Hmmm. I started out this post in topic "Do you believe in the pre-tribulation rapture?" and decided to come to the last post. Maybe its just bad timing.
My own view is mid-trib, but not exactly in the middle. The order goes like this
- The antichrist makes a covenant with the many. This is the set up. Day 1
[*]The regular sacrifice is removed. This is the apostasy of the church. Day 295
[*]The two witnesses start preaching. Somewhere between Day 295 and Day 1260
[*]The Lord returns to meet the faithful in the air and they are nourished in the desert. Day 1260.
[*]The abomination of desolations takes place. Day 1260
[*]The two witnesses are killed and rise from the dead. Somewhere between Day 1555 and Day 2520
[*]The Lord descends upon the Mount of Olives. Day 2520
I can certainly understand how someone might have said that an expert is required to interpret this. There is only one right sequence of events. Your interpretation can't be different from mine and us both be right. So to suggest that the Holy Spirit is sufficient for achieving the right interpretation is definitely incorrect.
No small amount of work went into coming to the conclusions above. There is not room here to explain it. For that I've written the first few chapters of a book I've titled "Jot & Tiddle." I plan on working on it for another year or so.
Mid-trib cannot possibly harmonize with Scripture-
BibSac Volume 157 Number 628 October-December 2000
Author - Robert L. Thomas
Referring to 2 Thess 2:2 & 3-
"Some writers have supposed that in 2 Thessalonians 2:13 Paul named recognizable events that will precede the Day of the Lord. In fact Gundry apparently looks to this passage for the title of his recent book, First the Antichrist: Why Christ Wont Come before the Antichrist Does. That view is oblivious to what the passage teaches, being based on the way most English translations have rendered 2 Thessalonians 2:3. Three features related to the verse deserve emphasis."
"First, in the preceding verse (v. 2) the verb e˙ne÷sthken is present in meaning, even though its form is the perfect tense. It combines the prepositional prefix e˙n with the frequent verb iºsthmi, which in all of its New Testament usages in the perfect tense is instransitive and intensive in emphasizing existing results. That the perfect tense of iºsthmi means is present is confirmed by its usage elsewhere (Rom. 8:38; 1 Cor. 3:22; 7:26; Gal. 1:4; Heb. 9:9). Recognition of this fact indicates that the false information among the Thessalonians that Paul was combating was the teaching that the Day of the Lord is present, not that it has already come (RSV), that it is at hand (KJV), that it is just at hand (ASV), that it has come (NASB, NIV), or that it had come (NKJV). I have found only three versions that render the verb correctly. Darby renders it, the day of the Lord is present; Weymouth has the Day of the Lord is now here; and the New Revised Standard Version has the Day of the Lord is already here. These capture the intensive force of the perfect tense of e˙ne÷sthken."
"Second, a feature in verse 3 to be noted is the suppressed apodosis that must be supplied with the conditional clause begun by e˙a»n. Clearly the apodosis to be supplied comes from the end of verse 2. Translations that have missed the sense of the end of verse 2 supply the wrong apodosis: that day shall not come (KJV), it will not be (ASV), it will not come (NASB), that day will not come (NIV, RSV), that Day will not come (NKJV). But even the three versions that render verse 2 correctly supply the wrong apodosis: that day cannot come (Weymouth), that day will not come (NRSV), it will not be (Darby). Some versions indicate the absence of an explicit apodosis, but others do not."
"To be faithful to the context, the understood apodosis should be the Day of the Lord is not present. Complying with the context in this manner yields grammatical criteria for labeling the last half of verse 3 as a present general condition. Most clauses with e˙a»n and the subjunctive in the New Testament are more probable future conditions, but when the verb of the apodosis has the force of a present indicative, that makes it a present general condition. Such a construction often expresses a maxim, a generic condition in the present time. It expresses a principle or a proverb. In such cases the protasis makes an assumption in the present time, and the apodosis gives a conclusion in the form of a general rule. Therefore the sense of Pauls statement in verse 3 is as follows: If the apostasy does not come first and the man of lawlessness is not revealed, the Day of the Lord is not present. That is a principle you can count on.
So, the correct reading should be If the apostasy does not come first and the man of lawlessness is not revealed, the Day of the Lord is not present."
Therefore, if we are to endure half, or part of the tribulation, then we are to see the apostasy as well as the man of lawlessness revealed. This logically concludes your stance as denying the imminent return of Christ, which is taught throughout Scripture, that Christ could come at any time for His church. According to the midtrib view, this is not true. Jesus cannot come "like a theif in the night", because there will be many signs of His coming, and His church would surely know based on the knowledge of those signs given in His Word.
Further-
2Th 2:6 And you know what restrains him now, so that in his time he will be revealed.
2Th 2:7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains {will do so} until He is taken out of the way.
The restrainer being the Holy Spirit, who will be taken out of the way at the time of the rise of the antichrist. Thus, we cannot have the church without the Spirit, pointing to a pretrib rapture instead of a mid or post trib rapture.
This is the 70th week of Daniel -
Dan 9:24 "Seventy weeks have been decreed
for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy {place.}
"Your people" being Israel. The trib is not for the church but for Israel. Thus, we will not be there but He has "delivered from the wrath to come" (1 thess 1:10), God has not "appointed us unto wrath"(1 Thess 3:9), and "saved us from the wrath of God" (Romans 5:9).
