To suggest the rapture is a new understanding is to ignore the scriptures that teach such an event. Those scriptures have been with the church from the beginning, and really the argument is not about the existence of a ‘rapture’ but in the timing or interpretation of that event.
These are not new ideas.
1 Th 4:15-17 - …15By the word of the Lord, we declare to you that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will be the first to rise. 17After that, we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.…
“Those scriptures have been with the church from the beginning, and really the argument is not about the existence of a ‘rapture’ but in the timing or interpretation of that event.”
Yes, those scriptures have been around, but until “rapture” theorists cropped up, everyone correctly understood them to be merely describing the resurrection of the righteous. There is no separate event only for the living described in any of those verses, no matter how hard one tries to twist them to justify it.
Yep caught up with the Lord on his way down (his return, the end). Note it does not say caught up and taken to heaven. Those in Christ are given new resurrected bodies, these new bodies are for earth not heaven. The only physical bodies in heaven are Jesus, Enoch and Elijah. Bodies are for earth, a new millennial rule of Jesus on earth.
Matt 24:29 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
IMMEDIATELY after the tribulation Jesus gathers his elect ( not before the tribulation). You can’t read the word of God and support this false rapture teaching.
[Speaking as a born & bred - now former - pre-tribber] This passage, which so many Evangelicals believe teaches the pre-tribulation rapture, teaches exactly the opposite. When, according to the verse, does the rapture occur? AFTER the resurrection - cp. v. 17: "after that..."
If pre-tribbers were consistent with Scripture, instead of teaching a sudden, instantaneous rapture, they would be teaching that the FIRST event will be the opening of graves all around the world, and the bodies of the dead in Christ ascending to heaven. Only AFTER this earth-shaking event witnessed by people everywhere, would the rapture occur.
Is this what pre-trib prophecy teachers are teaching? No. It shows how weak the standard "pre-trib rapture" theory actually is, if even the primary (and virtually sole) text they rely upon does not support the picture they paint of a sudden spiriting away of believers
I shudda read ahead.