I must be missing something because Jesus comes back WITH his church but then his church rises to meet him in the air???
All this proves is that those who don't want to believe in the Rapture will say just about anything, no matter how ridiculous to justify their disbelief...
Understanding that there are a huge number of Freepers who are Catholic, and other denominations that don’t focus heavily on end-time prophecy, I know I put myself out on a limb when I discuss my belief in a rapture here on FR.
That being said, I’m no theologian or expert on the order of events in prophecy, but I’ve always took the line in scripture “”the dead in Christ will rise first,” to mean that when a Christian dies their Spirit will be lifted up to heaven at the time of death to be in the Presence of Jesus. And at the Rapture, the living Christians will join them. And most who believe in the Rapture believes this happens at the beginning of the 7-year Tribulation.
I do believe in the pre-Tribulation Rapture, mainly because the Tribulation period is seven years, and there is allot that needs to happen in just the first 3 ½ years of it. It would take Global Chaos for one man, the antichrist to enter the Worlds stage and deceive nearly everyone LEFT on the planet, (all the peoples of the World in all religions) in such a short period of time. The only type of “Global Disaster” I could think of on that scale would be for 200 or 300 million Christians to just vanish. And the whole point for the belief in the Rapture is we don’t believe Jesus meant for the Saved to have to suffer through the horrors that will happen to the planet during those seven years. And because he loves us so much and does not wish that any shall parish into eternal Hell, he knows it will take a great shake-up of those left to finally get them to listen. The “tough love” that so many of us fathers are familiar with. That we believe is the whole point of the Tribulation. Many will be saved during this time but they will be persecuted horribly, much like the first Church was, with public executions and torture, only to be ended with the physical return of Christ.
What you are obviously missing is a biblical view of the Church, and the nature of the saints who have fallen asleep vs. those who are alive at His coming.
There saint triumphant and saints militant.
The saints triumphant (in their souls) return with Christ at the Second Coming to be reunited with their bodies that rise from the grave.
The saints militant are changed in the twinkling of an eye and they meet Christ body and soul in the air. All these transformed/resurrected saints accompany Christ to the earth in triumph where He judges the sheep and goats.
All this proves is that those who don't want to believe in the Rapture will say just about anything, no matter how ridiculous to justify their disbelief...
You just need to read the Bible to get the complete picture. There is a ”rapture” in the Bible, just not the false view of the rapture invented by the JN Darby and perpetuated by the dispensationalists. It’s called the Second Coming.