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John 15:7,8 - "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. Bythis my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples." Some are willing to spend hours in prayer asking for a miracle instead of planting the word of God in their hearts, which in time would produce the miracle. Prayer is what water and fertilizer are to a seed. They help the word release its life. But if you haven't planted the seed, it doesn't matter how much water and fertilizer you apply, the soil still won't produce fruit. It's the seed that has life! Genesis 3:11 - "And He said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?" By taking the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they found a source of the knowledge of right and wrong outside of God. This can be identified as the principle of reasoning. They no longer needed the wisdom of God; they could govern themselves according to their sense of right and wrong. This is why God questioned them "who told you?" They replaced obedience with reasoning. Jesus compares the Church to virgins who "all got drowsy and began to sleep" (Matthew 25:5). Virgins sleeping at the end of the age: this seems incomprehensible with all the signs in the Heavens and wonders upon the earth, not to mention the increasing presence of Christ. Yet this phenomenon is something we each battle: THE TENDENCY TO BECOME SPIRITUALLY DROWSY AND LOSE OUR FOCUS as we wait for the Lord's return. There is a subtle activity of the enemy that dulls our perception and seduces our zeal. Our vision takes a backseat to other less important aspects of life. From the beginning, the voice of satan has had this lulling effect on mankind. Eve's excuse for disobedience was, "The serpent hath caused me to forget" (Genesis 3:13Young's Literal Translation). This sense of spiritual forgetfulness, of drowsiness, is the cloud of blindness that we each must discern and overcome. Today, God is awakening us to the reality of His presence. The promises the Lord gives us in the Scriptures must become more to us than dream-like realities only reserved for the hereafter. Jesus unveiled God's glory on the Mount of Transfiguration! Paul says that we all can behold the glory of God and be transformed by it (see 2 Corinthians 3:18). For this reason, the Scripture says, "Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you" (Ephesians 5:14). If we truly want Christ to "shine" upon us, we must arise from the distractions that entomb us in lethargy and spiritual darkness. Right at this moment, the presence of the living God is near enough to hear the whisper of your heart. But if we want our dream of standing in the presence of God to come true, we must wake up. AFFIRMATIONS: God has given me his Spirit, not the world’s spirit, so that I may realize and comprehend and appreciate the gifts of divine favor and blessings so freely and lavishly bestowed on me by God. (I Corinthians 2:12) I am complete in Him who is the head of all principality and power. For I am His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has before ordained that I should walk therein (Colossians 2:10; Ephesians 2:10). Out of His glorious riches He strengthens me with power through his Spirit in my inner man (Ephesians 3:16). I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:14). ALBERT FINCH MINISTRY

Nice to meet you again rollingthunder, and thank you for your thoughtfull and educational reply to my post. Yes, no problem with the above, we meet him in the air: 14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. 15For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Notice that in the passage above, it says that God will bring with Jesus, those who have died. That sounds downward to me, but I could be wrong. Bring is toward us, take is away from us. The point is, we are going up to be with Him. Passage also mentions angels and trump, so I think we are on the same page there. However, the passage states He comes down, and we go up, and does not say whether we come down with Him, or we go up with Him after we meet in the air. I basically disagree with you about the two different types of coming. I find the one where Jesus comes again, after the tribulation, where He gathers the elects, from the earth, the living and the dead saints, and brings us to earth with Him, but I cannot find the other one. The only distinctions I notice in comings, are the words used, primarily parousia (coming alongside, coming to be present) and ercomai, (I come, I go). Context though as always, will generally tell you what is meant, but the Greek can shed light as well. Again, it does not state in that verse, what direction we go from that meeting, up or down. I hope I am misunderstanding you, but it looks to me like you are saying that in that verse (Mark 13:37) that that is not Jesus second coming to the earth. I must be misunderstanding you because immediately before the verse you quoted we see exactly what this is describing: 24"But in those days, after that tribulation, THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, 25AND THE STARS WILL BE FALLING from heaven, and the powers that are in the heavens will be shaken. 26"Then they will see THE SON OF MAN COMING IN CLOUDS with great power and glory. 27"And then He will send forth the angels, and will gather together His elect from the four winds, from the farthest end of the earth to the farthest end of heaven. (the upper case letters above are from the NASB, not my doing) The fact that verse 27 begins with "and" connects it to the verse before it, so it is saying "After the tribulation, things happen and Jesus comes in power and glory and gathers His elect. 100% consistant with what I am saying and what I believe. I do not disagree with you, as far as I can tell all verses and passages about Jesus coming are at His revelation or His appearing. I don't think that is the case. There are more that one sort of judgement. God can judge the earth and inflict his wrath upon it, just as the flood was a judgement, and Sodom and Gommorah were judgements. Those judgements are against a people and are not the judgement that is eternal. I am sure I do not have to convince you of that, it is for the benefit of those who might be reading this thread, who are not as well studied as you are. To that end I offer the following passage. Matt 11:23,24: 23"And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descend to Hades; for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day. 24"Nevertheless I say to you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for you." This demonstrates that there is yet a judgement to come upon Sodom. I beleive this will also be the case when the Lord come in Judgment. So no, I do not beleive beleive I have my judgements confused, I am noting the distinction of punishment on earth and punishment in eternity. That is not quite fair, I am not importing anything, I am using the parable of the wheat and tares to demonstrate that there is a type of person, who can appear outwardly like a beleiver, but is in fact, counterfiet. Nothing more need be implied than that. If it has no relation to the ten virgins, why does it start out saying "The kingdom of heaven is like . . ."? and in the parable of the tares and the parable of the virgins, the result is the same, weeping and gnashing of teeth for some, I think you are trying to hard to make distinctions that need not be made. A parable is only a parable after all, not everything in it has a one to one correlation with comething else. Being how parables are at times designed to obscure meaning, I prefer ones that the bible interprets, without me bringing too much into it myself. If you show me where what you are saying about them, are in the explanations Jesus gave, I am all ears, I apologize, if I am not quite as open to what you think it means. Again, as in many replies so far, my point is being glossed over and other details are being imported that I am not even talking about, except to answer off topic (to me) replies. Restating my point yet again: "So, the answer to our question of "when?" is: When the master comes and assigns the lazy slave to the place where the hypocrites are and there is wailing and knashing of teeth, THEN it will be comparable to ten virgins. In Matt 24, the topic is clearly not the rapture, but Jesus second coming, His glorious appearing after the tribulation. Also, we see this "wailing and gnashing of teeth language from Jesus, elsewhere in the book of Matthew, chapter 13 Well, it makes sense to me, and I do not feel that you have even remotely made a case for how it does not. Making sense, is not even what concerns me, I know my ways are not God's ways, so it certainly need not make sense to me to be true. I am not interested in what makes sense as much as I am interested in what the bible actually says. Whether or not it makes sense to us, it harmonizes with all passages (not all interpretations of all passages), does not need to infer anything that is not stated, or at least does not contradict anything that is stated, that is to say it is not contradicted by scripture, and is the plainest understanding of the related passages. I am not quite sure I even understand what your overall view is rollingthunder, so I am not sure how much we agree or disagree on other details of end times. It at least seems to me that you have Jesus coming back twice (as in the pretrib scenario), but I always marvel that no one has been able to produce a single verse that states any such notion, it is all infered in their view, but that inference is imported to the text, not extraced from it. Similar to another tenent of pretribism, which I also fail to understand, the notion of imminence, but that is another topic for another thread, and has likely already be discussed to death. Thank you for your wonderful tone and teaching spirit.