Matthew 24:36 reads, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” So no one can speak from Sinai on this matter. Yet just the very fact that we cannot know the moment of Christ’s return for His Church, argues that the Rapture will occur before the time of Tribulation that will come upon the earth. So we will examine the compelling Scriptural evidence for the Pre-Tribulation Rapture.
PART III – THE CASE FOR THE PRE-TRIB RAPTURE
Understanding the timing of the Rapture would seem to require an understanding of just what God has revealed about the End of the Age. We are given serious clues about this in the writings of the Prophet Daniel, as well as the Gospels of Matthew, and Luke. Before His final coming in judgment, Christ told us the world will see a time of “great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be.” (Matthew 24:21) Jesus’ return as judge will be preceded by events so terrible that “unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved.” (Matthew 24:22) Christ described the events of those days to His disciples: “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.” (Matthew 24:7-8) He goes on to detail events on the earth just prior to his coming in glory. “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” (Matthew 24:29-30) Even a cursory look through the Book of Revelation fleshes out for the reader a seven year period of disease, war, natural disasters, persecution and political & economic dictatorship unprecedented in the annals of man.
But to understand the meaning and something of the timing of these future events, let’s return to those passages in Daniel that we just looked at in Chapter III. In those verses, God revealed to Daniel, much of the outline of history; – the rise and fall of nations and kings as well as a very accurate schematic of God’s plan for the end of the age. We saw how God gave him the exact timing of Christ’s first coming into His Kingdom, and how that Messiah was to be “cut off,” – which happened when He was rejected by the nation and crucified. We’ll pick it up halfway through Daniel 9:26 and take it through 9:27. “And the people of the prince who is to come Shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end of it shall be with a flood, And till the end of the war desolations are determined. Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, Even until the consummation, which is determined, Is poured out on the desolate.”
Yeah that’s a mouthful! Yet these verses contain an amazing prophecy of incredible accuracy that clues us into not only the timing, but also the meaning of much of God’s plan of redemption. We saw that incredibly accurate picture of both Christ’s first coming. It also tells us of His return in the last days. Let’s break it down. First let’s recall Daniel 9:24 again but in another translation. “Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy.” God has had a plan all along to pay the price for our sin, to create a Kingdom of Righteousness – where there will be no sin, to fulfill the word of His prophecies and to anoint Jesus the Messiah as King of Kings. What we have here then is a summary of the timing of God’s entire redemptive plan.
Then the prophecy describes what was to follow: – the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. “And the people of the prince who is to come Shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.” Jesus too made that same prediction in Luke. In verse 6, speaking of the Temple Jesus says: “the days will come, in which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.” That was fulfilled by the Romans in AD 70. It was at that time, you recall that the 2nd Temple burned, as the Roman Army soldiers tore down every stone in a greedy attempt to recover the Temple gold. Following that war and the next about 60 years later, the Jews were scattered among the nations in fulfillment of prophecy. Just as Jesus told us in Matthew 21:24, they were slaughtered and scattered and “trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” It can be argued that the “times of the Gentiles” was fulfilled in 1967, when the fledging, re-born nation of Israel recaptured Jerusalem during the 6-Day War. The thing to remember is that Daniel’s prophecy primarily concerns God’s dealings with the nation of Israel. “Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people,” says Daniel 9:24. Chuck Missler points out that the Church was not present for the first 69 weeks of prophecy, nor will it be there for the 70th.[i] The already 2,000 year period, known as the “times of the Gentiles,” is but an interlude between that 69th and 70th week.
What this all means is that the coming 7-year Tribulation, the 70th week of Daniel, will mark the completion of God’s prophetic plan for the Jewish nation.[ii] In other words God’s plan went through the first 69 weeks of Daniel’s prophecy. Then the prophetic time clock stopped, – at the crucifixion, – and will resume when the “times of the Gentiles” is complete. Romans 11:25 concurs that Israel will remain in “blindness…until the fullness of the Gentiles is come in.”
When will this Tribulation occur? Paul gives a sign to watch for. “Let no man deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed.” (2Thessalonians 2:3) The Day of the Lord will not happen until a great apostasy, or falling away from the previously held tenets of the Faith has occurred.[iii] A couple of verses later, Paul continues the thought. “And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed.” (2Thessalonians 2:6-8) Notice that the “falling away” or Great Apostasy is what prepares the way for the appearance of the “lawless one”, or Antichrist.
Now in the verses just quoted, it is “He who restrains” that will be “taken out of the way.” That “He” is a person: It is the Holy Spirit, who lives in every member of God’s true church. Scripture indicates that the Holy Spirit will not be removed from the earth during the Tribulation. In fact His presence is what makes possible the sealing of the 144,000 Jewish evangelists, and the saving of the millions of ‘Tribulation saints’.[iv] But His influence will be greatly diminished when the Church of true believers is taken out. This is what allows the rise of “the man of sin.” To many scholars, this seems the best explanation of this passage in 2Thessalonians 2.
An interesting confirmation can be found in Jesus’ own words recorded in Matthew 25:1-13. It is a parable of the rapture of the Church. “Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now five of them were wise, and five were foolish. Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them, but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. “And at midnight a cry was heard: ‘Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him!’ Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘No, lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding; and the door was shut. “Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us!’ But he answered and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.”
The ten virgins represent the “Professing Church”. But not all are truly saved. In Scripture oil often represents the Holy Spirit. All true believers are indwelt with the Holy Spirit at salvation. Not everyone in church is saved. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21) In the parable of the virgins, Jesus clearly states here that some will be ready and some will not. It is significant that Christ uses a marriage feast as an illustration. In Revelation 19, Jesus’ union with His Church is described as the “marriage supper of the Lamb,” the Church referred to as His “wife”. In Matthew 9:15, Jesus refers to Himself as “the bridegroom”. Those who are saved, will go “in with him to the marriage”. It is worth noting that to the others, “the door was shut.” Again, in the light of this parable, only a pre-Tribulation rapture makes sense. As Todd Strandberg of Rapture Ready puts it, if God’s saints weren’t pulled out until after the Tribulation, they won’t “need to seek the Lord because they’ll immediately be confronted by Him and His army of angels”.[v] So next week, we’ll close our case for the pre-Trib rapture.
[i] Chuck Missler, The Great Snatch, 1995
[ii] A Pretribulation Rapture of the Church, Rapture Ready, Editor Todd Strandberg
[iii] John MacArthur, Notes from the MacArthur Study Bible, pg 1854
[iv] Todd Strandberg, The Pre-Tribulation Rapture, Rapture Ready
[v] Todd Strandberg, The Pre-Tribulation Rapture, Rapture Ready
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