(((...”What comes upon the Earth when the restrainer is taken out of the way is the wrath of God... Paul assures that we are not appointed unto wrath, but to obtain salvation.... The Rapture of the Church of Jesus The Christ will be Raptured ‘before’ the wrath of God is poured out upon the earth in growing degrees of severity.... The Body of Christ is not due the wrath of God”....)))
Yes, I agree.
The “man of sin,” “the son of destruction” won’t be able to come until God permits it ‘by removing the restraining power’.... The reason for the restraint was so that the Antichrist would be revealed ‘at God’s appointed time and no sooner”...just as was Christ because God controls Satan.
The Holy Spirit of God is the only Person with sufficient power to do this restraining... How does He do it?... Through Christians,... He works in society to hold back the swelling tide of lawless living.
At some point He will be removed from the earth, ‘allowing sin to have dominion over mankind’..... This can only happen when all true believers in Jesus Christ is removed......
The Holy Spirit lives within each believer....so when the church leaves the earth at the rapture, the Holy Spirit will be taken out of the way in the sense that His unique lawlessness/restraining ministry/ through God’s people will be removed.
.....as soon as individuals again start placing their faith in Christ during the tribulation, the Holy Spirit will again be “present” in the world...But His ministry of restraining, seems limited to the time before the tribulation.
Additionally, during the Church Age there is no differentiation between Jew and Gentile. During the Tribulation Jews, not the church, JEWS are doing the evangelizing.
A third point overlooked when trying to place the Rapture at mid-trib or post trib is the reality that the first resurrection need not be a single day event. God is not limited by human reasoning, He transcends it! The Second Coming of Jesus to set foot upon the Earth was not somehow violated when Jesus confronted Saul on the dusty road to Damascus. The Power of God can accomplish things in ways we could not even dream of a century ago.
The Church teaching for generations was covenant theology. It did not account for the rebirth of Israel in their Promised Lands. It had never been done in the History of Humanity that a nation was utterly destroyed then reinstated after 2000 years. Even during the Jewish captivity there were a remnant of Israel in the lands, awaiting re-upping by decree of the ones who had conquered them.
It is odd that covenant theology has to make all sorts of twists to the scripture passages in order to avoid what Jesus taught in the Olivet Discourse. He said clearly that there would be another temple built at the end of the Age, and it would be in that temple that the abomination which makes desolate would happen, in Israel, IN Jerusalem, IN THE TEMPLE The Jews would build again. That prophecy was given 37 years before the temple He and the four disciples on the Olivet mountain were looking at, gleaming in the setting sun!