Who is Going to be Raptured at the First Rapture?

[Churchwork]

Partial Rapture Videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtAARTaI5H4)

Who will be raptured at first rapture to the throne at Rev. 7.9 before the 7th seal opens the 7 trumpets of the Tribulation which begins at Revelation 8.1?

While the throne is still in heaven (Rev. 4.1-2), the Antichrist will be brought to nought by the exploded glory of the parousia of Christ (2 Thess. 2.8,9). The parousia commences first in the clouds (Acts 1.11c; Rev. 1.7a,14.14a). As it commences, there is a first rapture according to readiness (3.10, 6.11a,12.5,14.1-5; Luke 21.36; Matt. 24.37,40-41) "before the throne" (Rev. 7.9) in heaven, before the trumpets are blown (Rev. 8.6). After some time, the Lord descends from heaven to the air (1 Thess. 4.15-17, 1 Cor. 15.23). Finally, the completion of the later harvest takes place (1 Cor. 15.50-52, 1 Thess. 4.15-17). And "on the clouds" (Matt. 24.30b; Rev. 14.14,15) like lightening (Matt. 24.27), He appears in Person. "On that day his feet shall stand [step down] on the Mount of Olives" (Zech. 14.4).

The Great Tribulation occurs in the latter three and a half years (Rev. 9-11), "for a time, and times, and half a time" (12.14). All this occurs during the return (parousia) of Christ (SofS 2.8-13) first in the clouds, then in Person (Zech 14.4, Acts 1.11, Rev. 1.7) with His first resurrection overcomers (Jude 14,15; Rev. 20.4) to reign with an "iron rod" (Ps. 2.9; Rev. 2.27, 12.5, 19.15) in the millennial kingdom (20.2-7). Afterwards, when the 1000 years is finished, God will do away with the rewards (Matt. 25.1-12, 13.44 "like a treasure hidden in the field") of the millennial reign to usher in the new city and new earth (21.1ff) in the new heaven when all the saved will be pillars (3.12), and there will be no more distinction among the nations.

Study partial rapture at first rapture (Matt. 24.37,40-41, Luke 21.36; Rev. 3.10, 7.9, 12.5, 14.1-5) to be received according to readiness and the 7th trumpet rapture (1 Thess. 4.15-17, 1 Cor. 15.50-52) for those who are "alive" and "left" together with the resurrection of those asleep according to completion of the harvest at the consummation of this age, the dispensation of grace (to fulfill the last "week," each week representing 7 years in Dan. 9.24-27).

[Churchwork]

Understand partial rapture (http://www3.telus.net/trbrooks/Partial_rapture.htm) and you will discover what is wrong with pretrib and posttrib onlyist views. In fact, you will also soon discover why there is no prewrath before Revelation 9.18 and the second woe, but there is a prewrath of 1 Thess. 4.15-17 that takes before the last twenty-four months of the third woe which contain the bowls and are specifically named the wrath of God: " seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God" (Rev. 15.1).

The prewrath resurrection and rapture occurs before the 24 months of the 7 bowls of the 7th trumpet: "And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, [and] over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God" (Rev. 15.2). "And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous [are] thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true [are] thy ways, thou King of saints" (v.3). "Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for [thou] only [art] holy: for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest" (v.4). "And after that I looked, and, behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened" (v.5). The "seven golden vials full of the wrath of God" (v.7) "No man was able to enter into the temple, till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled" (v.8).

After nuclear holocaust in the second woe of 13 months in Revelation 9, the 7 bowls are yet to be poured out. The saints who were not raptured at the first rapture at the start of the Tribulation are raptured at the start of the last trumpet that contains the 7 bowls of wrath.

[Churchwork]

Re: Terry James
http://www.raptureready.com/terry/terry.html


The Lord tells me --in His Word-- that liars have no place in Heaven, and that false accusers of His children are particularly in trouble.Therefore, by your own words you admit yourself into Hell and lock yourself in Hell from the inside. Unless of course you have since rebuked the writers in your recent book who changed this verse,

"Let no man deceive you by any means: for [that day shall not come], except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition" (2 Thess. 2.3). Not departure!

But you also reject partial rapture as well, for clearly we see conditional statements for the first rapture:

"Because thou didst keep the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of trial, that [hour] which is to come upon the whole world, to try them that dwell upon the earth" (Rev. 3.10).

Do all Christians do this? Of course not. It is a conditional statement. Why warn us to be watchful if there is no consequence to doing so? "Keep thee form the hour of trial..."

"Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man" (Luke 21.36). Here again we see a condition and a consequence. Why be antinomian?

"Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two [women shall be] grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come" (Matt. 24.40-42).

Why watch if you are going to be raptured before the Tribulation anyway? Party it up. Or maybe, you are wrong at the outset Terry James and your thinking is really fleshly and selfish?

It occurred to me Pretribulation Rapture Onlyists are sorta like Calvinists in that clearly the word is heeding us to watch, pray, keep the word of His patience, and God pleads with us continually, but they are antinomians, because Calvinists say they were irresistibly selected anyway and others given no opportunity to be saved, like Pretrib Onlyists who say we will be raptured irregardless of our behavior and these consequences and warnings in God's word.

Do not think by my writing this I am any less stern with posttrib onlyists, for they too misjudge God's word by taking away the hope of the Church which is in a first rapture according to readiness. Both of you guys are going to accuse the brethren day and night (Rev. 12.10) when you see a couple million people disappear from the planet, yet there you in the heap of it, assuming this could not be the body of Christ for it was you surely would have been included.

A great falling away is about to come up pretrib and posttrib onlyists. The Amplified Bible Version has this interesting point to make:

"Let no one deceive you or beguile you in any way, for that day will not come except the apostacy comes first [unless the predicted great falling away of those who have professed to be Christians has come], and the man of lawlessness (sin) is revealed, who is the son of doom (of perdition)" (2 Thess. 2.3) [Dan. 7.25, 8.25, 1 Tim. 4.1]

[Nottheworld]

Raptured Alive

We know that at the return of the Lord Jesus many will be raptured alive. This is the last way of overcoming death. Both 1 Corinthians 15.51-52 and 1 Thessalonians 4.14-17 discuss this way. We realize there is no set date for the Lord’s coming. He could have come at any time during the past twenty centuries. Hence believers always could cherish the hope of being raptured without passing through the grave. Since the coming of the Lord Jesus is currently much nearer than before, our hope of being raptured alive is greater than that of our predecessors. We do not wish to say too much, but these few words we can safely affirm; namely, should the Lord Jesus come in our time, would we not want to be living so as to be raptured alive? If so, then we must overcome death, not letting ourselves die before our appointed hour so that we may be raptured alive. According to the prophecy of Scripture, some believers shall be raptured without going through death. To be thus raptured constitutes one more kind of victory over death. As long as we remain alive on earth we cannot deny we may be the ones to be so raptured. Should we not therefore be prepared to overcome death completely?

Perhaps we will die; nonetheless, we are not necessarily under any obligation so to do. The words the Lord Jesus variously proclaimed make this teaching crystal clear. On the one hand our Lord asserted: "he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6.54). On the other hand, yet on the same occasion, Jesus also affirmed this: "This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever" (v.58). What the Lord is saying is that among those who believe in Him, some will die and be raised up while others will not pass through death at all.

The Lord Jesus expressed this view at the death of Lazarus: "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die" (John 11.25-26). Here the Lord is not only the resurrection but also the life. However, most of us believe Him as the resurrection, yet forget that He also is the life. We readily admit He will raise us up after we die, but do we equally acknowledge that He, because He is our life, is able to keep us alive? The Lord Jesus explains to us His two kinds of work, yet we only believe in one. Believers throughout these twenty centuries shall have experienced the Lord’s word that "he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live"; certain others shall enjoy in the future His other word that "whoever lives and believes in me shall never die." Thousands and thousands of believers already have departed in faith; but God says some shall never die—not some shall never be raised again, but, some shall never die. Consequently we have no reason to insist that we first must die and subsequently be resurrected. Since the coming of the Lord Jesus is nigh, why should we die beforehand and wait for resurrection? Why not expect the Lord to come and rapture us that we may be delivered totally from the power of death?

The Lord indicates He will be resurrection to many but also life to some. Marvelous though it is to be raised from the dead, as was the experience of Lazarus, this by no means exhausts the way of victory over death. The Lord has another method: "never die." We are appointed to walk through the valley of the shadow of death; on the other hand God has erected a floating bridge for us that we might go directly to heaven. This floating bridge is rapture.

The time of rapture is drawing near. If anyone desires to be raptured alive he here and now must learn how to overcome death. Before rapture, the last enemy must be overcome. On the cross the Lord Jesus entirely overcame that enemy; today God wants His church to experience this victory of Christ. We all sense we are living in the end time. The Holy Spirit is presently leading us to wage the last battle with death before the rapture comes.

Realizing his days are numbered Satan exerts his utmost strength to block Christians from being raptured. This explains in part why God’s children are being assaulted so fiercely in their bodies today. Due to the severity of these physical attacks, they seem to breathe into themselves the air of death, thereby relinquishing any hope of being rapture alive. They do not perceive this is but the challenge of the enemy, aimed at hindering their ascension. However, should they receive the call of rapture, they naturally soon come to possess a combative spirit against death. For they sense in their spirit that death is an obstacle to rapture which must be overcome.

The devil is a murderer (John 8.44). The purpose of Satan’s work against the saints is to kill them. He has a special tactic for the last days: to "wear out the saints" (Dan. 7.25). If he can add just a little anxiety to the believer’s spirit, increase just a trifle the restlessness in his mind, cause the saint to lose sleep one night, eat less the next time and overwork still another time, then he has made inroads with his power of death. Although a single drop of water is powerless, continuous dripping can indisputably wear a hole in a rock. Being well acquainted with this truth, Satan incites a little worry here, a little anxiety there, or a little neglect elsewhere to literally wear out the saints.

Sometimes the devil directly attacks believers and causes them to die. Many deaths are assaults such as these, though few recognize them for what they are. Perhaps it is merely a cold, sunstroke, insomnia, exhaustion or loss of appetite. Perhaps it is uncleanness, wrath, jealousy or licentiousness. Failing to perceive that the power of death is behind these phenomena, the full victory for Christians is jeopardized. Were they to recognize them as the assaults of death and resist aright, they would triumph. How often saints attribute these to their age or to some other factor and miss the real import of it all.

The Lord Jesus is returning soon. We must therefore wage a total war with death. Even as we fight against sin, the world and Satan, so must we fight against death. We should not only ask for victory; we should also lay hold of it. We should claim the triumph of Christ over death in all its fullness. Were we to review our past experience beneath the light of God we would discover how many times we have been assailed by death without our knowledge. We endlessly attributed happenings to other causes and thereby lost the power to resist. If we had recognized certain events to have been the assaults of death, we would have been strengthened by God to have experientially overcome death. In that case our experience would have been like passing over broken bridges and torn-up roads: for in that experience all our surroundings appear to demand our death—yet we cannot die: time and again we despair of life, still we cannot die: we ask ourselves why we now must die, for though the battle fiercely escalates, we do not feel like dying: we seem instead to cry out—I do not want to die! What is the implication of this kind of experience? Simply that God is leading us to fight our last battle with death before we are raptured. These assaults are designed for no other purpose than to frustrate our being raptured alive.

We should clamp shut the wide-open gates of hades with the victory of Christ. We should stand against death, forbidding it to make any inroad in our bodies. Resist everything possessing the disposition of death. View sickness, weakness and suffering with this attitude. Sometimes the body may not be conscious of anything, yet death is at work already. Anxiety in the spirit or sorrow in the soul may produce death as well. God is now calling us to the rapture; accordingly, we must subdue whatever might hinder that event.
God places His children in various circumstances which impel them hopelessly and helplessly to commit their lives by a thread of faith into the hand of the Lord. For his hand is their only hope. And during such a period it is as though they were crying out, "Lord, let me live!" Today’s battle is a battle for life.

Murderous evil spirits are working everywhere. Unless the saints resists and pray they shall be defeated. They shall die inescapably if they continue to remain passive. Should you pray "Lord, let me conquer death," He will respond with "If you resist death, I will let you conquer it." Prayer alone is futile if the will is passive. What you should say is: "Lord, because of your conquest over death, I now resist all its onslaughts. I am determined to conquer death immediately. Lord, make me victorious."

The Lord will enable you to overcome death. So lay hold of the promises God has given you, ask for life, and trust that nothing can harm you. Do not concede to the power of death, or else it will touch you. For instance, you may be staying in a disease-infected area; yet you can withstand all diseases and not permit anything to come upon you. Do not allow death to attack you through sickness.

No longer can we wait passively for the Lord’s return, comforting ourselves with the thought that we will be raptured anyway. We must be prepared. As in every other matter, rapture requires the cooperation of the church with God. Faith never lets affairs follow the line of least resistance. Death must be singularly resisted and rapture must be claimed wholeheartedly. Faith is necessary, but that does not mean passively deserting responsibility. If we only believe mentally that we can escape death yet passively continue to submit ourselves to its power, how are we benefited?

[Churchwork]

Deriving the 144,000 from the 120 Jubilees of 6000 Years

Amazing revelation about the 144,000. 120 Jubilees or 6000 years (1 year equals 1 day in this case) x 24 hours/day = 144,000 (Rev. 14.1-5).

For the first time in my life I understand where the 144,000 are derived from. I knew who they were and even knew they were the pinnacle reached, but didn't know why it was exactly 144,000. God is saying from 3986 BC when Adam was 18 years old (born 4004 BC; age of accountability and sinned at age 18) to 2015 which is 6000 years, He is looking for 144,000 virgin firstfruits overcomers by virtue of being virgins and faithful. (I am not a virgin so I don't qualify, but I am faithful.) Once His number is reached, the first rapture according to readiness takes place "before the throne" (Rev. 7.9) of the man-child overcomers (12.5), before the trumpets of the trumpets of the Tribulation (8.7ff) commence, who kept the word of His patience (3.10), were prayerful (Luke 21.36) and watchful (Matt. 24.42). Please note Rev. 7 to 11 are the major points, and chapters 12 to 19 give the details like Gen. 2 gives the details of Gen. 1.

I now know. So the reason why Satan, the great Restrainer, holds back the Antichrist is because he is waiting for the opportune time. But his hand is forced when the first fruit overcomers, martyrs from the past 20 centuries (5th seal), and living overomers are raptured alive at the first rapture (about 1/7th of living overcomers as represented by the Philadelphia church being the only overcomer church of the 7 churches). In retaliation, Satan sets up his grand deception with a false peace treaty only to break it midway that leads to WW III. God help us all!

[Luke]

Rev. 3.10 says if "thou didst keep the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of trial, that hour which is to come upon the whole world, to try them that dwell upon the earth." The only way for God to keep this promise is through rapture. There is no guarantee a Christian won't be martyrded during the Tribulation.

Therefore, only Christians who do this will be raptured before the Tribulation. Those who are alive and left will be raptured at the start of the last trumpet (1 Cor. 15.50-52, 1 Thess. 4.14-18).