(And this is all difficult during the day hours, I'm at work. This is all done on breaks. Forgive the lapse in all non-timely responses.)
Revelation 2:22
22 Behold, I will cast her into a bed,
and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation,
except they repent of their deeds.
2 Corinthians 11:2-3
2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy:
for I have espoused you to one husband,
that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. 3
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be
corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
The Rev passage is using a metaphor to describe how some in the church has went after the world.
Absolutely correct, "except" it is not a metaphor. Because of the record of 2 Cor. 11:1-3, we find (because Israel has been written a bill [or writing] of divorce),,,
Jeremiah 3:6-8
6 The LORD said also unto me in the days of Josiah the king, Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done? she is gone up upon every high mountain and under every green tree,
and there hath played the harlot. 7 And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me.
But she returned not. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it. 8 And I saw, when
for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.
Jehovah (Jesus) has taken another as his bride (The Church) under the New Covenant. (This is not replacement theology, Israel is still Israel, and God's first choosen "people") But she is no longer his "espoused bride".
Not everyone in the church is saved.]
That's true, in a sense. Every member of the "true" Church of God is. But not all members of the
local church are, many are not saved.
today the church is full of these people. They claim to be of Christ but seek after the world. They are adulterers to the claim that the make. This is not about saved people. The saved do not practice this;
The reason disobedience by believers to God is portrayed as the sin of adultery, is to establish the fact that the lost are excluded from the company all together. The lost are not saved (of course), but as a result, they are also not engaged to Christ (also, of course).
Therefore, the lost can not commit adultery against Jesus for the simple fact that adultery can only be committed against one's spouse. When the world engages in the activities mentioned in Revelation 2:22 as was Jezebel, and teaches "his servants" (believers) so, it is called fornication because the world (as is Jezebel) is lost. They can not commit the sin of adultery, having never accepted Jesus as Christ our Lord, Savior, and BrideGroom.
The fact that Revelation 2:22 records the sin as adultery, is the proof positive that Jesus is speaking to the believers of the Church of Thyatira (not the lost) but who have turned away from the truth in Christ, and are accepting the false teachings of "Jezebel" who has rejected the truth and failed to repent.
Only those who are true believers are members of "The Church". Those who count themselves members but are not saved are simply that, lost, and are in a continual state of fornication before God.
Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
Absolutely, no unbeliever (
the unrighteous) will ever inherit the kingdom of God. And they "live" (and relish) in all the descriptions listed. "They" are what they practice.
A believer can never
become the embodiment of what is described, because we have an advocate, Jesus Christ. But a believer can engage in the behavior and sever his/her fellowship, although they retain their "relationship" as a child of God, albeit they make themselves a disobedient child, and therefore an adulteress to Christ just as Thyatira is exampled.
in 2 Corinthians there is no suggestion that they are not going in the rapture. You keep reading into text things that are not there.
The passages establishes the relationship between Christ and his faithful Bride, who is encased inside the adulteress Church of God. The Bride awaits her redemption from this wicked world, whereas the adulteress engages of the lusts of the world which separates her from fellowship with her BrideGroom.
There is no partial rapture.
I, of course, respectfully and lovingly disagree. Many (most pre-tribbers) are in agreement with you. I am in the severe minority. (It’s been said by some that the “movement” is growing, but I have seen no evidence of that. I know personally only three others like myself, and I didn’t convert them. They stumbled over me because of their belief.)
I have also gained knowledge through the scripture by way of the teachings themselves that little will change between now and the Rapture. Sadly, most of the church will be in denial at that time as well. The scripture records no "mass exodus" of believers from the physical, only that it will occur.
