Results 21 - 22 of 22
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Results from: Notes Author: RoaringLamb Ordered by Date |
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Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
21 | Rapture different from Second Coming? | 1 Thess 4:17 | RoaringLamb | 90279 | ||
justme: Thank you for your response and welcome! I read Matt. 24 as you suggested. Actually, it's one of several passages I had in mind when I asked my question, and I'd hoped for a more specific response. I'm familiar with all the accepted teachings on the subject and have read all the passages on which they are based. It's just that I don't see that they are saying what is being widely taught. When I've been reading says THE RAPTURE COINCIDES WITH THE SECOND COMING RATHER THAN PRECEDES IT BY YEARS, as it seems most Christians believe. One thing we often fail to do when discussing the Bible is "sweat the details" - to scrutinize every word and the full import of what a passage says. This is what I think we have done with scriptures relating to prophetic events - particularly, to Christ's return and what occurs immediately after death. As a result, many Christians I have spoken to, heard preaching, or whose writings I have read, hold to beliefs that contradict one another. For example, many of the same people who believe 1 Thess. 4:17 is describing a secret rapture, in which Jesus returns prior to the second coming to take believers to heaven, also believe the saved go to heaven immediately at death while the un-saved go immediately to the lake of fire. I believe both views are false, but I don't see how anyone can hold to both. Then again, maybe I do... I've found that more doctrinal errors occur over the timing of biblical events than anythng else. Passages and narratives are not always written in strict chronological order. Too often we miss the semantic signposts that indicate where breaks in the narrative, digressions, and parenthetical thoughts occur. On this rapture/second coming issue, we have missed a critical signpost that appears in several endtime passages, including the following: "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. 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" (Matt. 24:30-31 KJV). "According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air" (1 Thess. 4:15-17 NIV). "Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed - in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised inperishable, and we will be changed" (1 Cor. 15:51-52 NIV). "The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said: 'The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever" (Rev. 11:15 NIV). Did you notice that each of these events have in common the BLOWING OF A TRUMPET? Yes, I know many events in the Bible are associated with the blowing of trumpets, but these all point to the blowing of a particular trumpet. In Matt. 24 the appearance of Christ which everyone on earth can see occurs in concert with a trumpet and God's gathering of his elect. In 1 Thess. 4 the resurrection of the dead saints followed immediately by the rising of the saints who are alive to meet them and Christ in the air is accompanied by "the trumpet call of God." Traditionally, this is the rapture. First Corinthians 15 is speaking of the same event as 1 Thess. 4, as evidenced by the righteous dead being raised imperishable and the living righteous being changed -- also associated with a trumpet blast. But note, here it gets a little more specific: it says "at THE LAST TRUMPET"! What does Paul mean by the "last" trumpet? Obviously, there must have been OTHER trumpets blown BEFORE this one. Finally, Revelation 11, depicting the climax of the Day of the Lord, in which God has poured out his wrath upon the earth, the last 7 phases of which had been announced by great trumpet blasts, identifes "the last trumpet": it is the 7th trumpet. And what happens at the blowing of this trumpet? The kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of the Lord. We find ourselves at the same point in time shown in Matt. 24 when "all the tribes of the eath mourn" and "see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory"!! justme, PLEASE, if I have missed something show me; but if it's clear to you from these scriptures that error is being taught, please discuss them with other believers. |
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22 | Searching for the truth | 1 Thess 4:17 | RoaringLamb | 89737 | ||
Greetings, Fellow Heirs. I'm new to this forum and am eager to join this discussion. Of all biblical issues, none have generated more discussion, debate, passion, speculation, and confusion among people supposedly of "like mind" than that of the rapture and the various fates of mankind at the end of the age. Yet I am fully persuaded that we -- the body of Christ -- can and WILL come to agreement on this. Four reasons I know we can do this: (1) God is not the author of confusion (1 Cor.14:33); (2) we [if we are true believers] have God's Spirit (Acts 5:32); (3) God is not divided (1 Cor. 1:13); and (4) I've been through this before, in discussions involving Christians from all kinds of denominations and, in each case, where love and humility -- and Christ -- ruled, understanding was achieved. Once we see, from God's Word, that denominational pride is sin; that God is against false teaching; and that God requires us to come to unity in the faith (1 Cor. 1:10-13), we can discover the plain, simple truth about these things. Having done this many times before, I am familiar with the various lines of reasoning and points of contention -- as well as the false assumptions -- that have unnecessarily prolonged the debate for centuries. The problem lies in our tendency to jump from FALSE PREMISES TO PREMATURE CONCLUSIONS. Forgetting the biblical injunction against PRIVATE INTERPRETATION of the Scriptures (2 Pet. 1:20), we rely on human reasoning and end up presenting opinion as doctrine. While we all speculate on matters not definitively set forth by the Scriptures, when it comes to DOCTRINE, we had better verify what we teach. Doctrine is that which we hold one another accountable to believe. Upon DOCTRINE we make RULES. And because of RULES, I have seen people put out of churches, leave churches, and refuse to become part of churches. Because of RULES, people have even committed suicide. Every church I have ever attended has preached at least one sermon against the practice of the Pharisees and Saducees of going beyond God's requirements and laying burdens on others. Yet every one of them had their own set of requirements. A quick example: many churches condemn ALL consumption of alcoholic beverages -- going far beyond the biblical condemnation of DRUNKENESS. When I address this forum again -- if it's God's will -- I will examine the first premise most churches teach that the Scriptures plainly contradict, but by its application casts many a stumbling block before the would-be believer. I think we will begin to see that the "good news" REALLY IS GOOD. In Christ, Jay |
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