Not Afraid of the Antichrist by Michael L Brown & Craig S. Keener

Author:Michael L Brown & Craig S. Keener
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Prophecy and End Times;Eschatology—History of doctrines;Rapture (Christian eschatology)—History of doctrines;Tribulation (Christian eschatology);Tim LaHaye (1926–2016);Left Behind series;REL067060;REL006140
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2019-02-13T16:00:00+00:00

2. Jesus Can Come at Any Moment

Does Jesus’ coming as a thief for His Church precede the Tribulation or does it bring the Kingdom? Another popular argument for a Rapture before the Tribulation is the argument from imminence, namely, that Jesus can come at any moment. The argument runs like this: Jesus will come at an unexpected time, which must be before the Tribulation. After all, after the Tribulation begins, we can count down seven years and know when Jesus will return after the Tribulation.4

Before answering how Jesus’ coming as a thief addresses timing, we should challenge the association that some make between the thief image and a supposedly invisible coming of Jesus.5 A thief comes unexpectedly, but his arrival itself is hardly secret. Old Testament law allowed a homeowner to kill a thief only if the thief came in the night, precisely because in the night the residents could be presumed home, so a thief who came then was presumably ready to kill them to seize their possessions (see Exodus 22:2–3). Jesus’ coming like a thief means that He comes suddenly and unexpectedly, not that He will not be seen when He comes.

Moreover, New Testament imminence involves keeping ready for an unexpected time, but not necessarily one in which believers are unprepared. The wicked are caught by surprise, but this surprise does not entail that Jesus comes without there being signs of the times (though these signs seem ambiguous enough to keep us ready always, rather than predicting a particular era as necessarily the one). Since believers are always in the light (see 1 Thessalonians 5:4–8), we should always be prepared for our Lord’s coming.

The specifics of a post-Tribulational answer to the unexpected/any-moment argument will vary depending on one’s understanding of the Tribulation and its length (which we will address later in this book). One point, however, is clear: Every passage about Jesus’ coming being unexpected, if it specifies anything in the context about timing, explicitly refers to Jesus’ coming at the end of the age, not to a time at the beginning of the final Tribulation several years before!

Consider this one first:

And the day of the Lord will come like a thief—in which the heavens will disappear with a terrible sound, the elements will be destroyed with consuming heat, and the earth and the works done on it will be laid bare.

2 Peter 3:10

This passage is clear enough that it cannot refer to the beginning of the Tribulation, since no place remains to have a Tribulation. It becomes more complicated for millennial questions, which are not the subject of this book. (One controversy at a time!) Some protest that since 2 Peter does not leave room for the Millennium, but there must be one, then the same could be true for a Rapture before the Tribulation. Yet at the least, a pre-Tribulationalist who offers this protest thereby concedes that this and similar texts by themselves offer no support for a pre-Tribulational Rapture, which ruins their use of the imminence argument from such passages.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.