Thief in the Night-- Pretrib or Second Coming?

This looks like a different topic to me, but this comes to mind

Hebrews 11:19
Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.

That 2 cents is worth at least 20 cents - or maybe 2 dollars...

And that's all we've got. That the point. For this vastly profound, seminal type/shadow/figure of all types/shadows/figures.

The same could be said of much of the OT. The lessons and types and signs pertaining to the Church and NT vis a vis a seamless continuity are there. Commentary is many times not available or even necessary.

These idiotic demands of "show me the verse that says" is a symptom of a total failure to grasp the fundamental nature of the Bible.

Case in point: the 24 Elders. They are the pre-trib raptured Church regardless of anyone's refusal to concur. Denial of the pre-trib rapture betrays ones willful stupidity and obstinacy.

Furthermore, there are ZERO "verses" that DIRECTLY link Isaac with the Exodus 12 etc. passover, Lamb of God or any such like thing. There are ZERO verses that explicitly declare that Abraham is a type of God the Father. Likewise Issac as a type of Christ.....no explicit verses.

Same goes for Moses....a type of Christ with no explicit supporting verses.
Same goes for Joseph....a type of Christ with no explicit supporting verses.
Same goes for Joshua....a type of Christ with no explicit supporting verses.

Figures, patterns, structures, types, shadows, idioms are the BASIS of Biblical truth. They are not irrelevant trivial artifacts.

And much of the pre-trib rapture doctrine follows suit. There is TONS of biblical support. In fact it is overwhelming.

Except the thing is, people can see the Isaac typology, and it doesn't cause any friction or outright contradict New Testament doctrine. There is also Galatians which associates Isaac v. Ishmael with Isaac being a type of the promise, which is associated with faith in Christ as opposed to the law. It aligns well.

Pre-trib is different. Paul teaches that the rapture and resurrection occur at the coming of the Lord. He refers to the rapture/resurrection event as our gathering unto Him. Matthew 24 sets the coming of the Son of Man and the gathering of the elect after the tribulation. We can see from II Thessalonians 2 that the man of sin will be destroyed at the brightness of the Lord's coming. In I Thessalonians 1, Jesus gives His church rest when He returns with His angels, executing vengence on them that know not God, when He comes to be glorified with the saints.

Pre-tribbers want to take that and say that Jesus comes back more than once. And supposedly there are some allegories that support it, but you don't have to assume pre-trib and read those scriptures and try to come up with allegories in the first place.

There is also the issue that Peter said that Christ must remain in heaven until the restoration of all things. Pre-trib has Jesus leave heaven seven years before the restoration of all things, then come back and start restoring.

The thing is, the apostles revealed hidden mysteries in the Old Testament. Where did they reveal a pre-trib rapture? And why would the rapture not fit with the way Paul and others worded their writings? Why do pre-tribbers have to work so hard to come up with a way to make Paul's writings or Matthew 24 work with their interpretation.

What I don't see from you is a lot of explaining these types that supposedly support the pre-trib rapture. I do see a lot of boasting about how great the case for the pre-trib rapture is. That isn't very convincing when people keep showing.

As for the elders, you have to read pre-trib into that also. If the elders are disembodied spirits, it works. If they aren't consciously there (like the Yeshua who was an Aaronic priest probably wasn't consciously there in Zechariahs' vision) the passage works.

You do notice, don't you, that the case for pre-trib, unless you redefine terms or do something unusual with interpretation, rests solely on these loose arguments and interpretations of allegorical passages, which can be interpreted numerous ways with the carnal mind?

I said:
"There certainly is tribulation under God's wrath. Don't be so narrow."
Please enlighten me on what "the issue" is then. Thank you.

Well, then you've just learned something.

Romans was written to BELIEVERS:

2:5 - But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.

13:5 - Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience.

God's wrath is towards sin, for whoever is sinning.

OK, a very long post with a lot of questions. Rather than wade through all that, how about just getting to the point?

It seems some who try to defend a pre-trib resurrection/rapture go to great lengths to convince. But such an approach doesn't convince.

Don't you just have some verses that SAY what you SAY? That would be great.

You aren't addressing a group who has no concept of biblical types, shadows and prophetic telescoping.
Most of us understand metaphorical and poetical methods of expressing truth.

There must be something real to cast a shadow.
PTR is a peripheral fantasy, not a major Biblical theme. It has some of the weakest typological support
I've seen for any eschatological idea. It isn't taught in The Bible in any manner, fashion or form.

But then after all kinds of tribulational stuff, He still says, "... I come as a thief....' as late as Revelation 16. And the coming as a thief verse in Matthew 24 is about the coming of the Son of Man.

43 But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.
44 Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.

And the coming of the Son of man is set 'after the tribulation of those days' earlier in the chapter, also called 'great tribulation.'

Then we see this in I Thessalonians 5
2 For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
4 But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.

If the church will be raptured out beforehand, why would Paul be concerned about a day overtaking them as a thief?

I suppose pre-tribbers can try to divide this up into separate events, or argue that there are multiple warnings about 'come as a thief' like days.


Read Ephesians 3. Paul writes about a mystery being made known through the apostles and prophets. He revealed mysteries.

If we read Paul and others, we read about the parousia, the coming of the Lord. Now, we have pre-tribbers arguing that there are hidden mysteries about the pre-trib rapture in various passages of scripture. So we are getting allegorical interpretations and two-or-three-steps-of-human-reasoning-away-from-a-verse type of reasoning (e.g. "not appointed unto wrath"), and allegorical interpretation.

So are pre-trib interpreters supposed to be a second wave of apostles and prophets telling us of secret mysteries hidden in the writings of previous Bible authors who didn't explicitly teach pre-trib?

The thing is, with allegorical interpretation, it can be legitimate if the Spirit of God is behind it. But the carnal mind can do all kinds of things with it. And people from various conflicting eschatologies can use allegory and loose interpretation methods to argue for all kinds of things.

Are you willing to say 'thus saith the Lord'-- that God is prophetically inspiring you on specific allegorical interpretations? Did you hear God tell them to you? Can you claim you received revelation like Paul and the prophets Paul wrote about in Ephesians 3 did? Otherwise, what rational reason is there to think any of this is true. But it would be foolish to sin against the Lord (death penalty in the Old Testament) by falsely prophesying if it were not true.

Great. Thank you. So who are the 24 Elders of Rev 4 & 5?

I could see how you could take it that way. Paul uses imaginary interlocutors. This isn't in the 'behold thou art called a Jew' section or addressed to 'O man'. He goes on to explain that the indignation and wrath is for those who reject the truth and follow evil.

What translation is that? It looks like you choose a loose translated that added the word 'God' into the text. Is there a manuscript tradition that has that word in there in the Greek?


Here is some context:

4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
5 Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.

You could argue for mediated wrath here, or that God allows the wrath of man as discipline. It's not a hill I'd die on. Another passage comes to mind, wrath revealed against all ungodliness of men, which convinces me more than this translation.

This just appears to be a case of bad translation. I just looked it up, and I am surprised to see this in the ESV. Normally I like that translation, but this disappoints, even alarms me-- since I have been using the ESV a bit myself, and now I will be careful. I am not seeing 'God' in the text in any translation, or of course, the Greek. I looked at an interlinear and Byzantine.

And don't get me wrong. Super fine high resolution parsing of the finest vagaries and vicissitudes of the Greek/Hebrew text is ALSO utterly absolutely essential. Which is why I value the imputs of TDW so much. The truths begotten and extracted by this effort are equally....EQUALLY important and valuable. No doubt.

Oh my goidness. Did you willfully OMIT the following facts? To wit:

Kings AND priests redeemed from every tribe tongue people and nation, who are so described earlier in Rev 1, 2 and 3. Sitting on thrones wearing white robes and crowns per Rev 2 & 3.

The Church. The one and only corpus who have these attributes. No other. Period. End of debate.

Rev 1:5 - And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood,

Rev 1:6 - And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

Post-tribbers are strike out again. Always have. Always will.

Thank you Gary.
I will put more time into it as soon as possible.

Strike out. I don't know what you are talking about. You aren't refereeing a sport. What debate?
There wasn't a debate. You asked a question & I asked a question.

Nothing about rapture timing was discussed or debated.

Aaahhhmmmm........denial ain't just a river in Egypt? Something like that. Whatever.

But yea. Revelation chapters 1 thru 5 have the indelible watermarks of the pre-trib rapture all over it. No post-tribber has, can or will touch the first 5 chapters of Revelation, nor the obvious identity of the 24 Elders, and how these chapters flow into Rev 6 and beyond.

But...I thank you for you time nevertheless.

Think, too, about why "resurrection" is mentioned in the following verse, before anything is stated about the ones in this verse being in their "priest" roles (if it were the case, as some suggest, that this occurs after the death of the believers):

Rev20:6 - "Blessed and holy is the one having a part in the first resurrection! Over these the second death has no authority, but they will be [future tense] priests of God and of Christ, and will reign with Him a thousand years."







[note to the readers: pre-tribbers see 20:4b speaking of those saints who will have died DURING the trib yrs, following "our Rapture," thus is not speaking of "the Church which is His body"]

Revelation 1:1 - "The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants what things it behooves to take place in quickness [noun]. And He signified it through having sent His angel to His servant, John,"

[to take place "IN QUICKNESS" is not things which will transpire over some near-2000-yrs]


Revelation 1:19[c] - "Therefore write the things that you have seen, and the things that are, and the things that are about to [are SURE to] take place after these,


Revelation 4:1 - "After these things [after the things in chpts 2-3, the things WHICH ARE] I looked, and behold, a door was standing open in heaven, and the first voice that I heard like a trumpet was speaking with me, saying, "Come up here, and I will show to you what it behooves to take place after these things."





[then John is shown things starting with chpts 4-5... which includes the description of the 24 elders]