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The
Posttribulational Rapture Position
From: Answers
To 200 Of Life’s Most Probing Questions by Pat Robertson, p.156.
I
do not find in the Bible the teaching that Christians will be “raptured”
prior to the Tribulation.
The
Bible teaches two comings of Jesus—one, His birth; the second, His coming
again in triumph. There is no third coming for a secret rapture. The book
of Matthew specifically says, “Immediately after the tribulation
of those days.... Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven...and
He will send His angels...and they will gather together His elect from
the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
This
is just one of many references that indicate we will be going through
a time of tribulation until Jesus Christ comes back.
I
do believe that Christians will be protected in the midst of tribulation,
however. After all, the Israelites were protected when the plagues fell
upon Egypt.
Throughout
history there have been successive martyrdom’s of Christians, and it is
the height of arrogance to assume that only twentieth-century Christians
in the United States of America will be spared any kind of persecution.
That goes against the flow of history for the last two thousand years.
Jesus said, “He who endures to the end shall be saved.” Persecution is
simply part of living as a Christian in this world. The saints in China,
Russia, and other communist countries have been tortured, have suffered
privation, have had their jobs and their families taken away from them.
Many of them have already died because of their witness for Jesus. It
is hard to contemplate much worse tribulation than these great men and
women of faith have already endured.
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"But
immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be
darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will
fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken, |
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and
then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then
all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son
of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. |
31
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"And
He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will
gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the
sky to the other. |
—Matthew
24:29-31 |
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