Post courtesy: Tony Campbell
Disclaimer: There are several raptures throughout the Bible but when most people hear the word 'rapture' they instantly think of the rapture of the church. Therefore to keep things simple, when I say rapture I'm talking about the rapture of the church. Also, I expect everyone to look up each verse referenced including the surrounding context out of none other than the King James Bible. There are 7 basic Bible concepts that need to be understood before approaching the timing of the rapture of the church. If you don't adhere to all 7 of these, please take the time to address whatever one you fall short on before approaching the understanding of the timing of the rapture.
While what is already listed above should be enough to understand this fundamental Christian doctrine, I'm just going to drive the point home now. For the rest of this post I will be listing off different proofs for the pre-tribulation rapture. I will try to have them sorted out from the various types of scriptural proofs to the logical arguments and so on.
You're going to need to be thinking in terms of a timeline for the next couple of points (I will post a simple one in the comments for those who have a hard time visualizing).
These next ones are doctrinal differences confirming both the pre-tribulation rapture and the necessity of rightly dividing the word. Although they are basic, I won't be getting into the details of these doctrinal differences because they can be just as extensive as the timing of the rapture. Just know there are multitudes of verses for each of these topics.
Typology and Symbolism Song of Solomon is about a wedding between a Jewish bridegroom and a gentile bride i.e. Christ and His bride (the church). Analyzing what first century Jewish wedding traditions look like in comparison to Christ and His church reveals remarkable support towards a pre-tribulational rapture of the church. There is an 80 minute video discussing this in depth. You can watch it here.
People often use Lot as a post-tribulation rapture argument because he was just kept safe from God's wrath and not raptured / translated but I think from the language used it's entirely possible that is another type of the pre-tribulation rapture. In Genesis 19:22 the Lord was speaking to Lot in the context of destroying Sodom and Gomorrah and it reads, "Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do any thing till thou be come thither". Likewise, God will not start His wrath until the church escapes thither. Concepts
Things that make you go hmmmm...
Now I know there is still a 'post-tribber' out there right now who has already disregarded everything I just listed and wants to tell me that Matthew 24 says "Immediately after the tribulation...And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds.." I get it. I want you to know that I believe that verse is 100% true and means exactly what it says. This entire passage is written TO Jews in the context of right before the second coming of Christ. THERE WILL BE A POST TRIBULATION GATHERING, A RAPTURE IF YOU INSIST, BUT IT IS NOT FOR THE BODY OF CHRIST, IT WILL BE FOR JEWS AND MAYBE OTHER TRIBULATION SAINTS. We must rightly divide the word! Understand who the verse is written to and what period of time is being spoken about and sort out the doctrine accordingly. As a Christian in the church age, not everything in the New Testament is written to you. Therefore if a Christian starts applying anything and everything in the New Testament to themselves, they will come up with major wrong doctrine and ultimately leads to a false works based gospel. I hope this post has been a blessing to you. Take this to the Lord in prayer if you must, it's what we should do to begin anything anyways. Please keep debate off this post, there are lost souls watching and we don't want to be a stumbling block for them. This post is not exhaustive. Brethren, look up because our redemption draweth nigh. Maranatha!
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For a few months I have been looking into various programs that are used to create Web apps which can run on any platform because all platforms have internet browsers. With proper coding, users see the same application in Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone, etc. If I had it to do over again, I would have gotten into this type of programming years ago. But, I was both happy and stuck with programming small applications for MS Windows based PCs. While there are many of those, there are so many more internet users who only use phones. Prior to this experience, I found a way to create several Bible references with a Web application called Twine. While Twine is intended to create Interactive Fiction through single web pages, it could also be used for nonfiction reference materials. All of the pages in here that have colored backgrounds were created with Twine. The Bible Tools App has links to all of the Twine pages, to this website and several others. It has a familiar menu bar at the top of the window for PC users and three different Tabs below: Main, Other and Quick Access. The Tabs are more akin to what Mobile users frequently see. Below are a some screen shots you can click / tap through. I hope many of you find it useful as there is a lot of information consolidated into one application. The first page is basically a table of contents. One can access those same pages from the top menu or from the quick access buttons, whichever way works best for you. Here is a link to the Bible Tools App webpage. https://bible-topics.michaels-tech-notes.info/BibleToolsApp.html Devotional for Dec 25:
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh. The mystery is great, not because it is very mysterious but because it is so astounding. The mystery is the amazing truth that God was manifest in the flesh. It means, for instance, that the Eternal One was born into a world of time. He, the Timeless One, lived in a sphere of calendars and timepieces. The One who is omnipresent, existing in all places at one and the same time, confined Himself to a single place--like Bethlehem, or Nazareth, Capernaum or Jerusalem. It is wonderful to think that the Great God, who fills heaven and earth, should compress Himself into a human body. As men looked at Him, they could say accurately, 'In Him dwells all the fulness of the godhead bodily.' The mystery reminds us that the Creator visited this insignificant planet called Earth. It is only a speck of cosmic dust, relative to the rest of the universe, yet He bypassed all the rest to come here. From the palace of heaven to a cattle shed, a stable, a manger! The omnipotent One became a helpless Baby. It is no exaggeration to say that He whom Mary held in her arms held Mary, for He is the Sustainer as well as the Maker. The omniscient One is the fountain of all wisdom and knowledge, and yet we read of Him that, as a Child, He increased in wisdom and knowledge. It is almost incredible to think of the Owner of all arriving unwelcome on His own premises. There was no room for Him in the inn. The world knew Him not. His own received Him not. The Master came into the world as a Servant. The Lord of glory veiled that glory in a body of flesh. The Lord of life came into the world to die. The Holy One came to a jungle of sin. The One who is infinitely high became intimately nigh. The Object of the Father's delight and of angelic worship hungered and thirsted, was weary at Jacob's well, slept in a boat on Galilee, wandered 'as a homeless stranger in the world His hands had made.' He came from luxury to poverty, with no place to lay His head. He worked as a carpenter. Never slept on a mattress. Never had hot and cold running water, or the other conveniences that we take for granted. And it was all for you and for me! O, come, let us adore Him! A couple weeks ago I ran across a web application called Workflowy. Its general purpose is to capture your thoughts, daily tasks, research notes and anything else you need to store. One feature is quite unusual, the sharing of any node (a subsection of all notes), with anyone and they do not have to have a login account. Any number of users can be granted read only or the ability to change the shared information. This was very intriguing to me. The second feature that is very important is I can update the data from a phone, any browser or a Windows version of Workflowy. And the updates are VERY fast, like two seconds fast. So, I have been adding Bible related information for the last two weeks including a New Testament. The third feature of Workflowy that is also important is being search very quickly on any words or by tags. Searching the New Testament for say the word "holy" takes 1 second and finds 170 verses. Since this is so fast, doing Bible studies is very possible. Below are two screenshots, the New Testament table of contents and the results of searching for "holy." Each item with the ➡️⏺️ arrow and circle next to them is a node. Clicking the arrow opens up the node. Clicking on the circle will Zoom in so only one node is visible. The colored items at the top of the table of contents are tags. At the right side, entering holy into the search box, displays the above results. If I click on #grace, it will filter verses containing that tag as shown below. (Notice it puts #grace into the Search box automatically.) Below is a couple minute demonstration of using this tool. It is in light mode since that is how it will be displayed for users who click on the link provided here. https://workflowy.com/s/bible/FTNEGZ5cEOoGoSVM I hope many of you will get some use out of this resource. I will be adding to the Bible Extras part of it from time to time.
For about a week, I have been studying 4 different ways to create slideshows on the Web. In the past, I have created several slideshows with Google Slides. But I was looking for something more neutral and independent of Google. The roundup of software included 1) Flowtime.js, 2) Impress.js, 3) Reveal.js and 4) Marp. All of these are quite interesting and capable slideshow JavaScript libraries. Flowtime and Reveal allow for both horizontal and vertical placement of slides, which can be great for having general information that can become more detailed by diving downward in your slides. Impress uses an infinite size canvas onto which you place each slide. This takes more work as does the formatting of slides. The animations in Impress are quite impressive. The first three programs all work well on PCs; however, they are not very seamless on Mobile devices. Coming to the last program, Marp, I found it to work very well on PCs and Mobile devices. The learning curve for Marp was around overriding the formatting for individual slides and slide elements. Once I figured out how to format lists, links, paragraphs and headers to my liking, the rest was easy. On Windows, there are two programs that have plugins for Marp, 1) Obsidian and 2) Visual Studio Code. Obsidian is a general purpose note taking program with a wide array of plugins. I keep daily notes and other information in my Obsidian vault. Since I dabble with programming, I also have VS Code installed. It is first and foremost a programmer's editing environment. Using the Marp plugin is almost identical in Obsidian and VS Code. One simply enters the appropriately formatted slide text then clicks on an icon to create a Marp HTML file which can then be uploaded to a web server. Since I already have a lot of text in Obsidian, I decided to use it along with the Marp Slides plugin. Below are a couple of screenshots from my first slideshow. The links in maroon color are active. The third picture show the navigational tool which contains previous, next, full screen and presenter buttons. On PCs, spacebar, right or down arrows move to the next slide. Shift spacebar, left or up arrows move to the previous slide. The Home and End keys move to the first and last slides. On Mobile devices, users can swipe left / down to move forward or right / up to move backward. Here is a link to the whole slideshow. Click here
Perhaps some of you will find uses for these type of programs. |
AuthorHas over 30 years experience in Information Technology and, more importantly, 30 plus years as a believer in Jesus Christ. Archives
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