We who speak of the rapture in blogs like these and other media, do so because the topic is often off-limits in a Sunday-morning sermon. The blessed hope and the truths surrounding it have been quieted by controversy. Pastors fear they will lose a portion of their congregation, either for the sermon or for life, if they dare touch this hallowed subject.

Bloggers have no such worry. We know people come and go from our messages and we live with the hope that someone will see the Biblical sense of what we say and begin to think.

May I simply pose some questions to my pre-tribulation brothers, or those who haven’t made up their minds?

Take a look at Matthew 24:31. Do you see what I see? Do you see an angel there? Do you hear a trumpet? Do you see the mention of clouds? Do you see a gathering of saints in the air from everywhere?

Me too. The pre-tribulation people call this the second coming, or the “final phase” of the second coming. And I think we all agree, yes?

Now take a look at 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17. Do you see those same angelic beings? Do you hear that same trumpet? Do you see the clouds? Do you see the catching up, the gathering in the air from everywhere?

Me too. Looks very much like Matthew 24, yes? But our dear brothers have been told by someone that I Thessalonians is a picture of the “rapture” (English word not in Bible), that happens seven years before the “final phase” or the second coming.

Now for the life of me, and you too, why are we to believe that those two descriptions are about two separate events? Are there really going to be two meetings in the air, two angelic appearances with Jesus, two trumpets (though Paul calls his trumpet the last one, as can be verified in the book of Revelation: there is a last trumpet) , two comings with the clouds?

Aren’t our brothers looking forward to a second and a third coming? We’re not talking about where He arrives and what He does, only the idea of a coming from Heaven. Does He really do this twice? Is there really any Biblical reason why I should accept this fact without question when the church universal believed only in a second coming until the 19^th century, and most of it still believes that?

Just askin’.

It’s Bob from Hackberry House. I’m at Bob.j.faulkner.72@gmail.com.