ALL the Hebrew and Roman religious leaders’ traditions of men that have been added to the Word of God are why so many believers in Christ who will be living right before the Tribulation Period begins will be so unprepared and unalert. They will be the carnal believers and the natural men and women (unbelievers – Jews and Gentiles) who will miss the Rapture and end up suffering during the Tribulation Period.
Even though all believers in Christ are promised eternal life, all believers must understand that believing is more than giving intellectual assent to Christ’s Existence or His Redemptive Work. Believing also means Christ’s Ekklesia (His One Body of Believers or One Community of Faith Believers) is His collective Bride who uses everything He gave to Her to help Her become His saintly Overcomers.
When the apostle Paul says the righteous believers are NOT meant to go through God’s end-times Wrath, the apostle Paul means exactly that. So that God would not pour out any of His Wrath upon His righteous sons and daughters, He poured out His full cup of Wrath upon His only begotten Son, Jesus the Christ. As a result, the Bride of Christ (every born again, saved, justified, and fully sanctified Jew and Gentile) would be RESCUED from (would escape) ALL of the end-times Wrath to come!
God established the Feasts of First Fruits and Pentecost as moveable Feasts that fall 50 days apart, on the Sundays that follow regular weekly Saturday Sabbaths. Today is the 50th day after First Fruits 2014 or the Sunday after the seventh Sabbath, which means it is Pentecost Sunday.
It is a huge interpretive mistake that always causes many to identify the Bride of Christ as the Tribulation’s “elect.” The Bride of Christ absolutely is not the Tribulation’s “elect,” because the Scriptures show that it is the spiritually blind Jewish people, the unbelieving Gentile masses, and the unprepared, unwatchful Body of Christ members who are the ones who will experience the Tribulation Period. The Bride of Christ (the faithful, obedient, prepared, and watchful Body of Believers) is raptured before the seven year Tribulation Period ever begins!
Many Messianic Jews and Christ-believing Gentiles agree that the Feast of Trumpets primarily is a picture of The Rapture—the “snatching away” of the alive Bride of Christ. Yet, despite the fact that biblical Scriptures and Jewish traditions are in harmony with each other about the “last trump” or last trumpet being the shofar blast that marks the start of Yom Teruah or the Feast of Trumpets/Rosh HaShanah, many people still want to claim that the “last trump” is the seventh judgment trumpet in Revelation.
The Bible neither suggests/states that the Rapture will be unexpected for EVERYONE nor does the Bible suggest/state that the Day of the Lord will be unexpected for EVERYONE. On the contrary, Christ Jesus clearly implies that the Rapture ONLY will come as a thief in the night to the unprepared and unwatchful believers. Likewise, the apostle Paul clearly states that the Day of the Lord ONLY will come as a thief in the night to those individuals who are in “darkness”—to those very surprised ungodly and immoral unbelievers!
The Divine Truth that can be found in the Holy Bible is that Father God wants His children, and the Lord wants His disciples, to strive to be holy in every aspect of life—to see no evil (to not look at anything that can cause us to sin), to hear no evil (to not listen to ungodly advice), and to speak no evil (to not speak corrupt communication)!
If we are the Lord’s disciples and He truly has set us free from the unbiblical traditions of the institutional “church’s” men (and women), then we should have a true biblical perspective (we should base our approach to understanding how to use the terms apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher, and so forth on nothing but Scripture). The biblical perspective on how the Holy Bible deals with the issue of how to use the terms apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher is that there obviously is a very big difference between disciples of Christ Jesus “holding an office in the Body of Christ” and disciples of Christ Jesus “functioning in the Body of Christ.”
Most believers are not in agreement about where the Rapture happens in the Olivet Discourse’s timeline, and they disagree because too many believers fail to see that the Olivet Discourse is not completely sequential. They also disagree because too many believers fail to understand that the Olivet Discourse is more about the disciples’ questions and Christ Jesus’ answers to those questions—the Lord’s predicted signs and time of the His Parousia! Put differently, the Olivet Discourse’s focal points are on the nation of Israel’s expectations, which are based on Old Testament prophecies, and on God’s worldwide plan for the Earth, instead of on the Rapture of the CHURCH, which is the Body of Christ/Bride of Christ.
