GN, you are a pretrib premillennialist, I am a post-trib premillennialist. We are both Futurists and Premillennialists, I am not one of these Amillennialists, Preterists, Historicists that come against you. “Rapture isn’t in the Bible,” and so on. Fact is, I come down on your side most of the time. We only differ on whether the rapture takes place before or after the tribulation.
Apparently you are not capable of discussion on this subject without throwing out vicious statements such as:
Your Demonic false doctrine
Since you don’t know scripture
You can’t produce any to validate your beliefs
Your dead idol Justin Martyr
Justin Martyr worshipped by people who have to deny the Bible to make their Godless beliefs work
There is no call for such as this. Do you have any idea what you sound like?
I realize you believe your pretrib system, but you should allow the possibility that you might be wrong. You really shouldn’t be so closed minded. A good example: the Pretrib author back in 1988 who put out the book, “88 reasons why the Rapture will take place in 1988.” All 88 Pretrib reasons were wrong, of course. As is this preposterous notion that apostasia means the pretrib rapture.
As to Justin Martyr (he’s not my “idol,” by the way), when he spoke of “the man of apostasy,” he was merely repeating what everybody who knew the Greek language knew. Which was everybody, they well knew what apostasia meant.
As to your comment about the apostasy an “ongoing endless thing for two millennia,” I never said that, nor do I believe that. The context again, GN, the context of 2 Thess. 2 is the end time. The man of sin, son of perdition, is the main figure, and identifying individual of the end time. Thus the apostasy, an end time rebellion against God, that he rises out of is end time specific also.
You are a Futurist, and not a Historicist, are you not? Well, so am I. Hence, my understanding the Bible teaches a future end time apostasy, rise of the antichrist, tribulation, and millennial. I see us in that end time apostasy now, the man of apostasy is just around the corner.
If you don't like statements like what you posted, then have the decency to simply admit that there is not one verse of Scripture ever given by God that validates post-Trib rapture yet you choose to believe it anyway. The problem arises when someone asserts a belief while denying the Scripture that destroys that belief and denying the Scripture that confirms the Biblical doctrine.
I realize you believe your pretrib system, but you should allow the possibility that you might be wrong. You really shouldn’t be so closed minded. A good example: the Pretrib author back in 1988 who put out the book, “88 reasons why the Rapture will take place in 1988.” All 88 Pretrib reasons were wrong, of course. As is this preposterous notion that apostasia means the pretrib rapture.
This is a perfect example. You claim that I may be wrong, yet you have given not one verse of Scripture that supports what you believe. That means that you not only have no credibility with what you say you believe, you certainly have nothing to say to someone who has repeatedly produced the Scripture that proves that the Rapture will happen before the Tribulation. As far as the occasional nut that comes out with a date, that is one every few years and they are soundly condemned by Bible-believing Christians who take the word of God literally, including the part where Christ says that no man knows the day nor the hour of the Rapture. Contrast that will the utter, hopeless buffoonery of post-Trib Rapture dupes who constantly, not every few years but constantly deny and lie and circumvent and do anything other than give the Scripture where God validates their beliefs.
And, as further proof of what I've said, you deny what the article says about the correct use of the word apostasia while giving absolutely nothing that proves your position on the issue. This is where your total lack of credibility reveals itself. If you're going to say that Biblical scholars who have studied Greek for years and have presented both Biblical and scholarly evidence for what they have claimed is wrong yet give no evidence for your position that they are wrong, then you come across as a blinded cultist who has gulped down the Kool-Aid and repeats what you have been told while having no way to prove that what you believe is true.
I have asked you on at least two occasions to give me the verses in 1 Thessalonians where Paul talked about the "apostasy" being a rebellion against God by the Antichrist and you can't do it because the Scripture that would support that belief does not exist. So instead of just admitting that the Scripture doesn't exist (because if it did you'd post it in a second), you continue to propagate the lie that the "apostasy" is talking about a rebellion against God or a falling away from the church when Paul never mentioned either one of those things in 1 Thessalonians.
This is why things get a little rough for you. When you insist on continuing a glaringly obvious lie, and have been shown over the course of several posts that God does not validate your beliefs and in fact actively opposes your beliefs and you still cling to that which contradicts the clear, inarguable Scripture, those of us who don't have the delusions of divinity and grandeur that allow us to deny and discard and change the word of God to fit our beliefs are going to stand up for the Word of God.
And I know it's a waste of time, but I'll try again to give you a chance to put aside your un-Biblical beliefs and agree with God. Did Jesus Christ lie when He said the following:
...upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.
Did Jesus lie or tell the truth when He made that statement?