QUESTIONS concerning 1Cor.15 & 1Thes.4

[OneLight]

1 minute ago, WailingWall said:

Yes, i believe in the new testament prophecies. We meet the Lord in the air and its off to the kingdom. Not heaven

When we meet Jesus in the air, we are told that we will always be with the Lord.  That means where ever He is, we will also be there.

1 Thessalonians 4:17

Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

[seeking the lost]

On 11/17/2016 at 2:16 PM, WailingWall said:

After being changed in the twinkling of an eye, we meet the Lord in the air. Where do we go from there? All the Rapturist claim we are going to heaven. Thing is, i cant find where that is actually written. Can anyone point out the scripture that makes that claim

Without going beyond the scripture we know: 1 we meet in the air and 2. So shall we ever be with the Lord.  That is all that  is written on the event in context.  Notice that the indication of location is in the air and there is no return to earth.  

[seeking the lost]

9 hours ago, inchrist said:

Yes but the text doesn't state a return to heaven either....so we need to be fair on both sides....the answer is not in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 and we are left with a stale mate.

greetings inchrist

I place the time of the rapture at the end of the thousand years.  This is the time as stated in Revelation 20 that the resurrection takes place.  It is at this time that the books are opened and judgement takes place. Rev 20:12-15

12 And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.

14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

[seeking the lost]

6 minutes ago, inchrist said:

Interesting view. But I cant see that being possible.

They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years.⁵ (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.)

Greetings inchrist

The first resurrection which is describe in the first part of the verse is not inclusive enough to fulfill the requirements of the Thessalonians passage.  The first resurrection is a closed set, including only those specified.  Those in the first resurrection are not going up in the air.  They are only being raise to reign upon the earth.  The rest of the dead who are raised at the end of the thousand years is the only time that the rapture can occur. 

[Ezra]

On 11/20/2016 at 1:43 PM, WailingWall said:

Yes, i believe in the new testament prophecies. We meet the Lord in the air and its off to the kingdom. Not heaven.

No, you don't really believe in New Testament prophecies, otherwise you would not be promoting such false ideas.

For anyone to object being in Heaven is a red flag. Scripture equates "the Kingdom of God" with " the Kingdom of Heaven".   So meeting the Lord in the air implies going back to Heaven, from where the Lord descends.  The throne of God is in Heaven. The throne of Christ is in Heaven. The heavenly host is in Heaven.  The New Jerusalem is in Heaven. But we have someone here dismissing Heaven as irrelevant! 

It is rather disturbing that now the doctrine of Heaven is under attack.  Generally it was the doctrine of Hell, but now both these doctrines are under attack.

[Marcus O'Reillius]

On 11/17/2016 at 3:16 PM, WailingWall said:

After being changed in the twinkling of an eye, we meet the Lord in the air. Where do we go from there? All the Rapturist claim we are going to heaven. Thing is, i cant find where that is actually written. Can anyone point out the scripture that makes that claim

Jesus indicates twice in the Gospels that our place will be in Heaven upon His Return.

Mt 13:24-31 "...but gather the wheat into my barn."

John 14:3 1 "Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. 2 In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. 3 If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. 4 And you know the way where I am going." 5 Thomas *said to Him, "Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?" 6 Jesus *said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

The correlations between the Olivet Discourse & the sixth Seal of Revelation:

1. Corresponding to the sun/moon/star event preceding the Day of the Lord (Joel 2:31):

Mt 24:29 "But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

Rev 6:12 I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; 13 and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind.

2. Second correlation: the splitting of the sky as the "sign" of the Son of Man:

Rev 6:14 The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

Mt 24:30 And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.

3. Third correlation the gathering of the Elect (those who are "remain" (are still alive after the Great Tribulation) and are left (upon the earth) from 1Th 4:17 ~ is the presentation as foretold in John 14:5 of the Great Multitude before the Father:

31 And He will send forth His angels with A great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.

Rev 7:9 After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; 10 and they cry out with a loud voice, saying,
" Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb."
~
13 Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, "These who are clothed in the white robes, who are they, and where have they come from?" 14 I said to him, "My lord, you know." And he said to me, "These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15 For this reason, they are before the throne of God; and they serve Him day and night in His temple; and He who sits on the throne will spread His tabernacle over them. 

Notice too, that the Great Multitude show up in Heaven out of the Great Tribulation from which the Elect, those who remain and are still alive for the Rapture, are gathered.
This confirms the equivalence of the Great Multitude to the Church - whose sin is washed away by the Blood of Jesus.

Jesus reveals to John that He will take us to the Father, in Heaven, and IN His Temple.
Thus completing the third time that Jesus is said to "save" us - when we are resurrected from the grave and those surviving the shortened Great Tribulation are raptured to the "barn" of Heaven.

[Marcus O'Reillius]

On 11/17/2016 at 5:23 PM, WailingWall said:

Matthew 25:31-34 (KJV)
³¹ When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
³² And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
³³ And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
³⁴ Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

Its when Jesus sets up His kingdom on earth

Five Times the Bible Presents Two Resurrections

There are five times where two resurrections are mentioned in the Bible.  The order of sequence is always the same; first for only the “Living,” then for both “Living and Dead.”  The Bible can jump from one Resurrection to another in one-two fashion without mentioning the intervening time, as three of the four do, because of the nature of “gaps” in the Bible.  The Resurrections represent the bookends of the Millennium.  Jesus can go from one to the other and thus span a thousand years without mentioning them.  An omission of a fact is not a commission of an error.

“Living” is used as Jesus uses the term here:

^{Mt 22:32}'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead but of the living." 

Here, Jesus is speaking of people who have died, yet calls them “living.”  “Living,” being capitalized, then refers to the spiritually living component of the Righteous.  Using this analogy of life, much the Gospel accounts say Jesus is the “Son of the living God,” the corollary would be the “Dead” being synonymous with the Wicked.  Thus, word interplay remains between the words: “living” and “dead,” which the reader will have to discern in Scripture such as can be found in Jn 5:25.

            Likewise in trying to pin down a time, when a prophet like Zechariah says, ‘there will be a day,’ or when Jesus says, ‘a time is coming;’ tells us nothing of when it comes: only that it will be.  It is up to the reader to understand that an intervening time between days or times can exist, and that also those events enumerated by such prophets or Jesus need not occur on the same day.  Imparting crucial tidbits of knowledge in this manner, Jesus acts in a manner consistent with the prophecy in Isaiah that the people would hear but not understand.  Just as Daniel understood the desolation of Israel would last seventy years in Daniel 9:2 before Gabriel came to him to lay out the crucial aspect of the seventy ‘sevens;’ God hides His Plan within Scripture for those who seek Him.  Using a sequence of events approach with the tools of prophecy which are demonstrated in Scripture, allows the seeker to see what has lain in plain sight but has been glossed over in so many readings.

That the subsequent second Resurrection has any who are spiritually alive at all is due to the Millennium period.  Some will live righteous lives during this period of Christ’s rule on the Earth over the nations.  Those righteous people living and dying after the Rapture and during the future thousand year period require a second Resurrection where they can join the Elect. 

            The gap from one resurrection to the other returns this commentary to the tools of interpretation.  The Bible allows for this transition because both are essentially the same, bracketing the Millennium and being bridged by the Rule of Christ.  Their origin is from a speaker knowledgeable in God’s plan: Jesus.  In Daniel, He is the Man in Linen, in the Gospels, Jesus speaks in the first person and in Revelation; He reveals it to John. 

 

[Marcus O'Reillius]

	First Resurrection Just the Living	Second Resurrection Living and Dead
1.	Daniel 12:1 But at that time your people--everyone whose name is found written in the book--will be delivered.	Dan 12:2 Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.
2.                                             3.	Mt 13:24-30 "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.  27"The owner's servants came to him and said, 'Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?'  28"'An enemy did this,' he replied.  "The servants asked him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?'  29"'No,' he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn. '"     Mt 24:31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.	Mt 13:47-50 "Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish.  48When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away.  49This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous 50and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.                   Mt 25:32-33; 46 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. …Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
4.	John 5:25 I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.	John 5:28-29 Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out--those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.
5.	Revelation 7:9 After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.   Revelation 14:1; 4 Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads… They follow the Lamb wherever he goes.   Revelation 20:4-5 And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. 5 (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection.	Rev 20:11-12; 15 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.   …If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

[Marcus O'Reillius]

Matthew 25 shows both "Living" and "Dead" being before the throne.
This is much like the Great White Throne Judgment of Revelation.
This is also where the "bad fish" are thrown out.

Matthew 25 does not show those saved on the Day of the Lord on the earth for the Millennium Reign of Christ Jesus.

[Marcus O'Reillius]

The First Resurrection is only for the spiritually “Living” and includes some who are living bodily on the Earth.  The Second Resurrection includes both spiritually Living from the Millennium and all the spiritually Dead from all time, who, as classes of people, are both all deceased at that point in time.  Joining the Sheep to the Elect fulfills Paul’s promise that God has not forgotten Israel but will save all of them after the full number of the Gentiles have come in.  While the Elect include nearly all who are Living at the first Resurrection (except for the Remnant and the meek who go into the Millennium); the Sheep will be added to Elect in Heaven after the Millennium.  So not all who belong to the Living are yet included in the first Resurrection because some of them haven’t been born.  There are important distinctions made during the Millennium Reign of Christ which substantially alters the rules for entry into eternal Life.  The reason presented within this commentary is that the Millennium is for unbelieving Israel: the Jews, to be ultimately reunited with Christ, whom they rejected before. 

            Without Revelation, interpreting Daniel, Matthew and John as indicating two Resurrections a thousand years apart would be impossible.  With the book of Revelation, however, seeing the differences in what is promised with the fullness of the Gentiles coming in before Israel is saved, then illuminates how some will “come to everlasting life” as Daniel puts it; that others will be like Sheep like Matthew has it, or “those who have done good” (as opposed to faith-based salvation) being an examination of their deeds.  

            Thus the Bible is consistent in presenting in sequence linear order, two resurrections from the grave unto Life in Heaven.  It always lays them out as first for the Living, or righteous, and the second being inclusive of both Living and Dead as in righteous and wicked – which then have to be separated.