The Church Does Not Enter The Tribulation – Reasons That Prove It – Part 2 Of 3 Series

THE CHURCH DOES NOT ENTER THE TRIBULATION – REASONS THAT PROVE IT – PART 2 OF 3

We continue looking at the reasons that prove the Church, the Body of Christ can have no part in the coming wrath of God in the Tribulation. God’s members of the Bride are delivered from that coming judgement. Of course I know there are some who do not accept the Tribulation is the literal event the bible describes, but I am not going down that track today.

[5]. THE THIRD SCRIPTURAL REFERENCE – ALAS THE DAY OF THE LORD HAD COME!

For this we look at 2Thessalonians where that church had a real problem. In his visit to the believers for three weeks, he taught them about the DAY of the LORD. That is a common term in all the prophetic books for that period in history when God will intervene in the affairs of men with open judgement. This will be a terrible time on earth. [[I have a full study on this “The DAY of the LORD” in my series on SermonCentral in the Eschatology series.]] There is much in the Old Testament prophets explaining the events in the DAY of the Lord.

Anyway Paul taught the Thessalonians that the DAY of the LORD was a terrible time of suffering and that occurred in the Tribulation but believers would be delivered from that terrible time by the Rapture. Paul wrote this – {{2Thessalonians 2:1-2 “Now we request you, brethren, with regard to THE COMING OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST AND OUR GATHERING TOGETHER TO HIM, that you may not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, TO THE EFFECT THAT THE DAY OF THE LORD HAS COME.”}}

The saints at Thessalonica were greatly disturbed that they were in the DAY of the LORD because they were suffering persecution and trouble. In other words they believed they were in the Tribulation and had missed out on the Rapture. The DAY of the LORD covers the period straight after the Rapture until the Millennium. The “coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him,” is the Rapture.

They were disturbed they had missed out. Some false teachers were telling them the DAY of the LORD had come already. They wrote to Paul in their distress and that is the background for 2 Thessalonians. In the previous letter Paul detailed the Rapture in chapter 4. 2Thessalonians is Paul’s response to their dilemma.

This is what he explained to them – {{2Thessalonians 2:3-5 “Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come UNLESS THE APOSTASY COMES FIRST, and THE MAN OF LAWLESSNESS IS REVEALED, the son of destruction who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God. DO YOU NOT REMEMBER that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things?”}}

This is a very critical passage for the pre-Tribulation Rapture. Paul says the DAY of the LORD will not come UNLESS first has come “the apostasy”. It is extremely unfortunate that most bible versions translate the Greek word ?p?stas?a (apostasia) as an apostasy from the faith or as rebellion. Let us be very clear here, apostasy from the faith is not something of the last days. It happened in Laodicea and look at the Roman Catholic church from 600 AD onwards, and of the Middle Ages and the horrible heresies of the 300 – 1000 AD like Arianism and Gnosticism that decimated the Christian faith. Apostasy has always been with us. NO, the word does not mean apostasy! It means something else.

The word means “departure” and it is not departure from the faith as in the 2Thessalonian usage. It means a departure in location. That is, a translation from earth to heaven; the Church removed from earth to heaven. Some who want to defend the Church being in the Tribulation can get very abusive as one did to me in a posting on SermonCentral. Let me explain the use of this word better from a previous article I prepared in the past:

The expression (apostasia) normally means defection, revolt or rebellion BUT it can also be translated by “disappearance” or “departure”, and it has been suggested by Greek scholar Kenneth Wuest in “Prophetic Light in the Present Darkness” and by E. Schuyler English in “Rethinking the Rapture,” that the reference is not to an apostasy from the faith (didn’t that occur some 1600 years ago and throughout history?) but to the translation of the church from the world.

Wuest points out that the word “apostasia” is derived from the root verb, “afistami” which means “to remove, withdraw, depart, go away, etc”. Of its 15 occurrences in the New Testament, it is 11 times translated “depart”, and Wuest accordingly argues that the substantive must mean “departure” or “going away”, and since the Greek text has the definite article [? = THE] then a particular departure is in view. It is, and that departure is the removal of the Church. These are the 15 references. My text for these verses is the NASB.