Tuesday, December 22, 2009

The Imminent Pre-wrath Rapture of the Church

I found this online book some time ago and am slowly going through it. While I disagree with many of the author's conclusions and I'm always right ;-), he does make some good points in certain areas.

Read it HERE.

The author also has also written a book called "What the Bible Says About the Future" which can be read online HERE, and has a new book pending called "The Olivet Discourse".

This resource page is helpful. In some instances, I think Mr Smith should have been more thorough e.g. the day of the Lord v the wrath of God in light of OT passages etc. In fact there is strong evidence that the dotL includes the 6th seal and the grammar of Rev 6:17 is OFTEN in the past. There are very good reasons for believing God's wrath is contained within the seals and the 5th seal martyrs are not an obstacle to this view - as has been discussed before. Unfortunately, he only gives this a cursory treatment.

He implies that many (most?) pretribbers take the apostasy of 2 Thess 2 to be the rapture. Although Dr Ice is one of these, most pre-trib scholars do not believe this to be true. Even if it were so, the apostasy/rapture view is not helpful to pretribulationism.

But, while I have some issues, Mr Smith does provide a lot of good food for thought.

5 comments:

GT said...

Mac;
I know I have come across this line of thinking before, I may have read some of this posted in another place. He does, as you say, make some good points that help to clairify the problem. I have always felt that the problem comes down to what is "the day of the Lord" vs "the wrath of God". Unfortunately, Mr. Smith doesn't seem to nail this down any better than most of the people who come from a pre-wrath view (from what I have read). His arguments against most of the so called proofs of pre-trib are still very weak. I think when one takes the full context of each passage and surrounding passages, the whole of the body of proof passages still point to a "very possible" pre-trib rapture! Unfortunately, throughout the whole of all arguments of pre,pre-wrath,mid ect. no one has absolutely proved a solid theory! All these positions are based on some assumptions that cannot be proved absolutely! At least until they all occur! LOL, Then of course, they are no longer theory but fact!
Thanks for this insightful post. Merry Christmas to you and Alesia!!

Maranatha!

Alf Cengia said...

GT,

Merry Christmas to you and your wife!

You’re right; we all bring assumptions to our rapture beliefs. I notice that many people want to create technical meanings for concepts like God’s wrath or the Day of the Lord and then argue accordingly. I’ve yet to read a conclusive argument for believing that the first half of the week doesn’t include both tribulation and divine wrath, but does that mean the church is spared? A plain reading of Rev 3:10 seems to suggest that to me. However, I don’t know for certain and, as you say, we won’t know until it happens.

Sam smith said something that I found interesting about Joel 2:31 because I’d been thinking along the same lines.

The assertion that the day of the LORD cannot begin until the celestial events are manifested is based on a faulty under¬standing of the word “before” in Joel 2:31. This argument depends upon the word “before” [Heb. lipnâ] meaning “to precede in time.” However, lipnâ commonly means “at” or “in the presence of.” In other words, Joel was simply saying that these celestial events would be observed “at” or “in connec¬tion with” the day of the LORD, not necessarily prior to the day of the LORD. In any case, the point hardly matters since, as stated in the first point above, the rapture could occur at any time prior to the advent of the day of the LORD—it need not be immediately prior.

Looking at an interlinear translation of that verse makes his argument more compelling, but who knows? The fact is that there are several verses that make it difficult to exclude the dotl from the great tribulation. And nowhere is it asserted in scripture that God’s wrath cannot occur before the dotl anyway.

Maranatha

Louise said...

Would like reactions to "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty" which I found on the Google search engine. Thanks. Louise

Alf Cengia said...

Hi ya, Louise. Did you just find that stuff on Google? It's been around for some time.

Perhaps you can come back and elaborate a little. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Alf Cengia said...

Hmmm...maybe not then.