There is no “Rapture”.
There is only the Second Coming of Christ.
Don’t bother me with the nonsense about, “but his feet won’t touch the ground”.
David Currie taught the “Rapture” for over 10 years before concluding he was in error and later writing:
“Rapture - The End-Times Error that Leaves the Bible Behind”
There is no Rapture.
Exactly. It is Christ’s second coming, not his 2nd and a half (coming part way, ‘rapturing’ His church and returning to Heaven), which a ‘rapture’, as thought of by most evangelicals, would represent.
One of the many issues that arose from the common futurist, tribulationist belief among evangelicals, is the interpretation of Revelation 9:16’s ‘200 million man army’. The NIV version is, IMO, a slightly closer translation to the Koine Greek. It states, ‘The number of the mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard their number.’ In Koine Greek, their largest number was ‘myriad’, meaning both ‘10,000’ and an indefinitely large number of things (or people). In present times, think ‘a gazillion’.
I did some quick math concerning the minimum area that a 200 million man army would occupy (not including their mounts, be they horses or machines). Assuming that a soldier standing in formation, occupies 1 square yard, the army would occupy a minimum of 200,000,000 square yards or 64.566 square miles. That is without being broken into divisions and including no equipment, other than personal weaponry.
Adding in equipment, or even horses, at least doubles that size to approximately 130 square miles. Broken down into divisions, the area occupied by such an army will be easily more than 150 square miles. I do not believe that the Jezreel Valley is that big!
Factoring in reserves and paramilitaries along with regular forces, there seem to be no more than 100,000,000 people under arms. Adding in the logistics of moving 200,000,000 men into the Jezreel Valley, it would take several years to complete!
Over all, it makes a lot more sense to interpret ‘twice ten myriad times ten myriad’ as an indefinitely large army, the addition of ‘twice ten times’ and the second ‘ten myriad’ being hyperbole to stress the size of the forces against Jerusalem. There are many other parts of Revelation that are disputed amongst those who claim Jesus as Saviour.
BTTT — You are right!