I continue my response to Gary DeMar and his blog post.
The title of his article reads, “You’re Not Getting Raptured Out of Here. Deal With It.” I can actually affirm this title, but for an opposite reason that DeMar does. What DeMar means by this is he does not even believe the Bible teaches there will be a rapture in the first place. This is an another example of DeMar’s detestation for dispensational-pretribulationism: Denying this view on the timing of the rapture is not good enough for DeMar—he feels compelled to go as far as denying the biblical rapture event itself!
(14) For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. (15) For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. (16) For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. (17) Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. (1 Thess 4:14–17).
What part of “then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” does DeMar not understand? See more on this point here.
So how do I as a prewrather affirm the meaning of the title? As anyone familiar with the prewrath position knows our principle message to pretribulationalists is: “You’re Not Getting Raptured Out of Here.” Pretribulationists teach that we will be raptured out of here before the Antichrist’s great tribulation. In fact this year, pretribulationist Chuck Smith told 8,000 attendees at a prophecy conference, in essence, “Look at the precarious world, you will escape the coming tribulation by being raptured soon.”
In contrast, prewrath teaches, “You’re Not Getting Raptured Out of Here.” Not because there will not be a rapture in the first place as DeMar mistakenly teaches, but because God is going to call the last generation of the church to experience its worst suffering through the Antichrist’s great tribulation. And only then, at a day and hour we do not know, will the Lord come back and rapture his people before he unleashes his day of the Lord’s wrath upon this wicked world.
