Kindle Notes & Highlights
Pretribulationalists believe He will win by rapturing the church, converting Israel, condemning the world, fulfilling the millennial promises, and ushering in the eternal state.
However, the church has long held to an understanding of Jesus one day returning to this world as He promised in John 14:1-3. Believers often argue regarding the timing of this coming to rapture or take His people to be with Him, but they still agree the Scriptures teach that He will come.
Notice the incongruity and shifting of terms.
The weakness with this view is not its inaccuracy, but its lack of concern for the Bible’s clear teachings about the end times. Consider how much of Scripture is prophetic in nature. Of the Bible’s 31,124 verses, 8,352 of them include predictions. This is 27 percent of the entire Bible! In the New Testament, one out of every 30 verses has to do with future events. If more than one-fourth of the Bible touches on the future, Christians should have a high level of concern for better understanding what those passages say and how they apply to today.
This is a twisted view of prophecy to say the least.
Bible prophecy is not written to scare us but rather to prepare us for the Lord’s return.
This is, again I think, a twisted view of biblical prophecy.
The early church was an evangelistic church. On the day the church began, 3,000 people were added to their number (Acts 2:41). The first written summary about the church in Jerusalem notes the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved (Acts 2:47).
No eschatological framework is mentioned by Peter/Luke
What’s more, we are warned not to add to or subtract from what God has revealed in His prophetic Word (Revelation 22:18-19).
There is no real indication this is for the canon, but is specifically for the book of Revelation.
The biblical facts state that they will prophesy in Jerusalem (“the city where our Lord was crucified”) for 1,260 days, be killed, resurrected back to life, and raptured to heaven. Interpretive assumptions deal with the timing of these events, the identity of the two witnesses, the nature of the celebration that follows their death, and whether their resurrections and raptures are literal or figurative.
I believe they are taking statements as "fact" which is problematic. Also, note that the authors fail to think that the two witnesses themselves might be figurative, or that the timeline is figurative.
Jude 14 refers to Enoch proclaiming a prophecy about the Lord’s coming.
I think this is simply bad scholarship by the authors. A further excurses to this text shows that this may not be what Moo is saying.
Just as Enoch escaped the coming judgment that took place through the flood in the time of Noah (Genesis 6–8), believers will escape the judgment of the tribulation period through a pretribulation rapture.
But Noah didn't just leave.
But Elisha assured them that even if they looked they would not find him—he was convinced Elijah had been taken to heaven (2 Kings 2:16-18).
The second half of this sentence is not attested to in the text.
What is intriguing about this rapture of Jesus is that the angels reported Jesus will return “in just the same way” as the disciples had watched Him go into heaven. What way was this? Jesus left by being “lifted up” (Greek, epērthē) and “received” (Greek, hupelaben) by a cloud. His ascension was physical, personal, visible, and glorious.
So, not harpazo?
Jesus promised to one day return in the same way at the second coming (Matthew 24:30; see Daniel 7:13) as well as to the same place, the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4).
Daniel 7:13 appears to have been fulfilled in the crucifixion/this taking up, not in a future event.
The fact that the Apocalypse uses the same word to speak of the ascension as 1 Thessalonians 4:17 uses to speak of the rapture (Greek, harpagsometha) clearly indicates Jesus’s ascension is a form of rapture.
If the authors were the same, maybe. This, however, is a linguistic stretch.
“The verb here for being caught up (harpazō) appears twice in Acts…and twelve other times in the NT…his instant removal makes clearer still that God is at work. It recalls Jesus’s removal in Luke 24:31.”
This feels questionable at best.
After Paul opens his heart to his readers, he shares about the experience he had 14 years earlier, and admits he was not sure whether he was “in the body” or “out of the body” (verse
So, this is only a maybe physically.
This amazing detail reveals Jesus is actively involved in preparing our future heavenly home!
That's quite an eschatological leap from one verse.
Like Elijah, they will be able to stop rain from falling. Like Moses, they will be able to turn water into blood and strike the earth with plagues (verse 6).
PRECISELY! These two are supposed to represent the OT prophetic figures.
Though some interpret the rapture of the two witnesses as a symbolic act, the text provides a straightforward reading regarding their ministry in the last days.
I mean, it's straightforward if you read it that way.
According to verse 5, this child is to be “caught up” (Greek, harpasthē) to God. Erich Tiedtke comments, “In Rev 12:5 the child (Jesus) is caught up to God to escape the persecution of the dragon.”
Say What?
Though his argument is valid, his conclusion is not the only option. In fact, his point could support either a pretribulation or posttribulation view. The only difference in the pretribulation view is the amount of time between the rapture of believers to meet the Lord in the air and when they will return with Him to earth in judgment at Armageddon.
Such a distortion of Piper's point!
In this assembly of people, believers are pictured as sheep, while unbelievers are depicted as goats. The problem for the postrib view is that if the rapture occurs as Jesus is descending to earth at His second coming, as posttrib proponents believe, that means all the sheep will caught up to meet Him in the air, leaving no sheep on earth for this judgment.
This is a WILD misunderstanding of the historical premillennial rapture. They have forgotten what John Piper said earlier and are setting up their own strawman
If the rapture happens in conjunction with the second coming, as posttribulationism teaches, one would expect the main biblical passage on the second coming to reference the rapture. Yet there is no mention of a rapture of saints being caught up to heaven anywhere in Revelation 19.
Oh boy. This one really misses what Rapture means to those who hold a post-Trib/historical premillenial view.
If details like the casting of the beast and the false prophet into the lake of fire are mentioned and the specific resurrection of the tribulation saints is described, how much more the Rapture and translation of the church as a whole should have been included if, as a matter of fact, it is part of this great event. Revelation 19–20 constitutes the major problem of posttribulationists. They have no scriptural proof for a posttribulational Rapture in the very passages that ought to include it.
What do you think the resurrection of the tribulation Saints is?!
First, the Bible consistently uses comprehensive, inclusive words like we and all when discussing the rapture. For example, 1 Corinthians 15:51 says, “We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed” (emphasis added).
I'm not a partial guy, but this doesn't refute what was said above.
Or to put it another way, how long will the wrath last, and how will God keep the church from that time?
YES how long?
The incident in David’s life where he numbered Israel shows that God used Satan in bringing judgment (2 Sam. 24:1; cf. 1 Chron. 21:10).
NOPE
As John Walvoord says: “Is it an unworthy motive to desire to escape the Great Tribulation? Actually it is no more so than the desire to escape hell.
Bad soteriology.
“One is forced to ask, how could the Lamb of God die and rise again to save the Church from wrath and then allow her to pass through the wrath that He shall pour upon those who reject Him? Such inconsistency might be possible in the thinking of men, but not in the acts of the Son of God.”
Is this the reason for the cross?
While there are exceptions, like believers carried into captivity along with unbelievers, the believers’ suffering was a result of corporate judgment on the nation as a whole.
Western individualism.
The preposition ek “emphasizes the completeness of our rescue by Christ—we are rescued out of the time of distress itself.”
Poor linguistic understanding.
Of course, all agree that believers are protected from this aspect of God’s wrath; however, in the context of 1 Thessalonians, which contains frequent reference to the Lord’s coming, the wrath in 1:10 points to eschatological wrath (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:1-9).
Not enough evidence.
They’re sequential, not simultaneous. The rapture must come before the Day of the Lord, not consummate it. The rapture and the Day of the Lord can hardly be parts of the same event, as posttribulationists maintain.
These are not completely exclusive terms, especially how historical pre-mills use them.
Third, in 1 Thessalonians 5:9 we read, “God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This verse tells us that believers have an appointment with salvation, not wrath. Many commentators believe the “wrath” in this verse refers to the wrath of hell, from which believers will be spared. Yet the entire context of 1 Thessalonians 5:1-8 is Day of the Lord wrath, not eternal wrath in hell.
There is no definite article here, so based on previous texts in this book, we cannot know who is being referred to.
