Question: Can you justify your interpretation of "two shall be grinding at the mill, one shall be ...

Question: I was always taught that “two shall be grinding at the mill, one shall be taken, the other left, etc.” refers to Christ at His second coming taking the wicked from the earth and leaving the Tribulation saints. Yet you teach this occurs at the Rapture before the Tribulation. Can you justify that interpretation?

Response: Yes. The Second Coming occurs in the midst of Armageddon in Revelation 19. Even before Armageddon the earth is in utter devastation. Already in Revelation 6 one-fourth of the world’s population has been killed. There have been famine, pestilence, and earthquakes that move mountains and islands out of their place so that the earth has been practically destroyed. And at last Christ must intervene to stop the destruction or no flesh would survive (Mt 24:22).

Yet Christ says that when “one shall be taken and the other left” the conditions on the earth will be as in the days of Noah with people “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage” (Mt 24:38); and as in the days of Lot when “they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded” (Lk 17:28). That description doesn’t fit the midst of Armageddon when Christ comes with His bride to execute judgment upon Antichrist and his followers. It can only refer to a time before the Great Tribulation, and that is when the Rapture must occur.