Am I magnet or what. This is what someone just sent me in a private message. This is not my beliefs let me make this very clear. Will the Body of Christ Go Through the Tribulation? by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam Print This Article In recent years, numerous arguments have been advanced to supposedly prove that the Church, the Body of Christ, will go through the “great tribulation” before being “caught up” to be with the Lord. The present trend of events is, of course, causing many sincere believers to fear that this will be the case, but we place our confidence in the Word of God alone and we are amply confirmed in our belief that the Rapture of the Church will take place before the tribulation period begins, and that the members of the Body of Christ will thus escape the sufferings that the tribulation saints will be called upon to endure. Our purpose in writing this article is not to defend or to attack anyone, but simply to consider whether arguments for a post-tribulation Rapture are valid. NOT ONE SCRIPTURE? Some who hold to the post-trib Rapture position say that there is not one verse of Scripture which explicitly affirms the Rapture of the Church before the tribulation. But why need there be? There is not one verse of Scripture which explicitly affirms that our Lord was baptized before His temptation by the devil, or that He was crowned with thorns before He was crucified, or that baptism with water is no longer included in God’s program for believers, or that God is a Trinity. Yet there is abundant Scriptural proof for all these and they are accepted as the truth of the Word of God. Years ago we printed an article entitled First the Departure, in which we dealt at length with a passage of Scripture which does explicitly affirm that the Rapture will precede the tribulation. In this article we gave conclusive evidence that the words hee apostasia in II Thessalonians 2:3 should have been rendered “the departure” rather than “a falling away” and that the passage thus reads: “Let no man deceive you by any means; for that day [the day of the Lord] 1shall not come except the departure come first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.” The preceding verses and the preceding letter written by Paul to these same people all bear witness that “the departure” referred to is the departure of believers to go and be with Christ. We are quite taken aback to see how lightly some have disposed of the evidence we advanced for this rendering of II Thessalonians 2:3. We have given Scriptural proof after proof that the word apostasia does not mean departure from the truth, but simply departure, and that the original passage in question certainly does not use the words “a falling away” but rather “the departure.” To all this our post-tribulational brethren reply by simply stating authoritatively and dogmatically that the word apostasia means a departure from the truth. Lest some of our readers believe that apostasia means a departure from the truth, we offer again what we believe to be conclusive Scriptural proof that the words “a falling away,” in II Thessalonians 2:3, should have been rendered “the departure” and that the Greek word apostasia does not contain ideas of revolt or rebellion as does our English word apostasy.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 03:38:40 +0000
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