Biblical question...

Enquiring Mind | 10/06/2001 | MississippiMan

[MississippiMan]

Quick question: I'm working on a novel and need to know what you think would be the single most definitive verse or brief passage that supports a pre-tribulation Rapture? I know there's a verse that does such but can't seem to find it at the moment.

Thanks...

MM

[tessalu]

There is no such thing as pre-tribulation rapture. In Matt 24 Jesus tells the signs of the end, and I think you can believe him. I have thought of some of the current teachings, which are fairly recent, and I can only wonder if Satan would try to take away from the glory of Christ's second coming, which will be the greatest day that this world has ever seen, and it is the day, that time as we know it ends. False Christ's will come, but none will be able to imitate Jesus coming in the clouds with his angels. What a Day that will be, and Jesus is our hope.

[watchin]

Maybe these will help:

Matthew 24:29-31
²⁹Immediately after the distress of those days ‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’
³⁰At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory.
³¹And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

2 Thessalonians 2:1-3
¹Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers,
²not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have come from us, saying that the day of the Lord has already come.
³Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.

Revelation 6:9-11
⁹When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained.
¹⁰They called out in a loud voice, How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?
¹¹Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.

Revelation 7:13-14
¹³Then one of the elders asked me, These in white robes who are they, and where did they come from?
¹⁴I answered, Sir, you know. And he said, These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

[E=MC²]

In addition to the prior posts of verses implying a pre-Tribulation Rapture, consider that of the four Gospels, John was especially written to the Church and the Gentiles; therefore, he was a picture (or symbol) of the Church when the voice in Rev. 4:1 said to him "Come up here" BEFORE the description of the Tribulation started in the subsequent chapters of Revelation. Also, Enoch was another picture (or symbol) of the Rapture in Gen. 5:24.

In addition, the Tribulation Dispensation does NOT apply to the Church (Gentiles) because it is called the time of JACOB's Trouble Jer. 30:7 NOT the time of the Church's Trouble or the time of the believers' Trouble.

[David]

I Thessalonians 4 and 5 describe the Rapture and the circumstances that surround it.

I Thess 4 describes the events that precede the Rapture ending with 15-18 which say: 15 . . . we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. 16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout . . . and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to mee the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord. (15 to 17 are the Rapture)

I Thess 5 tells us when: 1 But of the times and the seasons brethern, you have no need that I tell you--proceeding on through 8 about the events of the time and then in 9 telling us when the Rapture happens: "For God has not appointed us to Wrath."

The Rapture happens before "Wrath" starts.

Revelation 6:17 says "For the great day of his wrath is come . . . . " Wrath starts after the events of Revelation Chapter 6 and before Chapter 7 which is logicial since in 7:9 we see the Raptured Church in heaven ("out of the great tribulation"--7:14); and in 7:3-8; the Jewish remanent on Earth who have accepted Jesus Christ as Messiah who had the Rapture not occured before they do so, would be Raptured.

So where are we now: Revelation 6:6: Wheat three times the price of Barley; and the oil and wine hurt not. Wheat has been three times the price of Barley one time and one time only during the church age and that was in May 1996 when the 200% penalty tax on imported cooking oil and wine, adopted to leverage the Europeans to agree to GATT; suspended when they agreed to the terms of the treaty; was finally eliminated when the treaty had been signed, thus hurting not the oil and wine.

6:2 was Saddam; 6:4 was Desert Storm.

After 6:6: As I have told you many times, the quarter of the earth is the area occupied by the Moslem Jihad--74 degrees East Longitude to 16 degrees West Longitude; 90 degrees and exactly a quarter of the earth. The war is the Jihad War now starting; famine is widespread; death from AIDs is widespread; death from the beasts of the earth comes from ebola and Mad Cow which are transmitted by the flesh of the beasts of the earth.

All exactly and precisely as set out in his Holy Word. Praise God for the precision, accuracy and guidence he has given us in his Word to know where we are in time and can be watchful.

[watchin]

The only problem with your speculation about the Holy Spirit in 2 Thes. 6 is that it directly contradicts the first three verses of the same chapter.

Verses 1-3 tell us that the "coming of Christ, and our being gathered to him" will not happen until after the "man of sin is revealed". Your speculation on verse 6 results in the rapture before the man of sin is revealed. So the speculation that the "removal of the restrainer" signifies the rapture must be wrong.

Interestingly, if you do a simple lining up of the sequences of verses 1-3

                  apostasy,   man of sin,   rapture

and verses 6-8

restraint,   removal,   man of sin

lining up the only common term - "man of sin", you get another possibility -

restraint,   apostasy/removal,   man of sin,   rapture

- the "restrainer" may be the church, which is "taken out of the way" not by rapture, but by apostasy, a concept made all the more credible by the descriptions of the "last days" church:

1 Timothy 4:1
¹The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.

2 Timothy 3:1-5
¹But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.
²People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,
³without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,
⁴treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—5having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.

2 Timothy 4:3-4
³For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
⁴They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

[watchin]

"The man of sin is the Anti-Christ, so this falling away RAPTURO ..."

Whoa there, big fella. You are strongly implying that the greek word for "falling away" is "rapturo". Wishful thinking, that. The word is "apostasia" - rightly translated "falling away", or apostasy.

[Ready2go]

I agree TheBattman:

Jesus will come in the air, catch up the Church from the earth, and then return to heaven with the Church.

In 1 Thes. 4:13-18 we are given a clear description of the rapture, "the dead in Christ will rise, then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord."

The timing of the rapture is not known. From the word of God and from sound reasoning, something Jesus used quite frequently, I believe in the "Blessed Hope"... the pretribulation rapture.

Scriptural Evidence for the Pretribulation Rapture

When we search the scriptures and read the passages describing the Lord Jesus' return, we find verses that tell us we won't know the day and hour. Mat. 25:13 say Jesus will return at an unknown time, while Rev. 12:6 indicates that the Jews will have to wait on the Lord 1260 days. The 1260 days start when the Antichrist stands in the Temple of God and declares himself to be God (2 Thes 2:4).

This event will take place at the mid-point of the seven year tribulation (Dan 9:27). It should be noted that some people only see a 3 1/2 year tribulation. They are in a way correct, because the first half of the tribulation will be relatively peaceful compared to the second half.

Nonetheless, peaceful or not, there still remains a 7 year time period called the tribulation. When the Jews flee into the wilderness, they know that all they have to do is wait out those 1260 days (Mat 24:16).

There is no way you can apply "neither the day nor the hour" to this situation. The only way for these two viewpoints to be true is to separate the two distinct events transpiring here; the rapture of the Church comes before the tribulation and the return of Jesus to the earth takes place roughly seven years later.

The Marriage Supper of the Lamb

In Luke 12:36 the Word states that when Christ returns He will be returning from a wedding. In Rev. 19:7-8 we read about the marriage itself. Before the marriage takes place, there is the marriage supper. According to Jewish custom the marriage contract is drawn up first, often including a dowry. This parallels the act of faith we use when we trust Jesus to be our savior. The dowry is His life, which was used to purchase us.

When the time comes for the wedding to take place, the groom goes to the bride's house unannounced, she comes out to meet him, and then the groom takes the bride to his father's house. This is an exact correlation of the events according to the pre-trib scenario. Jesus, the groom, comes down from heaven, calls up the Church, and after meeting in the air, both He and the bride return to the His Father's house - heaven. The marriage supper itself will take place up in heaven, while down here on earth the final events of the tribulation are playing themselves out. After the marriage supper takes place, the bride and groom are presented to the world as man and wife. This corresponds to the time when Jesus returns to earth accompanied by an army "clothed in fine linen, white and clean." (Rev 19:14)

MississippiMan:

It might help you MM...if you read Matt thru John as Jesus dealing/talking with the Jewish folks.

Then read from Acts thru Jude as Jesus dealing/talking to the church

And Revelation as God dealing with everything soon to be fulfilled to a unbelieving world.

[MHGinTN]

Perhaps you are thinking of the passage in IThess where Paul speaks of the trump sounding and the dead in Christ rising first, then we who are alive and remain being caught up to gether with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord?...

1TH 4:13 Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.
14 We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.
15 According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.

16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
18 Therefore encourage each other with these words.NIV

[watchin]

?? Does that passage have anything at all to do with the discussion at hand, other than to indicate that the Master will one day return? Either I missed your point, or you did it again, pointing out the "what" rather than the "when".

[mdittmar]

Your to good for me,God bless.

[tutstar]

http://www.blueletterbible.org/

This website will prove to be very helpful!!!! My favorite for looking up verses.

[nmh]

Here's a verse:

1Thes.4

[17] Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

IMHO, this is the most difinitive verse for a pretribber.

Others might see this as more difinitive but I don't. Even though, I'll list it:

Rev.12

[5] And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.

I'd be VERY careful in sensationalizing prophecy. There is also a penalty attached to those who add and subtract from the book of Revelation. I suspect there are other penalities, unspoken for other offenses.

[watchin]

So we can pretty much ignore the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels then? What a perfectly foolish thing to believe.

[don-o]

So where are we now: Revelation 6:6: Wheat three times the price of Barley; and the oil and wine hurt not. Wheat has been three times the price of Barley one time and one time only during the church age and that was in May 1996 when the 200% penalty tax on imported cooking oil and wine, adopted to leverage the Europeans to agree to GATT; suspended when they agreed to the terms of the treaty; was finally eliminated when the treaty had been signed, thus hurting not the oil and wine. 6:2 was Saddam; 6:4 was Desert Storm.

Quick, please. I need a stock tip for Monday.

Buy oil or sell wine?

[nmh]

Not me! I'm a Christian and take the Word of God seriously. Because of that I am a pretribber.

1Thes.4

[17] Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

He took the punishement I deserved on the cross. I will not be punished in the tribulation. I will be judged with other saved Christians at the White Throne.

I'm not a fatelist, just a realist and point to the Bible for what will happen to those that are saved - raptured or caught up is what will happen as listed in that verse. There are also other verses that alude to it also.

[nmh]

Indeed the dead are resurrected first. What a glorious moment that will be. Also a bitter sweet one since many wish to disbelieve.

[maestro]

Your# 25) Wow!!!!!!!!!(You Know!)

[DreamWeaver]

For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.

Mat 24: 38-42

[watchin]

You've made the common mistake of thinking that proving the truth of the rapture automatically proves the pre-trib timing of it.

Imagine me proving to you that the rapture was a scriptural reality, and then saying, "There, I've proven the mid-trib rapture". It's really not the same thing, is it?

Let's all work on separating the "what" (which we largely agree on) and the "when" (which was the point of this thread).

[2sheep]

While people discuss the false doctrine of Pre-Trib Rapture, an innocent woman in Montana IS in tribulation.

MT: Ruth Christine gives birth While Handcuffed; nurses weep

America the la la land.  Pre-Tribbers should have been outta here by now!