Biblical Support for the Pre-Tribulation Rapture

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.

Yes those are apparently the same martyrs.The thrones are not identified, but when the Millennium begins the Church will have accompanied Christ to Earth for His Millennial reign and I don't know how the OT saints figure in but the 24 elders we see back in Revelation 4 I believe are understood to represent the 12 patriarchs of the OT and the 12 disciples of Jesus. In any case they are NOT the martyrs, they represent a separate group or groups of believers.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

That's what YOU say, and it's John MacArthur and probably scores of other theologians who say what I'm saying. I am just learning all this stuff for the first time and my views may change, but the idea has always been that it's the "saints" who rule in the Millennium and that certainly includes Christians and Old Testament saints. The Church is present with Christ so what do you imagine us doing for that thousand years? The martyrs are no holier than any other believer in Christ. But as I keep listening perhaps I'll have a clearer view of all this.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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.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. 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.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There is plenty of evidence that they are God-given to those who have spiritual discernment, which those who deny the basic tenets of the faith do not have and that includes you/

Sure, spiritual discernment is itself spiritually discerned and if you don't have that then you don't have evidence.

I've been listening to John MacArthur's various sermons on end times themes and am now in the Book of Revelation. Jumping around, not taking it in order, but absolutely awed with the territory he covers and I just want to report that. I think he is definitely one of the best of the best preachers on this subject -- or any biblical subject for that matter -- and everything he says has been eyeopening for me in one way or another because the man KNOWS the scripture.I've read the Book of Revelation, made myself read it more than once because we are TOLD to read it (or hear it) because blessings are attached to reading it. And I'm so glad I did that because although I ended up with questions galore after reading it, now listening to MacArthur's many sermons I am able to see how it all fits together in a way I could never have done if I didn't have a basic knowledge of what's actually IN the book. It's not that I think absolutely everything he says is gospel truth, I do have some doubts about some things he says here and there, but the preponderance of what he says is jawdroppingly illuminating. Maybe a series on Revelation by any good Bible teacher would have the same effect, but I do think MacArthur is more on top of it than any others I can think of, and clearer and better organized in his presentations.So this is just an appreciation of MacArthur's study of Revelation. Maybe nobody here will be interested but I wanted to say this because the teaching is so rich and useful... I just have to lavish praise where praise is due. I'm overwhelmed. I've been at it most of the day, really don't want to stop, but I have to take a rest from it whether I like it or not. After resting up I expect to come back for another mind-expanding dive into this great teaching.

No, more like "It takes one to know one."

The basis for a seven-year Tribulation is in Daniel 9:Daniel 9:24 says that seventy weeks (sevens) (of years) are decreed to completely finish the history of the Jews. There are to be 69 of those weeks until Messiah the Prince: 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.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.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.This is how those Christian teachers who teach the Pre-Trib Rapture understand this passage in Daniel. Of course there are other interpretations of it, and PaulK has one of them. 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. 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. The next verse in Daniel foreshadows the seventieth week which is yet future: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. 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.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.Of course others are looking for a more geographic revival of the empire and a leader of one of the expected ten nations in that empire to be the Antichrist. they look to the EU as the seat of power of this revived empire, and I agree that far. I think the Pope is going to be the head of that European coalition. Those who hold to the Pope as the Antichrist count him among the Roman Caesars, which they count up to be ten, but it could be ten nations of the EU.The Seventieth Week is understood to start when "the fullness of the Gentiles" is complete, which will be at the Rapture of the Church.At that point the Jewish prophetic clock will start ticking again and Daniel's Seventieth Week begins. Otherwise known as the Great Tribulation or the Day of the Lord. (The whole period is a Tribulation period but the GREAT Tribultion is said to start halfway through, or at three and half years, when the "abomination of desolation" is set up by the Antichrist. That act triggers the outpouring of God's wrath. I still need to study up on this part of the prophecy. I know the last book of Daniel splits the time like that.So I suppose PaulK will now present his entirely different understanding of the 70 weeks timeline.
)Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Just as there is a time gap in the prophecy of Seventy Weeks for the jews, in which the Church grows over two millennia, so when the Jewish prophetic clock starts up again in the Book of Revelation the Church is absent, Raptured into heaven, while the last seven years of Jewish history is played out. This occurs between Revelation 6 and 18. In 19 Jesus appears on a white horse with His Church. 20 begins His Millennial reign.The Church is the subject of the first three chapters of Revelation, then is seen in heaven in Revelation 4 and 5, at which time Jesus begins to open the seven seals of the scroll of God's judgment on the Earth, and that begins in Chapter 6. The "times of the Gentiles" are over and this is the time of the Jews resumed. One third of them will become believers in Christ during this period which is a great revival period as well as judgment. There are also Gentiles who will come to Christ through the preaching of the 144,000 Jews seen in Revelation 7. (I just ordered John MacArthur's book on Revelation, "Because the Time is Near" so I hope to understand all this better from that book.)

Of course it's interpretation. Yes, based on scripture. Shared by all the teachers of the Pre Trib Rapture I've run across.The calculation of the 69 weeks is consistent though I don't know the reasoning. I'll take them over you though, and perhaps eventually I'll have a better understanding of how they arrive at it. 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.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.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. They fade from history into the background while the Church becomes the dominant entity for the next two thousand years. 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. 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. I kept thinking how we know we aren't going to escape tribulation in this world since Jesus said "In this world you will have tribulation." But He went on to say " but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." Just that phrase reminds me of how He took the place of us believers. But there are other scriptures that make it clear that although we are to experience all kinds of tribulations in this world this is a different thing than God's wrath in judgment. It is that wrath He took in the place of us believers so that we are spared the Day of the Lord which is the outpouring of that wrath. There are the direct quotes about how we are not destined to God's wrath which have come up in this discussion earlier though i'd have to look them up again now. Anyway, I realized I was failing to appreciate what Jesus did in our place when He died for us.For a long time I'd thought the Pre Trib Rapture position trivilalized the Church and made too much of the Jewishness of the Seventy Weeks and the events of the Book of Revelation. Realizing I was the one trivializing the Church by failing to appreciate how Jesus took God's wrath against me onto Himself had a big part in changing my mind.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.And it is the Church that follows Jesus back to Earth in Revelation 19. All that had to come together in my mind to convince me, and it's become consolidated in this very discussion. Now the gap in the Seventy Weeks makes solid sense to me as it didn't before. It does all hang together very very well but for me it took quite a long time to get the whole picture, For a long time it remained tentative and subject to reinterpretation, but now it's quite solid.Now I can also follow the teachers without balking at various points as I often have. I'm now listening to a pastor Gil Rugh at Sermon Audio who is doing a very good job of spelling it all out, someone in a small church somewhere I'd never heard of before, and I'm following along and enjoying whatever he says that's new too. I still have to put trust in the various teachers to know a lot more than I do even as I've grown into the interpretation. 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. I now see the reasoning for it in a way that is convincing. I still wish someone would directly address this problem I've had though, since as a Christian all we ever knew is that the Church is God's people and the Jews are going to eventually become part of the Church as they recognize Jesus as their Messiah, not remain outside when they become believers. Again, I now see that there have to be the two separate groups, but even though I see how it is the truth, I can't say I fully grasp it since I saw no hint of it in the scriptures until fairly recently.I do have a lot better appreciation for the scriptural basis of the argument that I've been hearing from different teachers recently: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. I did hope to find a comprehensive list of all the scriptures that support the interpretation and there doesn't seem to be one, but the teachers say that there are many others that apply and eventually I hope to collect them. However, the first three I mention above are the main support referred to by all.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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. It fits NOTHING after Jesus declared Himself the Messiah. You can't show that it fits, that it is "part of the 70 weeks," 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. There is nothing but the destruction of the temple and the city by the Roman army under Titus, from which Jesus warned His disciples to flee without going back to get their belongings. You apparently think that just because it is what happened next in history the events of 70 AD must be part of the seventy weeks timeline, but no, it has to fit the description in Daniel and it does not. 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.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.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.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.This was the view of the Reformers. So whether there will in fact be a literal presentation of himself as God in a literal temple remains a question I have. The establishment of the Abomination of Desolation does seem to be a clear event that must happen at a point in time that triggers the second half of the Seventieth Week and the outpouring of God's wrath on the world.I'll have to come back to the rest of your post later, God willing.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No wonder you are so wrong on the other thread. You're just wrong, period, about all these things. Were you really ever a Christian? Well if you weren't, then you still have a chance to become one. Go read what I just wrote on the other thread and may it be of some help to you.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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.Are you really so arrogant as to think that YOU know more than the many teachers and preachers who have studied these things for years and certgainly know all the verses you posted. Unbelievers are certainly a cheeky lot.I hope you don't mind if I can't get to your posts since I've been awfully busy dealing with PaulK's already and I'm also trying to listen to people at You Tube who know what they are talking about on these issues.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Just read the passage in context, that's all MacArthur did. It's perfectly clear when you read the whole thing as a unit.