No it is not fair to pre-tribbers because the system you speak of is a compromised system. They are actually at a disadvantage because there is no clear scriptural proof of a pre-trib rapture.
As for the profitability of this discussion I say that any time a brother or a sister realizes that they have been deceived about any non biblical doctrinal belief. The God of heaven is blessed because the blinders have been removed from one of His children. I firmly believe that what we believe about the end times will dictate our reaction to the events when they happen and if we believe wrongly or false doctrine then our reaction to these coming events will be the wrong reaction.
How do you know that the seventh trump will sound at the beginning or just before the beginning of the battle of Armageddon? What scripture tells you that the last trump will sound just before the battle?
You have just verified my point because when you speak of the last trump sounding at the gathering of the armies at Armageddon. You are speaking about something that is not written anywhere in the bible. In fact it is after the sixth trump is sounded that the bible speaks of the two hundred thousand,thousand man army. Not the seventh trump. The bible is not at all clear about the sequence of events regarding the Seals, the Trumpets and the Vials or Bowls. If the seventh trumpet sounds just before the battle of Armageddon or at the gathering of the armies and the battle takes place at the end of the seven years. What happened to the Bowls. My whole point here is this. If it is not written in the bible it is a false doctrinal teaching and we need to put a stop to it if we can. Or at they very least we should speak out against it as the opportunity arises. Jesus did. Any time one of His disciples said something that was dead wrong He corrected them. We should be fallowing Jesus's example at all times and in all things.
You can simplify much of it by saying you don't believe in two raptures. You can also ask why the tribulational believers are not allowed to be
part of the "church" because they will somehow miss the rapture. How can the Holy Spirit take Christians to heaven and be so called "taken
out" when you have Christians dying for their faith during the tribulation. There are dozen's of ways to approach it logically. How can the
dead in Christ "rise first" when they are dying afterwards in the tribulation. Are martyred tribulational believers not "dead in Christ?" The
pretribbers accuse the historical pre-milleniumists of saying "Christians are going to go up and then they are going to come down." I've
heard this in sermons over and over "they go up, and then they come down," repeated as though this invalidates the eschatological
position. If someone is in the US or China, and they are traveling to the mount of olives, my point is they are going on the other side
of the world. It is going to be a gathering, not just going up and coming down.
It is much easier to believe that the last trump is the seventh trumpet in the book of Revelation. I would say "pray!" And pray as
much as you can before God. Ask God to "protect you from any theology that isn't true" on this point. There are plenty of scriptures
that indicate Christians will be persecuted if you take a literal interpretation of the New Testament. Then you don't have to "dance
around" Matthew 24 and 25 and all of the passages that clearly indicate the one taken is taken first to judgement.
When I say "dance around" I mean claiming New Testament passages are only to the Jews or Israel, and not to the followers of
Christ (Jewish or not) to whom Jesus was speaking to. The fact is, if you had no dispensational hermeneutic to interpret the passages
and you just took them literally, we would all be either post trib or Amill, or some postion that might somehow combine them.
I expect a 1000 year reign, but I will not be surprised if we were somehow wrong on that one verse being an exactism.
Test all things, hold fast to what is true.
In Christ,
Michael