ebedmelech said in post 116:
No...actually it does more than that. It ushers in eternity after judgment also.
Let's look at this through Revelation 11:15-19:
Revelation 11:15:
15Then the seventh angel sounded; and there were loud voices in heaven, saying,“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever.”
Are you saying that Jesus will return immediately after the tribulation's 7th trumpet sounds (Revelation 11:15-19)? If so, note that it doesn't refer to any coming of Jesus. Instead, Revelation 11:15 refers to the future point in time (Revelation 4:1b) when Jesus will take ultimate, legal, physical authority over the earth, away from Satan (cf. Luke 4:5-7) and Satan's fallen angels (Ephesians 6:12), and away from the Antichrist (the individual-man aspect of the beast) (Revelation 13:4-18, cf. Revelation 12:9) and the Antichrist's 10 kings (Revelation 17:12-13). It won't be until a little later that Jesus will take de facto, physical control of the earth at his 2nd coming and during the subsequent millennium (Revelation 19:11 to 20:6).
Jesus' 2nd coming won't occur immediately after the sounding of the tribulation's 7th trumpet and the declaration of the legal replacement of the Antichrist's future, literal 3.5 year worldwide reign (Revelation 13:5-18, Revelation 12:6,14) with Jesus' reign (Revelation 11:15). For a "time" (Revelation 11:18) can last awhile (cf. Revelation 12:14). (It's like if someone said "It's time to sell this house"; this doesn't mean that it will get sold immediately.) The only part of Revelation 11:18 that will happen immediately after the 7th trumpet sounds is "thy wrath is come", for the plagues of the vials (Revelation 16), the tribulation's final stage, will come out of the 7th trumpet's heavenly-temple opening (Revelation 11:19, Revelation 15:5 to 16:1).
So the 7th trumpet (Revelation 11:15-19), even though it will be the last trumpet to sound during the tribulation, won't be the resurrection "last trump" of 1 Corinthians 15:52. The latter won't sound until after the entire tribulation of Revelation chapters 6 to 18 and Matthew 24 is over, at Jesus' 2nd coming (Matthew 24:29-31; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-16), which won't occur until Revelation 19, and which is when the church will be resurrected (Revelation 19:7 to 20:6; 1 Corinthians 15:21-23,51-54; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-16).
Before the 2nd coming, the tribulation's final, Revelation 16 stage could last for 75 days. For the first vial in Revelation 16 could be poured out immediately after the 1,260 days of the Antichrist's worldwide reign, which 1,260 days could begin when the abomination of desolation (possibly an android image of the Antichrist) is set up in the holy place (the inner sanctum) of a third Jewish temple in Jerusalem (Matthew 24:15, Daniel 11:31,36). And Jesus could return on the 1,335th day after the setting up of the abomination of desolation (Daniel 12:11-12, Revelation 16:15). An analogy for the possible 75-day vials-delay between Jesus taking legal possession of the earth (Revelation 11:15) and his return to take de facto, physical possession of it (Revelation chapters 19-20) would be someone in New York legally inheriting a house in California 75 days before he moves there to live in that house.
At Jesus' 2nd coming, he will resurrect and judge only the church (1 Corinthians 15:21-23; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-16, Revelation 19:7 to 20:6, Psalms 50:3-6, cf. Mark 13:27), and then he will marry the obedient part of the church (Revelation 19:7-8, Matthew 25:1-12). Then Revelation 19:11-21 will occur. So both the resurrection and the rewarding of the church spoken of in Revelation 11:18, as well as the destroying of the destroyers of the earth spoken of in Revelation 11:18, could occur 75 days after the 7th trumpet's sounding. And because a "time" can last awhile (cf. Revelation 12:14), this would still be well within the "time" referred to in Revelation 11:18.
Everyone not resurrected and judged at Jesus' 2nd coming won't be resurrected and judged until Revelation 20:11-15, which won't occur until sometime after the returned Jesus and the bodily resurrected church have reigned on the earth for 1,000 years (Revelation 20:4-6, Revelation 5:10, Revelation 2:26-29). Both resurrections and judgments can still occur within Revelation 11:18's "time". For the original Greek word (kairos, G2540) translated there as "time" can refer to even quite a long period. For example, the same Greek word is used in 2 Corinthians 6:2 to refer to the "time" of people getting saved, which has been going on for some 2,000 years.
ebedmelech said in post 116:
This coincides with what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:25-28:
25 For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet.
26 The last enemy that will be abolished is death.
27 For He has put all things in subjection under His feet. But when He says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is evident that He is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him.
28 When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.
Note that 1 Corinthians 15:23-28 doesn't require that Jesus will deliver the kingdom to God the Father immediately at his 2nd coming, only that he will do that sometime subsequent to his 2nd coming. For right after his 2nd coming, "he must reign" (1 Corinthians 15:25) on the earth with the bodily resurrected church for 1,000 years (Revelation 19:7 to 20:6, Revelation 5:10, Revelation 2:26-29). Then he must defeat the Gog/Magog rebellion (Revelation 20:7-10, Ezekiel chapters 38-39). Then he must bodily resurrect and judge the unsaved of all times, at the great white throne judgment (Revelation 20:11-15). Only then will he have "put all enemies under his feet" (1 Corinthians 15:25), including death itself (1 Corinthians 15:26), which will be cast into the lake of fire at the great white throne judgment (Revelation 20:14). Only after that will Jesus deliver up the kingdom to the Father (1 Corinthians 15:24). Then a new earth (a new surface of the earth) will be created and the Father will descend from heaven to the new earth in the literal city of New Jerusalem, the Father's house (John 14:2), to live with the church on the new earth (Revelation 21:1-4).
ebedmelech said in post 116:
26 The last enemy that will be abolished is death.
1 Corinthians 15:26 refers to when the first death will be cast into the 2nd death, the lake of fire, at the great white throne judgment (Revelation 20:11-15). The resurrection at the great white throne judgment is the resurrection at "the end" (1 Corinthians 15:24), and will include everyone who wasn't part of the first resurrection (Revelation 20:5), the bodily resurrection of the church at Jesus' 2nd coming (1 Corinthians 15:21-23, Revelation 19:7 to 20:6; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17).
ebedmelech said in post 116:
At this point Christ is reigning but pre-trib theory denies this...even though Christ clearly received the reign from the Father upon his resurrection in Matthew 28:18-20:
18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.
19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
20teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
As God the Word, Jesus was the Creator of everything in heaven and earth (Colossians 1:16-18, John 1:1,3). And in the first century AD, he became a flesh and bones human being (John 1:14; 2 John 1:7), so that he could die on the Cross for our sins and rise from the dead on the 3rd day (Hebrews 2:16-17; 1 Corinthians 15:1-4), and become our eternally-human high priest/mediator (Hebrews 7:24-26; 1 Timothy 2:5).
After his resurrection into immortality in his fully-human flesh and bones body (Luke 24:39), Jesus the man was given ultimate spiritual authority over heaven and earth (Matthew 28:18). He ascended bodily into heaven (Acts 1:9-10), and is now in heaven ruling spiritually over everything (1 Peter 3:22, Ephesians 1:20-23, Colossians 2:10,15, Philippians 2:9).
But he won't take ultimate, de facto, physical authority over the earth until his 2nd coming, when, still as a flesh and bones human being (Zechariah 13:6, Zechariah 12:10-14), he will descend bodily from heaven (Revelation 19:11-21, Zechariah 14:3-4, Acts 1:11-12) to physically reign on the earth (Psalms 72:8-11, Zechariah 14:8-21) with a rod of iron with the bodily resurrected church for 1,000 years (Revelation 20:4-6, Revelation 5:10, Revelation 2:26-29, Psalms 2, Psalms 66:3-4, Micah 4:1-4, Luke 1:32, Isaiah 9:6-7).
After his 1,000-year reign and subsequent events are over (Revelation 20:7-10, Ezekiel chapters 38-39), Jesus will resurrect and judge everyone who wasn't resurrected at his 2nd coming (Revelation 20:11-15). Everyone who has ever lived will have to bow down before him and admit that he's Lord of everything (Philippians 2:10-11, Acts 10:36).
ebedmelech said in post 116:
Moreover, Jesus NEVER spoke to a rapture.
Note that Jesus did speak of the rapture, for it's the gathering together of the church at his 2nd coming (2 Thessalonians 2:1; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17), which he mentioned in Matthew 24:30-31, Mark 13:26-27, and John 14:3b.
The English word "rapture" is derived from the root of the Latin word "rapiemur", which is how the old Latin (Vulgate) translation of the Bible translated the original Greek word (harpazo) translated as "caught up" in 1 Thessalonians 4:17. So the "rapture" is the church's being "caught up together" at Jesus' 2nd coming (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17), which is the same as the church's being "gathered together" at his 2nd coming (2 Thessalonians 2:1, Matthew 24:30-31), which will occur immediately after the future tribulation of Revelation chapters 6 to 18 and Matthew 24 (Matthew 24:29-31; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-8, Revelation 19:7 to 20:6).
Christians need to be wary of the mistaken idea that no rapture will occur at Jesus' 2nd coming. For such an idea could be employed in the future by the Antichrist's False Prophet (of Revelation 19:20, Revelation 13:13-15) to fool some Christians into thinking that Jesus' 2nd coming has happened (Matthew 24:23-26) without Jesus having to have raptured (caught up together/gathered together) the church to hold a meeting in the sky with him at his 2nd coming (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17; 2 Thessalonians 2:1, Matthew 24:30-31).