Epistle Online,
Here is my post on the rapture continued.
The Apostle Paul plainly said in 2 Thess. 2, that two things had to happen before the Lord comes for the Church, #1- the falling away [religious apostasy}, #2- "that man of sin be revealed" {Antichrist}, now, the man of sin has not been revealed yet, and Paul said that he had to be revealed first, and what 2 things happen after he is revealed? we get taken and he gets destroyed. "Then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming." The coming in verse 1 and the coming in verse 8 are both "parousia" in the Greek and those two verses are not divided by 7 years.
The he that gets taken out of the way in verse 7 is not the Church, for the Church is the bride of Christ {female gender}, and besides, wouldn't it make more sense for Paul to say, "until YOU get taken out of the way"? or he could have used the word "us", or "Church" since that is who is was refering to, so the "he" is not the Church, and it is not refering to the Holy Spirit either, because the Holy Spirit will need to be here, otherwise nobody could get saved during the tribulation, so the restrainer I believe that gets taken out of the way could very well be Michael the archangel. My pastor said that he felt that the Lord was telling him that it was Michael, and shortly afterward, my pastor picked up a book that was written by some preacher almost 2 hundred years ago, and as soon as my pastor opened that book, the first thing he saw was that preacher saying that he believed it was Michael the archangel that was the restrainer. Daniel 10:21 even says, "........and there is none that holdeth with me in these things, but Michael your prince." and Michael is even mentioned in chapter 12 of Daniel, and he does battle with Satan in Rev. 12:7-10.
There is no indication that there is a pre-trib rapture in 2 Thess. 2, and even if the Church indwelt with the Holy Spirit was the retrainer, nowhere in 2 Thess. 2 does it say that the Church goes to heaven. Jesus certainly was not talking about escaping the tribulation period in Luke 21:36 or in Rev. 3:10. One reason why is because the "rapture" involves a resurrection, and no living saint before or after the tribulation gets caught up and receives new bodys until the dead in Christ rises first, which would include even the tribulation saints that get martyred. Jesus could protect us without rapturing us. In his prayer to his Father in John chapter 17 verse 15, he said, "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil". He was refering to his 12 disciples, but couldn't he keep us FROM the evil as well? Of course. Another way of escaping all these things at it says in Luke 21:36, or to be kept from the hour of temptation as it says in Rev. 3:10, is to put on the whole armour of God so that we might be able to withstand in THE EVIL DAY as Paul said in Ephesians chapter 6.
The Lord comes as a thief in the night, but does he come as a thief in the night twice? I say no, because 1 Thess. 5:3 says, "For when they {unsaved} shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child: and they shall not escape." We as christians are warned a head of time in verse 4, "But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief." If those verses were talking about the Lord coming as a thief in the night to rapture us BEFORE the tribulation, then there would be no tribulation because it mentions sudden distruction, and that could be the distruction that Peter was talking about when he said, "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night: in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." How can the Anti-christ come in to power when the earth melting? I believe that sudden distruction that Paul mentioned in 1 Thess. 5 is the distruction that Peter was talking about in 2 Peter 3.
Contined......