The Rapture and the Endurance of the Saints
Sometime near the end of last year, our small group finished up a study of the book of Revelation that took us well over three years to complete. It was a fantastic study, I loved going through it and we learned so much going through it beyond just the book of Revelation or the end times.
One of my favorite parts about it was that sometime during that study, my friend Chris found some fantastic resources on the subject from pastor Joel Richardson. Through his involvement with Emmaus Table, he helped put together a deep study presenting his position of a post-tribulation rapture in a series of videos on YouTube called The Rapture and Endurance of the Saints. I've listened to much (but not all) of it, and it is really fantastic, but man, there is a lot of information in there. I've found myself struggling to recall the key details of this perspective as I've talked to people about it, and this has concerned me a bit (I feel like I should understand it better, and be able to recall it to memory more effectively).
Because of that, I've decided to start a series of posts where I attempt to capture and share the high-level, key points of this perspective, and the key supporting scriptures for each. I feel this is important because as I've listened to the series, I've come to agree with this perspective, but it is contrary to the very popular alternate perspective of a pre-tribulation rapture.
It feels important to me that I should emphasize that while I believe these are things that are valuable to study and understand as believers as much as is practical, it should absolutely not be something that divides us. Conversations of this nature are of great value to us, but as Jesus clearly told us in Acts 1:7, "It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority." (also see Matthew 24:36) I believe this is not a subject that we can know definitively or with absolute certainty, and for that reason, it should never be a subject that divides us as believers and the body of Christ.