The Rapture Vs Second Coming

[Iconoclast]

Read the text in context.
Amos 9:11-15 NKJV

" On that day I will raise up The tabernacle of David, which has fallen down, And repair its damages; I will raise up its ruins, And rebuild it as in the days of old; [12] That they may possess the remnant of Edom, And all the Gentiles who are called by My name," Says the LORD who does this thing. [13] " Behold, the days are coming," says the LORD, " When the plowman shall overtake the reaper, And the treader of grapes him who sows seed; The mountains shall drip with sweet wine, And all the hills shall flow with it. [14] I will bring back the captives of My people Israel; They shall build the waste cities and inhabit them; They shall plant vineyards and drink wine from them; They shall also make gardens and eat fruit from them. [15] I will plant them in their land, And no longer shall they be pulled up From the land I have given them," Says the LORD your God.

This is during the Millennium not the eternal state

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Hello SM,

I was taught a similar thing when i was under dispensational teaching, but I think it will not stand....specifically because of the context...

Acts 15 is dealing with the question.....WHAT shall we do with the gentiles who are coming into the church in droves.....

THis language is speaking of the Nt evangelism taking place at the time of the Apostles,and is still going on....

behold, the days are coming," says the LORD, " When the plowman shall overtake the reaper, And the treader of grapes him who sows seed; The mountains shall drip with sweet wine, And all the hills shall flow with it.

We are in the Kingdom now...Jesus is on the throne...The passage does say anything about a future millenium at all...

It speaks of the here and now ,right in the Apostles time:
13 And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Men and brethren, hearken unto me:

14 Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name.

15 And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written,

16 After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up:

17 That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things.

18 Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.

19 Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God:

This kind of inconsistency in the pre-mill scheme began to work on me SM...so I started looking at the "other"ways believers have seen these passages...

After the Millennium this creation is destroyed by fire and the New Jerusalem descends out of heaven to the new, eternal earth, which is the home of righteousness. It is at this point, Revelation 21, where there is no temple, for the Lamb is the temple.

The literalist has no problem seeing Hosea as it is, we live in the church age, God has set aside Israel as a nation until the fullness of the Gentiles is complete. The church is a mixture of primarily elect Gentiles just as during the time of the nation Israel the elect are primarily Jews. Read Romans 9 - 11 in context. It's quite clear.

SM...this is what the premill teaching says...but I no longer believe it holds up. What Blindness in part is...is not God setting aside the whole nation ....as a parenthesis....

 

[Allan]

My challenge is still out there, yet unanswered. If we're going to appeal to Scripture for our views, then my dispy friends should be able to come up with one fixing the rapture at the beginning of the Tribulation.

Actually Tom, I answered a long time ago.

Show me one defintive scripture that states that God is 1 and yet in 3 persons. The whole doctrine of the trinity is not established in any one verse but through seeing it via multiple places to build the doctrine upon. We note there are places in scripture that speak to the fact there is only 'One' God, and others that establish the GodHead, revealing a distinction of God. Some passages even says "God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit".. yet none state specifically that God is one, yet in three persons.

By your very criteria, you cannot believe in the Trinity of God, and this goes for various other doctrines as well.

The question is not whether there is one verse that states this specifically but rather, is there sufficient scripture that speaks to this enough to build a doctrine upon it?

For me, I hold closer to a pre-catching away/rapture view as I find there are passages to support the view, HOWEVER, I am not opposed to Post-rapture as it also has valid support in scripture (though mid has almost no scriptural validity - in my opinion). So while I preach a rapture view, I actually teach showing both ends, I have a bit more emphasis on 'pre'.

 

[Allan]

remember, what is the purpose of the Great tribualtion, and does national israel still have a factor to play, like in Daniels 70th week still to come, when the Son of man shall appear to bring His kingdom to the Earth?

Also, good to remember that historically , the church has viwed any views on end times as legit, A Mil/pre/post rapture, as that is a debate among belivers, ONLY one niew as heresy has been Full pretierist!

Actaully, if we go back to history we must note that till nearly 450'ish A.D., the orthodoxy of the Church was what we call Pre-Mill today (though the rapture was understood to take place toward the end of the 7 year tribulation) which means those discipled by the apostles (especially and notably John's disciples) and those who followed them, held to this view. It wasn't till then, in the seedling Roman Church, that was growing, made the decision to change it's overall view to the early form of what is today called Covenant Theology.

 

[Tom Butler]

Actually Tom, I answered a long time ago.

Show me one defintive scripture that states that God is 1 and yet in 3 persons. The whole doctrine of the trinity is not established in any one verse but through seeing it via multiple places to build the doctrine upon. We note there are places in scripture that speak to the fact there is only 'One' God, and others that establish the GodHead, revealing a distinction of God. Some passages even says "God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit".. yet none state specifically that God is one, yet in three persons.

By your very criteria, you cannot believe in the Trinity of God, and this goes for various other doctrines as well.

The question is not whether there is one verse that states this specifically but rather, is there sufficient scripture that speaks to this enough to build a doctrine upon it?

For me, I hold closer to a pre-catching away/rapture view as I find there are passages to support the view, HOWEVER, I am not opposed to Post-rapture as it also has valid support in scripture (though mid has almost no scriptural validity - in my opinion). So while I preach a rapture view, I actually teach showing both ends, I have a bit more emphasis on 'pre'.

Hello Allan, glad to see you're posting again. I'm glad you reminded me that we've been through this before.

I do understand that our doctrines and practices are derived from the whole of scripture, not just from cherry-picking a few proof-text verses from here and there.

I have found that many of those proof-texts (such as I Thess 4:13-18) which are cited as a pre-trib event, don't say that at all. And, some passages (such as Matthew 24) are clearly post-trib, at least to me, and don't require such cherry-picking of other scriptures.

So, my reasoning is, if we have some clearly post-trib verses, why don't we have some clearly pre-trib verses?

I don't fall out with anybody who sees this differently. And, I confess I do have a little streak in me which loves to twit those who glibly assume its validity.

Let me quickly say that you are not one of those. You are a serious student of the Scriptures, and have my respect, even if we come out at different places, sometimes.

 

[DrJamesAch]

I'm still looking for a clear, unequivocal, not-subject-to-any-other-interpretation scripture which teaches a pre-tribulation rapture.

There are plenty of clear post-tribulation return verses. The pre-trib view appears to assume its validity and read it into certain verses.

I would love to have a verse when talking to Jehovah's Witnesses that comes right out and says "Jesus IS God" but there isn't one. However, there are hundreds of verses that make it obvious that He is.

That being said, there may not be a verse that says "The rapture will occur before the tribulation", but when constructing various time lines from Daniel 7, 9, 11, Revelation 11-13, 1 Thess 4, 1 Cor 15, and a proper understanding of who the "elect" are in Matthew 24, the purpose of the tribulation, I think it can be reasonably concluded that there is a rapture of the church, and that it occurs before the great tribulation begins.

For the post trib position that has been made popular now from the Steven Anderson point of view in his "After the Tribulation" video, I have written a partial refutation of this video. http://dorightchristians.wordpress....andersons-after-the-tribulation-a-refutation/

 

[DrJamesAch]

Actually Tom, I answered a long time ago.

Show me one defintive scripture that states that God is 1 and yet in 3 persons. The whole doctrine of the trinity is not established in any one verse but through seeing it via multiple places to build the doctrine upon. We note there are places in scripture that speak to the fact there is only 'One' God, and others that establish the GodHead, revealing a distinction of God. Some passages even says "God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit".. yet none state specifically that God is one, yet in three persons.

By your very criteria, you cannot believe in the Trinity of God, and this goes for various other doctrines as well.

The question is not whether there is one verse that states this specifically but rather, is there sufficient scripture that speaks to this enough to build a doctrine upon it?

For me, I hold closer to a pre-catching away/rapture view as I find there are passages to support the view, HOWEVER, I am not opposed to Post-rapture as it also has valid support in scripture (though mid has almost no scriptural validity - in my opinion). So while I preach a rapture view, I actually teach showing both ends, I have a bit more emphasis on 'pre'.

I don't want to deviate from the rapture topic, but on the subject of the Trinity, I believe Matthew 28:19-20 where it says "in the NAME (singular) of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost" is sufficient to establish that God exists in 3 persons. But furthermore, if one carefully studies Genesis 18-19, you will notice something that even the JW's forgot to alter in their Bible.

Beginning in ch 18, you see 3 men talking to Abraham and he addresses all 3 as LORD. Some argue that the "LORD" was the one in the middle. But then while Abe is talking to "the one in the middle" the other 2 go to warn Lot and Lot addresses them both as Lord in ch 19:17-18.

There are some that consider themselves pan-tribulationists: however it pans out.

 

[DrJamesAch]

Actaully, if we go back to history we must note that till nearly 450'ish A.D., the orthodoxy of the Church was what we call Pre-Mill today (though the rapture was understood to take place toward the end of the 7 year tribulation) which means those discipled by the apostles (especially and notably John's disciples) and those who followed them, held to this view. It wasn't till then, in the seedling Roman Church, that was growing, made the decision to change it's overall view to the early form of what is today called Covenant Theology.

Not quite sure what your conclusion is here because those early disciples, including those from John (like Polycarp) have statements that indicated the rapture would occur before the tribulation.

Covenant theology and Roman theology are not very synonymous. Covenant theology is more closer to Preterism than the Roman view of Dominion or Kingdom Now theology. But the RCC eschatology view has never put the rapture before the tribulation, not then and not now. It has been assumed that a priest named Ribera contributed to this theory, but his theory is used to explain away the view of futurism and then bootstrapped to Darby's view of the rapture when there has never been a connection between Darby and Ribera. Ribera's commentary on Revelation merely attempted to refute that the RCC wasn't the whore of Revelation 17, it did nothing to substantiate the origin of futurism, nor did it establish an eschatology different from what the RCC believes now which is still based on Augustinianism.

 

[Yeshua1]

Not quite sure what your conclusion is here because those early disciples, including those from John (like Polycarp) have statements that indicated the rapture would occur before the tribulation.

Covenant theology and Roman theology are not very synonymous. Covenant theology is more closer to Preterism than the Roman view of Dominion or Kingdom Now theology. But the RCC eschatology view has never put the rapture before the tribulation, not then and not now. It has been assumed that a priest named Ribera contributed to this theory, but his theory is used to explain away the view of futurism and then bootstrapped to Darby's view of the rapture when there has never been a connection between Darby and Ribera. Ribera's commentary on Revelation merely attempted to refute that the RCC wasn't the whore of Revelation 17, it did nothing to substantiate the origin of futurism, nor did it establish an eschatology different from what the RCC believes now which is still based on Augustinianism.

Would say that up until around the time of Augustine, the church would have loosely held to a pre mil viewpoint, but Augustine brought in the view of the RCC being the Kingdom here on earth, so after that point of emphahsis, the church , at least the Roamn part, went into allogorical/spiritualizing the texts, so Church was now Spiritual Isreal, and the church was ushering in the Kingdom on earth, so it was either A/post Mil to hold to!

 

[Yeshua1]

Hello Allan, glad to see you're posting again. I'm glad you reminded me that we've been through this before.

I do understand that our doctrines and practices are derived from the whole of scripture, not just from cherry-picking a few proof-text verses from here and there.

I have found that many of those proof-texts (such as I Thess 4:13-18) which are cited as a pre-trib event, don't say that at all. And, some passages (such as Matthew 24) are clearly post-trib, at least to me, and don't require such cherry-picking of other scriptures.

So, my reasoning is, if we have some clearly post-trib verses, why don't we have some clearly pre-trib verses?

I don't fall out with anybody who sees this differently. And, I confess I do have a little streak in me which loves to twit those who glibly assume its validity.

Let me quickly say that you are not one of those. You are a serious student of the Scriptures, and have my respect, even if we come out at different places, sometimes.

allan hit the nail on the head here, as the pre trib viewopoint sems to fit the overall plan and purpose of god as regards to what he has planned for the Church/isreal/ and what the nature the GT is for!

 

[Allan]

I don't want to deviate from the rapture topic, but on the subject of the Trinity, I believe Matthew 28:19-20 where it says "in the NAME (singular) of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost" is sufficient to establish that God exists in 3 persons. But furthermore, if one carefully studies Genesis 18-19, you will notice something that even the JW's forgot to alter in their Bible.

Beginning in ch 18, you see 3 men talking to Abraham and he addresses all 3 as LORD. Some argue that the "LORD" was the one in the middle. But then while Abe is talking to "the one in the middle" the other 2 go to warn Lot and Lot addresses them both as Lord in ch 19:17-18.

There are some that consider themselves pan-tribulationists: however it pans out.

Hello

I actually spoke to that specific verse in my post. However the point "I" was making is there is no single verse in scripture states there is only 1 God, yet three persons. In the very passage you submit, it states 3 having the same authority, and while it gets us half way there, you need to imply the rest to finish it.

With regard to the OT, anyone who was or seemingly above another was typically addressed as 'Lord'. As a simple example - even Sarah called Abraham 'Lord', or Abraham to the King Melchizedek. It isn't the word "Lord" that illustrates whether an angel or pre-incarnate Christ but the worship toward them and if it was permitted/ allowed or not, that gives us a determining look as to who was before them. Specifically is what you present in Gen 18, the text tells us that God is one of them as it states in verse 13,17, 20, 22, 26-27, 30, 31, 33 - The Lord said to Abraham, and continued speaking of this individual in the highest sense of the word because He was the one able to give judgment and even adjust it as He pleased, against the cities

I think you missed a verse or two however, in that the Lord stated:

"Gen 18:21 I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know."

Thus he did not stay (vs 33 states He left), but left and is in fact one of the two seen in chapter 19.

 

[Jedi Knight]

Hello

Well the prodigal son returns! :smilewinkgrin: Howdy brother Allan!

 

[Allan]

Well the prodigal son returns! :smilewinkgrin: Howdy brother Allan!

Greetings brother Jedi