Someone should have told Peter and Paul and James and Thomas and early church marytrs there would be a rapture to save them from their time of tribulation..
Agreed. Christ himself promised we would have tribulation in our lives.
Someone should have told Peter and Paul and James and Thomas and early church marytrs there would be a rapture to save them from their time of tribulation..
1 Thes 4:14,16 teaches that those marytrs are only asleep in Christ and will "rise" 1st. Neither will we be saved from tribulation, but I believe we [in Christ] will be saved from God's wrath.
1 Thes 4:17 teaches that those of us [in Christ] yet alive or not yet martyred when the events of 1 Thes 4:16,17 happen will be "caught up" 2nd.
That "catching up" in the Latin Vulgate is 'rapiere' which has been Anglicanized to "rapture".
When it happens and where it fits in the sequence of events in Revelation and Daniel's 70th week, is a subject of much flawed debate, which flaws have often been exposed as the traps they are. And again Christ told us no one but the Father knows when the 2nd coming will be, nor when the "rapture" happens. So date prognostication is also a trap.
However, scripture none the less records and prophecies a "catching up" of those alive in Christ will happen. I believe God's whole word is true and self-consistent, though I don't yet fully understand how. I have studied it at length, and the "pre-Wrath" explanation (rapture around or between the 6th and 7th Seals) is, so far, the best fit, though an imperfect fit.
But if these are the endtimes, then we are to stand firm in our faith and not depend on some "fire escape" to bail us out before our faith is truly tested.
1 Thess. 5:9-11 For God hath not appointed us to wrath but to otain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him. Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another even as also ye do.
1 Cor 15:52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for th trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raesed incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
This is not the last trupet of Rev. 11:15 but the last trumpet of 1 Thess. It is so designated because it signals the end of the present age.
Becky