The imagination is hard-pressed to fathom the ramifications of what will happen when millions suddenly vanish.

The world will instantly go into cataclysmic chaos at the moment that stunning event takes place. We agree that the rapture of the Church (all born-again believers in Jesus Christ for salvation since the Church Age began at Pentecost will be anything but a “secret”. Christ’s coming again will be fully seen in the heavens by all, including Christians who will be watching for Him to break through the darkness of that hour. The post-trib position says there is no “secret” rapture. The post-trib rapture view says that the rapture and Christ’s coming back to the Mount of Olives will occur almost simultaneously-certainly with no more than a matter of days separating the two events. The pre-trib view of rapture says that Christ’s second coming is in two phases, separated by at least seven years. These two viewpoints-the pre-trib, and the post-trib-offer the greatest contrast to examine in consideration of the second advent of Jesus Christ, within the overall belief that rapture will, according to Bible prophecy, happen before Christ’s foot actually touches down on Planet Earth. Let us look at only the pre-trib rapture and the post-trib rapture positions for the purpose of exploring what is meant by the “thief in the night” references in 1 Thessalonians 5:2 and 2 Peter 3:10. There are other views of the second coming that have Christ returning when the earth is perfected and made ready, but we won’t go there in this essay. They hold to the notion that that is His only return in the second coming. Those who hold to a post-tribulation rapture, or a no-rapture position, believe that Christ will come back at the end of the tribulation, at Armageddon. We who teach the pre-trib rapture, so the accusation goes, would have falsely led these people to think the Church would not be here when Antichrist is on the world scene.Īlmost all who are antagonistic to the pre-trib rapture doctrine teach that the “elect” will have to endure part or all of the seven-year tribulation era. I’m not precisely sure of their “reasoning,” but I think they claim this because they are convinced that the ones who fall for the rapture viewpoint won’t be able to recognize Antichrist when he comes to power. We are castigated for foisting upon innocent, gullible believers a “secret rapture” that will somehow lead these Christians to take the mark of the beast (Rev. We are condemned by our detractors as leading astray Christians alive now-if they live to see it-who will be required to endure the tribulation, thus to wash their robes clean in preparation for inheriting God’s Kingdom. We who hold to the pre-trib rapture viewpoint are often accused of being deceivers. No scriptural proof-text in God’s Word more clearly points to the first of the two phases of Jesus Christ’s second coming than does the following: “For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night” (1 Thess.

Like a thief in the night