Seven Strong Arguments for a Pre-Trib Rapture | thebereancall.org

Seven Strong Arguments for a Pre-Trib Rapture

September 7, 2023
Lee Brainard

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My birth name is Lee William Brainard. I am a Bible teacher and an author. The Bible is — by far — my favorite book. I read it in the original languages (Greek and Hebrew), several literal English translations, the German (usually the Elberfelder), and the Greek OT (the Septuagint). My areas of study include the biblical languages, eschatology (prophecy), apologetics, the major theological controversies, ancient history (with particular interest in ancient catastrophism), and electric universe cosmology.

Currently my wife, Nita, and I live in Harvey, ND, where I share in the ministry of the Word at Harvey Gospel Chapel. We have four children (Josiah, Noah, Ezra, and Lydia), all of whom are married. At the present time we have sixteen grandchildren.

My life experiences are varied. I have been, among other things, an Airborne Ranger, a carpenter, a truck driver, a farm hand, a factory worker, a sawmill hand, a car salesman, an insurance salesman, a day trader, a Jiffy Lube tech, and a propane truck driver. I have worked on my own cars, cut a lot of firewood, and done a lot of remodeling. In Wisconsin my boys and I built a 3600-square-foot log home in post-and-beam style.

Lee’s website: www.soothkeep.info

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Transcript:

Lee: All right! Well, it’s a pleasure to be here. It’s always a pleasure to be with the people of God. It’s a pleasure to talk about the things of God. It’s a pleasure to open up the things of God. (Do I have some kind of a “bounce” here in the feedback? Maybe I’m just talking too loud for the volume.) At any rate I do that sometimes. You’ll have to forgive me. I get excited! People mistake this staid laid-back Plymouth Brethren for a Pentecostal. I get too excited sometimes! [Audience laughter]

But anyway, today we’re going to talk about seven strong arguments for a Pre-Tribulation Rapture. Now, we live in some very, very interesting times. [Bob: We do don’t we? Let me try to adjust this (microphone)  just a little bit.]

All right! There we go. So, we live in very interesting times. We see apostasy in the world. The world is apostatizing away from the Judeo/Christian ethic. They’re overthrowing every institution of God. They’re overthrowing belief in God, belief in Christ, belief in the Gospel, belief in Israel, belief in the church, belief in the Bible, belief in marriage, belief in the distinction between the sexes, overthrowing meat and dairy! I mean, just anything that God gave man, there’s opposition to it and it’s growing. We see this everywhere we look.

We also have the rise of a satanic New World Order. There’s a deep-state in every major nation; there’s a global cabal that’s behind the deep state. They are engineering everything; working through dozens of secret societies, working through quasi-government organizations, working through churches, working through every kind of group and organization you could think of. It’s a very grass-roots organization on the bottom level. It’s very deep-state, global cabal at the top. 

But their aim, their goal, is to reduce the world’s population to 500 million, maybe lower. They want to pen everybody into 15-minute cities and treat them like cattle at a packing plant. They want to ban them from eating dairy and have them eat bugs and algae. Welcome to a brave new world!

They want to force them to submit to a “Brave New World Order,” where everyone is facing spyware, facial recognition cameras, the Central Bank digital currency system with a social credit scoring and social grading and social shaming.

That’s what we’re facing!

And I’m telling you, this stuff is happening so fast in the world that if the Lord doesn’t take the church out of the world sometime in the relatively near future, we’re going to run smack dab, and rear end the great tribulation!

That’s what we’re up against! So, when this car of the so-called church is running down the highway, barreling down the highway, towards the Tribulation first, and then all of a sudden every real believer on the planet just disappears, and there’s just a couple passengers left in that car, they’re going to go into the Tribulation.

Now, we also see apostasy in the church. In the broad church—the professing church—we see people are walking away from the Orthodoxy that they’ve given lip service to for centuries. And it’s terrifying to see this going on. 

In the evangelical church, we see things that will give you gray hair overnight! We see the evangelicals used to be a relatively safe haven, but starting around World War II, we saw the rise of the new Evangelical movement, and since then it’s morphed into a hundred different errors. It feels like a many-headed hydra, if you’re familiar with Greek mythology. That many-headed hydra, you take the head off and another one would grow in its place! You couldn’t destroy the monster! That’s what we’re facing right now.

The church—the evangelicals are riddled with a thousand different errors. And we need to have discernment in the last days to stand against this. We’re facing the Emergent Church; we’re facing the prosperity gospel. On the more conservative side, we’re facing things like the King James-Only, and Replacement Theology from the scholarship and the academic communities that are in some branches of the church.

But we’re also facing, as we’ve heard several times already this week, Theistic Evolution. The “flat earth.” The Hebrew Roots. I mean, everywhere we look. Try and find individual Christians that are not influenced by one or more of these areas of serious error. That’s very difficult!

But in spite of all this—in spite of the apostasy that we see in the world, in spite of the apostasy that we see in the professing church, in spite of the apostasy that we see amongst real Christians! Now, real Christians can’t apostatize in the sense of losing their salvation, but they certainly can and do apostatize in the sense of embracing bad doctrine that takes them away from the testimony that God intended them to embrace in the scriptures.

But all this being said, we live in the most exciting time in the history of the church since the birth of the church! You know, we’re facing the deepest, darkest forms of evil in the history of the church. They are more widespread and they’re more militant than they ever have been in the past—the greatest, most deceptive array of false doctrine the church has ever faced in the history of the church. 

It comes with…let me put it this way: There is great honor when men and women rise to the occasion in times of great challenges. And right now, the question that faces us is: Will we rise to the occasion in the last days? Will we rise to the occasion and step up to the plate with the knowledge of the Word of God, with discernment, with sound doctrine, and respond to the issues of the day that are challenging the integrity of the Evangelical Church? That are challenging the authority of scripture? That are challenging the perspicuity of Scripture, as we already heard this week?

Will we be a testimony for righteousness and a testimony for truth? Will we keep a level head when everyone around us is losing theirs? 

Now, in the midst of all this prophetic phenomena that’s going on, I’m going to focus on one issue, and that is the Pre-tribulation Rapture. Now, what’s sad about this is from the late 1800s up until maybe the time of World War II into the 50s, early 60s. The Pre-tribulation Rapture was the dominant eschatology position amongst Evangelicals—at least Evangelicals that were solid Evangelicals, soul-winning Evangelicals, vocal Evangelicals. 

But since that time, the tables have been turned, and we’ve seen, now, a revival of Reformed Eschatology, and the rise of a very vicious anti-Pretribulation spirit, and that characterizes the prophetic battleground around us. 

People are teaching the Pre-wrath Rapture; they’re teaching the Post-trib Rapture; they’re teaching Amillennialism and Preterism, and they’re teaching Post-Millennialism and Kingdom-Dominion theology, and Hebrew Roots. And this has changed the landscape in which we’re trying to operate. 

It used to be that you could have a Prophetic Conference, and everyone assumed that you were going to be preaching the Pre-tribulation Rapture, because they were the only ones that were preaching—well, maybe not the only ones, but virtually the only ones that were preaching prophecy. And now people are holding conferences for every kind of bad eschatology. 

At any rate, these groups, from different angles, have leveled many accusations against the Pretribulation Rapture and left many people that believe it, kind of cowering. They don’t know how to respond.

“Oh, there’s no Pre-tribulation Rapture taught anywhere in church history! You won’t find it at all in the early church fathers.” Oh, really? 

“Well, the Pre-tribulation Rapture was invented by J.N. Darby, and he got it from a demon-possessed woman!”

You can’t believe that unless you’re completely ignorant of history and you’re gullible! 

“Oh, but there’s no big names in church history who were Pre-tribulation Rapture believers.” 

If that’s true, I could care less! 

“Oh, the vast majority of people in church history that were anybody, they weren’t Pre-tribulation Rapture.”

But that’s beside the point! 

“The Reformation leaders and the leaders of the First and Second Great Awakening, they weren’t Pre-Trib.”

Yeah, well, so, what’s the point? We had 1500 years where people didn’t understand salvation by faith alone. They were bamboozled and led astray by bad doctrine. Martin Luther comes along, stands…one man, stands alone, and puts his 95 Theses up on the door of the Chapel of Wittenberg, and starts a revolution that leads to Sola Scriptura and Salvation by faith alone. Just one man!

Well, what would have happened if he had listened to the reproaches in his day? “But Martin! No big name in the last 1500 years ever believed in salvation by faith alone!”

“Oh, yeah, I never thought about that!”

That would be a rough situation!

I’m going to tell you what, folks, when it comes to pre-Tribulation Rapture, I’m going to give you a lot of arguments today for a pre-Trib Rapture. I’m going to give you seven distinct arguments. But right now, I can tell you, before the living God, that if every pre-Tribulation Rapture believer on the planet turned tail and ran and surrendered in the next year, I wouldn’t wave one iota in my belief in the pre-Tribulation Rapture, because I am standing on the Word of God alone. And if I have to stand alone with Noah; if I have to stand alone with Martin Luther, then so be it! 

But I’m going to stand on the Word of God, regardless of who stands with me and who stands against me! I’m going to stand on the Word of God no matter what kind of reproaches are thrown my way.

Now, I’m not going to tell you I’ve got rhinoceros hide and I don’t “feel” anything that’s thrown against me, because sometimes reproaches sting. But at the end of the day, when I lay my head down on the pillow, I am seeking God, saying, “God, strengthen me to stand for Your truth, regardless of what men say!”

Well, anyway, let’s move into the seven strong arguments for the Pre-tribulation Rapture. I’m going to just run through them and enumerate them and then we’re going to walk through them one at a time.

The first one, number 1: The Bible makes a clear distinction between Israel and the church. 

2: Distinct redemption programs under the new covenant: God plainly states in the Scriptures that the 70th week, or the Tribulation, is upon Israel. 

3: The Bible clearly promises that the church shall be delivered from the time of Tribulation. 

4: Every passage in the Bible that gives us saints in the Tribulation, that gives us characteristics where we can identify those saints, they are never Christians. They’re always Jews. Practicing Mosaic Jews. 

5: The church is seen in heaven in Revelation 4-5 prior to the opening of the sixth seal in Revelation 6. 

6: There is a number of typologies in the Scripture, which vindicate, validate, and illuminate a Pre-tribulation Rapture. 

And 7: When we look at the days of Noah in Matthew 24, and we look at the whole concept of relative normality, that fits the time of the Rapture. It does not fit the time of the Second Coming.

So, let’s move into this first argument: The Bible makes a distinction between Israel and the Church. Two distinct redemption programs that both fall under the New Covenant in the Messiah. Now, I’m going to start right off by saying there is absolutely no sense on which Replacement Theology is correct. Israel, the actual physical descendants of Jacob have not been permanently set aside and replaced by the church. Classic replacement theology is out of the picture. It’s absolutely wrong.

But there are some people that teach that Israel, literal descendants of Jacob, has been set aside, not to be replaced by the Gentile church but that God is now putting Gentiles in the Jewish body of believers. He’s adding Gentiles to Israel. And they say, “Oh, we’re not Replacement Theology! We reject Replacement Theology! We think God never left Israel!”

If you replace Israel in the sense of the physical descendants of Jacob and you replace that with Israel in the sense of the Jews and the Gentiles in a mixed combination that’s mostly Gentiles, you just came up ultimately with the same replacement theology as classic replacement theology. You just slapped a different label on it.

So let me look at the arguments that demonstrate that there is a distinction between Israel and the church, and that there’s two programs. Let’s start with Romans:11:28-29: “As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes, but as touching the Election, they are beloved for the Father’s sakes, for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.”

Now, let me ask you something: How many of you (because we all know that the gifts and calling of God are without repentance), how many of you in your mind, whenever you hear that, immediately associate it with God’s calling of Israel and His fulfilling His Old Testament promises? When I grew up as a young babe in the Lord hearing this, I never heard it applied to Bible Prophecy; never heard it applied to Israel. We are always applying the principle to things in our day. I’m not saying that’s not legitimate. That’s a legitimate application, but right here, God’s applying the principle specifically to the fact that He has gifted and called Israel; He’s given them a job to do, a testimony to be, and He will not forsake His gifting and calling. He will fulfill it.

Now right now, currently, they are opposed to Christ and they are opposed to the Gospel. But God still has His Old Testament promises on His heart. He is going to give national Israel a second chance in the Tribulation. And one-third of the nation, according to Zechariah 13 is going to be converted. They are ultimately going to believe in Jesus Christ and the Gospel. And they will, through the New Covenant, inherit their Old Testament promises.

Now, by the way, I want to give a little rabbit trail here. The Tribulation, make no mistake! The Tribulation is not God returning to salvation by the Law. Some people make a mistake here. Nobody has ever been saved by the Law. There were many people saved under the Law in the Old Testament, but nobody was saved by the Law. David is very, very clear: “Blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven.”

Now the Tribulation is God going back to the people who are under the Law currently and giving them a second chance to receive the Messiah they rejected the first time so that they can receive their Old Testament promises under the New Covenant in Jesus Christ’s blood—in the Messiah.

He’s going to give them a second chance. And this is going to be glorious, because we read in Romans:11:12: “Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world and the diminishing of them be the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fullness!” And verse 15 says, “For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?”

In other words, “You thought it was amazing when Israel got set aside and God went to the Gentiles, and we saw this great amazing work of God, you thought that was amazing? It’s going to be even more amazing when I take the Gentile church out of the world and I go back to Israel! Then it’s going to be even more amazing.”

Personally, (this is just my estimation of what I see based on the scriptures), I think the Tribulation is going to be the greatest revival in the history of the world in the midst of the greatest apostasy in the history of the world. 

Now, here’s another argument: We have the Church Age vs. the Temple, so that we’ve got two distinct programs. God’s going to do one, then He’s going to do the other, Acts:15:13-16. This was the big Counsel in Jerusalem. And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, “Men and brethren, harken unto me. Simeon has declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name. And to this agree the words of the prophet, as it is written: “After this I will return and will build again the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down, and I will build again the ruins thereof and set it up.”

So, notice, we’ve got this phrase “after this…” This is not equating the building of the church with the building of the Temple, and we’re spiritualizing the building of the temple. That’s where some people go with this. This is saying, “After God is done gathering a Gentile people for His name out of the whole world, then He’s going to return to Israel and rebuild the Temple.”

Basically, what’s going on here is James, the lights have come on and he is recognizing that this Gentile church age dovetails perfectly with the Lord’s stated rejection of Israel and His later return to the Nation of Israel.

When this concept is presented to him, the lights came on. He put two and two together. He said, “Oh, yeah! All over the Old Testament we see Israel rejected, we see God separating Himself from Israel; then we see God returning to Israel. We see God building the Temple. So we can take this rejection period and, BOOM!, the Gentile church fits in there perfectly! This dovetails together. This is the design of the Living God. 

Now, what we see here given as a quotation, he says, “This agrees with the words of the prophet as it is written: “After this I will return and will build again the Tabernacle of David,” I’ve not been able to find out…. To me this does not look like a direct quotation of any passage. I’ve looked for it and I didn’t find it, but what I did find is that this represents a number of passages from the Old Testament. He’s just kind of digesting and putting all these old Testament prophecies and promises together and saying, “This is what it’s talking about!”

God has rejected Israel. He’s working with the Gentiles. He’s going to come back to Israel. He’s going to rebuild His temple.

In other words, what’s going on here is that God is not permanently done with Israel. There is no Replacement Theology. Romans 9-11 were written for one main purpose: to demonstrate that God had a purpose with Israel. He has not set that purpose aside. He is going to fulfill that purpose.

Now, here’s another argument that goes down this path that shows there’s two programs going on. God cannot have two temples down here on earth at the same time. He rent the veil of the earthly temple at the Cross prior to Pentecost. He set the earthly temple aside and then He made the spiritual temple. There was a spiritual precedent going on here. God—if He’s going to do the same kind of thing—He needs to remove the spiritual temple from the earth before He goes back to the physical Temple. 

You know, the earthly temple and the spiritual temple, there are two distinct Testimonies on earth that are operating on very different and contrasting principles. We see all over in the book of Hebrews, when the reality comes, God’s no longer working with the shadow. The earthly temple was a shadow. What He’s done with the shadow, He goes to the Body, the real organism, which is the Church. But there’s seven years of the shadow left coming. And then God is going to give Israel the reality in the kingdom. 

Now, I want to point out one more thing before we go on to my number 2 argument for a Pre-Tribulation Rapture. And that is we have these two different programs we’ve been looking at: the Church and Israel. The Church is God’s program for individuals having their own relationship with the Savior.

Now, when we come into Israel’s aspect, this is God’s relationship with the nation under the New Covenant. Now there’ll be Gentiles saved during the Tribulation, and they’re going to be saved as individuals too, but God is focusing on His relationship with the Nation of Israel. There were promises made to national Israel, not to individual Israelites. To National Israel, about the land, about the Temple, about the Throne, about the Kingdom blessings and promises. You have to have a redeemed Nation of Israel for those promises to be fulfilled, which is one of the reasons why Satan is trying so hard and has been trying so hard to erase the Nation of Israel from planet earth. Because in his mind, his perverted mind, he’s thinking, “If I can get rid of the Israelites, then the Lord Jesus cannot return!” 

He doesn’t realize that God could close both eyes and tie both hands behind his back and still beat the daylights out of him! National Israel cannot receive her national promises until the nation is brought into faith in Jesus Christ and His work on the cross, and they receive their Messiah! 

This is going to be an amazing time! When you look at what’s going on in the 70th week, we see that the nation of Israel, according to Daniel:9:27, is going to have a covenant forced upon them by the Antichrist.

In Isaiah 28 it tells us that this is a covenant with death and an agreement with Sheol. This is the Great Apostasy that we read about in 2 Thessalonians 2. It’s associated with the Antichrist. And this apostasy is going to keep growing and spreading until the whole nation in the middle of the week… Well, not the whole nation and every individual, but the nation as a whole is going to worship the Antichrist. One-third of them will refuse to do so.

Now, this is going to end in a very great manner. There are numerous passages in the prophets that tell us, we come to the end of the seventieth week and this whole thing is over, and judgment has been brought upon the world, there’s going to be great mourning amongst the Tribes of Israel as they realize that their rejected Messiah is their true Messiah indeed. 

They’re going to see the holes in His hands: “What meaneth these holes in your hands? What meaneth these wounds?” And they’re going to weep and mourn and be restored in a glorious way! What a blessing that’s going to be!

And anointing the Most Holy is anointing the Holy Place. That’s going to be an exciting day too, when the Millennial Temple is anointed.

Here’s another verse: Jeremiah:32:7: “Alas, for that day is great so that there is none like it; it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.”

“None like it?” This language rings like the Tribulation, Why does it ring like the Tribulation? Because it is the Tribulation! If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. And if it looks like the Tribulation, it is the Tribulation. God’s great focus in the time of Tribulation is the Nation of Israel. 

He’s got a plan with the Gentile world too, but His primary focus is the Nation and people of Israel. We read this also in Daniel chapter 12: “At that time, Michael shall stand up. The great Prince who stands watch over the sons of your people and there shall be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation, even to that time. And at that time, your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found in the book.”

What a day that’s going to be! During this Tribulation, God has already promised, Not one Jew who believes in the Messiah is going to be lost.

Now, some of them are going to be martyred. But not one is going to be lost to the delusion. And by the way, I’m going to say this again later, but I’m going to say it right now: Nobody in the Tribulation—NOBODY—is going to accidentally take the mark of the Beast. Nobody is going to be deceived or bamboozled into taking it, in the sense that it was an accident. Taking the mark of the Beast is an intentional rejection of what is known to be light to embrace what is obviously darkness.

We’re going to cover that more in a minute, so I’ll just move on here. 

Now, there’s a time of trouble here such as never was. We’re talking about the Tribulation again. And again the focus is Israel. This is the Archangel Michael standing up for the nation of Israel—and, by the way, there is a great and mighty spiritual war going on behind the scenes. If we could see the spiritual warfare going on behind the scenes of what’s going on at this conference right now, if we could see the spiritual warfare going on behind the scenes in our daily life, our knees would start knocking! When we see the Holy Angels up against the demonic fallen dark angels, if we could physically see them, it would revolutionize our spiritual warfare on our own behalf!

Now, we can’t physically see this stuff, and I’m actually glad that we don’t physically see it. But if we can spiritually apprehend what’s going on, it will also revolutionize our spiritual warfare. 

Last testimony on this subject, Matthew:24:21: “For then there will be great Tribulation such as has not been seen since the beginning of this world until this time, no nor ever shall be.” Again we see great tribulation such as never was before and never will be again. And if we examine the context of Matthew 24, read through it, it’s unmistakable. The context is the people and nation of Israel. They live in Judaea. They’re told to flee to the mountains of Judaea. In their midst the Antichrist sits in the Holy Place. That is he sits in the Temple! And God upholds the Sabbath in His dealings with them. “Pray that your flight be not on the Sabbath.” This is not the church in Matthew 24 there. This is the people and nation of Israel. 

So we’ve looked at these arguments, and if we trust the plain statements of scripture, God has focused the 70th week on the people and nation of Israel.

Now, the third point is that whenever we see saints in the Tribulation with characterizing distinctives, it’s never the church. It’s always Mosaic Lawkeeping Jews. The fact is the church is not seen on earth after Revelation chapter 3. They’re seen in heaven in Revelation chapters 4 and 5 before the first seal is opened in Revelation chapter 6, but the church is not seen on earth again until Revelation 19, when the Church Victorious descends with the Lord victorious on white horses. I’m looking forward to that day!

I’m telling you, I’m getting tired of politics talking about draining the swamp and taking the trash out! Not one of them is serious, and the ones that are serious get taken out, one way or the other. 

This world is so far gone that only the Lord Jesus can come down and bind the strong man and drain the swamp and carry the trash out. 

So if you look at the New Testament, look high, look low, there’s no passage—not one that has Christians in the Tribulation. They all have distinct Mosaic economy-keeping Jews.

I already went through Matthew 24 so I’ll just walk through it really fast. We see in 29Matthew 24 the Temple is the Holy Place in verse 15. We see that God’s upholding the Sabbath in verse 20. Now this is not the Jews upholding the Sabbath for themselves. This is God upholding the Sabbath. He tells them, “Pray that your flight be not in the winter or on the Sabbath.” In verse 16, the inhabitants of Judaea are told to flee to the mountains. This is not telling the inhabitants of Montana to flee to the Rocky Mountains, or the inhabitants of California to flee to the Sierra Nevadas! It’s telling the inhabitants of Judea to flee to the mountains of Judea.

We come to Revelation 11 vs. 1-2. What do we read? “Then I was given a reed like a measuring rod, and the angels stood saying, ‘Rise and measure the temple of God, the altar and those that worship there. But leave out the court which is outside the Temple and do not measure it, for it has been given to the Gentiles, and they shall tread the holy city underfoot for 42 months.’” 

What do we see here? We see God owning the Temple, the Altar, and those that worship at it. This is incompatible with Christianity at this age. When people try and go down the path, thinking “Oh, the church is going to be in the Tribulation!” They can come up with a cool little theory that has a couple proof texts and make an argument that looks like you’re going to have the church in the Tribulation! But they cannot deal honestly with several dozen contexts in the New Testament which have Jewish believers in the Tribulation or imply Jewish believers in the Tribulation.

Now, we have also, in the very next few verses, v. 3-6, “I will give power to my two witnesses and they will prophesy 1,260 days clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the God of the earth, and if anyone wants to harm them, fire proceeds from their mouth and devours their enemies. And if anyone wants to harm them, he must be killed in that same manner. These have power to shut heaven so that no rain falls in the days of their prophecy and they have power over waters, to turn them to blood and to strike the earth with all plagues as often as they desire.

So, I believe that these two witnesses are Moses and Elijah. I’m not going to go into that now; that’s a message in and of itself. But no matter who these witnesses are, their testimony is absolutely contrary to the Church Age.

Now, how do I know this? Well, I know because I read in Luke chapter 9:52-56: “As they went, they entered the village of the Samaritans to prepare for Him. But they did not receive Him because His face was set for His journey to Jerusalem. And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, ‘Hey, Lord, do want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them just like Elijah did?’” 

And He turned and He rebuked them and said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.” Now here, our clue is the phrase “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of.” He’s not telling them, “Listen, you guys are showing fruit like you’re unsaved!” No, He’s not saying that. He’s saying, “You guys don’t understand that I’m moving away from the Mosaic economy of the Old Testament and moving into a new economy, the church economy, and we’re going to be doing things a lot differently. There’s no more fire being called down from heaven! You’re in the wrong dispensation.”

This was a problem with the Reformation, and it’s still the problem in the Reformation churches! They’re in the wrong dispensation! The Lord would say the same thing to them He said to His disciples! “You guys don’t know what manner of spirit you are! You guys don’t understand what dispensation you’re in.”

So once we understand this, and we go back to these two witnesses calling down fire from heaven and calling down all kinds of plagues, they’re doing exactly what Moses did in the deliverance from Egypt and what Elijah did in his ministry. And they will be doing this in the Tribulation because the Tribulation is the last seven years of the Mosaic economy; it’s not church economy!

So now, the fourth argument is that the church is promised deliverance from the Tribulation. Directly promised! We see this, for instance, in 1 Thessalonians:1:10: “To wait for His son from heaven whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come.”

From what wrath? From the judgment coming upon the world at the end of the age, from the Tribulation and the Second Coming.

Here’s a rule of thumb: Unless wrath is clearly expressed, in the passage you’re looking at is eternal punishment in fire or outer darkness. It is a reference to temporal judgment at the end of the age.

The context here, there is nothing that talks about the eternal fire or the outer darkness. This is talking about the judgment that comes upon the world at the end of the age. 

Now, I’m going to go into this a little deeper in a moment, but I’m just going to bring it out here right now. Because a lot of people misunderstand the Day of the Lord. They always want to look at the Day of the Lord like this one nice tidy package. It only has one sense, and they try and fit every place into that one sense.

The Day of the Lord has four senses in the scriptures. It has the sense of the Twinkling of the Morning Star, which is the morning star of the Day of the Lord—that’s the first warning shot to the world that the Day of the Lord is on the way (That’s the Rapture of the Church). The 70th week is the Dawning of the Day of the Lord upon the world. It starts so it’s very innocuous and it moves up until it comes full daylight (Malachi:4:1-3), has the sunrise of the Day of the Lord. On that day, there is no more mercy. The seventieth week is Judgment mixed with Grace and Gospel. When that day comes, the Gospel offer is done. Mercy is done. Grace is done. The door is closed. Nobody is saved.

“On that day, let him that is righteous be righteous still, and let him that is unrighteous still.” That judgment wipes out the whole earth; the sheep and the goats get judged. There’s nobody left on the planet but the godly. The resurrected Godly that are going to rule and the still living human beings that came out of the great Tribulation that are not glorified to be ruled over.

And then we’re going to go into a thousand-year-long day, the kingdom. The Day of the Lord in contrast to man’s day. 

Now here’s another argument. This one is my favorite argument for a pretribulation Rapture: Revelation:3:10: “Because you have kept the word of my patience, I also will keep you from the hour of trial, which shall come upon all the world to try them that dwell upon the earth.

Now, let me paraphrase this. And by the way, I do use paraphrases at times. I usually use my own, but paraphrases can be a useful tool if you use them next to literal translations and you’re struggling with the context that can give you the general idea and then you can go back to the literal translation and you can get your precision. Paraphrases can only give you a general idea of the right direction of the passage. And if the paraphrase is going the wrong direction, it’s going to be a hindrance rather than a help. 

But here’s my paraphrase: “Because you patiently suffered with me in the time of my patience, I will remove you from earth prior to the worldwide trial I am bringing on the earth to try all those who are earthly minded as opposed to heavenly minded.”

Now notice—the whole world here. This is the entire planet. We’ve had a lot of severe judgments come upon this world in the last 2,000 years. But not even WWII covered the whole planet. World War II covered a lot of territory, but it did not cover—nowhere near—the entire planet. Since the flood, there’s been no judgment that has engulfed the entire planet. This is going to engulf the entire planet! And notice too, the trial falls on them that dwell on the earth. It’s the earth dwellers. It doesn’t fall on the Christians. It doesn’t fall on the world in general. It’s directed at the earth dwellers, in other words, those that are earthly minded rather than heavenly minded.

How’s this going to work? The Rapture trumpet blows, all the heavenly minded who are born again go up; everyone left at that moment is earthly minded and they are all headed into the Tribulation! 

Now, you’ve probably heard of the Pre-Wrath Rapture. They handle this passage very differently. They say, “Oh, this passage, Revelation:3:10; this is the church being preserved under the Antichrist. This is the church being preserved in the time of trial or the time of Tribulation.”

Well, there’s two HUGE problems with this interpretation. The fact is, folks, almost every bad doctrine has fatal errors in their favorite proof texts. That’s just the way false doctrine works. False doctrine is always inconsistent with itself and false doctrine always has fatal problems in at least some if not all of their favorite proof texts.

Now, I want to point out here, the first problem is what I just pointed out. This judgment here, this trial, is plainly stated to fall on those that dwell on the earth—the earth dwellers. This doesn’t include the church! We’re not earthly minded. We might be tainted with a little earthly-mindedness at times. But we’re spiritually minded people with a little bit of tainting of the earthly stuff on us. We’re not earthly minded.

Now, these are those—the phrase “earth dwellers,” this is synonymous with unsaved, ungodly, unrighteous, unconverted. These are those that are still in Adam. They’re not in Christ. They’re in the first Adam, not the second Adam. These are people who are in the way of Cain or the way of Balaam or any of the other ways of the world. And they missed the Rapture because they’re not saved. 

Now, the second argument, that they’re really astray on, keep from here. It’s the Greek phrase Tereo Ek. And if you’re interested in some technical details on this, I have a video on my YouTube channel that goes into how Tereo Ek is used in the Greek New Testament, in the Septuagent, and in secular Greek outside the Bible. And it just walks you through it. It gives you the examples. Now, Tereo Ek means “keep from.” It does not… mean keep well in. It doesn’t mean keep through. It means to keep from. Now, imagine if you were given charge of babysitting a child, and the parents, when they left you in charge of this child said, “Just keep the child from the campfire. We’re going to go into town. We’re going to go to a steak dinner and then we’re going to come home. But keep the kids away from the campfire.”

And so they come home, back from town, come back to the campground, and you’ve set up this cool contraption, and the child is bouncing in a bouncy seat right over the fire. “Oh, but I am protecting them from the fire!”

“No you didn’t! Their feet are bouncing in and out of the flames! I didn’t say keep them through the fire!” Do you think those parents are going to buy the explanation that “Oh, I did keep them from the fire.” You think they’re going to buy that? No! “Keep from” means keep from! It means you never went into it in the first place. It means you didn’t even get close to it! 

I remember when my youngest son Ezra, he was a terror at times when he was growing up. And one time my wife told him, "You cannot cross this line!" So my little son does this number, he creeps up and he does this, he goes.... Nope, sorry is not going to cut it! "Keep from" means keep from, period.

Now the pre-wrath interpretation also says, “Oh, but you’ve got to understand! ‘Tribulation’ and ‘wrath’ are two different things. They’re distinct.”

Are we reading the same Bible? This here, this isn’t the Antichrist Tribulation vs. God’s Wrath against the unbelievers. That’s not all this is. Yeah, there’s an element here of the Antichrist expressing his wrath against the believers. We’re not denying that. But this context here is not talking about the Antichrist Tribulation against the believers. This context is talking about God’s trial, God’s tribulation, which He’s pouring out on the unbelievers.

This is where we have to stand our ground on what the Bible says! And not be allowed to get moved side by side and swayed by these vain opinions.

You know, this is raising a false dichotomy. No error can thrive without a false dichotomy. Sometimes the false dichotomy is an extreme on one side of the ditch from an extreme on the other side of the ditch. And that works for both camps. Both camps are happy to maintain that false dichotomy because they both make converts from the other side.

And sometimes the false dichotomy is an error against a misrepresented truth. But unless there’s a false dichotomy, no error can thrive. That’s what we have here: “Oh, Tribulation vs. Wrath!!” Folks, we’ve already seen that this is God’s effort against the  unsaved world. It’s not Satan’s effort against the saved church. 

And secondly, do a study yourself. Take the word “tribulation,” and take the word “wrath” and then take all the synonyms and go through the scriptures, Genesis to Revelation, and study the whole thing out yourself. Put your notes in a notebook. You will discover these two concepts overlap. Especially when they’re referring to judgment at the end of the age.

Let me give you a couple examples. In 2 Peter chapter 2:9 we read “The Lord knows how to deliver the godly from trial.” What’s this talking about? You look at the context, the trial is the fire that fell on Sodom and Gomorrah. The Lord delivered Lot from that trial. So we have the Greek word “Pyrosmos,” the same Greek word used in Revelation:3:10, and here it’s used of the Judgment that God sent on earth of the kind that incinerated Sodom. We read the same word in the Septuagent in Deuteronomy:4:34, which is in the context of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, and we read, “Did God ever, in the past, take a nation for Himself out of the midst of another nation by trials, signs, and wonders.” Here again, “Trials” is the Greek word Pyrosmos. So, we see that trial or tribulations overlaps with judgment, and to deny it is really either a demonstration of great ignorance or great willingness to ignore evidence and make a selective use of evidence. 

But either way is problematic for the camp of error. 

Now, there’s one more point I want to bring out here, in favor of the right understanding of Revelation:3:10 in this hour of trial. And that’s that this tribulation or trial is one that God sends on the world and even though the devil is involved in it, Satan plays a subordinate role. 

If you look at the 70th week, the ultimate test, the whole ultimate picture is God vs. the Devil. Then you’re going to misunderstand what’s going on here. Underneath, the only thing underneath is the sovereignty of God. This whole outplaying above that is God vs. the Devil, seen here on earth playing out. Because Satan can’t do a single thing on God’s playing field down here on earth unless he first gets permission from God! He has to get permission from God to sift Job; he has to get permission from God to sift Peter; to sift any apostles, to sift you! And if you’re going through a trial in your life right now, you can rest assured that Satan had to get permission from God before he could come against you. 

And you can rest assured that when that trial is done, you’re going to come out ahead and the devil’s going to come out behind. Can you imagine, the most frustrating job in the universe is being the devil. Can you imagine what it would be like to have a batting average of zero after 6,000 years? 

Every time you come against a believer and try and get them to deny God and walk away and deny the faith, and they always come out purified and cleansed and strengthened? And on a rare basis one of them has to be called home early. But they’re still saved. They’re still redeemed. They never forsook their Lord! 

He is the most humiliated being in the universe. And that’s why he’s so angry when he comes to the end, because he knows his time is short. Now I mentioned that we’ve got to understand the sovereignty of God is underneath this whole thing or we’re not going to understand it at all! And I want you to understand that when Satan comes in through the person of the Antichrist at the end of the age, this is a great delusion that God has sent. 

We read in 2 Thessalonians:2:11, “For this reason, God will send them a strong delusion that they should believe the lie.” Now I want you to notice the context: the world has already manifested unwillingness to believe the truth and instead embraced unrighteousness.  And it says, “For this reason, God sends them great delusion.”

Well, what is the great delusion? It’s not a coat of butter on top of the earlier part of the passage or a coating of frosting on top of the earlier part. It is the passage. The great delusion is the coming of the Lawless one, Mr Iniquity, in the energizing of Satan, with all lying powers, signs and wonders. And by the way, I put “lying” with all three. It’s an adjective for all three. It doesn’t just qualify the last one. 

Now, I want you to understand this great delusion. Because sometimes people get a little nervous about this. “What’s God doing? Why is He sending the delusion that’s taking people to hell?”

Oh, man, once you understand what’s going on here! This is so amazing. This delusion is so over the top, so obviously wrong, that the only people that are going to believe it are the people that want to believe the lie! Nobody’s going to accidentally believe this garbage! This is really God’s last-ditch effort to save anybody that can be saved. If their eyes can be opened to how bogus this garbage is, their eyes are going to be opened! This is over-the-top slop! Nobody…NOBODY…is going to accidentally take the Mark of the Beast. Nobody is going to accidentally worship the beast. Nobody is going to accidentally serve the Antichrist. This whole trial—let me put it this way: The heart of the trial of the 70th week is not the judgments falling from heaven. Those are part of the picture to wake people up and make them think, but the heart of the trial is the dividing of mankind between following the Messiah and following the Anti-Messiah. Following the Christ/ Following the Antichrist. Following light or following darkness. Following the Gospel, following the false “save the earth” gospel. 

Anyway…. I just think that we need to vindicate God’s glory in this, because this passage makes some believers nervous, like God’s hurting His own cause. But I think they don’t understand what’s actually going on here.

I’ve got two more passages I want to work through, and then I’ve got to go through the last few arguments fairly quickly. And that’s okay, because they’re short arguments. John 14, verses two and three: “In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”

Now, this implies deliverance from the wrath to come. And you say, “Well, how does it imply deliverance from the wrath to come?” 
Well, let’s follow the argument. “I go to prepare a place for you.” Well, where did He go? 

He went to heaven.

So where is He right now?

He’s in heaven.

What’s He doing right now?

He’s building your mansions!

Now, also, the Father’s house is not here on earth. The Father’s house is in glory in the New Jerusalem, and it will not come down to earth. The Father’s not coming down to earth until the end of the Millennium. 

What a glorious thing this is! The next time the Lord Jesus physically interacts with His church will be the Rapture of the Church to take Her to the New Jerusalem for the duration of the Tribulation.

Now, I’m not going to have time to go through 2 Thessalonians:2:1-3. I’ve got a lot of material there. I’ve got videos on it. I’ve got material on my website, and if anyone wants the notes from this message, get me your email somehow, and I can send you a PDF of my notes.

I’m going to move on to my last three arguments and work through them pretty fast. 

Argument number 5 is the church is seen in Revelation chapter 4 and 5. Here we see the 24 Elders—and this is mysterious for many people. They wonder, well how is this a picture of the church? Who is this a picture of?

Well, let’s look at the context. The context, chapters 2 and 3 is the Church Age. Revelation:4:1 is the picture of the Rapture. There’s a door open in heaven. We hear “Come up hither.” Chapters 4-5 is the glorified church in heaven. And we see the Father hand the scroll to the Son, and we see the Son start opening up the seals, and Kingdom work begins. This is when the Lord starts taking possession of the earth! And dealing with it as He sees fit, as righteousness demands.

Now, how do we know this is the church? First of all, because they can’t be angels because according to chapter 5 verse 9 they were bought with the blood of the Messiah, so they can’t be angels. There’s no redemption for the angels. We know they’re not Old Testament saints or pre-resurrection New Testament saints. How do we know that? It says, “Because they’re seated on thrones,” they’ve got their throne already. And they’re wearing their Stephanos crowns, their reward crowns. If they’re already enthroned, and they already have their crowns, that means they’ve already been rewarded, which means they’ve already been raised from the dead. 

Now we’re in the time of the Tribulation now. That means they can’t be the Old Testament saints, who don’t get raised till the Second Coming. It has to be church saints that were already raised. 

Now, well, why 24 though? Why is there only 24 here? I think (this is my explanation. It’s the only explanation I’ve ever seen that makes sense to me. There’s a few that are pretty reasonable, but this is the one that’s closest, I think, to a scripture pattern analogy.) That’s that these are the 24 courses of the New Testament priesthood.   

If you remember, we see in the book of Hebrews chapter 11 (no it’s chapter 8), the Old Testament temple ceremonies were patterned after New Testament ceremonies, and they were told to make everything “after the pattern shown you on the Mount.”

So, how are we going to do this? How are we going to make this pattern? Well, we go back to 1 Chronicles chapter 24, and we see the 24 courses of the Priesthood that David set. Now why would David set 24? Well, it has to be according to the heavenly pattern. Everything in the temple was according to the heavenly pattern. That means the heavenly pattern has 24 courses of the priesthood.

When we go into eternity, 24 believers from the history of the church will be appointed—the heads of the 24 courses. And every believer is going to be in one of those courses. And we’ll cycle through our priestly worship duties for all of eternity. 

All right, there’s six typologies of the Rapture. Our point six is some typologies of the Rapture, and I’ll go through some of these pretty fast because you’re familiar with them. At least some of them.

The typology of Enoch in Genesis:5:24: “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” Now he was taken prior to the flood. And he’s a type of the Rapture, which takes the believers out of the world before the Judgment.

Now, many people say, “Aw, you can’t make a typology out of that! It doesn’t fit! There was hundreds of years between Enoch and the flood.”

So? People that make that argument, they don’t understand how typology works. Typologies are made by God according to what’s recorded and not recorded in the Bible. You can’t make a typology walk on all fours. You can’t force every detail in the shadow to harmonize with every detail in the reality. There’s no typology in the Bible that works that way. And you can’t reject a typology just because you can think of things where the shadow doesn’t harmonize with the reality. You simply determine on the point the Bible is focusing on, and let that typology stand and forget about everything else. 

Let me give you an example. We read about Melchizedek in the book of Hebrews where we’re told that…we see that he’s a type of Christ, and he has no genealogy, no father, and no mother. 

Now, if you go back in history, if we had the right secular history, we could find out that, yeah, he did have a genealogy. He did have a father. He did have a mother. I don’t think this was a pre-incarnate version of Jesus. That appears here and there on an appearance at a moment. But a whole lifelong ministry? No! This isn’t an appearance of Jesus. It’s a typology of Jesus. And His typology isn’t His life. The typology is the Lord picking Melchizedek up out of the world and dropping him in the pages of scripture, and making a typology out of Melchizedek’s life. 

And there was some analogy in some of Abraham’s dealings with Melchizedek. It may well be that Abraham had no idea of Melchizedek’s genealogy or his mother or his father. But he honored what he saw.

At any rate, so we return to Enoch here. The only point that God is trying to convey with Enoch is that there is a deliverance of the godly prior to judgment. And the time between Enoch and the flood is completely irrelevant. 

Here’s another typology. Abraham, in Genesis 18-19, was up on the planes of Mamre fellowshipping with God and the angels while Lot was on the lower planes, escaping from judgment by the skin of his teeth. It’s a picture of the glorified believers in heaven with God and with the angels while there’s believers on earth escaping from judgment.

John:6:16-21, we have the disciples sailing on the sea of Galilee and finding themselves suddenly in the midst of a storm that had quickly blown in, severe enough that they were terrified. And the Lord came to them, and suddenly, they were safe at harbor. This is a picture of the pre-Tribulation Rapture. It also implies that the church at the end of the age is going to suddenly find herself in a satanic storm that has blown up here on the planet and we’re going to be delivered and taken home.

One more typology here. Daniel chapter 3 and the Hebrew youths being delivered. It’s odd that Daniel is missing when the three Hebrew youths are cast into the fire. The assumption is that Daniel had been sent on a diplomatic mission in a foreign land. We don’t know–it doesn’t really tell us. We just assume, but this seems to be a typology that there are going to be godly Jews associated with the church that are gone on a mission, out of the land. Mysteriously gone while the remaining godly Jews go through the fire in the Tribulation.

So, I’m going to wind up here. I didn’t get to my last argument, which is “Relative Normality in the Days of Noah.” But it will be on my notes, and if you want the notes they’ll be available. I just trust and hope that this has been a help for you in laying hold of the doctrine of the Pretribulation Rapture to seeing what a strong case we actually have for it. The Bible makes a distinction between Israel and the church. God said that the seventieth week is for Israel. The Church is promised deliverance. We see Israel in the Tribulation, not the Christians. We see the church in heaven in Revelation 4 and 5. We have typologies that have saints removed from the scene of judgment. And we also have the days of Noah, with the relative normality, which is in my notes. 

So, hopefully I’ve encouraged you in the truth of the Pre-tribulation Rapture. Keep looking up, folks! We’re going home soon!

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