Problem is with you approach - IF you really wanted to know YOU would study - since you choose not to you have shown you are willing to follow whatever people say that makes it easy for you to not have to study - that is all on you -
It does not matter to me what you believe - since you cannot refute what I have said already - there is no reason to give you anything else -
I grew up as Dispensationalist. The doctrine of the rapture was the only thing I knew for the first ~18 years of my life. That's about how old I was when I first met anyone who challenged the doctrine, and it seemed absolutely foolish to me that a Christian could say that the doctrine of the rapture wasn't true because, in my mind, of course it was how could it not be? So I quoted the usual bread and butter rapturist proof texts, such as 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. But they went further, they asked me to go read Scripture myself and to show them where it says that Jesus will return prior to "the tribulation" and take all Christians out of the world into heaven.
So I looked.
And I looked.
And nothing. It wasn't there. No where in Scripture.
I did, however, notice something else in my reading, something nobody had ever taught me in my entire lifetime as a Christian, the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead.
Instead of finding anything about Jesus snatching us up from the earth into heaven to escape tribulation, I instead saw a consistent, repeated, and constant emphasis in Scripture about the fact that the Lord will come and the dead will be raised. Not taken into heaven, but resurrected in the body.
This alarmed me, as nobody had ever told me that there would be a resurrection of the dead, only that there would be a "rapture". I wondered if maybe I was wrong in what I was reading, or how I was reading it--then I discovered that what I was reading in Scripture for the first time wasn't just me, it was in fact what had always been believed. It's what the ancient fathers of the Church taught, it's what every theologian, churchman, and teacher in Christianity had taught since the earliest years of Christianity right up until today. The fathers believed this, the medieval theologians believed this, the Protestant Reformers believed this, and every major Christian group and denomination today believed this. It's what Catholics believed, it's what Orthodox believed, it's what Lutherans believed, it's what Methodists believed, it's what Presbyterians believed, it's what Baptists historically believed, and so on.
This again alarmed me, because if I could open up a copy of the Bible and see this, and if it's what was always believed historically, and what virtually all Christians today still believed--then why didn't anyone teach me this? So I spoke to my dad about it, thinking maybe I had been told this but for some reason just never processed it. My dad was perplexed when I brought it up, because he wasn't aware of it either. Then when talking with my Christian friends, both from my Pentecostal church and from another non-denominational church, they thought I was just being weird and told me that of course the rapture is true and that they had never heard of any resurrection before. The reason I didn't know about it, turns out, wasn't simply because I wasn't paying attention, it's because my teachers in the faith--my parents and church leaders--either didn't know anything about this themselves, or simply never talked about it.
This was a seminal moment in my Christian life, it was the impetus that put me on a path toward questioning the things I had been raised to believe without question, and toward an earnest, thorough and continual study and reading of Scripture, to study the history of the Christian Church, and begin studying theology.
So what's my point? My point really is only this: It is precisely because I dedicated myself to the study and pursuit of Holy Scripture that I gave up on the doctrine of the rapture and came to accept the historic and orthodox doctrines of the Christian Church.
I would also encourage people to study these things. Though when you do, you may not like what you find. At least not at first. Don't worry though, turns out good theology and solid exegesis is far better than bad theology and bad heremeneutics. You'll be better for it in the end, and have a far better foundation in your faith to stand upon.
-CryptoLutheran
