sTILL wISHING sOMEONE wOUJLD aDDRESS tHESE pROBLEMS i kEEP hAVING wITH THE pRE tRIB rAPTURE sCENARIO

sOMEHOW THIS POST ENDED UP ON THE CREATIONISM BLOG.  i HOPE IT'S IN THE RIGHT PLACE NOW.

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Just heard MacArthur lay out the pre-tribulation rapture scenario and as usual I'm left with the same questions after all of it, qhich lever get answered or even addressed.  I get the logic of the basic scenario and it's very compelling, very persuasive, but nevertheless I have a problem with elements that seem to be left out,k or taken for granted.

How can there be two bodies of believers who have all the characteristics of the Church but only one of the greoups IS the Church and the other is the Tribulation Saints?  While "the Church" is in heaven, having been raptures before the start of the Tribulation period, others are being saved during the tribulation, some martyred, some managing to escape death to the end, all sharing exactly the same characteristics as the Church possesses and yet they are not the CHurch.  All I ever hear from the supporters of this scenario is that, well, that's just the way it is.  Those people are not th Church because the Church has been raptured and is in heaven.  Yet there is nothing about them that makes them different from the Church believers and I see nothing anywhere in scripture that suggests that there are to be these two separate groups of believers atg the end, all believers according to the same standards, all saved by fatih in Christ's death and so on, all the same and yet one group is the Church and the other is something else.  I don't get it and I don't see how nobody else sees this as a problem.

Specifically I have a problem with the different groups of martyrs.  The martyhres under the altar in Revelation Six after the opening of the fifth seal are waiting for another group of martyrs to join them so that they will aoll receive their rewards at the same time.  Presumably these are martyhrs made during the events of Revelation Six since the martyrs that were made during the church Age of the last two millennia have been raptured and are in heaven with the CDhurch.  Yet they are martyrs just likie those under the altar and like those yet expected to be martyred during the tribulation.  If Martyrs are being treated as a group unto themselves, how is it that those with the raptured Church are just blended in with the church and not separated out as are the other two tgroups?  Those in the raptured group would include all those martyred under the Caesars, especially Nero, in the early centuries, and all those mayrtyured under the Rom an Catholid Church of the Middle ages, millionsof them as memorialized in foxes' Book of Martyres.  It makes no sense to me that this group of martyrs would be treated as just part of the raptured church while other martyrs that come during the tribulation ate treated as a separate group, or two separate groups.  

I've said this many times beofre and here it is again.  I continue to see it as a question that needs an answeer, and I continue to susepct that it called the whole pre trib scenario into queisotn.  Not that I have an alternative in mind.  

I Wish Someone Could Answer These Questions About thew Problems I See in the Pre Trib Rapture ScwnaEIO

Just heard MacArthur lay out the pre-tribulation rapture scenario and as usual I'm left with the same questions after all of it, qhich lever get answered or even addressed.  I get the logic of the basic scenario and it's very compelling, very persuasive, but nevertheless I have a problem with elements that seem to be left out,k or taken for granted.

How can there be two bodies of believers who have all the characteristics of the Church but only one of the greoups IS the Church and the other is the Tribulation Saints?  While "the Church" is in heaven, having been raptures before the start of the Tribulation period, others are being saved during the tribulation, some martyred, some managing to escape death to the end, all sharing exactly the same characteristics as the Church possesses and yet they are not the CHurch.  All I ever hear from the supporters of this scenario is that, well, that's just the way it is.  Those people are not th Church because the Church has been raptured and is in heaven.  Yet there is nothing about them that makes them different from the Church believers and I see nothing anywhere in scripture that suggests that there are to be these two separate groups of believers atg the end, all believers according to the same standards, all saved by fatih in Christ's death and so on, all the same and yet one group is the Church and the other is something else.  I don't get it and I don't see how nobody else sees this as a problem.

Specifically I have a problem with the different groups of martyrs.  The martyhres under the altar in Revelation Six after the opening of the fifth seal are waiting for another group of martyrs to join them so that they will aoll receive their rewards at the same time.  Presumably these are martyhrs made during the events of Revelation Six since the martyrs that were made during the church Age of the last two millennia have been raptured and are in heaven with the CDhurch.  Yet they are martyrs just likie those under the altar and like those yet expected to be martyred during the tribulation.  If Martyrs are being treated as a group unto themselves, how is it that those with the raptured Church are just blended in with the church and not separated out as are the other two tgroups?  Those in the raptured group would include all those martyred under the Caesars, especially Nero, in the early centuries, and all those mayrtyured under the Rom an Catholid Church of the Middle ages, millionsof them as memorialized in foxes' Book of Martyres.  It makes no sense to me that this group of martyrs would be treated as just part of the raptured church while other martyrs that come during the tribulation ate treated as a separate group, or two separate groups.  

I've said this many times beofre and here it is again.  I continue to see it as a question that needs an answeer, and I continue to susepct that it called the whole pre trib scenario into queisotn.  Not that I have an alternative in mind.  

Righjtig a Couple of Wrongs as usuusual

 Keep hearing how "our blessed hope" refers to the Rapture as understood in the Pre-Trib end timnes framework.  So distressing.  Our blessed hope is the hope of being with Christ forever and that has nothing to do with any partiular system of end times theiology, it's all Christians blessed hope.  Those millions who died in Christ before the raputre have the same blessed hope as those who will be raptured without dying.  

The Pre Trib people have this habit of being so certain of their ssyuystem of thought they seem to have no way of answering any objections to it that hap;ppen to arise.  And objections will always arise, there are always going to be questions.  All they seem to do with them is pronounce them wrong, I haven't heard anything I'd call a real answer.   Scripture for instance does here and there use the phrase "the wrath to come" as a description of what Christ died to save us all from.  While there is reason to ubnderstand that some will be saved from the speicfi wrath of the Great Tribulation of the Day of the Lord, as in Revelation 3:10, the idea of 3escaping the wrath to come is not always presented in those terms, it is soemetimes a definition of what Christ died for us.  But they don't seem to know this or they dobn't seem to want to address it from that point of vi3ew..

 Since I'm on one of my lissues or peeves, I might as well add another.  Another reference by a good teacher to that passage about the demon possessed boy the disciples weren't able to set free, which Jesus exp;lained as its being the sort of demon that required prayer and fasting to get it to leave.  That is, that's what the King James says.  the modern versions say only that it takes prayer and leave out the fasting.  Martyn Lloyd Jones commented on it that the Fasting does not osccur inte earliest manuscripts.  Mac Arethur doesn't mention the fasting at all, he just usess thje modern version that leaves it out.  

A case of the destrubctive work of Westcott and Hort's preferred manuscripts that Burgon identified as corrupt but which are now enshrined as the legitimate line of Greek manuscripts over the line on which the King James was based.  These older and supposedly better manuscripts are a trijan Horse in the Church, destroying foundations bit by bit because they are accepted as legitimate and superior to the Received Text on which the King James was based.

These bogus manuscripts which may be forgeries but are at least the wsork of early church heretics as Burgon understood it, destroy biblical inerrancy first and foremost although this isn't acknolweledged by many of the best exegetes.  It should be but they come up with ways of rationalizing it away.  

Who knjows why fasting was left out of the bogus line, but since it is left out we are to take it that it was added later and is therefore not what Jesus actually said.  this is a pernicious destructive way of thinking but it prevails because Westcott and Hort are taken to be legitimate scholars instead of the maniuplating corruptors they really were.  

So if youi want to get rid of a certain kind of demon you need to fast as well as pray but all we are allowed to think is that prayer is the onbly thing required.

What is Our Blessed Hope?

I keep hearing that "our blessed hope" is the Rapture, and specifically the rapture as understood in the Pre-Tribulation format.  This makes no sense.  Our blessed hope is shared by all Christians, not just those of the last generation who will be taken to heaven in the Rapture, but by all those who have died in Christ up until that time.   Most people who are the Lord's will not be raptured, but will die in the Lord and yet they too are heirs of the promise of the Blessed Hope, which is the blessed hope of being with the Lord forever.  Not the Rapture, not any particular understanding of the Ratpure.  All who are the Lord's have the Blessed Hopew.

Just had to say it again.