Pre-Tribulation Rapture Theory

When does the rapture of the Church happen?

There are many arguments for what is called the pre-tribulation rapture. However, throughout Church history there have always been people who believed that Christians would go through all or part of the Great Tribulation. The basic idea is that Gentile Christians will not go through this time and instead Jewish Christians will take over spiritual leadership on the earth until Jesus returns.

According to John Little of Omegashock, those who hold to this view have embraced a lie. Those who teach this view are part of a fifth column attack on God's people, making them sitting ducks when persecution breaks out. Below is a summary of John's work, followed by some questions for reflection and links for further study.

The Pre-Tribulation Lie

By John Little of Omegashock.com

Part 1 - What to look for before the rapture

The Antichrist must appear
The Tribulation must happen; this includes suffering
The sun and moon must be darkened
The Lord must descend from Heaven with a shout
The resurrection must happen (or happen at the same time)
A place of safety on this earth for believers

Part 2 - False evidence

Imminent Return Of Jesus; misunderstanding of the definition
God has not appointed us to wrath; not His wrath, but Satan's
The Church is the restrainer; more likely to be Michael
Who populates the millennium; smokescreen

Part 3 - Jesuit origins

When the Protestant Reformation began, the pope commissioned the Jesuits to try to destroy it by whatever means, especially since most Protestant leaders said the either the Roman Catholic Church and/or the pope was the Antichrist. In the late 1500s, some Jesuits thus created a new Roman Catholic doctrine called Futurism, which says that this can't be because everything in the Book of Revelation is in the future. Then, about 200 years later another Jesuit added on the heresy that all the good Christians (i.e., Roman Catholics) would be resurrected BEFORE the Antichrist appeared. Part of the package, though, was that after this ‘rapture’, the Roman Catholic Church would side with the Antichrist. Then, in 1827 a Scottish Presbyterian, Edward Irving, published an English version of the book called “The Coming of the Messiah”. A young lady named Margaret MacDonald, whose vision(s) created a massive sensation throughout Scotland and Great Britain in 1830, was a member of Irving’s congregation. By 1830, Irving was preaching that the Rapture will occur in two stages – a secret one before the Antichrist, and a public one at the end of the Great Tribulation. John Nelson Darby, was 30 when news of what was going on hit the headlines. He did his own investigation into the matter and incorporated it into his teaching, especially when he visited the US six times between 1859 and 1874. Next, Cyrus Ingerson Scofield, a Kansas lawyer, published the first edition of his famous Scofield Reference Bible in 1909. By 1930, more than one million copies of his Bible were in print. He effectively elevated his own thoughts on the Bible to be as important AS the Bible, itself. Whether this was intentional, or not, is immaterial. The fact is that his errors instantaneously became legitimate in the eyes of everyone who read his bible. Thus, the Jesuits, were successful as many seminaries became major proponents of the Jesuit Pre-tribulation Rapture theory.

Part 4 - Causing true harm

It is like spiritual heroin, as it will put a smile one's face and make one feel wonderful. Corrie Ten Boom pointed out that westerners who told Chinese and African Christians about the pre-trib rapture did them a disservice, because when persecution came, they weren’t ready. Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. – 2 Timothy 3:12. The Tribulation is not the wrath of God. It's the great persecution and wrath of Satan.

Part 5 - the wrath of Satan
Proponents of the Pre-tribulation rapture argue so vehemently against a post-tribulation rapture because they simply don’t want to suffer persecution. We've gotten soft and must grow up. The Tribulation is Satan's wrath, not God's wrath. In a nutshell, it’s the war that the dragon makes upon those that have the testimony of Jesus Christ (Rev. 12:13-17). God will protect them in the wilderness some where.

Part 6 - movies
The Left Behind books and movies helped spread the pre-trib rapture lie. A new one is coming out by Hollywood, so a little common sense tells us it's got an agenda. Thank God, somebody put out a good movie to debunk ... See "After the Tribulation: The Pre-Tribulation Rapture Fraud Exposed" Official Movie.

Questions for Reflection

If Jesus desires a "glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blemish" (Eph. 5:27), do you really think this describes the Church today? How else will this come to fruition besides persecution (prior to the rapture)?
Since Rev. 1:4 clearly states that the entire letter is for the seven churches in Asia, which were predominantly Gentile, why should anyone think that Rev. 6-18 describes a time period totally void of Gentile believers?
If Rev. 3:10 is talking to a group of believers in Philadelphia and we live in an age that looks much more like the church of Laodicea, why would the Laodiceans be raptured out because the Philadelphians kept the word of Jesus' patience? This is not logical. Instead, would it not be more reasonable for the Lord to simply take godly men and women like the Philadelphians home via natural death before the 3.5 year period which is mentioned 4 times in Daniel and 5 times in Revelation? This would be consistent with what He did in the days of Noah: "And all the sons of men who knew the LORD, died in that year before the LORD willed them to die, so as not to behold the evil that God would bring upon their brothers and relatives, as he had so declared to do." (Jasher 5:21) After all, Jesus also said that "as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." (Mt. 24:37)
If our Lord Jesus said in John 17:15, "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil", why would the Father make an exception and take Christians out of the world before the tribulation?
If the simplest simplest approach to reading 2 Thessalonians is merely to take it as a continuation of 1 Thessalonians, i.e., both are talking about the rapture followed immediately by an intense period of judgment called "the Day of the Lord", then why do some people to try so hard to manage the text to make it fit a pre-trib theory?
If you saw events in Rev. 6-18 happening before your very eyes, would you abandon the pre-trib rapture theory?
Is your God big enough to protect you through the Tribulation?
Do you think it requires more eternal hope to desire an escape from this world via a pre-tribulation rapture or rather desire to endure hardship and resist evil until a pre-wrath rapture (at the last trump - 1 Cor. 15:51,52, Rev. 10:7) or death so as to receive a better resurrection (Heb. 11:35)?
If the Illuminati is quietly funding organizations that teach a pre-trib rapture, why would they be doing this?
If there is "nothing new under the sun" (Ecc. 1:9), and most religious people who were anticipating a Messiah were caught by surprise when Jesus first came, is it too much to expect that most religious people who are anticipating a Messiah will be caught by surprise the second time?
How does your view of the timing of the rapture affect your willingness to make physical preparations to survive difficult times in which many people starve and/or die?
Do you think that a pre-trib rapture view is of any practical value to the Christians who are being persecuted or killed in the Middle East? Or is it possibly a hindrance to good survival tactics?

More information for further study