Now I'm reading in a website called Grace Through Faith, run by a Jack Kelley, some of whose articles are linked at Jan Markell's Olive Tree Views, and so far his pro-rapture arguments are quite convincing.
He addresses one of the objections I raised in my posts on the 36 reasons, that is, why the church should escape tribulation since we are promised tribulation, in Tribulation versus Great Tribulation. He deals with the same question in a recent article, September 4th -- There is No Seven-Year Tribulation showing that the contexts are different in which tribulation is described as the normal expectation of the church as versus the Great Tribulation.
It's convincing and important, but doesn't really answer something like Corrie Ten Boom's letter in which she describes people who have learned a false expectation that they will escape persecution from belief in the Rapture and are therefore unprepared for the suffering they are facing. I also think of Josef Tson who was persecuted under Ceaucescu in Romania, talking about how persecution is coming to America and quipping that the rest of the world doesn't wonder about the timing of the Great Tribulation, only whether or not America will ever go through it. Well, it looks like we are about to go through tribulation here too -- that normal kind of tribulation.
But it also looks like the entire world is on the brink of The Seventieth Week of Daniel (formerly known as The Great Tribulation).
And I thank Jack Kelley for pointing THAT out too, because it's confusing that the last seven years of planet earth are so often called The Great Tribulation when most studies of the relevant prophecies identify only the last three and a half years as the period of tribulation. He's right, much better to call it The Seventieth Week (The first half of the 70th week will be taken up with God's Wrath, as described in Revelation 6. That's going to be hard enough to get through).
Also, referring to Daniel’s 70th Week (which concerns Israel) as the tribulation (which is world wide) hides the fact that Israel and the Church can’t co-exist during that time. Because of this, many Christians don’t realize that during Daniel’s 70th Week God’s focus will be on Israel, with its Old Covenant Temple, animal sacrifice, keeping the commandments and all things Jewish. How can the dispensation of Law and the Dispensation of Grace exist in the same place at the same time when the two are theologically incompatible? Truth be told this is perhaps the most compelling reason for a pre 70th Week rapture.I'd say it's pretty compelling.
IT is hard to know if the rapture is "pretrib" when one cannot correctly find the "trib" in Revelation. In fact, most really don't understand that the 70th week or "trib" begins with the 70th seal. And where do we find a huge crowd in heaven, too large to number? It is just before the 7th seal is broken.
ReplyDeleteDid you notice that Paul (the ONLY writer of the New Testament that received revelation knowledge of the rapture) wrote in 1 Thes. 5, that THEY get the sudden destruction of the day of the Lord, while WE and US get salvation and are ever with the Lord - because we have no appointment with the sudden destruction and wrath?
Coop
Sorry, 7th seal.
ReplyDeleteHi Coop, thanks for your comment. I'm not quite sure what you are saying here, so I'm not quite sure how to respond. My post highlights the idea that we should think in terms of the 70th Week of Daniel INSTEAD OF the "Great Tribulation" because at least the first part of that week isn't about tribulation -- but you equate the two. The idea is that the 70th week starts with Revelation 6, but the "great" Tribulation begins halfway through the week.
ReplyDeleteAll of it that begins with the first seal looks to me like "tribulation" in one sense or another though.
I'm not sure where to place in the scheme of things the multitude who are pictured before the opening of the 7th seal, that come through "great tribulation." Are they the Church or are they some other group that remain faithful through the persecutions of the Antichrist? Since I'm leaning to the idea that the Church is absent at this point it would have to be some other group, but I realize this raises many questions and I haven't answered them yet. I'm also not sure how to think of the 144,000 of the twelve tribes of Israel who are pictured just before that multitude either.
Yes, I did in fact notice that passage in 1 Thess 5. Judgment certainly comes upon the earth simultaneously with the salvation of the saints, which either has to refer to the rapture before the seven years or the second coming when the judgment is the final judgment and the seven years are over. It sounds like judgment coming on the earth rather than the final judgment. So either the church is raptured out of it or protected through it.
But I do find the argument convincing that the 70th week is a finishing up of Old Testament business in some sense, rather than a dealing with the Church.