Could the rapture be referred to as a coming?

[kenny2212]

Bottomline is God chose to give us laws; and with laws come judgement  (whether one obeys or disobeys the law). It's not a question of whether Daniel's 70th week is the time of "Jacob's trouble" or not. God will judge everybody, Jews and non-Jews alike.

God bless us all

[Omegaman 3.0]

8 hours ago, kenny2212 said:

Why would God put all of his children alive at that time in an "unwinnable" war? The tribulation saints are those who have "a change of heart" after the rapture.

The rapture is God's way out.

Well Kenny, the war is not unwinnable. The war is not one of flesh and blood, it is  not a war about physical life. It is a spiritual battle, that is taking place during physical life. For believers, that was was already won, by Jesus 2000 years ago, now we are just waiting for in time for that reality to catch up. Those on the winning side, those in the army of General Jesus may make some sacrifices, but they are still winners, victorious. The victorious, persevere until the end, and do not withhold anything from their Lord, willing even to die for the glory of God.

The rapture is not God's way out, you definitely did not find that in the Bible. Gods way out, is eternity with Him, whether a person is in the rapture or not.

The idea of "tribulation saints" tells me you have been reading the thoughts of those who have elected to follow the ideas of John Nelson Darby, Cyrus I. Scofield, Hal Lindsey, Dr. Thomas Ice, Tim Lehaye, and scores of other that have popularized that doctrine of easy escapism. It basically started in Scotland, less than 200 years ago, but I am afraid that is was American, that really gave it a boost. We then exported it to other countries around the world, and for that I apologize as an American. Sure, there are saints in the tribulation, so that term is not a bad one, but they are not a special category, people are saints (the seperate from the world, chose of God) or they are not. The "tribulation saints" are merely the saints that happen to be here, just before Jesus' return. The term is a recent one, I would wager that it is not found in any commentary or writing prior to the 20th century.

Jesus in His Olivet Dscourse, warned of deception to come. "Take heed, lest anyone mislead you." Implication is that people can be mislead. How would that happen? It would happen when people start believing things that are not in the word of God. Jesus charged the disciples with making more disciples, and teach them to follow what He had told them.

Matt 24 and 25, Mark 13, and Luke 17, would fit in that category. There is not need to pretend, that somehow, when these passages are speaking to the elect, that elect means Jew, and not the elect as the word is used every other time the New Testament uses it to refer to Christians. That is a trick than some try to employ to make us think that these passages are for the Jews, not the church. Nonsense! Sure, it affects those in Judea, in a different way that those in the rest of the world, because the focus of these events are local, and the attention to that sabbath, etc, shows the Israel-centric focus. If this passage is just for Jews, then why do we even concern ourselves with the tribulation and related event anyway, after all, if it is just the Jews, then Gentile Christians are not in view. We know though, from other passages, that it has world wide effects. 

These disciples to whom Jesus was speaking, became the first Christians, and they spread the message to the world. If this was about the Jews, Jesus would have been better off, informing the Pharisees!

So what was a large part of what He was saying? He gave the sequence of events, right up to when He would come back, after the tribulation. One does not have to interpret that, one merely needs to believe what Jesus Himself said, and other New Testament passages confirm. 

The second thing He did, was not just tell them what would happen, he told them why it was important to know: To prevent being deceived.

Here is something to think about:

"Therefore when you shall see ‘the abomination of desolation". Jesus indicated, and I have shown you in a previous post, that that was clearly to be in the middle of the 7 years. Now, you need to decide, whether that tribulation is in the past, or still in the future. If it is yet in the future, then this sign of Jesus soon return, the main sign we are told to watch for, is also in the future. If it is in the future, then it is not intended to warn the disciples of Jesus day, but is instead intended to warn those who are there to see it happen, that much should be obvious.

What is He warning about? Deception!

"For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will give great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect."

There is no reason to suppose, that non of the elect will not be deceived. If that were the case, then there is no need to warn because the won't be deceived. Those, on the other hand, you are not paying attention, are not aware of the warnings that Jesus gave to prevent deception. I suppose I could add, that for those who want to say that the elect are Jews, there would be nothing remarkable, about deceiving Jews who are not yet born again. That will offend some, I suppose, but I don't think that can be helped. The elect, are those chosen by God to be His, whether or not they are Jew or Gentile.

I think it is best to understand this, as Jesus telling us, that the false prophets and false messiahs, will perform miracles, with the intentions that they will deceive the elect, to whatever degree is possible. We already see this sort of thing now. There are people who perform fake miracles of healing, and they have a following. People can be deceived, and it will only get worse, when real supernatural sighs, performed by evil false prophets start happening.

These things are all I am hoping to do Kenny, not just for your sake but for all who read these posts. I hope that people to not follow these new ear tickling doctrines of an invisible return of Jesus before the tribulation that the Bible never even mentions once. I sincerely think they are part of a deception to get people of their guard. I do not think that those who spread these ideas, are deceiving others out of malicious intent. Most are probably very sincere, and believe what they are saying, it is just that what they are saying, is not from the Bible, that is concerning to me. It is possible, that some are doing it for the money, writing books, making movies and the like, but that is not the description of most Christians who believe in a pre-trib rapture, most are just the victims of others, and of course our own desires not to suffer, play into our readiness to accept things that sound more appealing than the truth does.

Jesus did not describe His return as secret or invisible, he said it will be visible to everyone. The Bible does not say that informed Christians will be caught my surprise, like a thief in the night, that terminology is offered to those who do not believe, or to the lazy servants not doing their master's will.

Let's not be in that group, let's be prepared, watching and doing what we are supposed to be doing until He come, even, and especially if, it is during the times when that is the most difficult to be a Christian, during the reign of the anti-christ. Don't worry, it is a speck in time, compared with etermity.

[Omegaman 3.0]

On 1/28/2020 at 10:23 AM, OldCoot said:

The only kink in equating the catching up with the same coming where Yeshua physically returns to the earth is, if the righteous are caught up at that time when Yeshua is returning to take over and rule, then who would be left to be the sheep of the nations (Matthew 25 / Joel 3)?

care to expand that, unravel it, with a bit more explanation to what your are trying to say?

[kenny2212]

Since you won't budge, I rest my case.

God bless us all

[OldCoot]

3 hours ago, Omegaman 3.0 said:

care to expand that, unravel it, with a bit more explanation to what your are trying to say?

Fair enough.

My previous post was directed to those who feel that the removal of the righteous (rapture) occurs at the same time that Messiah is coming back at the end of the tribulation period.  What is commonly known as the post trib view.   Kind of an up we go and right back down we come.

In Matthew 25 and Joel 3, the nations of the world are gathered together at the Valley of Johoshaphat (also known as the Kidron Valley and valley of decision).  That is the valley that runs between Jerusalem and the Mt. of Olives.   There, those of the nations are separated out by the Lord into the righteous (sheep) or the unrighteous (goats).    The unrighteous to condemnation.  The righteous go into the kingdom.

But if the righteous were caught up just as the Lord is returning, then how would there be any righteous of the nations to separate out from the unrighteous in the valley?   That is the kink or flaw in the post trib rapture view.  If the removal or rapture occurs at the same time Yeshua is coming back to rule over the earth, It leaves no righteous left on earth and of the nations to separate out as Joel 3 and Matthew 25 talks about.

There has to be a delineation.  Those of the nations that are being gathered and separated out are still living, mortal beings.  The righteous who were caught up earlier are changed to immortality according to Paul in his letters to both the Thessalonians and the Corinthians.    So at a very minimum, the catching up / removal / rapture has to occur some time before the end of the tribulation period when Yeshua returns and assumes His rule over the earth.  Post trib is totally invalidated.  That only leaves the pre, mid, or pre-wrath views in play.

That these righteous that are separated out go into the kingdom are said to have eternal life is not a conflict.   Those of us that believe and place our trust in Messiah now have eternal life, as we have passed from death to life.   John told us so in 1 John.  But at the removal or rapture, we are changed from mortal to immortal according to Paul.  The righteous that are separated out of the nations also have eternal life, just as we do now.  They also have passed from death to life just as John says we have. But they are not yet changed.  They go into the kingdom as mortals to repopulate the earth

 

Edited January 31, 2020 by OldCoot
Spelling

[OldCoot]

10 hours ago, Walter Goraj jr said:

The Bible is a spiritual book. It did not come from the minds of men. In God's time His Word is progressively revealed to His people, and that means not everyone.

Indeed it is.   But was the Adamic Covenant not literal but just an allegory?   How about the Noahic Covenant?   Of that one, even James heading up the Jerusalem council said that was still in effect for gentiles that come to faith in Messiah.   What of the Abrahamic Covenant?  The Lord was very clear that as long as the sun is during the day, the moon is during the night, and the waves roar on the seashore, that covenant is still in effect.  Even to a thousand generations.   And Gabriel seemed to think the Davidic Covenant was literal, as he reaffirmed it to Mary when he told her she was going to bear the Messiah.

So it still remains.   If there is no objective standard to determine what is to be seen as literal and what is seen as allegory, then anyone can change the goal post anytime they want.   That leads to all sorts of confusion and misapplication of the scripture.

The HS uses many rhetorical devices in scripture, and allegory is one of them.  When the scripture says that the Lord protects the righteous under His wings, it is obvious that is an allegory because to think it is literal would imply that God has feathers.

Unless the context implies an allegory, it is not within our right to impose an allegorical meaning on the text.    The default position should always be the the text means exactly what it says unless the context suggests otherwise.   Origen and Augustine really messed things up when they incorporated gnostic exegesis into things.  In other words, making allegory the default position.   Uh oh.... that came from the minds of men!   

Edited January 31, 2020 by OldCoot

[Omegaman 3.0]

5 hours ago, OldCoot said:

But if the righteous were caught up just as the Lord is returning, then how would there be any righteous of the nations to separate out from the unrighteous in the valley?   That is the kink or flaw in the post trib rapture view.  If the removal or rapture occurs at the same time Yeshua is coming back to rule over the earth, It leaves no righteous left on earth and of the nations to separate out as Joel 3 and Matthew 25 talks about.

Thanks for the reply. I always just supposed there are two kinds of people, those who are righteous (imputed by the blood of the lamb) and everyone else. It looks to me, like when the Lord returns after the tribulation, He is returning with those He has gathered, and they return with Him to the earth.

No, those who were not the gathered, are left below, and basically wiped out. However, there is a subset of that not righteous, who are not destroyed.

Consider this as a future scenario:

 3Then the LORD will go out and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle. 4On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley, so that one half of the Mount shall move northward, and the other half southward. 5And you shall flee to the valley of my mountains, for the valley of the mountains shall reach to Azal. And you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the LORD my God will come, and all the holy ones with him.

There you have a fight where the Lord fights the nations, that sound familiar. He comes to the earth and the Mount of Olives. In Acts 1, there are dumbfounded (it sounds like, as they seem him taken up into the cloud. Angels tell them that he will be seen when He returns, just as they saw Him leave. Again, a visible return, no invisible one mentioned.

Now, it Rev 12 we have this:

And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. 5She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, 6and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.

There, it seems to me, that the woman is Israel, she gave birth to a male child, a ruler over the nations who was caught up to the throne of God, how many people does that describe, I can think of only one! Meanwhile, as we just saw (I think), there will be some Jews protected by God for 3.5 years.

Then there is this:

10And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. 11And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. 12Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”

There Satan is on the earth, and someone has conquered Him, by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. The loved not there lives, and and were killed. Kind of goes along with what I was saying to Kenny before, about how Christians are not afraid to die, and are willing to do so for their Lord, Kenny called them tribulation saints.

So, Satan is ticked off, darn it, he cannot get those pesky Christians to surrender to him, they remain faithful to their Lord, even in the face of death, at least some have until that point.

13And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. 15The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood. 16But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth. 

There we see, Satan after the Jews (pursued the woman) but the Jews were given great wings so that they could escape the serpent in the wilderness for a time, times, and half a time (1+2+1/2, 3-1/2 years, or 1260 days). So, he sends a flood after her, but the earth swallow his flood (I am thinking likely an army here) but these Jews escape, protected by God.

 17Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

There again, Satan is really wrathful, so he goes off to make war with who? Those who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Christians (messianic believers, most likely).

So what do we have, we have the nations who get destroyed, and Christian who are dying because they will not submit, and the third group, those that escape and are protected by God. So, everyone is present and accounted for. Unbelievers are wiped out, Christian dying in persecution, but they come back with Jesus, and I know I do not have to tell you the verses you know them perfectly well, but does God destroy the Jews He just protected? Of course not.

That leaves them and or their offspring, to enter the millennium, or did I miss you point entirely?

[Omegaman 3.0]

7 hours ago, kenny2212 said:

Since you won't budge, I rest my case.

God bless us all

That is fine Kenny, but I did not think you had a case. I thought you had a question, and wanted to learn, my mistake. I do notice, that you had objections to my thoughts, but I also could not help but notice, I gave scripture to back every one of them, you did not have many scriptures, you just offered opinions and theories, feelings and the like. It just appears that your case, is not a case, because you did not even present one. That is fine, you do not need to, but if I were you, I would want to have some Bible reasons for believing what you believe, kind of like the Bereans, who searched the scriptures daily, to see if what Paul said, was true.

"God bless us all", indeed, I like your non-combative style, it is refreshing.

However, my impression is not that "since you won't budge, I rest my case.", if is more of since I (Kenny) am stubborn, I have no case to present, so I rest my case without being willing to even have a trial, all testimony and evidence is irrelevant.

Thanks. I will bow out of this thread, confident that someone may have or later might get something out of it. Keep pursuing truth and understanding!

[Diaste]

On 1/29/2020 at 3:33 AM, kenny2212 said:

Diaste, are you saying that there is no rapture? I know the word "rapture" isn't in the bible, but its synonym "caught up" is. The word "rapture" isn't in the English bible but is in the Latin Vulgate as "rapiemur". The word "rapiemur" translates to the word "rapture" in English.

1 Thess. 4:17 -

After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

 

VUL 17 deinde nos qui vivimus qui relinquimur simul rapiemur cum illis in nubibus obviam Domino in aera et sic semper cum Domino erimus

NIV 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

 

God bless us all

The point about the 'rapture' is it was likely never associated with the body of evidence in the whole of scripture. In my understanding it was dreamed up by McDonald and promoted by Darby as a pretrib event from the beginning. If that's true, and my information tells me it is, then the 'rapture event' is not real. There just isn't one. Some may think it's a semantic argument alone but since scripture records 'harpazo' as 'a sudden taking' and we know this is the moment of our redemption, it's more a total belief in the Word of God as preserved. I'm not interested in a discredited compilation in a dead language.

But again it's more than a affectation. The idea from the inception was pretrib and pretrib is found ill suited to the whole of scripture's account on the gathering.

[Diaste]

On 1/29/2020 at 6:48 AM, OldCoot said:

All of those words with little substance.   like clouds with no water.

Ha! Me?

You should look at yourself. 

Your personal maxim is a control mechanism allowing you to discount every argument that doesn't abide by your false requirement for veracity of scripture.

Scripture says: 

"Deuteronomy 17:6
On the testimony of two or three witnesses a man shall be put to death, but he shall not be executed on the testimony of a lone witness.

Deuteronomy 19:15
A lone witness is not sufficient to establish any wrongdoing or sin against a man, regardless of what offense he may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.

Matthew 18:16
But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses."

Numbers 35:30
Whoso killeth any person, the murderer shall be put to death by the mouth of witnesses: but one witness shall not testify against any person to cause him to die.

2 Cor 13:1

This will be the third time I am coming to you. "Every accusation must be verified by two or three witnesses."

Refuting the idea you made up that any doctrine or concept of scripture must be confirmed by the OT and NT as these are the only two witnesses that are valid. This is in your mind only and is not axiomatic.

When Paul commended the Bereans for searching the scripture for proof of what Paul was teaching they only had the OT. Your personal take on this would be that Paul was wrong and the Bereans were misinformed as at the time the written work dubbed the NT did not exist. 

Jesus would also be wrong in your eyes as the same argument applies; the NT had not been written. But it's worse than that isn't it? You divorced the text from the context and so your idea is not only misguided and misinformed but harmful. 

Your idea also means that for nearly  a century there could be no confirmation of the truth as the letters that make up the NT did not exist in toto till 95 AD. Some may not have been found till much later. The NT was formalized as an authority some 3 centuries later, 6 centuries for the Catholics. Those poor people, no truth confirmed for half a millennia.

The OT is speaking to matters of law and the requirement those matters be settled by no less than two eyewitnesses, speaking specifically to the consequences of murder. Since the only scripture that existed at the time when Jesus and Paul spoke about the need for 'every matter to be settled by two or three witnesses' it's abundantly clear the idea is not the OT and the NT but the spoken witnesses of those present. 

Jesus said, "Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” So the Pharisees said to Him, “You are testifying about Yourself; Your testimony is not true.” Jesus answered and said to them, “Even if I testify about Myself, My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. “You judge according to the flesh; I am not judging anyone. “But even if I do judge, My judgment is true; for I am not alone in it, but I and the Father who sent Me. “Even in your law it has been written that the testimony of two men is true"

As we see from the scriptures of truth, not the mindless agenda of the controlling elements of the body of Christ, the truth of a matter is established by witness testimony. Spoken testimony. That means that as long as there are two witnesses that confirm the idea we have truth. This means that Paul and John are sufficient as witnesses, as is every other NT letter writer, as they were all eyewitnesses to Christ and His glory.

You want to hold yourself to some personally derived standard that's fine, don't impose that kind of limitation on others.