The Many Insurmountable Difficulties of Futurism: The Pre-Trib Rapture Escape

Classic Futurism teaches Christ’s Church will escape Great Tribulation.

The sequence is as follows:

1. Christ comes secretly for His Church at the Last Trump.
2. The dead in Christ are the first to rise to meet Christ in the air in their glorified bodies.
3. Next, living believers receive their glorified bodies in the twinkling of an eye at which time they, too, are caught up to meet Christ in the air.

Thus, we have a gathering together with Christ of both deceased and living saints.

1 Thess. 4 & 1 Cor. 15 teach these scriptural truths.

However, Futurists veer from scriptural truth when they adamantly declare, without scriptural authority, that this rapture will occur before the Man of Sin, the Antichrist is revealed.

When we examine the context of 1 Thess. 5 we easily discover it relates back to what was just taught in the 4th chapter.

But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.
For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.

Paul explains that the rapture will occur on ‘the day of the Lord.’

The day of the Lord is the return of Christ in judgment.

For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness……….
………. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,
Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him.
Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.

Paul assures Christians that they have nothing to fear in the day of the Lord.

For Christians have not been appointed to receive the wrathful judgment of God.

Rather we Christians have been appointed to obtain salvation that we should have living fellowship with the Lord for all eternity.

Paul’s 2nd Epistle to the Thessalonians expands on the subject of the day of the Lord. Here he calls it 'the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ' and 'the day of Christ.'

Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,
That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.

Deceivers were teaching falsehoods concerning the return of Christ.

Paul needed to clarify and restate that which he had previously taught them.

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;

Before the gathering of the saints can take place (i.e. the rapture; the day of the Lord; the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; the day of Christ) the Man of Sin (aka Antichrist) must first be revealed to the Christian Church.

This ‘revealing’ is spelled out in further detail in the Revelation of Jesus Christ.

The Christian Church has had this revelation of the Man of Sin (the mystery of iniquity) revealed to them for 1,000 + years.

The united testimony of the saints as to the identity of the Man of Sin has been preserved and is accessible to all who care to learn the truth…..who have been given eyes to see and ears to hear.

Futurists believe they will escape the trials and tribulation brought about by the Antichrist.

Scripture does speak of those who seek to ‘escape’:

For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.

Futurists teach a Pre-Trib rapture escape.

Thus, they believe they are called to a Christian life of ‘peace and safety.’

No Antichrist. No Great Tribulation. No worries.

Is it not too difficult for the reader to understand that the gathering together of all the saints to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thess. 4) is the same gathering together described in 2 Thess. 2?

And is it not plainly spelled out by Paul that same gathering must be preceded by the revelation of the Man of Sin, Antichrist?

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;