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 19th century, and most of it still believes that?
Ran into some guy the other day who wanted to know if I was one of those “post” tribbers. I recoiled as I always do from being labeled and thus written off by major portions of the Body of Christ. But I answered him. “Sir, you...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
CONCLUSIONS And what have we found, exactly? One last review of the important points: Jesus says this age will begin to come to an end shortly following the world’s greatest catastrophe, which itself follows the revealing of the...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
paul: ii thessalonians 2 Did Paul ever deal with the question of the antichrist? Most assuredly. And as one might expect, this passage, II Thessalonians 2, has been abused quite a bit through the years. Let’s look at the first 12 verses. In...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
john: revelation 17 The famous harlot, the apostate church-become-governmental-power known as “Babylon the Great” is sitting on a beast in chapter 17. Yes, it is the same creature that we saw in chapter 13. It has seven heads and ten...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
The beast. He is described in verse 2 as having characteristics of leopard, bear, and lion, the very same as the first three animals seen by Daniel. So this beast is a combination of every power that has ever reigned. Daniel sees the only world...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
John: Revelation 13 Have you ever considered just how much Daniel and John have in common? As young men, both had a personal relationship with the Lord. They were both considered beloved of God. Defiantly strong for the Lord as young men, they...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
Yes, I am saying that Antiochus Epiphanes could well be the antichrist, not just a type of him. To the evidence in Daniel: Remember the gap idea first. As in Daniel’s visions, as in the 490 years, chapter 11 is moving along smoothly when...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
I want to remind us again here that from verse 15, dealing with Epiphanes’ father Antiochus the Great, the term “King of the North” is not used again until we are into the clearly prophetic portion of this passage. Though the...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
daniel's tenth through twelfth chapters I will refer to Daniel 10-12 as one chapter, as they tell one story, one prophecy. There should be no chapter divisions here, especially between chapters 11 and 12. Daniel 8 tells of one whose ancestry goes...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
