Wonderful Hope

I really like what Paul Henebury recently said at his blog:

"As the New Year rolls out I wanted to say something about some things I hope to achieve over the next 12 months – Lord willing. It would be wonderful if the Lord would return for his Church and make what follows academic..."

It warmed my heart. There’s a certain ineffable joy in believing that the Lord could come back at any time for His Church. It’s sobering as well.

Yet it has nothing to do with escapism or fear of a tribulation that other rapture pundits tend to minimize anyway.

As an ex posttribber I’m still willing to look at good arguments against pretribulationism. I shy away from proclaiming that it’s an iron clad, explicit doctrine. Yet most of the criticisms I read tend to highlight the weaknesses in the other systems. I recall the particular website that dissenters sent my “false prophet” pretrib teacher friend who was attending a Pretrib Conference. One of the “Questions for a Pretribulationist” was “Are there two parousias of Christ?”

Please, don’t keep telling pretribbers there’s only one second coming or parousia when your system is fundamentally multiple. That’s not honest. If you say the rapture occurs after the 6th seal and that the great multitude standing in front of the throne and the Lamb in heaven (Rev 7) is the raptured church then you have more than one coming (Rev 19). Hence one cannot get around the problem by simply asserting that it’s one coming that includes a number of events.

The same applies for the posttribulational location of the rapture at the 7th trumpet where Scripture is silent, and the so-called single “first resurrection” event. The only place where Revelation speaks of Christ’s coming and a resurrection (aside from the Two Witnesses) is Rev 19 & 20 which are separate events and not located at the 7th trumpet.

Don’t tell us there’s no gap between the rapture and the day of the Lord because 1Thess 5 follows after chapter 4. Especially when you insist the Antichrist isn’t destroyed at Christ’s “first” appearing at 2 Thess 2:8 but at the other (yet the same) appearing at a different time (and a gap) in Rev 19.

And the list can go on....