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That is what the Bible indicates to me, that the rising of the dead and the changing of the living, happens at the same time.

Thankyou. How do these apply exclusively to the rapture? They don't. It simply says that when Christ returns that the dead in Christ will rise first, and then the living follow, being caught up together in the clouds. It is logic that if you want them to be lifted together, that you have to raise the dead first, because the living don't need to be brought up from the graves. Corinthians is the same, just the one event of people being changed so that they can go to heaven. When does this occur? "At the last trumpet" When is the last trump? I Thess 4:16, when Christ returns. The dead are raised and the living are changed. None of these texts can be exclusively applied to the rapture, can they?

Post, when Moses recorded the information about no rain in the beginning, he was referring to a system by which the entire plant world would be watered, he was not talking about whether it rained on Adam's wedding or not. Ezra, and as for the rainbow, it is an integral part of light effects. God said that when a cloud passes, a rainbow would be seen in it, as it did when He spoke to Noah. How someone can suddenly conclude that it did not exist before then, is not a natural process of thought.

It isn't obvious to me, and I have requested several times on this forum, to have a single text published that supports the rapture and which does not support the second advent, and so far no one has been able to come forward and do so. As far as I am concerned the rapture is all in the imagination. I cannot come to any other conclusion without the scriptural evidence. I already know all of the scriptures which are supposed to speak rapture, and I already know none of them support it. That is why I accept that no one can prove to me, because it simply is not in the Bible. Can you quote just one text which proves the rapture? I know you can't and no one else can. No offense intended.

How can you prove that the texts used to support the rapture are not the same for the return of Christ?

Another illustration of how the end time scenes are mixed with visionary material of the future, is in the last few verses of Zechariah. It talks about sacrifices and pots etc, and we both know these would not be practiced by the people of God ever since the death of the prefigured Lamb. It so happens that what happened in ancient times, is similar in principle to the future, that is why we have record of these stories. Enoch warned the people before the flood, of Christ's return with His angels and saints, but that did not happen, the world drowned instead. Enoch had close communications with God, and he felt an impending doom over the world. Enoch did not understand the fate of the righteous, and thought that there would be no life after death. So God gave him a vision of end times and the return of Christ, with the resurrection of the saints. This vision so impressed Enoch that he preached it. Either way, the people were warned of their stupid mentality, and had they listened to his message they would have boarded the ark, because they would have recognized the same Spirit of God calling through Noah. I don't believe that because we have differing views that either of us is not in Christ, but that we all want to be ready when He returns, and that's what really counts. That faith saved Enoch.

Speaking about the first resurrection at the coming of Christ, Rev 20:5 "But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished" The rest of the dead, we see from the previous verse and chapter 19, are those who received the mark of the beast and were killed at the return of Christ. At that time the world is divided into two classes of people, those who have the mark of the beast and those who don't. All who have the mark perish. Then in the next verse it explains it again, blessed are those who are in the first resurrection where the second death has no power over them. (We are all prone to experience the first death, but the second death only happens to the lost after the judgement which occurs at the end of the thousand years.) As to the earth being destroyed with all its inhabitants at the coming of Christ, II Peter 3, shows that the entire earth will be destroyed, just like water destroyed the first world, where only the faithful were saved, only 8 people. It says in chapter 19 that Jesus will rule the nations with a rod of iron. This may be taken to mean that He rules on earth. But the chapter goes on to show what ruling with a rod of iron means. A rod of iron isn't there to bless people, but to beat them to death as the chapter tells. And the world absolutely deserves such treatment after what they have done to the millions of innocents. Jesus is symbolized as having garments dipped in blood, that is not a kingly robe, but that of a warrior.

That event occurs as John the Revelator says, at the end of the thousand years, then the Kingdom is established on earth. Otherwise John is wrong. This chapter in Zechariah is about the literal Israel and its historic events, as well as the elements of visions of the prophet about the future blended in, which is typical of these minor prophets.

We guess that many people would think of God and Jesus as Divine Beings with form, but when it comes to the Holy Spirit they even dare to say that He is just a power and not a Person at all. The Holy Spirit is the Person of the Godhead Who is the only contact and connection we have to both the Father and the Son. The nature of the Holy Spirit is to represent God, but He has only ever shown Jesus to us. He even revealed to Peter who Jesus really was. Indeed anyone who recognized and received Christ as the Son of God, was illuminated by the Holy Spirit. So if the representative and contact to God is invisible why should we expect to know what God looks like? Our only vision has been the humanity of Christ, whom the Holy Spirit has shown to be God. He is called the Holy Ghost as well, and ghost has the same meaning as spirit in the OT, which has nothing to do with the disembodied spooks of religions. Rather the Spirit brings the evidence or the workings of something very powerful which cannot be seen. As Jesus said, you can't see the wind, but you can see the results. I believe if the Holy Spirit could be seen, we would be looking at God in the form of a man, a perfect man. But since our existence is only a slice of the Divine realm, we can never see God in full, like Jesus said - no one has seen the Father except the Son. You have to be God to be able to see Him. We accept that the universe has finite properties, and God has infinite characteristics, none of which necessarily comply to the physics of the universe. When we think of omnipresence and such strange sounding words, we try and stretch our imagination how that could be, but it is easier to think of our universe as a lesser item, such as a photo compared to real life. To think that Christ would retain His humanity for ever, rather than go back to His former glory, is kind of heartbreaking...but apparently He would be disappointed not to. What love.

No thanks, I am familiar with it, and I don't mind what it means, it's just that the word outside of the Bible, has been spiritualized away by false doctrines in religion.

I am reluctant to use the word spirit because of its perverted Disney meaning.

How do you read the scriptures? There are about 300 references to the return of Christ in the NT and none of them talk about establishing a kingdom on earth at that time. Rather we find that the time for restoring the world happens when the New Jerusalem or Heaven comes down to earth at the end of the thousand years. At the return of Christ everyone except the faithful die. During the thousand years the earth is lifeless, and only the devil and his angels roam around doing time, until the judgement when there is a second resurrection (the first resurrection happened when Christ came to rescue His own, take them to heaven and destroy the world at the same time). See Revelation 19 to 22. Jesus said, I go to prepare a place for you, so that you may be with me, where I go. John 14. The second coming of Christ is to take His people home, the living and the resurrected. "They reign with Him," they do not reign on earth as so many now claim. There is only one cataclysmic event at the end of this world, not half a dozen, but the single return of Christ as a warlord, not as a Savior for sinners, or builder of an earthly kingdom. "My kingdom is not of this world." The Kingdom has already been prepared as Jesus said He would do for us. But you cannot convince the masses of that.

The rainbow has always been there. "I set my bow" said God. The colored bow surrounds God. It is also a part of the effects of natural light, always has been. The bow was seen in the dew drops, in water falls, in crystals, around the moon on misty nights and so forth. After the flood, heavy clouds would form - a threatening reminder of the flood, but "the bow would be seen in the cloud," a promise that a global flood will never happen again. It may be a torrential storm, but not the end of the world.

I assume that your concept of "spirit" is like Casper the ghost, or something like that. In common thinking, including the disciples, this is about as far as it goes, but someone once said to me, that they believed that God is more physical than the universe. It hit me. Today we hear from science that the universe is probably just a hologram compared to the physical substances in the universe which our material fails to have an obvious interaction with. That is a reverse of what is commonly thought, so here God is real and we are the Caspers. It is interesting that the Bible says we are in His image, and not the other way around. He is the real, we are the holograms - the image. You can put your hand through an image made of light. Imagine if an image of yourself said that it can't see you, so that you must be a ghost? You'd probably laugh and switch the thing off. We are made of mainly space. Our atoms are mostly a field of invisible energy. God says that man is like the grass, it comes up in the morning and withers in the afternoon. He says that the earth is less than nothing. That's pretty insignificant. Did you know that God can switch the universe off? Here today - gone tomorrow. The term spirit in the Bible is used to describe what we can know of the unknown - that is, characteristics but not the substance. And so spirit is used to define mind, mindset, breath, demeanor, etc but it is not used in the sense to define the physical, as so many Christians think, and as the disciples thought, when they saw Jesus walking on the water at night, and thought they saw "a spirit" or ghost. On another occasion, when Jesus explained to the disciples that they had not seen a ghost, He said, "doth a spirit have flesh and bones" He was referring to their concept of "spirit," it did not mean that He believed in such nonsense. Again, Jesus used the illustration of the people's concept about hell, and told a story about Lazarus and the nasty master. He did not believe in such nonsense, but used their pagan ideas to bring home the lesson of accountability and compassion. but the ignorant man will grab this parable and turn it into a foundational doctrine which contradicts the rest of scripture.

There is a lot more to this topic than what we have discussed so far, hang in there.

A person's true personality has nothing to do with sin. It is simply who they are. I'll explain why. It is not correct to say that personality is unaffected by sin, because it is torn by sin. I believe personality is created by God, even sheep have individual personalities, believe it or not. And I think sin destroys personality, it removes independent thought and action, it removes free will, and it turns you into an automation, guided by perverted instincts alone. Righteousness brings back freedom, creativity, intelligence, personality and character. Sin degrades a person down to a few factors. It makes them narrow and ignorant, but goodness expands the usefulness and diversity of people. It builds culture and interests. Sin just melts people down into a shadow at the bar. When we lose our personality, we are lost people. Jesus came to save the lost. Which means He came to give personality back. But we are not born without personality, childhood is probably the time when our personalities really shine. We lose personality when we become conformed to the world with its lusts, fashions and ideas. "Unless you become as one of these little ones, you will not enter heaven." Children express a very uncontrived and natural personality. They are uncomplicated and honest. When does a person receive their personality from God? At birth. It is a gift of God through nature, and honored by the Holy Spirit, throughout our life, in the hope that it will be developed and maintained in maturity as well, and finally taken to heaven. If we are found to be fake, God will not honor that. So authenticity has to do with what God has granted us at birth. The love of God is personal, and therefore if we lose our authenticity - our distinct personality, we lose the opportunity to connect with God. We are forbidden to make an image of God, but by the same token we are not to be conformed to an image either, an alterior self. God does not want us to worship an image of Him, and He does not want to talk to a false persona either. No lies and acting with God. Authenticity, honesty, love, individuality, personality = proper person. The only person God wants to know is the distinct individual He made us, to become who we were born, and born to be. The Christian life is not about discarding the innocence granted every child through the gift of God to all. What is that gift given to all?

I am just thinking how you agree with Ezra about being born with a sinful character and personality. If that is the case then we cannot change our spots, but Ezra went on to clarify that personality can be changed, by ourselves and with God, which seems to contradict the inflexibility of a sinner's condition. It is saying the leopard can change his spots, and if he gets help from above he'll do even better.

Yes, in a nutshell so to speak... (yet God has not left the human race without a heavenly treasure in 'earthen' vessels. There is something which God has given all, which gives them authenticity to begin with.)

And if I knew you the way God knows you, I would be filled with admiration for you. If I knew you the way the devil does, I would hate you. God is accepting, does not look for mistakes, and seeks to bless. I think J Vernon heard too many hell-fire preachers.

So leopards can change their spots to a degree, but believing leopards have divine help to getting along quicker?

So if you were born with a sinful personality and you can change personality by your own efforts, that means you can change a sinful personality which you claim we are born with, without Christ, a leopard changing his own spots.

Good instinct isn't self righteousness. You don't have to be a plumber to know that you don't associate certain components of the bathroom with love and marriage.

You would have to be honest with yourself, if you did not feel comfortable being there, don't go. That's honest.

Yes, that's about it. The people are disempowered through many avenues beginning with their education through to oppressive and dysfunctional systems of management.

You were born with a personality, and most likely still retain it now, although hidden it may be. What happens to this individual and distinct personality, or is it sinful and discarded?