Tuesday, July 27, 2010

I'm pre-Trib

“For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Thessalonians 5:9
While there are many verses that support the pre-Trib rapture of the church, this is the verse that clinches it for me. The Tribulation is the time of God’s wrath being poured out on a Christ-rejecting world, the end times when sin in sinful man will finally be judged. We will not be part of that if we have accepted Christ, and He has already paid the punishment we were due to receive for sin, on the cross. We are no longer condemned with the world (Rom. 8:1). Just as Lot was removed from Sodom before the judgement came, and just as Enoch was removed from the earth before the Flood, so too the Church (all true believers in Christ) will be removed before God’s judgement is poured out. God has not appointed us to suffer wrath, nor does He judge the righteous with the wicked (Gen. 18:25).
There are some who agree with all this, but point out that the Great Tribulation is technically only the last 3 ½ years of the final seven year period detailed in the book of Revelation (also known as the ‘70th week of Daniel’, see Dan. 9:24-27). They hold a ‘pre-wrath’ position which has the church enduring some of the wrath of the Antichrist but being removed prior to the sixth seal judgement, where the kings of the earth ask for the mountains to fall on them and hide them from ‘the wrath of the Lamb’ (Rev. 6:16-17). But all of the seals bring judgement, and Who is opening them? It is Jesus. The wrath of God starts with the opening of the first seal, when He takes His hands off the world and lets it deal with the full consequences of its sin for the first time. If we are in Christ, we will not be around to see these things, because He has appointed us unto salvation.

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