2 years, a number will be whisked to Heaven so great that a man in John's day could not number them. I believe these are the ones who cry out to the Lord sincerely, since they have experienced the departure (apostasia anyone?) of some whom they would count as true Christians by the lives they were leading in the Lord. God in His mercy, by His ever present Holy Spirit will bring these to Heaven as guests at the Wedding, since their faith in calling out to The Lord has washed their garments in the blood of the Lamb, spiritually. Jesus even gave a story about one who is caught at the Wedding without the garment for the party and is cast out.The collapse of electromagnetic dependent civilization is the beginning of God's wrath on the Earth and earth dwellers who will not be taken away in the Rapture. Jesus in John 14 told His Disciples that He was going away to prepare a place for them and that He would return for them and take them to that place, for in His Father's House are many rooms, rooms Jesus is preparing for the Bride's arrival in Heaven.
In several places the New Testament tells us that 'we are not appointed to wrath, but to obtain Salvation. The man of sin cannot be revealed until what is restraining him now is taken out of the way. The Body of Christ / collected Body of all believers is spiritually restraining him now. When the Rapture removes The Body of Christ / Bride of Christ THEN the wrath is poured out in ever increasing severety during the seven years of God putting an end to sin.
Here is a method for better discernment of the Revelation of John: try shifting back and forth in perspective from what is happening to those who will finally call upon the Lord and those who will refuse no matter what, and the work the Tribulation does in Judea and Jerusalem proper, with the newly rebuilt Temple. When you learn how to do that shifting of perspective, apply ito the Matthew Mount of Olives Discourse Jesus gave to the four Disciples.
me: Tribulation is about Israel
unlearner: The Great Tribulation will come upon all the earth. Revelation 3:10 Because you have kept My command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.
Yes, the Tribulation will cover the whole earth. It is useful to use the shifting perspective to discern when the Prophecy of Daniel is being referenced nd when the rest of humanity left behind by the Rapture event are in focus. During the Great Tribulation it is the Jewish 'virgins' who will be telling the world that the Messiah is going to be setting foot back upon the Earth at a specific day and hour, splitting the Mount of Olives in two. Anti-Christ gathers his armies (200,000,000 in number) for that coming hour, but the Revelation shows its a one-sided battle, with GOD slaughtering the lost who have followed anti-Christ, taking his mark for buying and selling, committing themselves to his reality, etc.
I am a pre-trib Rapture believer. This is a decades long study to/for me.
1 Thess 1:9&10 For people keep telling us what kind of welcome you gave us and how you turned away from idols to serve a living and true God and to wait for his Son whom he raised from the dead to come back from heaven. This Jesus is the one who rescues us from the coming wrath.
2 Thess 2: 1 Now we ask you, brothers, regarding the coming of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah, and our gathering together to him [See John 14], 2 not to be so quickly upset or alarmed when someone claims that we said, either by some spirit, conversation, or letter that the Day of the Lord has already come. 3 Do not let anyone deceive you in any way, for it will not come unless the a[pstasia takes place first and the man of sin, who is destined for destruction, is revealed. 4 He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god and object of worship. As a result, he seats himself in the sanctuary of God and himself declares that he is God.
5 Don’t you remember that I repeatedly told you about these things when I was still with you? 6 You know what it is that is now holding him back, so that he will be revealed when his time comes. 7 For the secret of this lawlessness is already at work, but only until the person now holding it back gets out of the way. 8 Then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will destroy with the breath of his mouth, rendering him powerless by the manifestation of his coming.
I cannot agree with your assertion. Paul tells us that Jesus hath delivered us from the coming wrath. Those that are instructed to persevere until the end are not the Bride, they are the invited wedding guests. What bridegroom would make His bride suffer to get her ready for a wedding?!The tribulation is specifically identified as the wrath of God being poured out upon the Earth. We, the Bride of Christ, are not appointed to wrath. The body of believers suffer many persecutions, but not The Wrath of God. The wrath of God is poured out upon those who did not believe, causing a number so great to suddenly call upon the Lord for deliverance, deliverance from the wrath happening on the Earth. These are not members of the Bride of Christ, they are invited guests at the wedding who spiritually wash their garment in the blood of the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.
Damiel's seventieth week is to put an end to sin.
The Tribulation IS the outpouring of GOD's wrath. The Rapture IS to take the Bride away from the wrath GOD sends upon the earth dwellers left behind when the Bride accompanies the Bridegroom back to the Father's House.
To better understand what the rapture really is, see my article:
John 14;19
Yet a little while: and the world seeth me no more. But you see me: because I live, and you shall live.
Jesus established His Ekklesia, founded upon what Peter stated of Who Jesus IS. That is a spiritual Body of Christ. The Kingdom is yet to be revealed, except that Jesus Himself told the Pharisees ‘the Kingdom is at hand’ ... He is the central and most essential aspect of The Kingdom. But again, He told His disciples at the last supper: Luke 22:17Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and said, “Take this and share it among yourselves, 18because I tell you, from now on I will never drink the product of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”
18 because I tell you, from now on I will never drink the product of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”
And i am not going to give a bunch of scripture to try and contradict it, as i do not know.
I only know that there is a lot of plain scripture which points to a spiritual return which many have been fortunate enough to have seen and many will see.
2- the evangelizing of humanity will be done by a chosen 144,000 JEWISH evangelists;
Hosea 6;2
After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight
1 Cor 15:20
But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. past tense, already happened.
Romans 8:30
Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. Past tense- already happened.
Glorified ( resurrected ).
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