I delayed writing on this for some time, telling God, ‘Oh I don’t know enough to put anything on paper.’ But I write not to spark a debate or start angry correspondence over this issue. I am merely pointing out what I was given during my studies. The timing of the Rapture is not a salvation issue. In other words no matter what you believe about the Rapture, it won’t keep you out of God’s Kingdom. I am writing because I fear that some would run to a false prophet and inadvertantly take the mark of the beast. Because they would say something like, ‘Well it can’t be the mark of the beast because we are still on earth, and maybe they are right you know, maybe the Bible was a lie, blah, blah, blah.’ Well that’s not so far fetched. Many believe that Christians will be raptured and taken up to Heaven to be with Jesus well before any tribulation or the appearance of the anti-christ. I do pray they are right, but I find other evidence in the scriptures. I just want to show that just in case, you might want to become familiar with what the Anti-christ is, and most won’t do that because they think they will be gone first.
There are many volumes by many scholars about the Rapture and the Timing of the Rapture. I am not a scholar, I am not an eloquent writer; but I have spent many years reading and searching the Bible and many books. I have looked at everything from Pre-tribulation rapture, to mid-tribulation rapture, to post-tribulation rapture, to no rapture at all. First let’s look at what the word Rapture means.
The Rapture
‘The rapture refers to the gathering up of the saved at the Second Coming of Christ. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” (Cath. Encyclopedia)
2 Thessalonians
Paul tells us in Chapter 2: “Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers, not 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. Don’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. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God. Then he goes on to say ‘Now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that all will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
Ok, before I go on, I have to mention that some scholars believe that the one holding the anti-christ back is the Holy Spirit. This is not backed up in scripture, nor is the fact that the church with the Holy Spirit is holding back the anti-christ, and when the church is raptured then the anti-christ will be revealed. In fact just the opposite is true.
Before we go on, I want to touch on what Jesus said in Mathew chapter 24: Jesus said: “ for then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now-and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ! or There he is! do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time. Then he gives us a clue, ‘So if anyone tells you, there he is out in the desert, do not go out, or here he is in the inner rooms, do not believe. For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather. (This hints of much death during the tribulation and deceipt) Then He said: Immediately 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. At 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. and he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call and they will gather His elect (us) from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
Ok, so Jesus tells us that immediately following the distress(tribulation) we will see signs in the sun, moon, and stars and then He will appear and His angels will gather us to Him.
Now, back to what Paul said, because I was shown that this actually ties in with Revelations. Paul said that yes, we would be gathered to our Lord in the air, but did you see the timing of that? I know he says with the last Trumpet, but that’s not what God pointed out to me. He said “For that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed.” So I know, that we will not be raptured before the tribulation or the revealing of the ant-christ.
Moving on to Revelations, the scholars that argue that the church isn’t mentioned any where in Revelations after chapter 4 are not backed up biblically. They say that when Jesus said to John “Come up here and I will show you what must take place” that in actuality that is the picture of the Rapture. Anyway, Jesus and Paul both said that the anti-christ would be revealed after much tribulation and rebellion before we would be taken to be with our Lord. In Revelation the revealing of the beast doesn’t happen until chapter 13. After the seals and the trumpets. Then we have the 144,000, the 3 angels announcing the fall of Babylon, The Harvest of the Earth, and the Seven Plagues(Bowls). In Chapter 16 after the 6th bowl was poured out on the earth, you see Jesus again, saying this in verse 15 : “Behold I come like a thief! Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his clothes with him, so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed.”
So, why would Jesus wait until the 6th bowl was poured out on the earth to make that statement, if no one was here to hear it. Because the previous chapters are pretty clear that all will worship the beast and take his mark except those who follow after the Lamb.
Then we move on to the Fall of Babylon in chapter 18, then in Chapter 19.we see much shouting and then in verse 9 it say’s this: “Then the angel said to me, Write: ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” and then he added these are the true words of God.” Then John says, “I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True!
So you can’t have a rapture of the church in Revelation chapter 4 and then way far into chapter 19 have the wedding supper of the lamb. The description John gives of Seeing Jesus on a White Horse is the same description Jesus gave us in Mathew 24.
Again, I encourage you to study the scriptures on your own, ask the Holy Spirit for guidance, and He will guide you. I truly feel I was led to this conclusion and truly feel it’s my mission to watch and warn. One day as I felt God speaking to me, I kneeled and said Lord, Use Me Let Me Be a warrior for you, use me in whatever way you wish. Sometimes I’m not always popular, but I will not go back on that statement to God. As I felt His hand on my head as I knelt, I knew it wouldn’t be easy and I would not be popular, but here I am. Any way, I don’t want to start arguments, I just want to tell you, if it doesn’t happen like they say, and we’re still here, don’t run to the antichrist by mistake. It is my desire to encourage with these words not frighten. We do know the end of the story!! WE Win! So to quote John in Revelation: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.
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PRETRIB RAPTURE STEALTH !
Many evangelicals believe that Christ will “rapture” them to heaven years before the second coming and (most importantly) well BEFORE Antichrist and his “tribulation.” But Acts 2:34, 35 reveal that Jesus is at the Father’s right hand in heaven until He leaves to destroy His earthly foes at the second coming. And Acts 3:21 says that Jesus “must” stay in heaven with the Father “until the times of restitution of all things” which includes, says Scofield, “the restoration of the theocracy under David’s Son” which obviously can’t begin before or during Antichrist’s reign. (“The Rapture Question,” by the long time No. 1 pretrib authority John Walvoord, didn’t dare to even list, in its scripture index, the above verses! They were also too hot for John Darby – the so-called “father of dispensationalism” – to list in the scripture index in his “Letters”!)
Paul explains the “times and the seasons” (I Thess. 5:1) of the catching up (I Thess. 4:17) as the “day of the Lord” (5:2) which FOLLOWS the posttrib sun/moon darkening (Matt. 24:29; Acts 2:20) WHEN “sudden destruction” (5:3) of the wicked occurs! The “rest” for “all them that believe” is also tied to such destruction in II Thess. 1:6-10! (If the wicked are destroyed before or during the trib, who’d be left alive to serve the Antichrist?) Paul also ties the change-into-immortality “rapture” (I Cor. 15:52) to the end of trib “death” (15:54). (Will death be ended before or during the trib? Of course not! And vs. 54 is also tied to Isa. 25:8 which Scofield views as Israel’s posttrib resurrection!) It’s amazing that the Olivet Discourse contains the “great commission” for the church but not even a hint of a pretrib rapture for the church!
Many don’t know that before 1830 all Christians had always viewed I Thess. 4’s “catching up” as an integral part of the final second coming to earth. In 1830 this “rapture” was stretched forward and turned into an idolized separate coming of Christ. To further strengthen their novel view, which evangelical scholars overwhelmingly rejected throughout the 1800s, pretrib teachers in the early 1900s began to stretch forward the “day of the Lord” (what Darby and Scofield never dared to do) and hook it up with their already-stretched-forward “rapture.” Many leading evangelical scholars still weren’t convinced of pretrib, so pretrib teachers then began teaching that the “falling away” of II Thess. 2:3 is really a pretrib rapture (the same as saying that the “rapture” in 2:3 must happen before the “rapture” [“gathering”] in 2:1 can happen – the height of desperation!). Google “Walvoord Melts Ice” for more on this.
Other Google articles on the 183-year-old pretrib rapture view include “X-Raying Margaret,” “Margaret Macdonald’s Rapture Chart,” “Pretrib Rapture’s Missing Lines,” “Edward Irving is Unnerving,” “The Unoriginal John Darby,” “Catholics Did NOT Invent the Rapture,” “The Real Manuel Lacunza,” “Thomas Ice (Bloopers),” “Wily Jeffrey,” “The Rapture Index (Mad Theology),” “America’s Pretrib Rapture Traffickers,” “Roots of (Warlike) Christian Zionism,” “Scholars Weigh My Research,” “Pretrib Hypocrisy,” “Appendix F: Thou Shalt Not Steal,” “Pretrib Rapture Secrecy,” “Deceiving and Being Deceived,” “Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty,” “Famous Rapture Watchers,” and “Morgan Edwards’ Rapture View” – most by the author of the bestselling book “The Rapture Plot” (the most accurate and documented book on pretrib rapture history which is obtainable by calling 800.643.4645).
[Greetings, I am not ashamed…Found this article on the web. Any reaction? Lord bless.]
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I agree with the article you found Irv. Points out the truth in scripture. Thanks.
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My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. John 17:15
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Amen! This is one of my favorites, the prayer Jesus prayed for us right before He was arrested. Thank you.
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