Is there really a rapture?

[OakWood]

2 minutes ago, missmuffet said:

What I have read of the Bible and I have read it through many times I sure do see it. So we have a difference in the interpretation. I am not going to get hostile because I believe in the pretrib rapture and I do not believe that you should as well because you do not believe in the pretrib rapture. We will have to agree to disagree.

I'm not getting hostile. I'm merely pointing out the truth - and once again you have not refuted the objections that I have raised. If the pre-Trib had any validity to it, you would be able to refute any objections to it. But the objections remain because they cannot be refuted.

[missmuffet]

6 minutes ago, OakWood said:

I'm not getting hostile. I'm merely pointing out the truth - and once again you have not refuted the objections that I have raised. If the pre-Trib had any validity to it, you would be able to refute any objections to it. But the objections remain because they cannot be refuted.

That is your choice. The world is full of them.

[OakWood]

1 minute ago, missmuffet said:

That is your choice. The world is full of them.

If the World is full of them, then you should have no problem in telling me what they are.

[missmuffet]

5 minutes ago, OakWood said:

If the World is full of them, then you should have no problem in telling me what they are.

Way too many to count. Some are God given choices some are not.

[OakWood]

7 minutes ago, missmuffet said:

Way too many to count. Some are God given choices some are not.

Well if there are way too many to count you're spoilt for choice, so you should have no problem telling me at least some of them.

[missmuffet]

13 minutes ago, OakWood said:

Well if there are way too many to count you're spoilt for choice, so you should have no problem telling me at least some of them.

Goodnight. God bless

[Ezra]

46 minutes ago, OakWood said:

And nothing you have said addresses the objections that I raised. You've merely quoted scripture to support your theory of a pre-Trib rapture.

Actually that passage in itself refutes your position. Revelation chapters 6-18 are about the Tribulation and the Great Tribulation.  But there is NOTHING about the Bridegroom coming for His Bride in those chapters, neither is there any mention of  the Church or the Rapture.  That is extremely strong evidence.

What we find is that there is already a multitude of saints in Heaven in Chapter 7 and then we have the Marriage of the Lamb in chapter 19.  How and when did the future Wife of the Lamb arrive in Heaven?  Before the Tribulation started.  Thus the book of Revelation itself is clear evidence that the Rapture occurred BEFORE  the Tribulation and the Great Tribulation.

[OakWood]

1 hour ago, Ezra said:

Actually that passage in itself refutes your position. Revelation chapters 6-18 are about the Tribulation and the Great Tribulation.  But there is NOTHING about the Bridegroom coming for His Bride in those chapters, neither is there any mention of  the Church or the Rapture.  That is extremely strong evidence.

What we find is that there is already a multitude of saints in Heaven in Chapter 7 and then we have the Marriage of the Lamb in chapter 19.  How and when did the future Wife of the Lamb arrive in Heaven?  Before the Tribulation started.  Thus the book of Revelation itself is clear evidence that the Rapture occurred BEFORE  the Tribulation and the Great Tribulation.

I've already explained why the Church is not mentioned but you obviously didn't read what I had written.

Do you honestly think that there will be a functioning legal Church under the reign of the Beast? Christians will be forced underground to worship.

Have you ever wondered why there is no Church in Saudi Arabia? Or do you believe that all the Saudi Arabian Christians have been raptured?

 

As for a multitude of saints in heaven - guess what? Saints have been dying and going to heaven for two thousand years. We're not the only saints. Are you ignoring all the millions of Christians who have gone before us? The wife of the Lamb is not just us, you know. Once again, pre-Tribbers are trying to claim that they are something special as if all Christians who lived and came before them don't exist.

 

The evidence you give can easily be applied to Post-Trib as well as the Mid-Trib. I'm not concerned with shared evidence, I'm concerned with evidence that either eliminates one option completely or presents without doubt a positive irrefutable case for another option.

Now let us look at the evidence that eliminates any possibility of a pre-Trib rapture, according to scripture.

The pre-Trib rapture relies on a third coming of Christ which is non-scriptural. You can play around with semantics as much as you like to say why one of these comings of Christ is not really a coming:- but it's still a coming.

A pre-Trib rapture would be the biggest miracle known in recent history. It would dominate the news headlines for weeks. How will anybody possibly explain the disappearance of all those people? The World will know that there is a God (the smile will be knocked off many an Atheist's face), the World will be terrified, and previous skeptics will be rushing out to buy copies of the Bible. Everybody will learn who the Man of Perdition is, everybody will be expecting an AntiChrist figure and nobody will fall for his lies and be deceived by him. Everybody will learn about the two witnesses. There will be no deception because a pre-Trib rapture will advertise the fact that the God of the Bible really exists. A pre-Trib rapture will show that there is absolutely no reason for anybody to ever call the Bible a lie ever again. Seeing is believing, and such a miracle would prevent the majority of the World from being deceived by the lies of false religions and false prophets.

The Book of Revelation mentions no such event as a pre-Trib rapture. Nobody mentions it, in fact everybody goes about their daily business as normal. People carry on with their daily lives, eating, drinking, partying, fornicating - why, they even celebrate and buy each other presents when the two witnesses are murdered. Only Christians will suffer. We won't be joining in with the party because we will be despised and persecuted by everybody else. Only we will know what is going to happen. While non-believers enjoy the 'false peace' that the AntiChrist brings only we will know that their fun isn't going to last - and when Jesus returns like a thief to judge the World we will be prepared knowing that he is coming to rescue us.

The expression 'returns like a thief in the night' does not apply to Christians, it only applies to non-believers and those who call themselves Christians but refused to read scripture and were not aware of what is happening. This is why Jesus tells us to be prepared so that we will not be left behind, and tells us not to worship the Beast, nor join in the decadent ways of Mankind. Our refusal to succumb to these Worldly temptations will make us very unpopular with the rest of the World and in extreme cases some of us may even be killed for our stubbornness, but we will be rescued for our faith when Jesus finally returns to battle with the Beast. Our tribulation will then be over, but it will be just the start of the troubles for those who took the mark.

Then of course there's the fact that throughout history the righteous have only ever been rescued from the judgement of God and not the sadistic anger of evil. Noah was rescued from God's judgement and so was Lot and we will be rescued from God's judgement which comes AFTER the persecution by evil, not before it.

The fact that the pre-Trib rapture originates from a vision that a teenager had should be enough to cast doubt on its doctrine. This girl was not a prophet. She could have received a demonic message for all we know. The vision that she had was exploited by the likes of John Darby who used it to formulate a pre-Trib theory. It immediately became popular because it's a comfort gospel, and people love comfort gospels - they don'tt like to hear bad news and hard truths.

Then there is another thing to think about. There is absolutely no reason why Satan would fabricate a Post-Trib doctrine. He gains nothing from it. All he does is make us prepared for persecution when trouble arrives and reminds us to keep our faith in God.

But a false pre-Trib doctrine completely suits Satan's plans. When it doesn't happen many will doubt their faith - or they will refuse to believe that the Tribulation has actually started and think that it's just another 'birthing pain'. A few pre-Tribbers may even be completely unprepared and be unaware of the prophecy because they didn't read the Book of Revelation because they thought it didn't apply to them.

Any doctrine that can force some believers to ignore parts of scripture is a doctrine to be very wary of. Not all pre-Tribbers do but I know for a fact that there are a few here on Worthy who refuse to take eschatalogical discussions seriously because they really believe that they won't be around to see the events discussed. It sends a  shudder down my spine to make me think that a supposed Christian doctrine can persuade people to  willfully ignore parts of the Bible.

Now travel to the Middle East and tell all those Christians who have been tortured by ISIS that you believe in a pre-Trib doctrine. You can always assure them that they've nothing to worry about because God will rapture them before the World gets really bad. I think a man who has been tortured, had his wife raped and seen his kids murdered will be overjoyed at your 'comfort gospel'. He'll definitely be breathing a sigh of relief over that one!

The pre-Trib is a doctrine of comfortable, Middle class Western Christians who want to have their cake and eat it. They want everything that paradise can offer but they seriously don't believe that one day they may have to die for their faith. They actually believe that they are the only Christians in history who are automatically exempt from anything that their forefathers may have had to endure. They even believe that those who are persecuted during the reign of the Beast are 'new' Christians who came to the faith after the rapture. Well, aren't you lucky to live precisely during that safe 'window' of time?

The fact that the pre-Trib doctrine is only seriously entertained by comfortable evangelical Westerners, and not even considered by the majority of Christians around the World is another reason to stop and think.

 

Nothing in the Bible supports a pre-Trib rapture that can't also be used to support a Post-Trib rapture. But there is enough in the Bible to cast a serious shadow of doubt on the pre-Trib position. The fact that no great Christian scholar before one or two hundred years ago had ever mentioned it or even thought of the idea should be enough to make any serious Christian suspicious of it. It's not taught by Catholics, by Orthodox, by Anglicans, by Methodists, by the Amish, by the Salvation Army, by any major Christian group (at least not in the mainstream anyway). I became a Christian, started studying the Bible and had never even heard of it until about two years later. You'd think if it was that important I'd have discovered it sooner.

 

 

 

 

 

[enoob57]

5 hours ago, OakWood said:

 The wife of the Lamb is not just us, you know. Once again, pre-Tribbers are trying to claim that they are something special as if all Christians who lived and came before them don't exist.

For your information there is only The Bridegroom=Jesus, the friends of the Bridegroom= OT saints, the Bride= The Church... the rapture only marquees the end of the Church age.

[OakWood]

5 minutes ago, enoob57 said:

For your information there is only The Bridegroom=Jesus, the friends of the Bridegroom= OT saints, the Bride= The Church... the rapture only marquees the end of the Church age.

I agree, but the end of the Church age (which I guess we're in already and have been for years) does not indicate a pre-Trib rapture. The Church is dying due to general apostasy, not because believers have been raised up.