How did you discover the Bible teaches a pre-trib rapture?

I was told about the pre-trib rapture (and then believed it). Then i read the Bible. Then i believed in a Post trib Rapture.

 

Are you a historic premillennialist?

 

Greetings, brother!

I would say that i am.

 

Hal Lindsey taught me! (Took a few years to hose all that out.)

 

Funny you say that...Immediately after i was saved someone gave me "Late great Planet Earth."

 

I am slowly going in that direction. The more I study the more I see this position as the most biblical.

 

That was my journey...the more i studied, the more i withdrew from pre-trib and (naturally, IMO) came to a historic premill understanding. What really changed my mind was when a friend told me to read 2 Thessalonians V E R Y .....S L O W L Y.

 

Genesis 17 was what got me to questioning my amillennial position. The covenant promise made with Abraham also included the land. But were an everlasting covenant(possession).

 

Interesting! For some reason i did not think of you as an amillennialist, but maybe we had interactions before. I've got into a habit of reading the Bible Cover to Cover straight through (Also, jumping around for different reason) and the Holy Spirit (IMO) really illuminates during this time, particularly contradictions in "My own system" of thinking.

 

This is an insulting way to put it: "reading the pre-trib view into Scripture." So the only possible, to you, is the post-trib view. Personally, I am willing to admit that you might be right, even while I hold strongly to the pre-trib position.

As for what proves a pre-trib position, as I noted to you on a different thread, the word "church" occurs nowhere in Rev. after ch. 2-3. There is no church on earth during the tribulation period, though there will be people saved.

I also said on another thread, why in the world would the Lord put His bride and body (two metaphors for the church, which He died for) through the tribulation, the worst period of awfulness in the history of the earth when He could take her out? I would certainly rescue my beloved bride for a house fire, a bad guy, or anything else that threatened her. The tribulation is not for the church, but for this wicked world.

There are many other points for my position I could make--but then you will say I am reading my view into Scripture.

 

When I first became a Christian, I simply accepted the "pre-trib rapture as fact because that was what I was taught. My church taught this view, my friends believed it, and popular "prophecy experts" (e.g. Hal Lindsey) promoted it. It all seemed reasonable, so I held onto that view until about 2007. I've since converted to the Partial Preterist view.

 

There is no clearer example of reading into scripture what is not there then trying to insist that the church is in passages where it doesn't say the church.

 

I let the Bible tell me what to believe. The first time I listened to the preacher tell us about it, yet I just wasn't sure about it. I did my best to search out all possibilities. The first thing that struck me as odd was this verse;
1Co 15:52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

This does not mean at the end of the trib

1Th_4:16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

We assume He descends to Earth but it doesn't say that.

I thought that all I had to do was find out when the last trump would sound and I'd have the answer of when Christ would come. However I discovered that these things would not happen all at once. These things in Revelations happens over a 7 year long tribulation. So I searched for the last trump. In Revelations There are no trumps only talking that sounds like a trump. Each event described is separate. and there is only one place where it mentions the rapture. Revelation 1:7 This is at the beginning of Revelations.
It is Paul who describes the Rapture and Christ doesn't come to take us to heaven. He sends His angel to gather us.

1Th 4:17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

We meet the Lord in the air not on earth. The rapture can happen any time it does not have to wait for the tribulation to end.
Christ said;
Mat 24:30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
Mat 24:31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

I prefer not to live through the worst conditions ever to occur on this earth so I lean towards a pre trib rapture
I have to admit we weren't meant to know when His coming would happen. We are just meant to be ready.
MB

 

I heartily agree.

 

I don't see how in the world anyone could take that passage as the Rapture. The whole world sees Jesus then, which is not any definition of the Rapture that I know of.

Scofield, as long as you mentioned him, calls the event of that passage "the return of the King in glory," (p. 1034), which refers clearly to the Second Coming in glory after the tribulation, not the Rapture. I could easily give plenty of quotes from other premil scholars. My grandfather, Dr. John R. Rice, called it "Christ's visible, Physical, Literal Return to Reign" in his commentary on Matthew (The King of the Jews, p. 386).

Sure it does. The Bible is very specific when it teaches church, clearly using the Greek word ekklesia, such as in Matt. 16 & 18, Acts 2, 1 Cor. 12-14, Eph. 4, etc. The Bible always uses the term "church" when teaching about the church. But even if that were not so, tell me how anything in Revelation after Ch. 3 refers to a genuine church in any way? (Maybe you need to define your term "church" for me.) All of the usages of "church" in Ch. 2-3 are genuine local assemblies of Jesus in named cities. Where is that elsewhere in Revelation?

As for Revelation 14:13, of course it refers to believers dying for the Lord. I believe many will believe in Christ during the Tribulation and die for Him, but that verse does not mention an earthly assembly which can be called a church. In fact, the believers in that verse are not even gathered together. Even so, if they were, simply believers being together does not equal a church, or every Billy Graham Crusade would have been a church, and no one called them that.

 

Can you answer this question about this verse?
1Th 3:13 To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.
How can Christ return with all His saints with out His gathering them first?
Maybe there is more than one coming!
MB

 

And?

Ok? You never made the case the church is there, neither in rev 14. Just pointing out there are believers is not evidence the church is there. You may believe that but you haven't convinced me.