Biblical Support for the Pre-Tribulation Rapture

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No, this is the situation I mentioned above somewhere that I've found to be problematic though part of the Pre Trib teaching, that there are two different sets of believers. The Church is raptured and is in heaven during all the events of the Tribulation. During the Tribulation many others are converted but they are a different group, they are not the Church. A third of Israel will be among them, and they will be the "great multitude" of Revelation 7.

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That is what the Pre Trib lot SAY. It is an interpretation, it is not the only possible interpretation. Do you really think that a human interpretation overrides something that the Bible clearly states ?Obviously there can’t be a big resurrection of all the previous Christians before the FIRST resurrection. The word FIRST should tell you that.

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I would suggest that you refrain from commenting on MacArthur's reading of the generation that will be alive at the time of the events prophesied before hearing his argumemts.

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I’ve refrained from commenting on any arguments that I haven’t already heard. I have commented on one obvious falsehood and on arguments already presented in this thread. I don’t see why I should refrain from either of this things.

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You give no hint of having heard MacArthur on the subject

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And I don’t claim to. However you did claim that he uses the same scriptures and we already know that those offer no real support for a pre Trib Rapture.

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I'm going with the reputable exegetes over you, my dear PK. As I said early on I've had to struggle to understand as much as I do, and your contradictions are not compelling in the slightest

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I am not asking you to go with me, but with what the Bible clearly says. Apparently you prefer your so-called reputable exegetes .

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The martyrs you mention join with the Church Christians and the Old Testament saints to have some kind of ruling role in the Kingdom

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That isn’t what Revelation 20:4-6 says, Edited by PaulK, : Fix tag

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I think you are overlooking the meaning of the "thrones." Those are what imply the Old and New Testament saints are accompanying the Tribulating saints

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I think that you are making assumptions. It is far from clear that those sitting on the thrones come down to rule on Earth. Nor is it clear from this text who they are.Grammatically there seems to be no antecedent for the they who sit on the thrones.There is an antecedent for the they who reign with Christ and it is the martyrs who are resurrected.So, no I’m not ignoring them, I’m following the grammar of the text.And you still haven’t explained why this would be the first resurrection if there was an earlier mass resurrection only seven years before.Also Revelation 6:9-11 seems relevant. Note that it is the souls of the martyrs, just as we see the souls of the martyrs in Revelation 20:4 - before they are resurrected. It is these verses which indicate to me that the earlier martyrs are resurrected in 20:4.

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The thrones are not identified, but when the Millennium begins the Church will have accompanied Christ to Earth for His Millennial reign

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That is what you say. However the text explicitly states that the resurrected martyrs will reign with Christ - and it doesn’t mention anyone else reigning.

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That's what YOU say, and it's John MacArthur and probably scores of other theologians who say what I'm saying.

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And we already know that they say things which aren’t true. Sorry, an argument from authority won’t cut it when the alleged authorities are so questionable.

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The Church is present with Christ so what do you imagine us doing for that thousand years?

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I think that’s an assumption. The dead Christians stay dead until after the Millenium, that’s clear.Look, if you can support your claims with actual scripture go ahead. But so far you’ve not been able to find much. Maybe you should ask yourself why your authorities are doing such a poor job of supporting their assertions.

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What should be asked is why YOU are so committed to denying the obvious scripturqally based arguments of the God-given teachers I've been quoting. You twist everything to suit what YOU think, you don't even bother quoting reputable teachers, and what YOU think is worth nothing

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No, that is not a question should be asked, because it is full of falsehood. If the arguments of your teachers have an adequate scriptural basis all you have to do is give it. The fact that you don’t is rather telling.And of course I don’t quote teachers I quote scripture. Apparently you think that is nothing. That’s even more telling.

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The presence of the Church in the Millennium follows from everything I've been arguing and the teachers I've quoted, it is not an assumption.

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So far as I can see it is an assumption. If you want to show otherwise all you have to do is to provide adequate scriptural evidence. The fact that you haven’t is, again, telling.

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The problem is that you haven't the spiritual discernment to know how to use the scriptures properly but like so many unbelievers who think they know how to read the Bible you put yourself above the believers and somehow manage not to doubt your superiority.

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Yawn. The usual false boasting. It’s proven that I can read the scriptures better than you. And you don’t like that, hence your silly claim to have spiritual discernment.

I’ll point out that a lot of the preceding post is interpretation, some without an real basis in scripture.

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Word to note is "after." When the 69 weeks are counted from the understood starting point which is a decree by King Artaxerxes, they come to the Sunday on which Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the donkey to announce that He is the Messiah. He is greeted with palm branches and cheers. One week later He dies on the cross. That is AFTER the end of the 69 weeks.

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It comes to about 26 AD which is a little early - the actual year is not known. And since this date really should be considered part of the timeline, I think you’d have to subtract any significant additional time from the duration of the Tribulation.Of course the start date is very vague and the choice of Artaxerxes has more to do with the fact that it almost works for this interpretation rather than any other merits. Artaxerxes primarily reiterated a decree of Cyrus, and if the decree is the important thing then why should it not be the original ?

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The seventy prophesied weeks are not completed. We are given only the 69 and they end when Jesus announces He is the Messiah. A literal week of seven days later He dies. No mention is made of the seventieth week of years and there is no period of seven years at that time that can be identified at all. The seventieth week remains unfulfilled, and we are in a "gap" between the 69th and 70th weeks. Jesus is crucified in this gap, and the Church is created during this gap.

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There is no scriptural support for a gap - it is proposed simply because the events did not occur as predicted - if Jesus was meant. However, the events of the seventieth week do fit well with events that occurred in the 2nd Century BC - supporting the scholarly interpretation.

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The seventy weeks are said clearly to be decreed for Daniel's people, who are the Jews. The Church is not mentioned at all. The whole seventy weeks is a Jewish timeline. The Church belongs to its own time period which intervenes between the 69th and 70th weeks.

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This is simply invented. The Jews continued to exist, to worship, to act. There is no reason why the following years should not count against the timeline. Other than the fact that the events did not happen then.

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It took me a long time to grow into the Pre Trib interpretation because I couldn't accept the idea of there being two separate groups of believers, but that is really what the scripture points to as I see it now.

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And yet you can’t find any decent scriptural support for it. You’ve just decided to trust the teachers who promote it regardless of scripture.

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This continuation of the passage above is a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 70AD. We are well into the "gap" period now.

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This is a big assumption, especially as this is part of the final part of the prophecy. There is no grounds to consider it as being in a gap rather than part of the 70 weeks.

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The next verse in Daniel foreshadows the seventieth week which is yet future:

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The people of "the prince that shall come" destroy the city in 70AD but "the prince that shall come" is yet future to those people. Those people are clearly the Romans, and the prince yet to come must therefore be a Roman.

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Note that he has to be a Roman only because of the interpretation. In fact destroy is a mistranslation and desecrate is better.I did research the translation - but more importantly the city and the Temple are still there in the following verses, so they can’t be destroyed.

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So here's some pretty confusing prophet talk. It's clear at least that it is talking about that "prince who is to come," and that he will confirm "the covenant" with "many" for "one week," and there's that seventieth week. Without getting into detail I'll just say that this prince is understood to be the Antichrist, who has not yet appeared in history and is still future. He has to be a Roman. He's going to "confirm the covenant with many" and that is understood to be a covenant he will make with the nation Israel for a seven year period, which seven-year period is understood to be the Seventieth Week of Daniel which is also the Tribulation.

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That is assumed, although there is a better candidate. Especially as Daniel 8 identifies the end times as being in the latter days of the Diadochi kingdoms which had ceased to exist by 70 AD.

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Since the prince is clearly identified as a "Roman" I consider this to be confirmation of my view of the Antichrist as the Protestant Reformers' identification of the Pope, who heads the ROMAN Church. In fact the RCC is considered by some to be the continuation of the Roman Empire in its rulership over Europe for a millennium. It now spreads some 1.2 billion people all over the earth. It was certainly dealt a deadly blow by the Reformation, but it has never completely died and since the prophecy indicates a revived Roman Empire at the very end I think the RCC is going to be it.

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There is no revived Roman Empire in the prophecy. Christians assumed that it spoke of the Roman Empire until that became completely impossible. Then the idea of a revived Roman Empire was invented. But the text of Daniel favours the Greek Kingdoms following Alexander’s death.Of course, at present, there is no revived Roman Empire and the closest thing in recent history is Mussolini’s rule over Italy. That absence would seem to be rather a problem for anyone expecting these events in the near future.

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The Seventieth Week is understood to start when "the fullness of the Gentiles" is complete, which will be at the Rapture of the Church.

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There is no scripture which states that the time of the Gentiles will end with the Rapture. Or indeed that it should take a long time. Luke 21 suggests that it will be a few decades at most, Revelation 11:2 suggests 42 months - or 3 1/2 years. An interesting figure, in the light of Daniel 9.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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Yes the idea of the gap is certainly because the fulfillment of the seventy weeks prophecy ended abruptly at the end of 69 weeks when traditional believers put it at Jesus' announcement of His Messiahship on what we now call Palm Sunday. One searches in vain for any fulfillment of the seventieth week in that period of time, or any other time in history so far, which leads us to the realization that it remains unfulfilled until some future time whden a "Roman prince" will make a covenant with Israel for seven years.

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Except that it didn’t end abruptly. There is an event you identify with the destruction but you put it outside the timeline for some reason. Even the event you identify as the end of the 69th week more likely happened a few years later (it can’t happen before 27 AD because that is the first Passover of Pilate’s tenure)

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Jesus is certainly the Messiah; if you are going to doubt that there's no point in considering anything you say. There is nothing at all that fulfills the seventieth week in history until we get to a time when "the prince who shall come" makes a "covenant with the many" which must be Israel since the prophecy is about Daniel's people, the Jews.

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For the purposes of interpreting Daniel we cannot assume that it refers to the Messiah. Especially as the punctuation of the Masoretic text indicates two Messiahs. One who comes at the end of the first seven weeks, and one who is cut off at the end of the 69th week,

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You don't say what the supposed event in the second century is but if it isn't a covenant with Israel for seven years made by a Caesar it's irrelevant.

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Oh, it’s the lot. All the 70th week, except for the very end. And it’s a Greek ruler so in better agreement with the text.

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They fade from history into the background while the Church becomes the dominant entity for the next two thousand years

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Aside from the Church’s disputes with the Jews, two major revolts and various other events, you mean. The Jews do not fade from history in 26 AD or even 36 AD. They are more noticeable than the Church for the 1st and early 2nd Centuries AD.

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Yes that is of course the reason. The prophesied events have not happened. All the previous events of the timeline did happen and terminated at the pregnant moment of Jesus' announcement that He is the Messiah. The last week of the prophecy, however, remained and remains, conspicuously unfulfilled in Jewish history

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Of course most of it did happen just not on your timeline. But making things up because the prophecy failed is just adding to the Bible. It’s not scripture , it’s just something people made up,

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Not entirely. I did have to be convinced by the scripture, and what finally convinced me was the Book of Revelation and the argument that the Church is spared God's wrath by Jesus' taking it on Himself.

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Which does not require a Rapture. Indeed, as I pointed out the Book of Revelation contradicts a pre-Tribulation Rapture. So it is not the Book of Revelation that convinced you but an interpretation of selected verses - which are open to alternate interpretations which better fit the rest of the Book. Indeed, if the Revelation was intended to present a pre-Tribulation Rapture, it could simply mention it occurring as one of the events - but it does not.

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And the second factor that made a big impression on me was finally seeing the Rapture in Revelation 4 when John is given the command to "Come up here." I thought that a far-fetched way to describe the Rapture, but then when it becomes clear that the Church really does not have a part in anything described in the Book of Revelation after Chapter 4, until Chapter 19, putting all the above together I was persuaded. So the saints of Revelation that are referred to later really cannot be the Church as I'd supposed for a long time, they really do have to be a different set of people

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John is told to come up here to witness what will occur in Heaven, there is no reason to interpret it as an event. The idea that the Church plays no part until Revelation 19 is simply assumed. You are easily convinced when you want to be (and not convinced by proof when you don’t want to be).

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And it is the Church that follows Jesus back to Earth in Revelation 19.

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Another assumption. It is certainly not explicit.

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Two separate sets of believers just made no sense to me. So I had to grow into that idea by hearing the reasoning for it over and over until I could see how it has to be the only way to look at it, yes, BASED ON THE SCRIPTURE evidence

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Except it isn’t. Scripture is interpreted to fit the idea, not vice versa. That is very clear from this thread.

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1 Thessalonians 4, 1 Corinthians 15, and John 14 are the main scriptures all refer to as the foundation of the Pre Trib Rapture interpretation, but 2 Thessalonians also contains support, and Philippians, and all the accounts of the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24-25, Mark 13 and Luke 21 also support the interpretation.

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I can say that the Olivet Discourse provides evidence against it (already discussed here) as does 1 Thessalonians 4 and 2 Thessalonians. 1 Corinthians 15 is hardly helpful. For instance 2 Thessalonians 2:2-3 indicates that Christians may expect to see the rise of the AntiChrist - and not a hint of being Raptured out of the way in those verse or the rest of the chapter.

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But it isn't part of the seventy weeks prophecy since that was clearly brought to an end after 69 weeks some forty years earlier and there is NO period of time afterward that fits the description in Daniel 9 of the seventieth week

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You mean that you exclude it from the timeline because it doesn’t fit your interpretation. But it is in the description of the seventy weeks - and there is no mention of a pause, let alone one lasting 2000 years or more. Which is a bit absurd when the whole timeline is 490 years.

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It fits NOTHING after Jesus declared Himself the Messiah

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You claim that the destruction - which is what is being referred to - DOES fit events after Jesus declared himself Messiah. But you still exclude it from the timeline.

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you are assuming it although there simply is no period of seven years there and nothing that suggests a covenant made by a Roman prince with Israel

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No, I am concluding that the supposed destruction is part of the timeline because it is explicitly mentioned in the description of the seventy weeks.

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It is because there is nothing in that time period that fits that prophecy that we know it was cut off at 69 weeks and the seventieth remains unfilled. That's the basis for the idea of the gap

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Yes, the basis for making up the gap is that the prophecy failed and you can’t accept that. Hence making things up.

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Jewish history effectively ended at the destruction of the temple since their entire way of life had revolved around the sacrifices they performed there and could not perform anywhere else. Now that they have returned and formed the State of Israel, although the temple mount is occupied by a mosque they are putting together the elements of a new temple in the hope that eventually they will get the mount back for that purpose.

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There is a lot of Jewish history you are excluding, but if we decide that the Temple is the deciding factor the gap can’t start before 70AD, which is too late for you.

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I don't know if that will happen, though part of the interpretation we are discussing involves the idea that the Antichrist must declare himself to be God as he sits in the temple, which is understood to be the Abomination of Desolation, so that there must be a literal temple that has been rebuilt for that purpose.

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The Olivet Discourse in Mark and Matthew indicates that it will be in the Herodian Temple, of course. But work has yet to start and Israel has existed for more than 70 years now. I wouldn’t assume that the Temple will be rebuilt anytime soon.

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But I'd point out that if the Antichrist is the Pope, which I believe along with a small group of others, then he has already declared himself to be God in the temple by simply occupying the position of head of the Church in the place of Christ, putting himself over the people of the Church, or temple. This is the position he has held since 606 AD when the Bishop of Rome was elevated to Bishop over all other bishops, which established the papacy in the Roman Church.

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No, the Pope has not declared himself to be God. That’s just anti-Catholic propaganda.

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I already answered from John MacArthur way back there, that "this generation" is clearly to be read IN CONTEXT as referring to the generation that witnesses the things Jesus has been talking about.

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But you have yet to support that claim, and Hyroglyphx includes context that points the other way.

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Just read the passage in context

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I’ve done that, and the context points to the natural reading of the then-current generation.

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... that's all MacArthur did. It's perfectly clear when you read the whole thing as a unit.

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Clearly false unless your context includes the assumption that it must happen and the fact that it didn’t. Neither of which should be included.

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MacArthur read it out loud to show that it naturally leads to reading the word in the context of the generation alive at the time of the events He's talking about.

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I doubt it because there is so much context that points to it being then then-present generation.

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I wish I knew where to find that so I could post it but there's too much to look through so I probably won't be able to.

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If reading in context were enough you wouldn’t need help.

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But you must admit it's the only reading that makes sense of the passage and doesn't destroy the integrity of the Bible

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I certainly do not. Because it is not true.