Question: In your December article you said that “Jews (like Gentiles) who believe in Christ prior to His Second Coming (when He makes Himself known to Israel and all Israel is saved) are in the church.” I wanted clarification whether those saved after the rapture of His Bride (made up of Jewish and Gentile believers) are part of His church.
Response: We are told that at the Rapture “the dead in Christ shall rise” to be caught up with the living saints into heaven. We are also told that when Christ returns at the Second Coming and His feet touch the Mount of Olives He brings “all the saints” with Him (Zec:14:5And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with thee.
See All...).
The Old Testament repeatedly refers to true believers as saints. Surely Abraham and David and Daniel, et al. are among the saints. They must be resurrected at the Rapture as part of the church for two reasons: (1) All the saints return with Christ at the Second Coming, so no saints could still be in the grave; and (2) the only other resurrection we read of (other than that of the unbelievers before the Great White Throne, Rv 20:13, for judgment) is in Revelation:20:4And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
See All..., and it involves only “them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither had received his mark....” These are the martyrs during the Great Tribulation under Antichrist, which could not include Old Testament saints.
That those martyred under Antichrist are also in the church seems clear from the fact that they are part of “the first resurrection” (Rv 20:5), which must include those raised after the Rapture. The remainder of both Jews and Gentiles who did not become believers until Christ returned at Armageddon, and were thus not martyred, continue alive on this earth in His millennial kingdom and inhabit the new earth and are therefore not part of the church, which will reign in resurrected, glorified bodies over them.