Featured The Rapture Vs Second Coming

My understanding is that Jesus comes for his bride/body, and there is the rapture odf the living saints, glorification, and the judgement seat of Christ/Supper of the lamb etc

We being removed would be the Salt and retraint taked out of the earth, and the HS is still here, but going back to like in OT times saving sinners...

So people still saved, while the tribulation for israel as time of jacobs Folly, and for the earth the great an terrible day of the lord!

Which the church is not involved in, spared THAt wrath of God!

 

The idea that the Restrainer is the Holy Spirit, who is taken out of the way, therefore no one will be saved during the Tribulation was taught to me 40-plus years ago. Is that still a common pre-trib view?

One of the passages which raised a question in my mind as to its validity is Revelation 7:11-17

They are in heaven. They are before the throne in the presence of the Lord Jesus. They came out of the Tribulation. And their tears will be wiped away.

Two possibilities here, pre-trib rapture or not: One, people will be saved during the Tribulation. Two, they were already saved when the Tribulation began

This weakens, maybe destroys the view that all believes leave at the beginning of the Tribulation or are saved during it. It also weakens the view that the Restrainer is the Holy Spirit, because it assumes that no one is saved apart from the work of the Holy Spirit.

Just some thoughts.

 

I was taught that the restrainer is the HS in and thru the Church here, or the Body here upon the earth, and when we depart, the HS will remain here, and will still be saving people, its just that he will seal off and work through the 144,000 jewish remant that revealtion talks about! So there will be evagelsim done here, and people will be saved, but most will be killed as access to heaven then!

 

So, it appears even Dispies don't agree among themselves. You believe the Holy Spirit remains during the Tribulation. I was taught that He leaves with the Rapture, making it impossible for anyone to be saved.

I, too, was taught (I think in Hal Lindsey's books) that the 144,000 are flaming Jewish evangelists. And, that only Jews would be saved. But without the work of the Holy Spirit (since He's gone).

Of course, He's not gone. The Holy Spirit is not bound by time and place.

I was also taught that the Day of the Lord is the time of the post-trib second coming. And, that the day will be like a thief in the night. Yet, somebody made a movie called Thief in the Night, and placed it as the "secret" pre-trib rapture.

So, my advice to Dispies, be careful. Even they don't all agree on the details.

 

We are the salt of the earth by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. When we are caught up to be with Him, His restraining work is complete. Notice in Revelation that the church is not mentioned on earth after chapter 3. This doesn't mean we won't endure the wrath of man before the rapture as we always have. I have three friends who have died as martyrs. But the tribulation is the wrath of God and Jesus will deliver us from the wrath of God and the time of trial determined by God to bring in he final number of elects jews. Romans 9 - 11.

The great tribulation is also the time of Jacobs Trouble which encompasses the second three and a half years of the tribulation after the Antichrist breaks his covenant with Israel.

 

think tha traditional concept is that after the rapture, we go back under the HS working as in OT times, and that people are still getting saved,but ina realtionship to god as the OT beleivers were, not part of the NT Body/Church!!

 

This is an argument from silence, which is the weakest of all arguments.

And, there's a problem with the statement's accuracy.

Who are these people mentioned by John?
Revelation 6:9

Martyred during the Tribulation
Revelation 7:9

Including saved Gentiles
Revelation 13:7

John is talking about the beast, the Anti-Christ. Making war on saints (including Gentiles). During the Tribulation.

These saints clearly are people of the church. In the Tribulation.

BTW, the word church is not mentioned in John's gospel, either. And God is not mentioned in the book of Esther.

 

:thumbsup::thumbsup:
Excellent post. Thank you for your clear concise answer.

 

One reason I suggest caution is that over the centuries there has been a lot of speculation over the identity of the Restrainer.

This link has a good summary:
http://www.raptureready.com/resource/stanton/k5.htm

Briefly they are:
The Roman Empire
The Jewish State
Human Government or Gentile Dominion
Satan
The Church
The Holy Spirit.

This author believes it is the Holy Spirit, but he doesn't offer much proof.

There is one more: There is a considerable body of opinion that holds that the Restrainer is Michael the Archangel. Do a little Googling and you'll easily find it.

The point I make here is, if the Restrainer is not the Holy Spirit, then this affects other views surrounding the end times.

And one final point. Paul says the Restrainer was taken OUT OF THE WAY. He does not say He was taken away, but OUT of the way.

And, if the Holy Spirit is taken out of the way, who took him, or ordered him to get out of the way? He is God.

If, however, this is Michael, such a phrase makes sense.

 

How about an Archangel?
Daniel covers things pertaining to the Tribulation (Gentile power)
and powerful spiritual beings working "behind the scenes".

 

You were probably writing this while I was posting #23, where I suggest that the Restrainer might have been Michael the Archangel.

I'm glad you've also heard this view.

And let me chase this rabbit a bit. If the Holy Spirit is Omnipresent, how can he be taken away, our out of the way? He's everywhere, and it is impossible for him to be somewhere one second and somewhere else the next. This would make it impossible for the HS to be the Restrainer.

Now, it seems obvious that the HS may manifest Himself in different ways at different times, or display His power in different ways at different times. But he just can't BE at different places at different times.

This just came to my mind, so I'm testing it out on you first.

 

I am in full-blown dispensational circles these days. I generally agree with the normal dispensational theory, except to say that I am not 100% sure and I leave it open for some conjecture.

If it is the Holy Spirit that is taken away:

He can take himself out of the way. He does the will of God the Father, as Christ does. The three are one, and they are equal in power and authority, but not in function. He can be ordered out of the way by the Father, as far as I can tell, though I could be wrong about it and would be remiss to be dogmatic about it.

Secondly, His being taken out of the way does not necessarily mean his removal from the scene. As I understand it, His role of restraint is against Satan and the demonic Antichristian system. To be taken out of the way, would mean that He would no longer be restraining Satan and the Antichrist. He would let them have their way with the earth and the non-believing peoples.

My belief is that the rapture is real and soon. All believers on earth (and, I hope, all children below the age of accountability, though I don't have scripture to back that up) will be evacuated to meet the Lord in the air, and ushered on up to heaven and brought to the Judgment Seat of Christ, then to the marriage supper of the Lamb. During that time, there is the early Tribulation, followed by the Great Tribulations. During that 7 years, the 144,000 jewish witnesses (yes, genetic jews) will accept Christ as Messiah and evangelize the world-- to the Jew first, and also the gentile. Many millions will be saved by Christ during the 7 years, and the Antichrist's government will put to death as many of the believers as they can get their hands on. They will not manage to find and kill them all. Meanwhile, the judgments of God and the aggression of antichrist will grind the world's population down to a small fraction of what it was. At the end of the seven years, there is a SHORT time of an unspecified number of days past the end of the seven days. It is during this time that the armies of the earth gather at Megiddo and assemble to be slaughtered. It is at that time, as they gather and prepare to attack Israel and/or the Antichrist (unclear to me, I've heard both ways), that "no one knows the day or the hour" that Christ will appear. They could count, if they knew, how many days long the 7 years was. But in the few days or weeks after it ends, they know (if they've been informed) that Christ is on his way. They do not know the day or the hour he will come, but they could know the year, and possibly be relatively sure of the month by that time.

Then, when he comes, he destroys Antichrist, and the armies of the aggressor(s). He lands on the Mount of Olives, splitting it in two. After Armageddon is settled, Christ sorts the goats from the sheep. The goats go to the holding pen of Hell while the living believers who survived the Trib are allowed to go on living into the new Millenium, the reign of Christ. The saints who will have returned with Christ will be in their glorified bodies, and evidently that means incapable of reproduction. They will reign with Christ as under-rulers over the surviving non-glorified believers. As these Trib-remnant believers reproduce over time, their children will have the choice of accepting Christ as savior or rejecting Him. As time goes on, many will reject Him. At the end, Satan will be loosed from his prison to tempt the unbelievers and lead them in rebellion against Christ, and He will prevail against Satan and his minions once and for all.

Then the White Throne Judgment, where the unbelieving dead are given their final judgment and cast into the Lake of Fire to suffer forever.

Then, God will destroy the existing physical universe, or at least the "heavens" and the Earth (exactly how Heavens are meant in this passage is open to debate) and then will create a new Heaven and new Earth, including a New Jerusalem, which together will be the glorious environment of the Eternal State, where we the redeemed will stay forever with our wonderful God.

That is how I understand it, but I could be wrong. This is essentially the mainstream view in Greenville fundamental Baptist churches these days, to the best of my knowledge, and certainly for my church.

We do not know or understand all the details, but this is the best we understand.

I believe God chose to make these things difficult to understand so that we would have to dig for the truth, because the struggle of unearthing truths from the Scripture is part of the process of growing closer to God. We don't need a bunch of "facts" laid out for us, we need to have the facts buried in spiritual truths so we are infused with the spiritual manna as we are looking for the arbitrary facts. The Bible is like a casserole where God mixed the vegetables with the meat and potatoes so we would eat it all without complaining.

 

Brother, this viewpoint is essentially the one I was taught when I first was exposed to end-time doctrines.

It was (and probably still is) the prevailing view in my church.

It was reinforced by Hal Lindsey's books (Late, Great, Planet Earth series); A scholarly writing by J. Dweight Pentecost (Things to Come); and any other books on the subject I could get my hands on.

I did not know this until a subjequent pastor preached on the end times one Sunday--and he preached it from a post-trib point of view.

Well, a bunch of us headed right for him after the service to challenge him. He smiled and held up his hands to stop us.

"Guys, we're not going to debate this right now. You have an assignment. I want you to find one clear, unmistakable, non-subject-to-any-other-interpretation scripture passage which teaches a pre-trib rapture. Bring that verse or passage back to the next service and we'll talk.

Shoot, I thought, this will be easy. It wasn't.

Shoot, I thought, there are a bunch of verses out there. There aren't a bunch. In fact, there aren't any. The clear, unmistakable verses are all post-trib.

So, that's the challenge. Find the verses that teach what you believe, that can't be interpreted any other way.

I was really ticked off when I couldn't find them, because I desperately want dispensationalism to be true. Who wants to go through he Tribulation?

 

Not finding the passages was disconcerting, but it wasn't enough. If dispensationalism is not it, what is?

Besides my own pastor's teaching, two books influenced by views.

Remember, this is back in the 1970s.

One is George Eldon Ladd's The Blessed Hope

The other is Robert Gundry's The Church and the Tribulation.

I don't even know if they're still in print

Even though i believe their views are correct, I want them to be wrong.

 

'SOME' conjecture? Some?

Amazing detail you've given there. Incredible. I wonder if today's dispy prophets could have 'conjectured' these passages together and gotten it right, say about 10 BC:

But thou, Beth-lehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting. Mic 5:2

When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. Hos 11:1

But there shall be no gloom to her that was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali; but in the latter time hath he made it glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. Isa 9:1

 

I can barely imagine how difficult it would have been to try to figure out the prophecies without the 27 additional books we have today. Matthew, Revelation, and the writings of Paul and Peter give us additional info. Practically every NT book, with a few exceptions, give some end-time prophecy.

It is entirely possible -- ok pretty certain-- that there are some pieces even now not revealed. God did not explain everything about the first coming in the OT prophecies, and there were some surprises for the people watching for it. Things will happen we won't expect. I just expect not to be here for most of the bad stuff.

One piece of prophecy that is interesting trying to fit into the dispensation system is Ezekiel's war. Many scholars say it is Armageddon, but others point out some problems with that idea. It could be, though.

 

There are a lot of current discussions concerning end times, but I don't see them represented here. I took a class from Hal Lindsey in 1969
at Campus Crusade, before he even wrote his book Late Great Planet Earth. A lot has changed since then - a lot of new ideas/revelations.
Hal was just plain wrong, but he was really the pioneer.

Firstly, the 70th week of Daniel pertains to genetic Israel, the Church (Bride of Christ) is long gone from the scene.
The Gospel portions dealing with prophecy are directed at genetic Israelites. The prophecies of the O.T. are directed at genetic Israelites.
If you cannot differentiate what passages pertain to the (gentile) Bride of Christ and which pertain to the adulterous Wife of Jehovah
(genetic Israel in unbelief, ie: The Time of Jacob's Trouble), then there is no way you can understand end-times events.
Not to mention the very soon fulfillment of Psalm 83.....

 

Pioneer at selling sensationalism...bookoo $$$$$$$

 

remember, what is the purpose of the Great tribualtion, and does national israel still have a factor to play, like in Daniels 70th week still to come, when the Son of man shall appear to bring His kingdom to the Earth?

Also, good to remember that historically , the church has viwed any views on end times as legit, A Mil/pre/post rapture, as that is a debate among belivers, ONLY one niew as heresy has been Full pretierist!

 

My challenge is still out there, yet unanswered. If we're going to appeal to Scripture for our views, then my dispy friends should be able to come up with one fixing the rapture at the beginning of the Tribulation.