Rapture Pre,Mid or Posttribulation?

Originally Posted by Mathetes the kerux

apanstesin is the word and it is used in reference to a coming king . . .

There's no such word in the Greek lexicon.

Originally Posted by Mathetes the kerux

see also the Lukan usage in Acts with a coming Paul.

Only one verse in Acts in which "coming" and "Paul" are used together, and it is Paul's usage describing the people who came to John the Baptist.

Originally Posted by Mathetes the kerux

The "come up here" is to John not the church.

Actually it is. We see in chapters four and five the celebration of the church around the throne, praising the Lamb who is on the throne. John represented the rapture. In fact, Matthew Henry said he was "in rapture" as will the church be at that time.

Here are Henry's exact words on Revelation 4:1:
To prepare for this vision, the apostle was in the Spirit. He was in a rapture, as before (Rev 1:10), whether in the body or out of the body we cannot tell; perhaps he himself could not; however all bodily actions and sensations were for a time suspended, and his spirit was possessed with the spirit of prophecy, and wholly under a divine influence. The more we abstract ourselves from all corporeal things the more fit we are for communion with God; the body is a veil, a cloud, and clog to the mind in its transactions with God. We should as it were forget it when we go in before the Lord in duty, and be willing to drop it, that we may go up to him in heaven. This was the apparatus to the vision.
(from Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible: New Modern Edition, Electronic Database. Copyright (c) 1991 by Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.)


Revelation 1:10, as Henry refers to, uses the same language:

"I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet."

The Apostle Paul had the same type of experience in 2 Corinthians 12:2, where he states:

"I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth,) such an one caught up to the third heaven."

It is interesting to note that in both Revelation 1 and Revelation 4, John hears a voice like a trumpet, but in neither case is this symbolic of the rapture of the church, and in neither case is this the “last trumpet” or the 7th trumpet spoken of in Revelation, which refers to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto Him.

2 Thessalonians 2:1-13 is generally referred to by the pre-tribs as a Second Coming of Jesus Christ Scripture.

In verse 1 Paul starts by saying:

“Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto Him.”

The “gathering together” is generally understood to be the rapture. But here, Paul mentions both the rapture of the church and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ as if they are two aspects of the same event, and they are.

He calls it “the day of Christ” in verse 2, and it verse 3 he refers to it as “that day.”

That day will not be divided by a seven year time period, any more than the 69th and 70th week of the Daniel’s Messianic prophecy was not divided by a nearly 2000 year gap.

The Scriptures consistently speak of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ as being one event in time where he will rapture His church and judge the world.

It may surprise some of you, but I do have a “Scofield Study Bible.” No, I did not buy it. My wife got it at a garage sale some time back. She probably paid a buck for it. It is in pristine condition, which is a good thing, not necessarily for me, but for the previous owner. Hopefully they did not read too much of the commentary in it. But then again, if they are evangelical, they were probably programmed with the same end-time scenario without reading a word.

I checked out Scofield’s commentary on the 2 Thessalonians 2. He acknowledges that “the gathering together unto him” is talking about the rapture, and he even references it to 1 Thessalonians 4:14-17, a “rapture only” Scripture. But he says that Paul is writing the Thessalonians to “instruct the Thessalonians concerning the day of Christ, ‘our gathering together unto Him’ (1 Thes. 4. 14-17) and the relation of the ‘day of Christ’ to the ‘day of the Lord.’ "

I am not making this up. Scofield believes that the rapture is the “day of Christ,” and the Second Coming is “the day of the Lord.” In fact, he has to believe this because that is the only way that the Darby/Scofield end-time scenario fits!

So, according to Scofield, the “day of Christ” in verse 2 is different from the “that day” of verse 3. “That day” of verse 3 must be referencing the Second Coming, or as Scofield says, “The day of the Lord.” So, all of the rest of 2 Thessalonians 2:3-12, according to Scofield, is talking about “that day” or “the day of the Lord” only.

It is also confusing to note, that the “rapture only” scripture he referenced in 1 Thessalonians 4:14-17, is supposed to only be talking about the rapture of the church (the day of Christ) and not the Second Coming (the day of the Lord), however, it mentions “the coming of the Lord.”

1 Thessalonians 4:15:

“For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.”

If this is a “rapture only” Scripture, as they say, then the rapture will have to be a “coming of the Lord.” And that is what the pre-tribs teach, despite the fact that I have been accused of lying about that in this topic. They believe He leaves Heaven and comes back, but just not all the way back to the earth's surface; He saves that for the real Second Coming.

But if this and all of these Scriptures are referring to the Second Coming of Christ and our gathering together unto Him as one event in time, then all of the Scriptures fit together without all of the confusion and the explaining and the saying that this Scripture is “rapture only,” and that Scripture is “Second Coming only,” and also without all of the reading into Scriptures something that is not there.

Yep, if 1Thessalonians 4:15 is a "rapture only" scripture as they say, then the rapture is a coming of the Lord.

"For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto THE COMING OF THE LORD shall not prevent them which are asleep."

This proves that I was not lying or misrepresenting the pre-trib Darby/Scofield view.