OK, well, I know I'm stirring it up with this one, but iMonk started it!
I grew up being taught about a secret return of Jesus for his church that would take place before 7 years of tribulation then he would come back again and judge everybody. I remember the guys teasing each other that the rapture would occur on your wedding night. "No, wait 5 minutes! Go get Rome first."
Anyway, I digress. A few years ago at my previous church, my pastor did a series on the End Times. I started doing a lot of research and reading a lot of different people on the subject, not to mention the oft referenced passages themselves. It was kind of tough, because I was coming to different conclusions than what was being taught. I really begin to see how many hoops the advocates of the rapture have to jump through to get the thing to work.
So, is it a teaching that's worth dividing over? I don't think so. The bottom line is that we just don't know exactly how and what is going to happen. Yes, He's coming back and if someone says otherwise, then that is heresy, but I think we must exercise some restraint in thinking we have every facit of the procedure figured out. That's the danger of the typical literal dispensationalist view.
Here's a couple of quotes from Monk to get you started...
Nowhere does Paul tell the churches under his charge that Christ will return twice in the dispensational, two returns scenario. He teaches that Christ will return once, publicly, for judgement and reward. Advocates of the two returns scenario must construct Biblical evidence, because there is no single verse that says Christ returns twice.
The propagation of this idea in books, music, sermons and novels may have caused most American evangelicals to assume that the Bible teaches the entire rapture-tribulation-return scenario, but the success of the doctrine does not make up for its absence in scripture or Christian history.
Continue reading iMonk's "Three Questions"
here.
