A Serious Stumbling Block for the Pre-Wrath, Post-Trib crowd.
For all their work slicing and dicing the scriptures to try and make a mid or post trib rapture work, I have never read or heard a good argument yet against one of the most rock solid proofs of a pretribulation rapture. Luke 21:36.
What does Luke 21:36 say?
36Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man."
First of all, it says "be always on the watch." This is the concept of imminency we hold, that Jesus can come back for us at any moment. The pre-wrath crowd and the post-trib crowd just can't understand this. When we are told to ALWAYS be on watch, that means RIGHT NOW. This sinks the pre-wrath and post-tribbers ship in and of itself. For both of those groups there's other stuff that needs to happen first, which means there's no reason to watch right now, except of course that our Lord commanded us to :-)
Next we are told to pray that we may escape all that is about to happen. Yep, the Lord told us specifically to pray for this escape. If someone has a problem with me having an escapist mentality, they need to consult the Lord on it, not me, I did'nt say it, HE DID.
The pre-wrath crowd tells us we have to go through the first 3.5 years of the tribulation. I guess they don't understand what the meaning of "ALL" is. Pray that you may be able to escape ALL that is about to happen. Last time I checked, ALL doesn't mean we escape PART of it, it means we escape ALL of it. What's so hard to understand about that?
Before I go any farther let me stop to defang the bible mutilators whose first and most beloved trick is to say "BUT WAIT..........WHAT DOES THE GREEK OR HEBREW SAY......"
Yea, they love this trick, since most people don't bother to look the Greek or Hebrew up on their own, the bible mutilation crowd likes to throw this at them. Basically they are trying to say they can do a better job at translating the bible than the original translators did, AND they don't want it to say exactly what it means at face value. Oh but they say "the greek and hebrew are much more expressive." Right, more expressive means they have more latitude to butcher the straghtforward meaning and torture the bible into saying what they want it to say....
Anyhow, I digress, let's look at the Greek word for "escape" above. I won't try to tell you what it means since you have eyes and can read if you've come this far :-)
Escape as used in Luke 21:36 above is the Greek word:
ekpheugo {ek-fyoo'-go}-1) to flee out of, flee away
a) to seek safety in flight
b) to escape
The last words I want to look at in Luke 21:36 are "all that is about to happen"
This clearly implies a future event or series of events that the Lord specifically tells us to pray we can escape from. Let's reason together, what future event is going to be SO BAD that He could be telling us to pray that we may escape it? What could He possibly be talking about?
Between Revelation 3:10, Luke 21:36 and Matt 24:36, a case is made so strongly for the pretrib rapture that regardless of what else the pre-wrath/post-trib crowd throws at it, the arguments fall apart. They either have to make many assumptions, and/or not bring these verses up at all in order to make their theories fit. That's not a sound way to examine the bible's wisdom.
Proverbs 25:2It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.
The Lord has concealed many things in His word, but He has given us powerful clues AND His Holy Spirit to search them out. If something really bad is going to take place in the future for everyone on the face of this earth, and the Lord had an escape for us so we would "escape ALL that is about to happen" when would this escape NECESSARILY HAVE TO HAPPEN?
You guessed it- BEFORE THE TRIBULATION!!!
Watch and be ready, the bible says He's coming when we don't expect Him.
Matthew 24:44So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
Peace~brother D
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