Hi, ________. I doubt we will have many readers, if any - and especially not at first. I would like to just start this out by writing for each other.
So I am across the world, having adventures and learning a lot. I am also in the middle of a small-scale theological journey to rethink my view on the end times for very important reasons I am too lazy to list. I have a bottleneck, being a perfectionist my heart wants to start at the beginning and explain to you both the Biblical and philosophical foundations for my queries. Alas, choices must be made in the name of conversational foundationalism: I have to get off the floor lest an infinite regression of boring and off-topic paragraphs be suffered.
Therefore excuse the rudeness with which I abruptly begin our first topic of discussion.
Do you believe that Jesus will rapture the church (at all)? If so, what scriptures do you think reference this event to come?
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Will there be a rapture?
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7 comments:
this is one of those issues that i have had to reconsider. it is sometimes easy to just accept what other people have taught you without actually employing any critical thinking. I am bouncing back and forth on this issue. Can anyone else relate to this issue?
I think there will be a rapture, and I think it is referenced by 1 & 2 Thess., and there is a good chance that Revelation mentions it.
If not, who enters the 1,000 years? Only resurrected saints? Then who rebels at the end when Satan is loosed? Did the reserrected saints have kids? I thought Jesus said that there is no marriage after the resurrection?
I agree that there will be a rapture. The main prooftext is I Thessalonians 4:13-18. I'm not sure that you can read that any other way, unless you claim that Paul did not write it or that he wrote it unknowingly. In either case, this portion of Scripture would cease to be the Word of God and I cannot accept that, as I begin with the presupposition that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. I also understand the faults of beginning with presuppositions, but that's one I gained by studying it intensely. Grace and Peace.
dshack, I know that Nick will agree with me when I say that we too believe in the innerancy of scripture (meaning that scripture never affirms any proposition that is contrary to the truth). However, our questions is about the interpretation of these passsage, which may only seemingly describe a rapture.
The 1 Thess. passage undeniably describes a rapture of believers into the air to meet Jesus. I guess my question about that passage is this: although it describes a catching up, it does not reveal what will happen afterward, and whether believers will merely meet Jesus in the air on His way down to earth. Many historic premillenials will say that the "tribulation" will occur before the rapture. In which case the dead and living in Christ will be resurrected, glorified, and caught up to meet Jesus on His way down to the earth to setup the 1,000 year reign.
I like what guest had to say when he pointed out that if all believers at the singular coming of Christ will be resurrected, then it will only be glorified persons who enter the Kingdom. In which case, they will not marry or be given in marriage, according to Jesus' account of the resurrection to the Saducces. But if it is all and only resurrected saints who enter the Kingdom, who will Satan incite to rebellion at the end when he is loosed for a short while?
1 Thessalonians 4
13. But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.
14. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.
15. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.
16. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
17. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.
18. Therefore comfort one another with these words.
1 Thessalonians 5
1. Now as to the times and the epochs, brethren, you have no need of anything to be written to you.
2. For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night.
3. While they are saying, "Peace and safety!" then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape.
4. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief;
5. for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness;
6. so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober.
7. For those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night.
8. But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation.
9. For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Whatever the rapture was, it happened to the first century believers!!!
What makes you say that, Anonymous?
As i am studying the 1 Thess 4 passage i am struck by the most obvious sence of the meaning. It might mess up people's notions of other end times events, but the "caught up" is discribed as a very loud and very visisble coming of Christ. I believe that if one believes that this passage teaches a rapture, they have to "rethink" their discription of that event.
(the assumption by those who use the word rapture is that it is a pre-tribulation snatch up of believers. i do not dispute that this passage teaches a rapture of believers, but that this "take up" is the final take up.
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