Hi Gregor, and how good to talk about the rapture among those who wait for it. I have my own view of the scriptures on that. Some will go, some won't, but it may certainly not have anything to do with always being so holy you are singled out.
I have a large handful of close friends who can't wait to get out and pray constantly to get out. Then the other group is shocked at the concept, and seems taken aback anyone would leave before the last soul was saved, or the last chance to die literally a bloody death for Christ.
It may be found that those who are found worthy to leave will leave. Those who are worthy to leave but choose in their hearts to stay behind, will do so.
And God will be with them every moment and do mighty miracles.
But probably they will go the way of the First Church. Maybe only because this is their desire.
The rest are going to be left in the most dreadful state of depressed confusion I can imagine in my mind. That is a great and horrible place to find yourself. Left here without divine assignment. And all the "prayers" holding back the flood gates gone.
And that is the warning of Jesus: When you see all this stuff starting to happen, and you know something really strange is going on that hasn't happened before, and get a feeling that the world is actually coming to an end as predicted, .............
"Take heed to yourselve, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and cares of this life, and SO THAT DAY COME UPON YOU UNAWARES.
For as a snare shall come upon all them that dwellon the face of the whole earth.
Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape these things that shall come to pass and to stand before the Son of man.
Flip over now to Rev. 7:
(John had been alone in Heaven all this time, and there was nothing he saw to this point but the heavenly inhabitants of the Old Testament, which we know. Then...)
After this I beheld and, lo, (which I take as surprise) a great multitude
which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the Throne and before the Lamb . They begin great praise, of course, and an elder apparently asks John if John knows who these people are, and John says no, but the elder knows, and the elder says:
These are they which came out of great tribulation.
(Rev. 7 (-14) That is the last time the word tribulation is mentioned.
It is after a half hour in heaven of silence of mourning for the inhabitants of earth after the Lamb opens the seventh seal.
...and another angel came and stood at the altar, having
incense in his hand...and offers up the incense of the
prayers of the saints, and only then does the real devastation begin on earth. Prior to that angels had halted what they were doing for a fifth angel to mark those to be saved. Now the people are in heaven before the throne, there is a half hour of sorrow, the eighth angel, the mightiest of all perhaps, the one in Rev. 10,
mixed a ball of prayers of martyred saints, and prayers period with fire from the Altar of God and throws the ball to the earth.
That begins what we call the Great Tribulation, which is never called The Great Tribulation, just great as in much tribulation, and it is mostly emotional , i.e., from pressure, afflicted, anguish, burden, persecution, trouble.
The word "tribulation" as in a period called The Tribulation is not mentioned again. The tribulation apparently came up to this time.
After this comes unrelenting horror for 17 pages.
I don't know. This to me is clean glass, so simple a child can see it.
What do you think?
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