Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012

Your handout this morning is a little complicated. We've got the usual black and white copies, and then there's a color page in there that is something we've distributed before, but I thought it was worth having in there. And then a two-page supplement giving some highlights and summaries of the pre-tribulation rapture. So anyway, that's in your handout. Let's take a look here.

This is History of End Times Teachings. There are some groups and churches that get really big into teaching about end times, both early on when I was here and then even a couple years ago in an elective who went through Revelation. But as I teach through it, what I get excited about in Revelation, the book of Revelation, is not so much the end times teachings, although that's certainly worth looking at, But 150 verses of the book of Revelation are in the heavenly scene. No other book, no other even combinations of books, gives that much description of heaven. And so I see it as a place of citizenship. Nonetheless, here is the history of End Times teachings. One of the things we have here on a chart there right at the front of your handout, is kind of the history of the main topics and issues throughout church history.

And like spiritual growth, what are the last things is something that wasn't looked at intensively until recent times. The church was largely preoccupied with other things. Some of the approaches to interpretation tended to push that off or just allegorize it or make it vague. And so it's only been something that's been looked at fairly intensively just recently.

Over the centuries, the human tendencies is to want to make the future known and understood in the present have brought about the tendency to read biblical prophecies into the people and events of the past. or the present. That is, for example, everybody seems inclined over the centuries to make, you know, we're living in the last times. Right? That kind of an assumption. And whatever's going on right now, that must be the last times. Especially when it gets bad. Right? If things get bad, it must be the last times. Right? Well, guess what? There have been all kinds of horrible times over the centuries, and it wasn't the last times.

The next one is the tendency to make predictions regarding specific dates, events, and people on the near-term horizon, time horizon. That has been real common. And then finally, the tendency to allegorize scripture so as to fit the above inclinations. If we allegorize it, we can make it say anything, including Christ is coming right now. This guy's the Antichrist, that one's the Antichrist, this one's the Antichrist, this other one's the Antichrist. Strangely enough, even the Franciscans, which is a Roman Catholic order, said that the Pope was the Antichrist.

Okay, so from there, we have different views that have been presented. The premillennial view The judgments and resurrections of different groups at different times, before or after the second coming, varying views of the timing of the rapture, if a rapture is held to take place, sort of a general premillennial view has been around for some time. The dispensational premillennial view, which says that the Church doesn't replace Israel, has been something, generally speaking, less common in the past or even heavily persecuted and only brought up clearly in the last couple of centuries. Then, the Amillennial view. The Amillennial view is the view held by the Roman Catholic Church, held by the Orthodox Churches. By that I mean Russian, Greek, Syrian, Serbian, etc. That's the Amillennial view. That is, there is no coming millennium. Christ is going to come again, but there's no millennium. That's it.

And then, along with that, inclined to see the Tribulation as descriptions of church age events. In other words, the Tribulation, instead of being a seven-year period of time, as scripture literally taken would describe, was just things that are happening right now. So, for example, when the Muslims invaded Europe, that was seen as a fulfillment of tribulation events. Shortly thereafter, the Vikings then started invading Europe, and that was seen as tribulation events.

After all, it was horrible, right? Then finally, the post-millennial view, which is a view actually more in recent centuries, and that is there is no tribulation, the church replaces Israel, and things on earth are getting better and better in preparation for Christ's coming.

What do you think about that? Are they getting better and better? Yeah. One lady of a post-millennial viewpoint who was a neighbor of ours some years ago, when our kids were small, said, you know, how is Christ ever going to come if we don't do everything right? So her thought was, we've got to do everything right as Christians in order that Christ would come.

That's not how it's going to be. Finally, we have the post-millennial preterist view. The preterist view is that prophecies are largely, if not entirely, fulfilled already. In the full preterist view, We are living in the New Heavens and New Earth. Yes. We're living in the New Heavens and New Earth and Satan is already bound. That's the full preterist view. Satan is already bound. How do you like that? Yeah, not so much, yeah. It's almost laughable, but that is how a number of people believe in the Preterist viewpoint. You may have heard of, like, Reconstructionist is one of the terms where they embrace that viewpoint.

And these are some of the people who want the Christians to take over the government because that's our obligation, is to take over the government and make everybody Christian by law. Oh boy. Okay, so the view is commonly that the Roman victory over Israel and Jerusalem in 70 AD took place in the late summer of 70 AD. That was Christ's second coming. Christ's second coming in judgment over the Jews through the Romans.

That's preterism. That, by the way, is the belief of the Seventh-day Adventists. In great part, they're a preterist viewpoint. Alright, now, the last slide on page one there, here's the historical existence of views of future things, and we have the premillennial view, which has been around since New Testament times, although that, along with the dispensational premillennial view, the evidence for which has been eliminated as much as possible by the Roman Catholic Church.

The Roman Catholic Church persecuted severely any belief in premillennialism. It was a death penalty. You were going to be slaughtered if you believed that and taught that. The Amillennial view was the view that was not taught in the New Testament, was not taught in a couple of the centuries afterwards, but then became dominant.

And when it became dominant is when the Roman government made Christianity the official religion. Because after all, we're the kingdom now, right? The church is the kingdom. And there's no need for Christ to come back and establish the kingdom because we've got it now.

Right? I wonder how he could have gotten that wrong. Pardon? I wonder how he could have gotten that wrong. Yeah. Along with that, and we covered this previously, along with that was the idea that there was not an understanding, a clear understanding among many of the gospel that is Christ died for our sins. And so the thought was that Christ died because the Jews killed their king. And therefore Christ is the church's king. Because they didn't understand that Christ loved and gave himself voluntarily. So that was not understood.

Okay, on the second page of your They hand out two primary approaches to the interpretation of scripture. The literal view is the text is to be interpreted literally unless the context clearly indicates otherwise, giving due consideration to the elements of language, history, and culture. And then the next view is the allegorical view, which started up in largely the third century. The text has a primary meaning that is literal, but the spiritual meaning and intended message are derived from the text through interpreting it by allegory and analogy. It's immature, according to the allegorical view. It is spiritually immature to simply interpret it literally.

That was the teaching of the allegorists, and that ended up becoming dominant. especially as Christianity was accepted as the official religion of the Roman Empire. So the colored chart on page 7 shows kind of the history of the literal interpretation and of allegorical interpretation in one view there, and we went over that a couple weeks ago, so we won't go over that now. But here's an example in the next slide of literal and allegorical interpretation. Christ's second coming will take place literally when Christ comes to earth to reign as the King of Israel and the King of Kings and Lord of Lords over the Gentiles for a thousand years. That's the literal understanding of those passages. The allegorical example might be a couple of different things, and probably more.

Christ's second coming refers to his coming into the hearts and minds of those in the Church, reigning through the Church. Or, Christ came already in 70 AD in judgment against the Jews. And that's the Reconstructionist idea, that is the idea of the Seventh Adventist Church.

The history and the last couple of pages gives more detail, but we'll go through the history of the pre-tribulation rapture. We will summarize the history of the pre-tribulation rapture in each time period. You'll find more details in that special handout in the last couple of pages. There are gaps of many centuries between known pre-tribulation rapture quotes during the Middle Ages.

This position, along with a larger view of premillennialism, was considered unorthodox and heretical, and was therefore subject to not just persecution, but slaughter. You might be tortured to death if you taught and believed such things. There is evidence of editing or eliminating premillennial writings during this time when those who might have held this position were often slaughtered and their writings destroyed. It was commonly the practice to kill all the people who taught such things and to destroy to powder and ashes everything that they wrote.

Here is the New Testament teaching, so we go into the apostolic era here. Jesus and the Apostles interpreted prophetic scripture passages literally. All the prophecies, for example, about Christ's first coming, were those literally or allegorically fulfilled? They were literally fulfilled, right? You look at the prophecies of Christ's coming, and if you look at all the details, there's something like 300 little details.

Okay, where was he going to be born? In Bethlehem, right? Micah 5.2. In not only just Bethlehem, but which Bethlehem? Because there was more than one. It spells out exactly the one that he was in.

Was that literally fulfilled or allegorically fulfilled? It was literally fulfilled. His death, described in Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22, was literally fulfilled. The prophecies of Christ's first coming were literally fulfilled. Guess how the second coming will be fulfilled? Literally. In round numbers, there have been in the Bible about 10,000 prophecies. 5,000 of those are already fulfilled, and 5,000 are yet to be fulfilled. They will be fulfilled in the time yet to come, which may start today. Okay.

They taught that Israel has a separate identity and future from the church. Here are the Apostles. They are just about to have Jesus ascend into heaven and they ask the question, is now the time when you're going to establish the kingdom in Israel? Did they mean Israel the church or did they mean Israel the nation? They meant Israel, the nation, and people. Every single one of the guys asking the question were of Israel, the nation, and people.

That's the question they were asking, not some allegory. And at the time, they didn't understand that there was going to be a church. But Jesus' answer was, no, that's not going to happen. The Father is going to establish that in His own time. Let me tell you what's going to happen. The Holy Spirit will come upon you and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Now is not the time when Israel as a nation and people will be established as the kingdom. They were seen as separate.

They taught that the church would be raptured prior to a seven-year tribulation period, before the wrath begins. They taught a literal 1,000 year reign of Christ. The 1,000 year figure is given in Revelation 21-7 six times. It says 1,000 years. I think it means 1,000 years. In the second century, the century right after the time of the Apostles, most of the church believed in a literal 1000 year reign of the Messiah at his second coming.

Get there. These were called, and I know it looks like Chile, it's Kiliasts, Kiliasts, and it's after the Greek term. But even Justin Martyr, 100 to 168 AD, said that anyone who didn't believe in a literal 1,000 year reign of Christ was a heretic. It already had begun. He also said the church had replaced Israel. So allegorical interpretation is beginning to slip in.

So then there's the chart on page 6 which gives kind of the genealogy of the disciples of the Apostle John and what they believed about a literal 1,000 year reign of Christ and about the coming kingdom. That was produced in like 1988, I think it was, and so the graphic is a bit archaic, a real blocky graphic, but nonetheless it presents the information. So that's what you have there on page 6.

Then, what characterized the early Church, the most striking point in the eschatology of the Antinocene, that is before, Antinocene means before the Council of Nicaea, is the prominent Kiliasm, or Millenarianism, a widely current opinion of distinguished teachers such as Barnabas, Papia, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Methodius, Lactanius.

So during this period of time, right after the church, they believed in a literal 1,000 year reign of Christ. That was the common teaching. And then, the origin of Alexandria, whose adult life was in the first half of the 3rd century, began to widely present this allegorical interpretation. allegorizing things.

Christ's second coming is the coming into the hearts of believers who will reign, you know, on the earth, right? That was the teaching. Origen questioned the authenticity of the Book of Revelation and he interpreted it allegorically. So, I'm not sure about this, but I'm going to interpret it allegorically. And so then he began a movement within the church to see things that way. Here are some examples.

Matthew 24.30 is where Christ describes himself as coming through the clouds at his second coming to establish his kingdom. Instead, Origen said that this passage referred to the second coming of Christ into the souls of those of the open-hearted when they accept the truth of Scripture. How do you like that? He said that the verses on the second coming of Christ referred to the mature believer seeing Christ in the hidden allegorical meanings of scripture.

Oh boy, okay. Further on origins views, the tribulation period judgments described in Revelation 6-19, chapter 6-19 were not literal events yet to take place, but a description of the struggles a person must come through on the way to union with Christ. Matthew 24-40, where there are two men laboring in the field, one taken and one left, represents the good and bad influences on a person's will. Yeah, you got an angel on one shoulder and the devil on another, yes.

Any passage not allegorized was considered immature and not yet spiritual. So you have to allegorize it in order to make it spiritual. The literal meaning was understood to be immature. If you understand it literally, Origen would say, then that's spiritually immature. It's too bad for you.

Here's the pre-tribulation rapture in the early church. The Shepherd of Hermas, which was written about 110 A.D., says you have escaped from great tribulation on account of your fate. Second to that, Victorinus, 270 A.D., said in his commentary in the Book of Revelation, he makes two references to the church being taken away or having gone out of the midst. So there is some understanding of the idea of a rapture, not real well expressed, but nonetheless present.

Then, stepping into the time when Christianity was made legal, and then shortly thereafter the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christianity gained the political and military support of the Roman Empire. The church was becoming much more comfortable in the world. Is that a problem? Yeah, that is a problem.

Viewing the kingdom is already present in the form of the ruling reigning church ruling from the Emperor himself. Premillennial and literal views of the Bible became increasingly under official suppression since those views stood in opposition to the amillennial view of the established church which was seen as the kingdom.

So the pre-tribulation rapture there in the Imperial Church, we have there 374 to 627 AD, in his sermon known as On the Last Times, the Antichrist and the End of the World, or Sermon on the End of the World, attributed to Ephraim the Syrian, is found, For all the saints and elect of God are gathered prior to the tribulation that is to come, are taken to the Lord lest they see the confusion that is to overwhelm the world because of our sins. So there's some reference to a pre-tribulation rapture, however vague.

Then, what began to happen is as the Roman Empire began to crumble, barbarians began to come in. These are the Vandals and the Visigoths and the Huns and different groups like that. Because people did not understand, look we've got a seven year tribulation period, they just took all those difficulties described and began to try to look in the book of Revelation for these barbarian invaders.

And since Rome has been the place where the church came out of, Right? And the church was established. The attacks on Rome are then all these descriptions of difficulties there in the Book of Revelation. That was the way it was interpreted. So this map of barbarian invasions on the bottom of page three was looked at as being fulfilled in the Book of Revelation. Yes? Yes. Yeah. So anyway, you have that hopefully in your handout as well. Now, page four.

After the barbarian invasions, several different ones, then you have starting, this is the time period starting with Gregory I, or Gregory the Great, as he's sometimes called. By 732, 100 years after the Muhammad, the Muslim advance was finally turned back in tourist France. 632 was the year Muhammad died. By 732, 100 years later, the Muslims had gone through most of the continent of Europe.

They had gone into North Africa. They had gone into Asia with the sword. By the way, here's a question to kind of test things. Is Islam a religion of peace? The first hundred years You had invasions of Europe, North Africa, and on into Asia. The first hundred years. Now, the first hundred years of Christianity, how many wars were fought by the Christians in order to spread Christianity during the first hundred years? None. So this tests the character of the supposed religion. Which one is a religion of peace? It's pretty clear. Yes. Actually, it depends on who you ask. Yes. It does, doesn't it? Okay.

Tourist France, not too far outside of Paris, was the place that was finally turned around. Charles Martel, Martel, it means the hammer, said, Christian Europe good, Muslim Europe bad. And he finally gathered a group together to drive out the Muslims and turn that push around.

Now, following that came the Viking raids. The Vikings came out of the area in northern Europe there and went into various areas, generally starting along the coast, but even into the Mediterranean and into the Black and Caspian Seas. They would come in, they would do their raids, and then run out. They weren't trying to take over a territory, they'd just go in and cause trouble and take what they wanted.

But that also was seen as some fulfillment of the book of Revelation. Because after all, this was horrible, right? And so some of the dates are there. And I think on the copy that I gave you, because it wouldn't print so well, I had some of these done in different print. But it gives the year of those invasions there on your handout and on the map here. Now, the impact of three teachings. The late imperial and medieval church taught that one, the church replaces Israel.

2. The church was the earthly kingdom.

3. The events of Revelation 6-19 were taking place during the church age, all reinforced through allegorical interpretation. If you can allegorize it, you can make it mean whatever you want. So that's what they did. These views taken together caused a great many to view the barbarian, Moslem, and Viking invasions as well as the subsequent Black Plague epidemics as judgments of God against the sins of the people. Oh, and by the way, you know how they had Y2K and all the craziness over that? They had Y1K too.

Only they didn't have anything to do with computers. So, anyway, the allegorical understanding confused people to the point where rather than looking towards something happening, and looking towards a rapture, and looking towards the Lord's coming, they saw these awful things as happening in the midst of whatever they were going through. It must be the barbarians. It must be the Muslims. It must be the Vikings. It must be Y1K, right? And so continued confusion because of that.

The Spiritual Franciscans, this is on page 5 of your handout there. The Franciscan Order, St. Francis of Assisi being the founder there, put forth these end times teachings that the Pope had become the great Antichrist. and that Revelation chapters 2 and 3 presented successive periods in church history. It's one reason why when we teach the Revelation, we don't teach that the seven churches or seven ages are periods in church history. Because what's interesting is everybody, starting with the Franciscans, everybody who has held that view always sees their time as the last one. Isn't that amazing? There's something a little too flexible about that. A little too flexible about that. Okay. Here is a pre-tribulation rapture in the medieval church. The history of Brother Dolcino attributes to him what seems to be a pre-tribulation rapture position about 1304. This is right after the period of the Crusades.

He was of the Italian group called the Apostolic Brethren. which taught a pre-tribulation rapture kind of teaching, he was put to death by hot pincers and burning in June 1307. This was likely not entirely for his position on future things, since he also declared his apostolic brethren group independent of the established church. So he was tortured to death, not just for his pre-tribulation rapture teaching, but because he taught that there was a group and a church independent of the Catholic Church.

One of the points we've made, and this is going into the Reformation period starting in 1517 with Martin Luther's 95 Theses, One of the points we made before is what was new of this Reformation period was the basis of authority, scripture. What was new was the basis of salvation, salvation by faith instead of salvation by church and works. And finally, personal Bible study and interpretation instead of the church telling you what the Bible says. What, however, was unchanged during the Reformation was politically and militarily aligned churches. So the Calvinists had their own military efforts and the Lutherans had their own military efforts and alliances.

And so that continued. And then secondly, the allegorical interpretation of much of scripture with the idea that Israel was replaced by the church. That continued for many and in great part during the Reformation period. And so, you have this chart here. This is the Reformation period with the different views that were prevalent, including the beginning of the post-millennial view.

That is, things are just going to get better and better until Jesus comes. As a matter of fact, it's our job to make it better and better until Jesus comes. I talked to one guy who held this view, and he says, when I paint my fence, it makes things better. and makes things more ready for Jesus to come. Wow. Okay.

Here are, starting 1648, but here are some of those who taught some kind of a pre-tribulation rapture in the recent centuries. Starting with Thomas Collier in 1674, and you have more detail on that on those last two pages here. I won't go through all that detail.

But several different ones, Morgan Edwards in 1788 had a write up here and I've got just a little clip of it. included there that talks about a pre-tribulation rapture, but all of these talk about pre-tribulation rapture. John Gill's commentary of 1748 is widely available on the internet and as you look at that he talks about this rapture. So this view has been taught by numerous ones in the 16 and 1700s. and published in varying degrees. This one by Morgan Edwards has not been very widely published and so I was thinking of putting it up on the Holly Hills website just so that it's available out there.

John Nelson Darby was the one who actually significantly put together the pre-tribulation rapture idea. And he recognized that the church's future and identity is distinct from Israel's future and identity. And that was in some degree fairly unique. He put that out there clearly. While we have a pre-tribulation rapture described by others, Darby is one who put this out here real clearly and said, wait a minute, Israel is Israel and the church is the church and those two are distinct and this pre-tribulation rapture is explicitly for those who are of the church. Essentially the Plymouth Brethren is the group that he was identified with. He was also one that taught the identification truths.

And then here in the 20th century, so the last century here, we have from that the Schofield Reference Bible, published 1917, about the time of World War I. And because it was one of the earliest study Bibles, that is it had notes and things like that, it was actually very influential.

One other thing that happened is post-millennialism, the idea that things are getting better and better until Jesus comes, had a major hit with World War I. because it's like things aren't getting better and better. The whole world is fighting here and we've got a ghastly war and that war is essentially ended by a flu epidemic. So things aren't getting better and better. Dallas Theological Seminary founded in 1924 by Louis Sperry Schaefer.

Then Israel becomes a nation again in May 14, 1948. Still a nation now. Although I read that Kissinger thinks that Israel will cease to be a nation in the next decade. But we'll see. I'm not so sure he's right. Post-World War II resurgence and post-millennialism. Since World War II there's been a resurgence in this idea that things are going to get better and better until Jesus comes. I don't know how, but nonetheless it has regenerated. Compromise of dispensational views with all-millennial and post-millennial views starting in the 1980s. That's known as progressive dispensationalism. And then Open Theism's gains around the 1990s to the present.

Open Theism is the idea, actually two things. One is God doesn't know the future. And Not only does God not know the future, but God changes. God doesn't know the future and God changes. That's open theism. That has gained a foothold in the last few decades. In fact, there was a meeting about a decade or so ago down in Colorado Springs, and it was a meeting of so-called evangelicals, and by taking a poll, roughly a third of them had some kind of sympathies with open theism.

The idea that God doesn't know the future, and therefore prophecy is fallible. The prophecies in the Bible are fallible. God makes mistakes, because he doesn't really know the future. It's God's best guess. It's prophecy. Yes? What do you mean by God changes? That's part of open theism, is that God can change. He changes his mind? He changes his mind. He changes his perception. God changes his understanding of things.

Some of the proponents of that you'll find in some of the seminaries. It's even here in Denver Seminary been presented. Let's see here. I'm trying to think of some of the main proponents. I can't think of them offhand, but what I'll do is I'll get those and list those up next time. Yes? Oh, pantheism. is God's in everything, yeah, which is more of a kind of a Hindu and to some, for some parts, Buddhist belief. So, yes.

Under that you just throw out the word, right? The Bible. You just throw out the Bible. Oh, well, no, what they do is they reinterpret the Bible. Oh, you're throwing it out. Yeah, yeah, essentially what it does is it takes the assumption that God doesn't know the future and that God changes and then puts that in scripture and interprets scripture accordingly. And it says that prophecy is therefore fallible. It's no longer God stating this is what's going to happen, but it sees God in time seeing the future much as we do. We don't really know with certainty, of our own perspective, what's going to happen in the future.

And they see God as largely in that same mode. Yes? So how is that viewpoint influencing how these groups function? Well, several different things. One is, instead of looking at prophecy, this is what is most certainly going to take place. Prophecy is looked, among open theists, as this is God's best guess. And so, that's one thing, is do we know what's going to happen in the future?

You know, for example, Romans 8.28 and 29 says that you are predestined to be conformed to His image. Well, are we sure? Well, maybe not. You know, Christ is going to come again, I hope. You see the perspective that starts to come into place there.

It impacts, and one of the reasons why I put it there, it impacts how you see biblical prophecy, because all of a sudden you don't have certainty anymore. Yes? This has to feed into the different translations as well, because if you have a preordained view in one of these different areas, and then you actually make a translation of the Bible, that's going to come out in some of the ways you translate, right? Yeah, well, it largely comes to not so much translation, but how do I interpret it? Do I look at these prophecies as certain? You know, this is absolutely going to happen?

Or do I look at it as, well, it might be what happens because this is God's best guess. He doesn't really know and have control of the future. God's as much surprised as we are about things. in open theism. God likes surprises even. Oh yeah, their study notes are definitely going to be different. There's no question about it. Their study notes are definitely going to be different.

Because God can change. God discovers things. God gets surprised by things. God can't say that such and such is going to take place with certainty. God's predestination, instead of being absolute and total, God's predestination of things is he'll try to influence it in that direction. Yes? Well, this is probably true in that time, but it certainly doesn't apply to us now because things are so different and God changes.

He gets modernized. God has a perspective much more like our own. Instead of what the Bible says, His ways are higher than our ways. Is it kind of humanized? Yes, it essentially makes God much more human in his character. These groups can get more involved in their opinion of politics and trying to sway Christian thinking. Certainly. Now, here's an interesting thing.

You had asked about who holds to this view, the Mormon Church. because the Mormon Church says that the one who is God was once a man and therefore changed from a man to being God and that will be the same of you if you're a Mormon that you will become a God like God is now. Therefore God changes. So Mormonism was open theism before it became something established in the evangelical church. Because if you are in the process of changing into a God, and the God who is now God was once a man, then yeah, God changes.

And God doesn't know the future. Yes? Allegorizing is somewhat similar in that it's a matter of how I interpret scripture. Example, the Bible uses a figure of speech, God remembered Noah. Well, does that mean that God forgot? Oh! Noah! I forgot! So that's how the open theist would look at it, is that God doesn't have this constant and total knowledge of everything. God actually doesn't know the future and sometimes even overlooks things. So this would be the open theist's viewpoint.

We have here a viewpoint of the different rapture positions. At Holly Hills we teach you pre-tribulation rapture. The other rapture viewpoints, and I'm going to make a statement here that might seem a little much, but basically nonsense. Make no sense whatsoever. They're grasping at straws and ignorant of things the scripture says.

Nonetheless, there are other rapture viewpoints amid tribulation and what's now, in the last couple of decades, come up as the pre-wrath rapture have been proposed. There has been a post-tribulation rapture view around for some time. That is, the idea that we're all going to be raptured at the end of the tribulation period and then come back with the Lord. So this is the up-down theory. You can get raptured only to come right back down. The pre-tribulation rapture is, in my understanding as we have taught, the only rapture view that makes any sense whatsoever.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? We'll look at the history of missions next week. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you as we look at these things. We thank you that scripture is indeed certain and that we can understand it, that it is clear, that it is consistent. And we thank you that we have not an I hope so kind of hope, but we have a certain hope, a blessed hope, a blessed hope in which you will come for us. And we hope it's today. And Lord, we give you thanks for the certainty that we have. We give you thanks for the knowledge of you that we have. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.