When I was dating my Wife, she attended a Brethren Church & they were really into Pre-Trib Rapture theology. I had never heard it before, so I was eating it up!
The “Left Behind” series was very big during that time (between the book series & the first movie coming out).
I later read, “Will Catholics be Left Behind” by Carl E. Olson and he dives into the history of these various dispensational views. Worth the read if you are interested in the end times.
I find the rapture claims unconvincing. One will be taken and one will be left (Matthew 24). “Where, Lord?” the apostles ask. If one person is left in bed or in the field, why would they ask where the person would be left? I think they were asking where the other person would be taken, and the answer is “where the vultures gather.” That doesn’t sound like heaven.
Jesus warned that people will suddenly die with no time for repentance, such as the rich man who built bigger barns (Luke 12). If some people remain unrepentant after all the trials mentioned in Revelation, when their souls are required of them, where will they be taken? That might be what Christ was talking about in Matthew 24.
At Christ’s second coming, we who are alive and remain will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:17). Doesn’t this say that there will still be Christians alive when Jesus returns?
I would like it if all good Christians go to heaven before all the troubles described in Revelation, but I don’t see biblical evidence for that.
Water vapor and ice crystals, I suppose. That’s what I learned in meteorology class. Some translations say “air” rather than “clouds,” so my guess is that it simply refers to the sky.
It always seemed kind of a mundane thing to mention … “coming back with clouds”…? Clouds are an everyday thing so I’m not sure how that would be all that miraculous.
But if what you’re saying is referring to what Hebrews called “a cloud of witnesses” … then it makes so much more sense.
Thank you. I learned something new today.
I don’t know if your interpretation is the correct one, but it sounds so much more meaningful than what I envisioned.
The millennial reign, as I understood it, always confused me. A great tribulation, followed by God’s reign on earth for a thousand years … a brief losing of Satan … and then an eternal kingdom from that point forward?
It sounds so back-and-forth and complicated. There’s a beautiful simplicity in believing the millennial reign is more metaphorical and happening currently.
Granted, I know, that just because something sounds “simple and clean” to my ears, doesn’t make it the truth. I’ll have to do more research on this topic to see where I land
I DO think that the pre-trib rapture is the least credible … as Matthew 24 describes those “left behind” as being those left for the buzzards (the opposite of what those Left Behind movies imply).
