The RAPTURE~PART 1

Here is the 50 million dollar question - will there be a Rapture of God’s saints before the Tribulation, or will all of God’s people living at that time have to go through the Tribulation and possibly be martyred for their faith?
I’m going to go ahead and give you the main verses from Scripture that deal with the possibility of a Rapture. There is divided opinion in the Body of Christ as to whether or not there is going to be a Rapture.
Each one of you will have to come to your own conclusion on this subject per your own interpretation of the Scripture verses I will list below. I’ll give you my two cents on the subject. I’ll point out key words and key phrases in the following verses.
As you will see in the following verses, I feel that there is very strong evidence from Scripture that there will be a Rapture, and that it will occur before the Antichrist starts the persecution of God’s saints, and before God starts to pour out His wrath upon the earth during the 7 year Tribulation. In other words, it will be a pre-tribulation Rapture.
1. This first verse is very interesting. You already know that one of the names of the Antichrist is the "lawless one", per the Scripture. This verse is definitely talking about the Antichrist. Here is the verse:
"And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in our time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming." (2 Thessalonians 2:6-8)
You know the lawless one is referring to the Antichrist because then the verse says that Jesus will destroy him when He comes back for the second time.
But look very closely at the phrase "only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed ..." The "H" in the word "He" is a capital H. This means "He" is either referring to God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit.
Since God and Jesus are in heaven right now, the "He" has to be referring to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has always been referred to as the One who restrains evil from getting out of control on this earth.
It says that the Antichrist cannot be revealed until He is taken out of the way. Since we know that the Holy Spirit still has to be down here even if there is a Rapture, who is "He" referring to? If there is a Rapture, there still will be a multitude of people that are going to get saved and then martyred. If they are saved, then they are sealed with the Holy Spirit, which means the Holy Spirit is living on the inside of them like He is with us.
I believe the "He" may be referring to the "Holy Spirit operating through the Church." This means that the Body of Christ, the Church, will be what is taken out before the Antichrist can be revealed.
Think about this. The Antichrist is going to be very easy to spot once he starts to enter into the world scene. All of the Scripture verses on the Antichrist and 7 year Tribulation spell out exactly what is going to occur, and there will be more than enough astute Christians who are going to be able to pick up who he is when all of these events start to occur.
With some of the powerful TV ministries that we now have in place, I am sure that the Body of Christ will be shouting from the rooftops once the Antichrist is spotted. The word will be spread and it will become very hard for the Antichrist to rise to the kind of power that the Bible is foretelling.
I believe that the Church has to be taken out, as the above verse is stating, before the Antichrist can be revealed to the rest of the world. And the above verse states exactly that - that the Antichrist will not be revealed until "He" who is restraining him is taken out of the way!
Once the Body of Believers are raptured off the face of the earth, there will nothing that will be able to stop the Antichrist’s rise to power. The rest of the world is going to be easily duped into believing in this man - especially with all of the false signs and wonders that will be performed on his behalf by the False Prophet.
I believe the above verse alone is very strong Scriptural evidence that there will be a Rapture of God’s saints before the Antichrist actually rises to full power.
(2 B Continued....)

* Article written by Michael Bradley of Bible Knowledge Ministries. Their
website is a resource of Bible commentary and teaching.

If you do not want to wait for the next article, you can go to our
end times section of our website for all 15 articles regarding the 2nd
Coming of Jesus. Copyright © 2005 by Michael Bradley. All Rights
Reserved.