Pre-Tribulation believers make intentional mistakes by avoiding certain verses of Scripture, or parts of those verses, almost as though those words were not there at all, and as though the verses didn’t say what they clearly do say.
I once made those same mistakes myself. I was an ardent defender of the pre-Tribulation position for twenty-eight years. I therefore understand the mentality and the will to make those verses say what you want them to say. I briefly discuss here a couple of such passages.
PAUL’S CLEAR STATEMENTS ON THE MATTER
Paul the apostle made clear statements as to when the rapture would occur in relation to the Tribulation in his two letters to the Thessalonian church. In the second, Paul told the Gentile church there that although they were suffering, they were to take heart because God was going to bring relief. This relief would come on the day Christ returns with his angels.
Pre-Trib teachers attempt to say that raptured believers will be the ones returning with Christ to fight the armies of antichrist, but Paul made a clear distinction between those being relieved of their sufferings, and those coming with Christ to bring relief:
God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels (2 Thessalonians 1:6 and 7).
Christ comes to bring relief, says Paul, when He appears “in blazing fire”. It is unmistakable, then, that when he appears in blazing fire, “every eye will see him”. In other words, the deliverance of the Gentile Thessalonian church will occur when Christ appears in the sky for all the world to see at His second coming.
Paul describes Christ’s coming in vengeance not as being “with us”, but “with his powerful angels” or “mighty angels” (KJV). He comes with his powerful angels to rescue those being persecuted. Therefore Paul makes a clear distinction in his letters between the Church and the angels of heaven who come to rescue the Church.
FIRST LETTER
This distinction is also made in Paul’s first letter, in which he prays that when Jesus comes to bring vengeance, Christ will see the believers of Thessalonica as being blameless:
“…so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones” (1 Thessalonians 3:13).
In this above verse we have the Thessalonians in clear distinction from the “holy ones” – the angels – coming with Jesus. The believing Gentile church will not be in the attack force.
TWO DISTINCT AND SEPARATE GROUPS
In Paul’s statements we have the relievers and the relieved; the rescuers and the rescued; the avengers and the avenged. Like it or not, the rescued, the relieved, the avenged, are those waiting patiently on the earth, while those doing the rescuing are angels who return with Christ.
Note that the rescue of the Gentile church is carried out by a Christ “in blazing fire”. This is no quiet, secret coming of Christ. In other words, there is no mistaking the fact that this rescue is Christ’s second coming, at the end of the Tribulation, as He himself described in his “Olivet Discourse”:
“Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other (Matthew 24: 30, 31).
NOT THE CHURCH!
Why did Paul make this distinction if the “attack force” from heaven is the Church? Again, notice what Paul did not say. He did not say “…on the day he comes with his holy people and all of us who have believed”. Paul’s statements demand two different sets of followers-the attack force – bringing vengeance – and the rescued.
Jesus said that when He comes in power and great glory, it will be the angels who will come with him (Matthew 25: 31). He didn’t say “you will come with him” or “the Church will come with him”.
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 