All Doves:
The critics of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture repeatedly tell us there is not a single verse that states that the Rapture is going to be Pre-Trib. The fact is, there is NO verse to prove that it is not true, so the converse of that is just as true or valid. The precise argument can also be made about every other position held on the Rapture. By that, I am stating NO other view of the Rapture is even remotely explicit to support the Mid-Trib, Pre-Wrath, Post-Trib, Pan-Trib, or No-Trib position on the Rapture. While this is by no means, a "he says, she says" argument, I have offered abundant support for the Pre-Tribulation Rapture in my series of posts on "Absence of Proof is Not Proof of Absence".
The rants of 'The Omega Shock Letter' author John Little have not abated, apparently he wants to eat our lunch, and to bury us as well, telling us we believe in a lie. He has, since last time, issued, parts 2,3,4 & 5 of his pontification on behalf of the "Pre-Wrath-Rapture-Babble" crowd. Remember my points from before as well as to his qualifications, they are so unimpressive. His problem is not with Eschatology but with Ecclessiology. He can't seem to see the clear difference between Israel and the Church.
The Church and Israel are completely separate entities in the Bible. Like oil and water they cannot be commingled as one!
While the Bible notes the name 'Israel' 2,566 times between the Old and New Testament, the Bible only refers to the 'Church' 77 times and the Church does not begin to appear until Matthew 16. Then on Tuesday or Wednesday of this past week, Mark Dice, an internet web pundit joined their choir and came out with his rants in a fifteen-minute take-down tirade against the Pre-Trib Rapture, using all the traditional lies to attempt to discredit the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. He began by attacking a movie that is soon to be released, starring Nicholas Cage, which by the way, has also been disavowed by Christian sites as being unbiblical, the movie that is. Mark Dice in his fifteen-minute ravings and rants revealed his lack of Biblical knowledge or understanding. Ditto on that regarding his knowledge of Church history. The belief of a Pre-Tribulation Rapture was well-established in the early church for the first three centuries, until Constantine legalized Christianity as the "State" religion. The Roman Catholic Church's power crushed the concept or idea for the next thirteen centuries. All of the critics of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture, in their rants and attacks, merely reveal their ignorance of Church history, and quote each-other's meaningless bovine excrement.
When Dr. Frank Thompson published his "Thompson Chained Reference Bible" in 1890, the world would see the fruits of Dr. Thompson a century later. Dr. Thompson was Anti-Semitic, the evidence is only found throughout his other writings. For those that are not familiar with the Thompson Chained Reference Bible, he broke a taboo of the written Word of God in KJV Bible in Revelation 22:18-19. I'll let you read them for yourselves. They are found at the end of Revelation, easy to find. Only two verses follow the quoted passage until you come to the end of the Bible. Dr. Thompson went through and changed each and every verse where the word Israel appeared and he inserted the word 'church' in substitute of the name 'Israel'. Fans of the Thompson Chained Reference Bible either ignore this fact or dismiss it as unimportant, but it is important.
I don't think I need to explain that the words 'Israel' and 'church' are NOT the same in the Hebrew or Greek text for either. Dr. Thompson actually provides the critics of academia evidence that Dr. Frank Thompson was stupid, but to be quite honest, Dr. Thompson was not stupid, merely arrogant and vindictive in his Anti-Semitism. This is not the first time in theological history that Truth has been set back by man's arrogance. Respected preacher and president of the Master's Seminary, John MacArthur did a similar thing a while back, stating that if one took the Mark of the Beast, they could still go to Heaven. His logic and reasoning were severely flawed and again we rely on the Apostle Paul's words of Acts 17:11, and not Dr. Frank Thompson or Dr. John MacArthur.
In this post we are going to be looking at the concept of what God did when trouble came. There is an abundant number of references to teach us that when trouble came God saved his remnant in a temporary but safe place. These are verses from the entire Bible, beginning in Genesis, that imply, infer, or support the concept of a Pre-Tribulation Rapture. The "Pre-Wrath-Rapture-Babble" folks have nothing to draw upon for "substance" to argue their case, and are forced to picket with the rants of John Little's 'The Omega Shock Letter', and now Mark Dice, which they still have at the top of their web site. I'm not inclined to think they will change it any time soon. They are clones of the 'Energizer bunny', it just keeps on beating the drum.
(1.)
In some of the following illustrations, I have touched upon some previously, but from slightly different perspectives. When God decided to cleanse the Earth of men, all except a remnant which He temporarily kept safe in the ark. In reading these, think for a moment, how the Church chooses to teach these stories. They are not fables, but real life historical events, but also containedwithin "spiritual" truths to be discovered.
Genesis 7:1 reads, "Then the LORD said to Noah, "Enter the ark, you and all your household, for you alone I have seen to be righteous before Me in this time."
Genesis 7:16 - "Those that entered, male and female of all flesh, entered as God had commanded him; and the LORD closed it behind him."
Genesis 7:17 - "Then the flood came upon the earth for forty days, and the water increased and lifted up the ark, so that it rose above the earth."
I will be underlining specific words and phrases that speak to the concept of a Pre-Tribulation Rapture "word pictures" If this simply appeared once or twice in the Biblical text, you might be able to argue it was coincidental and insignificant; however, when you see this "word-picture" theme repeated often, it is not by coincidence, and that it implies, infers, or portrays a Pre-Tribulation Rapture "word-picture". We find this pattern hundreds of times in the KJV Bible.
(2.)
Sodom was condemned but God sent angels to rescue Lot before calamity and kept him in a nearby city until it was safe.
Genesis 19:19 - "Now behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have magnified your loving kindness, which you have shown me by saving my life; but I cannot escape to the mountains, for the disaster will overtake me and I will die;"
Genesis 19:20 - "Now behold, this town is near enough to flee to, and it is small. Please, let me escape there (is it not too small?) that my life be saved."
Genesis 19:22 - "Hurry, escape there, for I cannot do anything until you arrive there." Therefore the name of the town was called Zoar." In Hebrew "Zoar" means "place of refuge" and "little one". It is named for the father of Nethanel who was chief of the tribe of Issachar at the time of the Exodus from Egypt.
(3.)
Joseph was condemned by his brothers, thrown into a pit and saved by God for a time in Egypt.
Genesis 37:28 - "Then some Midianite traders passed by, so they pulled him up and lifted Joseph out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty (shekels) of silver. Thus they brought Joseph into Egypt."
Genesis 37:29 - "Now Reuben returned to the pit, and behold, Joseph was not in the pit; so he tore his garments."
(4.)
Death was decreed to Moses and all first-born sons. God saved him in a basket among the reeds.
Exodus 1:22 - "Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, "Every son who is born you are to cast into the Nile, and every daughter you are to keep alive."
Exodus 2:2 - "The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was beautiful, she hid him for three months."
Exodus 2:3 - "But when she could hide him no longer, she got him a wicker basket and covered it over with tar and pitch. Then she put the child into it and set it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile."
(5.)
Israel was saved in a near town of Goshen, from the hail of the judgments.
Exodus 9:26 - "Only in the land of Goshen, where the sons of Israel were, there was no hail." Actually, Joseph encouraged his brothers to settle in the land of Goshen (not Indiana), and they prospered there and multiplied. We know that God protected Goshen from the plagues sent on the Egyptians nearby. That a Semite like Joseph could rise to power in Egypt was especially providential because Egyptians held great disdain for the Semites and referred to them as 'miserable Asiatics', in Egyptian literature. The Bible references three Goshen's but our focus here is on the northeastern side of the river Nile Delta. The Bible explicitly states that the Israelites in Goshen were saved from the plague of flies and hail, thus we can assume they were protected from the other plagues on the Egyptians as well, given their close proximity.
(6.)
In Exodus The LORD rescued those who were safe in a house marked by the Blood of the Lamb.
Exodus 11:4 - "Moses said, "Thus says the LORD, About midnight I am going out into the midst of Egypt."
Exodus 12:12 - "For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment - I am the LORD."
Exodus 12:13 - "The blood shall be a sign for you on the house where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt."
Exodus 12:23 - "For the LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to smite you." Something that most people forget is that the Passover applied to not just the Israelites, but included anyone that was in the household, even if they were Egyptians or Gentiles. The "Theme" of Passover is a clear picture of God's protection brought at near midnight to those he chose to preserve and deliver from Egypt [a picture of an evil world]. The concept of the "Feasts of the LORD" of Leviticus 23 were real [literal] events, but even much more, they were rehearsals of God's larger plan of "Redemption". When Christ Jesus fulfilled the Feasts of the LORD, he fulfilled them multiple ways: historically, physically, personally, and prophetically.
The importance is in that the "blood" protected the inhabitants within the household where it was applied to the lintels and doorposts. The Pre-Tribulation Rapture is the protection of the Bride of Christ, the Church.
(7.)
As Pharaoh came to destroy them, Israel was saved by another flood when the LORD kept the waters from destroying them.
Exodus 14:29 - "But the sons of Israel walked on dry land through the midst of the sea, and the waters were like a wall to them on their right hand and on their left." The truth of the Exodus event was proven by Dr. Lenert Moeller, in his book, 'The Exodus Case' and further documented by Jim and Penny Caldwell in their DVD series on 'The God of the Mountain'. This evidence has been suppressed by much of the Church, because of its implications for the contemporary Church. Evading and avoiding the evidence of truth does not nullify the truth. It only obscures it from the general public. The media [secular and atheist owned] does not desire to share this good news and does so at all cost.
I am going to pause in this series that I have to share in order that the reader can digest the implied, inferred and significance of how God not only saved His people, supernaturally, but provided us these word-pictures of the Great Thing that God is about to do for faithful believers. The Pre-Tribulation Rapture is our "Blessed Hope". There are 1,189 chapters of the Bible, and more than 31,100 verses - 31102 to be precise. The consistency and coherence of this larger picture is not broken in its huge chain, from Genesis to Revelation; and while there is not one single verse that the Rapture will be Pre-Tribulational as the wags at the "Pre-Wrath-Rapture-Babble" site contend, I merely remind you that the wags of the "Pre-Wrath-Rapture-Babble" have nothing, absolutely nothing to prove or even so much as suggest that their theory is valid. They will twist the hell out of Daniel 9:24-27 to deceive their readers. Proverbs 25:2 gives us the encouragement and motivation to unearth God's "Diamonds and Nuggets."
Let God fill you with Hope this week, like never before.
Pastor Bob