First, I want to begin by stating that I do not consider those who recognize the pre-millennial rapture of believers and the bodily return of Christ to the earth to reign are false teachers just because we disagree over the timing of the rapture.
I consider the views advocated in the article of this post to be serious false doctrine. It is of the same nature which Paul had to administer church discipline in order to correct. But the doctrine of a pre-trib rapture is not of that nature. I was raised in a church that taught this. I have pretty much always been part of a church that held this view. And some even consider my position of a pre-wrath rapture to be false doctrine. Although most will admit that it is not something for Christians to break fellowship over. But it is not possible to have a ministry or leadership of a local church divided over this issue and then stake a firm position on it.
Your views and comments are welcomed, and I appreciate some of the insights you have already shared. I particularly appreciate the comments you’ve made about the wedding guests. That is something I would like to explore more in my studies. I am always open to correction based on what the Bible says rather than views that are manmade and are forced upon the text.
Like you, this has been a decades long quest for me. I knew many years ago that there were serious problems with Biblical support for the pre-trib view. I did not get these from opponents of it. I got them from studying the Bible for deeper understanding of a view I already accepted. But the more I studied, the more I saw problems. And the commentaries and teachers did not have adequate answers. But after a lot of study on the subject I could not find a satisfactory answer to my questions. So I tabled the subject for a while.
Later, a family member who also maintained a pre-trib view, gave me a copy of a book by Marv Rosenthal which espoused the pre-wrath view. While I did not find every single point in that book satisfactory, I found the overall argument answered 90% or more of the issues I had never been able to resolve. And the more I studied, the more convinced I became that the rapture is, in general, pre-wrath rather than pre-trib.
So, with all of this in mind, I will address your points one-by-one. In order to keep things organized I will put my replies into one post but a separate on from this one. Hopefully, that will keep the post from being too long.
More to follow...
I learned long ago that a pwerfect chronological order to the Revelation is not there. There is however a change of perspective repeated, and with that a change in temporal perspective, from narrow time spans to broad over view time spans. I look forward to your post.