Posted on 06/09/2015 3:51:50 PM PDT by stockpirate
BKMK
serious question: why do you have to be removed to be kept from the hour of testing? We cannot minimize God’s ability to protect us anywhere at any time. Look at the children of Israel during the time of plagues. It effected the Egyptians but not the Israelites. God didn’t remove them.
What about the passover?
I do this too sometimes, but we must not limit what God is capable of doing. He can protect us here.
No doubt.
He can also remove us.
Which would be a powerfull witness to the many who are left here.I imagine there will be many millions who will seek God rather fervently then.The door that "no man can shut" will then be shut.Though He still stands at that door and knocks,they will then have to buy gold from Him "tried in the fire".
For those who simply will not believe no matter what they see or hear,the anti-Christ will hand wave away the whole event as himself having separated the sheep from the goats.
Now that the goats are gone,we can unite all religions,have us a golden age of man and build us a nice big temple in Jerusalem.
That there would be some heavy duty delusion.
It is not a time for testing...The times of the Gentiles have come to an end...It's a time for God's wrath...
The Tribulation has nothing to do with Christians...It's all about Israel...While those events are happening, the Wedding takes place in heaven...The Bride is in heaven during God's wrath on earth...
The Holy Spirit came at Pentecost to indwell believers. His presence on the Earth is 'in' the temple of the believers, individually. His work is restraining lawlessness. Lawlessness is increasing as this Church Age presence of the Holy Spirit draws to a close and 'the spirit of lawlessness is already working in the world' was a theme Paul stressed with his mission converts.
The work of the Holy Spirit in us is foreshadowed in The Shekinah Glory of the building Temple in Jerusalem. We read in Ezekiel 10 and 11 that the Shekinah Glory had to depart before the Babylonians could conquer Jerusalem. Ezekiel witnessed this departure from a vantage point on the Mount of Olives, interestingly.
The very presence of God's Glory in the Temple restrained the physical armies of the Babylonians. The Spiritual presence of God's Spirit in us believers restrains the appearing of the man of sin and the lawlessness he spreads like poison to the souls of men across the Earth during the seventieth year of Daniel's prophecy for Israel.
And that brings us to another aspect of the seven years of Tribulation. That period is all about God dealing with Israel and culminates in Israel ruling the nations of the Earth (what remains of the inhabitants after the astonishing destructions during the second half of the Tribulation, called the Great Tribulation).
During the Tribulation God's 'sealed from the twelve tribes of Israel' will be the evangelists, proclaiming the Gospel as aligned for that day, to culminate in a well hallmarked Second Arrival of Jesus on Earth. The Rapture is not an arrival upon the Earth. Jesus can come and deal with men like Saul ont he road to Damascus without setting foot upon the earth, so He certainly can come for His Bride, the Body of Christ, without setting foot upon the Earth.
But we read clearly in not only Revelation but elsewhere that He will set foot upon the Earth a second time for the Second Coming. This imminence of His coming again led Jewish scholars to theorize there must be two messiahs, a suffering one from Joseph's linage and a conquering one from the David linage. Jesus indicted the leadership in His day by reading only part of a passage in Isaiah which points to both roles for Messiah.
Sadly, ever since the rumblings of the Reformation the Catholic Church has sought to use scripture passages to battle the reformation, such as the purposeful confusion over the word 'apostasia' found in II Thess 2 which is translated in the KJV as falling away, derived from the Rheim's Bible (1582) which translated the Greek word meaning 'The Departure' as a Latin word for revolt. The earliest Bibles had this word meaning The Departure, not 'a departing' or 'a revolt' or even 'a falling away'. With the rumblings of the Reformation rising the Geneva Bible (1560) and the Breeches Bible (1576) used 'a departing' instead of 'The Departure'. The passage in II Thess is pointing to what happens before the man of sin can emerge, and it is not referring to an apostacy of belief, as shown by the passages which follow that use of apostasia and where the word is used elsewhere to indicate a leaving or departure as exiting through a doorway.
All that said to clarify that The Holy Spirit is restraining lawlessness 'in' believers and thus influencing society. When He is taken out of the way, by Rapturing the Church of believers in whom dwells the Holy Spirit earnest of inheritance, the Holy Spirit restrained will be out of satan's way and his lawlessness can abound. The Rapture removes the Bride of Christ in whom dwells the Holy Spirit during the Church Age.
It is going to be so sudden and so astonishing, when the daed in Christ are resurrected then transformed and the alive believers are transformed to not taste death and thus meet in the clouds to be with the Lord in the Father's House until Jesus returns to the Earth, that people will immediately be told a lie to cover the truth. And this lie will be believed because God will send strong delusion as the first of many 'punishment' steps of the Tribulation period. But he will seal 144,000 from the twelve tribes named in Revelation, before/during when He allows the departure and the man of sin to emerge. The for seven years Israel will be evangelizing and fighting for its life against the forces of true darkness.
"When He is taken out of the way, by Rapturing the Church of believers in whom dwells the Holy Spirit earnest of inheritance, the Holy Spirit restraint will be out of satan's way and his lawlessness can abound. The Rapture removes the Bride of Christ in whom dwells the Holy Spirit during the Church Age.
Now, brothers, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to him, we ask you not to be quickly shaken in your mind, nor yet be troubled, either by spirit, or by word, or by letter as from us, saying that the day of Christ had come. Let no one deceive you in any way. 3 For it will not be, unless the departure comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of destruction, 4he who opposes and exalts himself against all that is called God or that is worshiped; so that he sits as God in the temple of God, setting himself up as God. 5Don't you remember that, when I was still with you, I told you these things? 6 Now you know what is restraining him, to the end that he may be revealed in his own season. 7 For the mystery of lawlessness already works. Only there is one who restrains now, until he is taken out of the way.
It is easier to get what Paul is speaking of when he sort of repeats himself, as in the way verse three reads, then he repeats himself in verse 6 and 7, explain what the departure is with regard to 'restraining' the lawless one.
5 This is an obvious sign of the righteous judgment of God, to the end that you may be counted worthy of the Kingdom of God, for which you also suffer. 6 Since it is a righteous thing with God to repay affliction to those who afflict you, 7 and to give relief to you who are afflicted with us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, 8 giving vengeance to those who don't know God, and to those who don't obey the Good News of our Lord Jesus, 9 who will pay the penalty: eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might
That is a frightening thing to come and Paul had taught them of it. BUT, chapter two, he reminds them that such a terrible day will not come before The Depature and then the revealing of the man of sin.
I sincerely appreciate your thoughtful answer and of course all believers would love nothing more than to escape the time tribulation but I really don’t believe we will leave the earth until Christ’s return.
The Church has been persecuted throughout History. That is the wrath the persecution by man inspire by Satan’s hatred. But the Tribulation will be the Wrath of God. We are not appointed unto Wrath. I These 4 was given to comfort one another, not to warn one another.
Not to worry, so long as you believe He is The Savior, your Savior, He will will and do of His good pleasure. And it pleases God to Rapture away those in Christ as a Glory to Him, not the one being snatched away. Just be sure to keep oil in your lamp and a reserve for we know not the hour our Lord cometh.
pingalingaling
It's not just "tribulation". The last days are God's wrath and those in Christ have been promised they will never be subjected to the wrath of God.
1 Thessalonians 5:9 For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,
1 Thessalonians 1:10 And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.
Truly, perishing because of a lack of knowledge. Someone in ‘the church’ tells them the Tribulation is just troubles, and they do not differentiate the Wrath of God from the wrath of satan and the wrath of man (the latter two having been the hallmark of the Church Age, even today in some Isslimeic regions), well these blind sheep stumble on bravely, falling in one ditch after another.
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