Defense of the Pre Trib Rapture

[Mike Mclees]

21 hours ago, Montana Marv said:

But none of us believers are to ask for our blood to be avenged.  Our blood was avenged at the Cross.  We know that, so why do some of those who die during this 70th Week ask this question, which we as the Church already know the answer.  We as the Bride are gone, those under the Altar are waiting for the rest to die as they died.  Beheading.  If you die without being beheaded, you are not of this group.

In Christ

Montana Marv

 

Having suffered and martyred for Christ sake I would not  think it an unworthy request. The word says that the unbelieving world who are guilty of murdering the Lords own would come to judgment  

Edited December 23, 2017 by Mike Mclees

[Montana Marv]

4 hours ago, Mike Mclees said:

 

Mike

We are to Forgive others, not once but, seven times 70.  Romans 12:14 - Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse, v. 19 - do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath... For It is mine to avenge, I will repay.

We as Believers already know that God will avenge; so we do not need to ask Him to do so.  Those souls under the Altar are the ones who have been beheaded.  No other mode of death is given, only one for those under the Alter.

In Christ

Montana Marv

[Mike Mclees]

13 hours ago, Montana Marv said:

Mike

We are to Forgive others, not once but, seven times 70.  Romans 12:14 - Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse, v. 19 - do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath... For It is mine to avenge, I will repay.

We as Believers already know that God will avenge; so we do not need to ask Him to do so.  Those souls under the Altar are the ones who have been beheaded.  No other mode of death is given, only one for those under the Alter.

In Christ

Montana Marv

I didn't write the book. You will have to take it up with the Lord. As for your quote It is for the living. Those under alter are in heaven

[Pudgenik]

On 10/12/2017 at 1:33 PM, inchrist said:

No how about I simply refuse to accept Satan worshippers teaching me the gospel truth of the timing of the wrath Rev 6:15 as apposed to the 24 elders teaching me the timing of the wrath

Rev 11:18 The nations were angry, and your wrath has come. 

Its called credibility of witness, your satan worshippers lack any credibility to tell me when Gods wrath starts. I dont care how you wish to sugar coat them.

Why do you go on about irrelevant Chuck, giving  a drama episode that has no relevance to the passage written and copied from the talmud and Passage prepared by Zwi Werblowsky, a rabbinical scholar, which happens to be on chucks website .... has any relevance?

Instead of actually debating the jewish thought, you instead give me lip on the owner of the website, thank you for giving me a master class lesson in smoke and mirrors

I would'nt touch your version of the truth with a biblical ten foot poll

make that 20 feet, given your twisted version of 2 Corinthians 5:2–4 that has nothing to do with billion dollar homes in Heaven. Thank you for robbing the text of what Paul is actually teaching which is our resurrected bodies.

Then you should have no problem showing me a literal resurrection in the 6th seal?

You really don't have a clue how the other rapture doctrines work do you?

I'm so happy you said that...... please explain your contradiction below:-

Since there is only 1 tribulation, which tribulation does Christ come after in Matthew 24:31?

 

Not so fast guy......

Remove those blinkers because it also says ...... 

......SKY / Happiness / Power / Eternity / Gospel / AIR

based on your criteria....your very words

.... Don't you get tire embarrassing yourself? The word "heavens" from the verse you pulled is plural with an "S" at the end. That's referring to the sky just above us.
The word "heaven" in Matthew 24:31 is singular, no letter "S" at the end. This is referring to the place where God dwells

.....which one is it: SKY or GODS abode??

I know which one biblehub went with

sky.....

Pre-wrath, lol. Now there is something different. I've never heard that one before.

I really love all these time lines everyone has, they are almost comical.

I have to say, the problem that everyone makes is the presumption that you all think you know what the first seal is. When you do not.

I have repeatedly heard the first seal as being represented as the anti-Christ. It isnt.

But what do I know. 

Where are all your so called prophets. Does anyone use the Gifts of the Holy Spirit anymore.

[n2thelight]

On 12/22/2017 at 9:22 PM, Montana Marv said:

Mike

We are to Forgive others, not once but, seven times 70.  Romans 12:14 - Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse, v. 19 - do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath... For It is mine to avenge, I will repay.

We as Believers already know that God will avenge; so we do not need to ask Him to do so.  Those souls under the Altar are the ones who have been beheaded.  No other mode of death is given, only one for those under the Alter.

In Christ

Montana Marv

II John 9 "Whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son."

II John 10 "If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed:"

II John 11 "For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds."

[Montana Marv]

4 hours ago, n2thelight said:

II John 9 "Whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son."

II John 10 "If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed:"

II John 11 "For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds."

So you agree that those under the altar are not the Bride, the Body/Church of Christ. Because only those souls who were beheaded are those under the altar.

In Christ

Montana Marv

[n2thelight]

14 hours ago, Montana Marv said:

So you agree that those under the altar are not the Bride, the Body/Church of Christ. Because only those souls who were beheaded are those under the altar.

In Christ

Montana Marv

Nope,they are the Bride,they are those who have died throughout time,not just the during the tribulation.

Revelation 6:9 "And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:"

Where do you see just those that were beheaded?

Revelation 6:10 "And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord [Master], holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth."

At death ALL return to the Father,this is how He brings them with Him,not because of some rapture

Ecclesiastes 12:6 "Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern."

The "cistern" is the clay flesh body that our soul lives in. The cistern is built to hold the water or life that is within the flesh body, but once that bowl is broken the water or life leaks out of it, just as water leaks out of this flesh body.

Ecclesiastes 12:7 "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God Who gave it."

Then when? After the silver cord breaks, the mind is brain dead, and the body loses its life. Then shall the body "dust" return to the earth as it was, before it was formed into food, and entered your mouth as food to make your flesh body healthy.

The spirit is the intellect of the soul, that gives the soul its identity. This is not complicated. When the body dies, and goes to the grave, the physical body will never have a use again, for the soul has returned to the Father, to God who created it in the first place. Because this is a promise of God, it should be what all Christians look forward to all the days of their lives. That is the day that we will be with the Father and Jesus Christ is heaven, not at some distant time in the future.

They return with Him at the 2nd coming

I Thessalonians 4:14 "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him."

Revelation 20:4 "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the Word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years."

These are those that came out of the tribualation as in Revelation 7

 

And they along with all who have died in Christ will return with Him!!!

 

The below are His elect,those who were sealed

Revelation 7:14 "And I said unto him, Sir [My Lord], thou knowest. and he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."

[iamlamad]

On 12/22/2017 at 12:35 PM, Montana Marv said:

But none of us believers are to ask for our blood to be avenged.  Our blood was avenged at the Cross.  We know that, so why do some of those who die during this 70th Week ask this question, which we as the Church already know the answer.  We as the Bride are gone, those under the Altar are waiting for the rest to die as they died.  Beheading.  If you die without being beheaded, you are not of this group.

In Christ

Montana Marv

You are reading into that scripture what is not there! And you are pulling it out of its context also. John shows us this 5th seal was opened as soon as Jesus ascended, around 32 AD. It is for the martyrs of the CHURCH AGE. They had no idea how long the church age would last. 

Stop and think: 70th week martyrs should know they only have to finish the 7 years and Jesus will return. So no reason to ask. But those early church age martyrs had a good reason to ask. I am convinced James and Stephen were in that group. 

[iamlamad]

On 1/14/2018 at 4:42 AM, Pudgenik said:

Pre-wrath, lol. Now there is something different. I've never heard that one before.

I really love all these time lines everyone has, they are almost comical.

I have to say, the problem that everyone makes is the presumption that you all think you know what the first seal is. When you do not.

I have repeatedly heard the first seal as being represented as the anti-Christ. It isnt.

But what do I know. 

Where are all your so called prophets. Does anyone use the Gifts of the Holy Spirit anymore.

Ha! I agree with you on the first seal. They want to pull it out of its context of chapters 4 & 5, which shows us that the first seals were opened around 32 AD when Jesus ascended.  As you have guessed, "prewrath" is just one more in a line of myths concerning the rapture.

[Steve Conley]

On 1/14/2018 at 5:42 AM, Pudgenik said:

Pre-wrath, lol. Now there is something different. I've never heard that one before.

I really love all these time lines everyone has, they are almost comical.

I have to say, the problem that everyone makes is the presumption that you all think you know what the first seal is. When you do not.

I have repeatedly heard the first seal as being represented as the anti-Christ. It isnt.

But what do I know. 

Where are all your so called prophets. Does anyone use the Gifts of the Holy Spirit anymore.

Greetings in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,

Pudgenik, you need to read more widely. Although the name pre-wrath is relatively new, 30 years or so, the teaching it represents is found in the historical records of the Church over the past 1900+ years. Unlike the pre-trib and post-trib positions the pre-wrath position has 1) the church seeing the Antichrist, 2) the church going through great tribulation, and 3) the imminent expectation of the church being removed from the earth before the wrath of God is poured out in the day of the Lord.

All three of these positions can be seen time and time again in the teachings of the early church.

Shawn White in his excellent paper on the Pre-wrath Rapture says:

“It was never taught that the rapture could come before the antichrist until the 1800s. Larry Crutchfield, a professor at Columbia seminary, and a pre-tribulationist, is an expert on the early church fathers. He wrote a paper called “Rudiments of Dispensationalism in the Anti-Nicean Period”. He was looking for pretribulationalism in the early church fathers. But, he has this to say, “While there are in the writings of the early church fathers seeds from which the doctrine of the pre-tribulation rapture could be developed. It is difficult to find in them an unequivocal statement of the type of immanency usually believed by pre-tribulationists.”

Thomas Ice of the Pre-trib Research Center quotes Crutchfield in his article, “The History of the Doctrine of the Rapture” as his evidence of a belief in an imminent return of Christ in the early church. And he said patristic scholar, Larry Crutchfield, argues that the early church fathers believed in what he calls imminent intra-tribulationalism. That is, they believed that they were in the great tribulation but not the Day of the Lord. He summarizes the views of the pre-tribulation scholars on the issue as follows. With few exceptions the pre-millennial fathers of the early church believed that they were living in the last times. Thus they looked daily for the Lord’s imminent return. Disbelief in the imminent return of Jesus Christ within the context of ongoing persecution has prompted us to broadly label the views of the earliest fathers imminent intra-tribulationalism.”

Accordingly, we see that references to the imminent return of Christ by the early church were predicated upon their believing that the Antichrist was present and that they were experiencing the great tribulation.

Eckerty in “The Case For the Pre-Wrath Rapture”  gives some examples of the early eschatological beliefs of the church:

Tertullian: “That the beast Antichrist with his false prophet may wage war on the Church of God....Since, then, the Scriptures both indicate the stages of the last times, and concentrate the harvest of the Christian hope in the very end of the world.” 

Justin Martyr: “The man of apostasy...shall venture to do unlawful things on the earth against us, the Christians.”

The Pastor of Hermas: “Happy ye who endure the Great Tribulation that is coming.”

Irenaeus: “And the ten kings...shall give their kingdom to the beast, and put the Church to flight.”

Barnabas: “Take heed, lest resting at our ease, as those who are called of God, we should fall asleep in our sins, and the wicked prince, acquiring power over us, should thrust us away from the Kingdom of the Lord.”

Hippolytus: “Now concerning the tribulation of the persecution which is to fall upon the Church from the adversary. That refers to the 1260 days during which the tyrant is to reign and persecute the Church.”

Each of these historic saints associate the church with the “great tribulation” persecution of the Antichrist. Not a single one exempts the church from his reign of terror. There is no mention of a great escape of the church from great tribulation.

Spurgeon on the Rapture

Arguably the most published Christian in history, outside of the writers of the Bible, is Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The prince of preachers, as he has been called, preached the Word so often and effected so many people that his sermons and his Bible teaching were recorded for posterity and have been read and studied for over a hundred and fifty years. We have the good fortune to examine the understanding of Charles Spurgeon on most every text of the Holy Scriptures.

In 1988 a man by the name of Tom Carter compiled a book that he titled “Spurgeon at His Best” in which he presents 2200 quotes from Charles Haddon Spurgeon. These quotations were categorized and labeled so that one might get an idea about what Spurgeon believed and taught about nearly any biblical subject. In his book Carter identifies the eschatological understanding and teaching of Spurgeon as that of a post-tribulation premillennialist. The reason for this identification is that there are many unambiguous statements that Spurgeon made concerning Christ’s pre-millennial return. It was also true that his exposition of various texts concerning the “Parousia” included an expectation that the church would see the Antichrist and experience great tribulation first.

Kenneth W. Eckerty in “The Case For the Pre-Wrath Rapture” provides us with more of Spurgeon’s teaching on the timing of the rapture in relation to the events of the seventieth week:

“Charles Haddon Spurgeon, of the nineteenth century believed in these signs prior to Jesus coming back for here is a quote that confirms it: "I must leave this first point, concerning the terrible time [a time of fearful national trouble] when this precept is to be carried out, by just reminding you that, when the Lord Jesus shall come, the heavens shall tell us. There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars. ...Now I come to THE REMARKABLE PRECEPT ITSELF. Then look up, and lift your heads. ...let there be no looking down because the earth is quaking and shaking, but let there be a looking up because you are going to rise from it."

In his sermon entitled “The Joyful Anticipation of the second Advent” he says, "The great tribulation by Antichrist, first, then, there is a terrible time...a time of fearful national trouble, then the signs appear in the heavens, when the Lord shall come, the heavens shall tell us, there shall be signs in the sun, moon and stars. Then the rapture and the resurrection of the saints, our own eyes shall tell us, for they shall see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory...look up lift up your heads...because the graves are opening... you will quit the grave never more to die." April 23, 1885.

Everywhere throughout the Scriptures there is this double message of our Lord—“Watch, for I may come at any moment. Expect Me to come, and to come soon; yet never be terrified as though the time were immediately at hand, for there are certain events which must occur before My Advent.” How to reconcile these two thoughts, I do not know and I do not care to know. I would like to be found in that condition which consists in part of watching and in the other part of patiently waiting and working till Christ appears.”

We see that the teaching of Charles Spurgeon concerning Christ’s coming and our gathering unto Him was consistent with what today is called the pre-wrath rapture model. It’s no wonder, he was known for having the Bible flowing through his veins.

Walvoord on the historical church’s expectation of experiencing the great tribulation

Dr. John Walvoord, Christian theologian, pastor, president of Dallas Theological Seminary, pre-tribulationist, and a highly recognized eschatological scholar, writes concerning the fact that early Christian writers considered that they were in the great tribulation:

“Generally speaking, the early church fathers, as well as the Protestant Reformers, tended to identify contemporary events with the events of the Great Tribulation and because of this could look for the imminent return of Christ.” (John F. Walvoord, The Rapture Question, rev. and enl. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Co., 1979), p. 51.)

Among the early church writers, any statement of the expectation that Christ could come at any moment was facilitated by the fact that at that time they believed that the Antichrist had been revealed and that they believed they were presently in the “great tribulation”.

The belief in imminency among the historic church was due to the belief that they were in the “great tribulation”

As was mentioned earlier, Larry Crutchfield, a pre-tribulationist, concluded through exhaustive research that the earliest church fathers were imminent intra-tribulationists; that is, they were looking for the Lord’s return at any moment because they thought the Antichrist had been revealed and that the persecution they were experiencing was the “great tribulation”. When this is taken into consideration the supposed historic proofs of the early church believing in an any moment rapture (imminency) offered by pre-tribbers are exposed and found, on the contrary, to support the pre-wrath model of the church’s gathering to Christ.

Again, from the writings of Justin Martyr, a second century Christian apologist who was martyred in 165AD, we read:

“Christ shall come from heaven with glory, when the man of apostasy . . . shall venture to do unlawful deeds on earth against us Christians.”

The church’s expectation of seeing the Antichrist and experiencing “great tribulation”, as supported by sound biblical exegesis, has continued throughout the history of the church from the days of the apostles to today.

The Reformation saints believed that they had identified the Antichrist

The belief that the conditions for Christ’s return had been met was the very same reason the reformers expected Christ at any moment.

Hugh Latimer, who was burned at the stake by Queen Mary in 1555, set forth his understanding of the timing of Christ’s Parousia in a sermon on the Lord’s prayer saying:

“St. Paul says, “The Lord will not come till the swerving from the faith cometh” (2 Thess. 2:3), which thing is already done and past. Antichrist is already known throughout all the world: wherefore the day is not far off.”

He clearly believed that the church would see the Antichrist and suffer at his hand in what Jesus calls “great tribulation”.

These are just a few examples of the pre-wrath belief of the historical church.

As comforting as it is to see the pre-wrath position espoused throughout history, we must recognize that it is not the fact that the pre-wrath model is ancient which makes it true but that it is supportable by the Holy Scriptures. It is the testimony of Christ, the Apostles, and the Prophets as recorded in the Bible which makes the post “great tribulation” pre-wrath of God return of Christ for His saints certain.

 

All praise, honour, and glory be unto the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Alpha and Omega, our Saviour Jesus Christ.

 

End of the Age Chart PDF.pdf

Edited March 28, 2018 by Steve Conley