I think the application has strong encouragement/command for every believer to "be ready"
Don't be asleep at the wheel. You are to conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of his name regardless of him returning in your lifetime or not. Would it change how we lived if we were convinced he were returning any day now? One year from now? The next decade?
I'm sure every generation since the resurrection has had some opinion on it, definitely the early church with all the persecution. Do I think it will be in my lifetime? Yes indeed. I don't have any idea the time frame of when during the tribulation. I always hovered on mid trib/pre wrath as that just struck me since I was young. So many dreams to that effect...
but they changed over time. I think it's something people should prepare for physically in some fashion but what that is to each person is unique. I know for a fact I don't want to be here when the holy spirit steps out of the way. It won't be nice.
There are so many factors to it that I think preparation is a hard thing to speak to. I trust the Lord to make us ready. There are plenty of people that don't do wilderness survival training or practice emergency preparedness because they believe they'll get taken away before anything bad happens. It sounds like a dream...but I'm certainly on board with that if it does occur, would be great.
Many many people were tried for their faith in ways that very few of us have been. Yes we've been through spiritual attacks and marginal attacks from other people, some more than others.
I'm of the opinion that you don't take your warriors away just before a battle. Doesn't make too much sense.
This topic leads to some rather dark areas and since most of us here don't know anything about how nasty human warfare is it's hard to conceptualize. Even harder is that maybe just maybe the enemy will do far worse than anything we've ever seen or heard of. It's enough get worked up over if you let it run away with you.
When I say most I mean it's not typically something that's consistently on one's mind. We hope to be long gone. I think that hope has been translated into a fantasy in a lot of people's minds presenting a false sense of security. What if we aren't? What if we shockingly have to endure what people in scripture did? Would our faith change?
Think of the early church and the persecution. They went through that...why is it we think the Lord will take us before that? Don't you think it will be FAR worse? Or maybe it'll be a blip on the radar and most people will miss it. Everything will occur in the spirtual realm and will hardly be felt.
I realize I'm going around and around. I haven't thought about this in this fashion in some time. It's been niggling at me for a while but I just disassociate from it because I don't know what the Lord wants me to do specifically and I suppose I appreciate the subject being broached at this moment in time. It hasn't hit me this hard in a while. Most of the time I just ignore it.
A lot of it's private but I still feel the need to share a little bit occasionally regarding revelation. Just that we don't yet know...there's enough division to let people come to certain conclusions of why they are there. If the spirit of the Lord flows through each of the people that believe each thing, what does that say?
@Last 2 posters...somehow I simultaneously hold both sentiments. Tis a mite confusing lol.