How the Pre-Trib Rapture Became Popular in the Modern Church

"Our rapture" you repeat this short phrase over & over in your posts. (Which I have great difficulty reading, with all the added symbols, caps, no caps, etc!)

But never once do you offer a verse which has the word rapture in it! Let alone "our rapture!" I dare you to use a concordance or Greek lexicon and find this word "rapture" on any Bible except Jerome's 4th century Latin. This is a transliteration mistake.

"Our" is a plural, 1st person possessive pronoun. The genitive in Greek. Where do you find this in the Bible, coupled with rapture? No where, since rapture is not there.

When I see repeated posts by someone, raving about a phrase like "our rapture" with no references from the Bible, I have no choice but to realize this is a man made, non-Biblical term.

Nehemiah also said something about the rapture being our "blessed hope!" But, if there is no rapture, then this phrase has been misread. In fact, the Second Coming is our "blessed hope!

"while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ," Titus 2:13

What is the hope? An event or a person? The false rapture doctrine has ensnared people to look for an event, rather than Jesus Christ. And NO doctrine that takes our eyes off Jesus & onto an event can ever be true!

"Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears,[a] we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure." 1 John 3:2-3

Verse 3 makes it clear that:

"All who have this hope in him" NIV

"And everyone who has this hope focused[n] on him purifies[o] himself, just as Jesus[p] is pure)." NET

"And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure." ESV

This constant emphasis upon the rapture heretical! We do not await an event! We await Christ himself, or his promised Second Coming, which is all about Christ, not a secret special rapture, to escape tribulation, which is all about us. The rapture is a narcissistic, self centred, man-made doctrine!

One of the arguments most opponents to the Rapture use is that it can't be right as it was a theory developed much later in comparison to other views. They all say that it began around...

...
There are many more.

You keep raising up this straw man of two returns of Christ when it has already been explained that there is only one Second Coming of Christ to earth. You can call it a "return" if you wish. But Christ does NOT return to earth at the Resurrection/Rapture. He does come for His saints, whether you wish to believe that or not.

But the tribulation we have in this world since pentecost is not the same which we will find in the time of the great tribulation.
Even when Christians in all time have a heavy time of persecution.

My understanding of what chapter 1 is conveying (2Th1) involves the following points (I've made in the past):

--in Scripture, wherever the phrases "the Day of the Lord" and "IN THAT DAY" are used in the same contexts [close proximity], they refer to the SAME TIME PERIOD; so BOTH of these two chapters is the CONTEXT, and in which these same two phrases are used (referring to the SAME future TIME-PERIOD [i.e. the [7] TRIB YRS])

--chpt 2 is Paul explaining about "the day of the Lord" that the false conveyors purport "IS ALREADY HERE / IS PRESENT [perfect indicative]" and him telling WHY it's not so;

--chpt 1 uses the phrase "IN THAT DAY" ("among all those having believed, because 'the testimony of us to you' was believed IN THAT DAY"--this is not referring to the Thessalonians THEMSELVES and what THEY came to believe, prior to this writing)

FWIIW - I believe the original [good] manuscripts for the N.T. were the Koine Greek Textus Receptus.

In other words, it was originally written in Greek.

Consider the scope of this verse:

Revelation 1:

7 Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.

Just/Only Israel?

Kinda doubt it...

You keep raising up this straw man of two returns of Christ when it has already been explained that there is only one Second Coming of Christ to earth. You can call it a "return" if you wish. But Christ does NOT return to earth at the Resurrection/Rapture. He does come for His saints, whether you wish to believe that or not.

It does teach that Church will be spared the satanic persecutions of great trib. The bible however not say the church will be removed before that tribulation period. Jesus described church being persecuted by enemy in Olivet discourse, and In Rev we again see church (the believers in Christ) being persecuted by and even overcome and killed matching what had told us.

Mat 24:9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.
Mat 24:10 And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.

Mat 24:13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

Mat 24:15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand
Mat 24:16 Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:
Mat 24:17 Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house:
Mat 24:18 Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.
Mat 24:19 And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!
Mat 24:20 But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:
Mat 24:21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.

Kinda hard to see AoD and flee to mountains if you are raptured up to heaven before this happens.

Pretrib simply isn't in the bible. Only posttrib is there.


Rev 12:17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Rev 13:7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.

That's great tribulation and it is satan persecuting the church!

^ [ @DavidTree 's Post #186]

(I've mentioned...) Paul speaks, in 1Th5:1-3, of the ARRIVAL of "the day of the Lord" time period being:

--LIKE the INITIAL "birth PANG [SINGULAR]" that COMES UPON a woman...

--Jesus spoke of these (very things) in His Olivet Discourse (but in the PLURAL--SAME WORD though, that Paul uses here in 1Th5); so Paul is referring to the INITIAL ONE (of MANY MORE "birth PANGS [PLURAL]" that will follow on from that point), namely, the FIRST ONE BEING "Matt24:4 / Mk13:5 G5100 - tis - 'A CERTAIN ONE' ['a certain one' bringing deception]"

--"the beginning of birth PANGS [PLURAL]" are EQUIVALENT to the "SEALS" of Rev6... so the INITIAL "birth PANG [SINGULAR]" is Rev6:2 the rider of the white horse with A BOW ("bow" often meaning "DECEPTION," elsewhere in Scripture);

--the "SEALS" are a part of what Rev1:1 / 1:19c /4:1 refers to AS "the things which must come to pass IN QUICKNESS [NOUN]" (i.e. WITHIN the "7-yr Trib"--so SEAL #1 to His Rev19 "RETURN" to the earth, is the "7 years" [not to mention all that follows 4:1, some of which describes what takes place UP IN HEAVEN around the throne, chpts 4-5, as Jesus Himself will "STAND to JUDGE" by beginning with His OPENING SEAL #1 at the START of the Trib [/7-yrs]);

--in 2Th2:1-3 Paul provides the SEQUENCE (how ONE ITEM[/event] relates time-wise / sequence-wise to the OTHER ITEM[/time-period]) and says ONE THING *FIRST*--"THE DEPARTURE *FIRST*"--the one PREVIOUSLY MENTIONED in the text in v.1 (before the OTHER THING[/time-period] can be present to unfold upon the earth, with its "man of sin" IN HIS TIME [i.e. the "IN THE NIGHT / DARK / DARKNESS" ASPECT OF "the day of the Lord," aka the 7 TRIB YEARS, that ARRIVES at the INITIAL "birth PANG [SINGULAR]"--not at the END of all those]);

--Paul REPEATS THAT SEQUENCE 3x in this 2Th2:3-9a passage, which SEQUENCE also *agrees* with the SEQUENCE he'd already covered in 1Th4-through-5; as well as (in the SAME WAY) ALL OTHER eschatological passages covering this Subject (like Matthew 24 does, like Revelation 4:1 thru chpt 19 does, like Daniel 9:27a/b/c[26b] does, etc...)



... Many folks fail to grasp what Paul is actually conveying in chpt 2... especially due to their not "defining" the phrase "the day of the Lord" (v.2) as scripture itself defines it (as shown above, IN BRIEF), but rather as some have defined it in a "made up" way, to mean something else... and then their failing to DISTINGUISH in that chapter (or the 2-chpt context even) things that are NOT the same, as though they ARE the same

• (like 2:1 says, "OUR episynagoges UNTO HIM" [where WE will GO "TO the meeting of the Lord IN THE AIR" ('the coming/presence/parousia of OUR Lord Jesus Christ') and NO ONE ELSE IN ATTENDANCE THERE! ('so [IN THIS WAY] shall WE ever be WITH / UNIONed-with [G4862!] the Lord"--NO ONE ELSE! --NOT the "FIVE [wise] VIRGINS"!! NO! (He's NOT "MARRYING" THOSE!!)]... that/v.1 is NOT the SAME as v.8's [later occurrence] "the MANIFESTATION of His presence/parousia" (i.e AT Luke 12:36-37,38,40 "when he will RETURN FROM the wedding" (as an "ALREADY-WED" Bridegroom!)... THEN the meal [G347]!!)

Jhn 16:33
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation: G2347 but be of good cheer; I have been victories over the world.

No one taught a pre-trib rapture until John Darby, and Anglican preacher, in the mid 1800s. So the teaching is relatively new. Now, being new does not necessarily mean a teaching is defunct: while God never changes, He reveals knowledge and understanding in a progressive manner. Things that we have not contemplated before, suddenly come alive to us in the scriptures. So, while the ideas are new to us, they were always established in the mind of God.

But the manner is which things are "revealed" should be examined. So let's look at the manner in which the doctrine of the pre-trib rapture came to be a Baptist staple.

Dwight Young, professor emeritus at Brandeis University of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, personally corresponded with a friend of mine several years ago. My friend was a young lawyer ( as an aside, had George Bush Senior been elected for a second term, there is a good possibility that my friend would have been chosen as a state supreme court judge.) Dwight was a student at Dallas Theological Seminary at the same time Hal Lindsey studied there, so this is more than 50 years ago or so. They were graduate students.

Dwight said the professors were discussing Darbyism, and whether or not it was a valid theology. This graduate student, Hal Lindsey, wrote a master’s thesis on the subject of this form of dispensationalism and the rapture. He later turned that thesis into a book called The Late Great Planet Earth. Now some of you may not know about this book, but it was a runaway bestseller. It made a lot of money. According to Dwight, that is where the Baptists made the switch. They saw that there was a market for this doctrine, and they ran with it. Dwight later moved up to and was a professor of biblical studies, biblical languages at Brandeis University, from which he retired, and he was in a state of retirement when my friend met him. So, 50 years from the writing of a master's thesis, the teaching is so entrenched in the Baptist circles you would think it was the gospel.

Historically, nobody ever thought of this doctrine before Darby. But once he popularized it in the context of dispensationalism, meaning things wrap up within blocks of time, people began to embrace it because they did not have to trust the Holy Spirit. If you are going to have any measure of understanding of prophetic Scripture, the end from the beginning and where we are at this point in time, you are going to have to walk in the Spirit. He is the One who wrote the Book; He is the One who is perfectly capable of interpreting it. And the folly of logic and reason and man-made constructs, such as dispensationalism, will lead you to increasing folly, such as the rapture.

God knows the end from the beginning, and the greatest moment of the Body of Christ is in the midst of the darkness in Revelation. That darkness has no potential to blunt our display of the glory of God, the radiance of God’s glory, or to represent Him exactly. It has no ability to influence that at all. This is the time for the glory of what God has been doing, when He established the heavens and the earth for the purpose of establishing a corporate man in creation so that He might be seen in creation as who He is. He is on a path wherein not only will He show who He is in all of His glory through the corporate body, but He will bring the enemy to judgment as well.

Grace and Peace,

Aaron56

The author of 1 Thessalonians is the SAME author of 2 Thessalonians - go figure....

we always have tribulations yet Jesus said there will be Tribulation as the world has never seen nor will again in Matthew 24:21

21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.

Context of the word Tribulation and the word is used outside of the Great tribulation also. Many do not know what Jesus answered in the Olivet Discourse. I asked earlier in this thread No one I have seen answered.

I will ask again. In Matthew chapters 24- 25 what did Jesus answer?

I just said that...

...and that Paul says "the day of the Lord" ARRIVES like the INITIAL "birth PANG [SINGULAR]" (the very ones JESUS SPOKE OF!, and NOT as being at the END point, see)... Parallel to / EQUIVALENT of SEAL #1 at the START of the 7 years (not ARRIVING AT, or even toward, its END).





But believe as you wish, DavidTree.

Our Lord Jesus Christ said the SAME thing as the Apostles and Prophets.
You can safely and with Great Confidence put your trust in His Word.

Matthew 24:21 is TRUE
Are you saying He is not capable of keeping us through this time unto His Second Coming?

His Second Coming is clear in Scripture - He Returns and the dead in Christ Rise First = After that we who are alive and remain at His Coming are caught up (Raptured) to meet Him in the clouds. 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
And He will send out His angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.… Matt 24:30 -31

After He had said this, they watched as He was taken up, and a cloud hid Him from their sight.
They were looking intently into the sky as He was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them.
Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven.” Acts 1: 10-12

are you saying HE is not capable of taking us UP as He was?



I did not see you answer my question before you asked me your's


Many do not know what Jesus answered in the Olivet Discourse. I asked earlier in this thread No one I have seen answered.

I will ask again. In Matthew chapters 24- 25 what did Jesus answer?

You keep making the error of "adding to and taking away" from Scripture which is really really BAD to do, brother.