We seem to have a growth of pre-Trib skeptics within Christianity today. That’s because the erroneous date-setters have skewed truth in the Bible that Jesus said no one knows the time except His Father.
Now, some might say these skeptics are doing little or no harm. All believers, if the pre-Trib view is biblically correct, will be raptured. The only prerequisite for going in the Rapture to be with the Lord is to be saved–that is, believe in Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross at Calvary. It isn’t necessary to believe in the pre-Trib Rapture to be saved. Those who believe in another view of prophecy are “in Christ,” so will be evacuated from this fallen planet when Christ shouts, “Come up here!”
This is, of course, true. One doesn’t have to believe in the pre-Trib Rapture to be saved.
However, the first thing I would say in answer to that reasoning is that we who are in God’s family–are saved—are to strive to understand things God wants us to understand:
Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)
The pre-Trib Rapture of the Church is built upon an extensive body of Scripture. The Rapture is a clearly presented doctrine, and even most pre-Trib naysayers admit that the Rapture is in God’s Word. However, they, in most cases, adamantly deny that it is a pre-Trib Rapture that the Bible presents.
They give all sorts of arguments for when it will occur, all pointing to the Rapture taking place during the Tribulation, the time when Antichrist will be ruling as history’s last, most despotic dictator.
But these ignore—or convolute through twisting—God’s promise to keep believers out of that terrible time of God’s wrath:
Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. (Revelation 3:10)
This promise to spare believers of the Church Age, or Age of Grace, is seen while Jesus in His ascended form is revealing prophetic truth to John, who wrote the Revelation. Jesus here is talking to the seven churches. That’s the churches now in the dispensation of the Church Age. Jesus is telling believers of the Church Age that He will keep them out of the Tribulation.
Most who come against the pre-Trib timing of the Rapture refuse to accept that God deals with humankind in dispensations. And therein lies much of the problem with them not being willing to “rightly divide the word of truth,” as found in 2 Timothy 2:15. Unless this concept of dispensations is understood, the pre-Trib Rapture cannot be easily discerned.
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Luke 14:7-11
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