Why pre-tribulation rapture is doctrinally correct

By Elizabeth Prata

There are many people going back and forth over a pre-tribulation rapture versus a post-tribulation rapture. Rather than take a few verses, or worse, one verse, and build a doctrine out of it, the entire Bible must be looked at. Also one must look at God and His work with humans since the course of time began. But first, to answer questions about the rapture, one needs to ask what is the Tribulation? GotQuestions.org has an answer:

First, it is important to recognize the purpose of the tribulation. According to Daniel 9:27, there is a seventieth “seven” (seven years) that is still yet to come. Daniel’s entire prophecy of the seventy sevens (Daniel 9:20-27) is speaking of the nation of Israel. It is a time period in which God focuses His attention especially on Israel. The seventieth seven, the tribulation, must also be a time when God deals specifically with Israel. While this does not necessarily indicate that the church could not also be present, it does bring into question why the church would need to be on the earth during that time.

The primary Scripture passage on the rapture is 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. It states that all living believers, along with all believers who have died, will meet the Lord Jesus in the air and will be with Him forever. The rapture is God’s removing His people from the earth. A few verses later, in 1 Thessalonians 5:9, Paul says, “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The book of Revelation, which deals primarily with the time period of the tribulation, is a prophetic message of how God will pour out His wrath upon the earth during the tribulation. It seems inconsistent for God to promise believers that they will not suffer wrath and then leave them on the earth to suffer through the wrath of the tribulation. The fact that God promises to deliver Christians from wrath shortly after promising to remove His people from the earth seems to link those two events together.

Another crucial passage on the timing of the rapture is Revelation 3:10, in which Christ promises to deliver believers from the "hour of trial" that is going to come upon the earth. This could mean two things. Either Christ will protect believers in the midst of the trials, or He will deliver believers out of the trials. Both are valid meanings of the Greek word translated “from.” However, it is important to recognize what believers are promised to be kept from. It is not just the trial, but the "hour" of trial. Christ is promising to keep believers from the very time period that contains the trials, namely the tribulation. The purpose of the tribulation, the purpose of the rapture, the meaning of 1 Thessalonians 5:9, and the interpretation of Revelation 3:10 all give clear support to the pre-tribulational position. If the Bible is interpreted literally and consistently, the pre-tribulational position is the most biblically-based interpretation.

So if pre-trib is the biblically correct view, and if Jesus said He would keep the Church out of it, where does this post-tribulation view come from?

There are lots of anti pre-trib viewpoints around, and the only explanation is that those who promote them don’t really understand what went on at the cross. At some level they believe the Church should endure the great Tribulation because it needs to be purified, when in fact the Church was purified at the cross, becoming as righteous as God Himself in His eyes (2 Cor 5:17,21) They begin with the conviction that there is no pre-trib rapture and then pick and choose verses that when looked at all by themselves without the benefit of context, can be used to support their position." (Source)

The rapture is an event that will take place in the twinkling of an eye. The Tribulation is "the hour of trial"- a lengthy period of judgment in which God pours out His wrath on the rebellious people. Post-trib view cannot explain the imminence of the rapture since the Tribulation is a scheduled series of events that are prophesied down to the last day. Contrastingly, the rapture is an event that was so secret it was not revealed as doctrine until 20 years after the cross by Paul to the Thessalonians, and its exact moment of fulfillment is still a secret today.

Here is a good article from The Master's Seminary about the rapture, Why A Pretribulational Rapture?

The following four questions will be raised and answered in this attempt to present a convincing response to the ultimate question at hand, “Why a pretribulational rapture?”
1. What does “rapture” mean?
2. Will there be an eschatological “rapture”?
3. Will the “rapture” be partial or full?
4. Will the “rapture” be pre, mid, or post in a time relationship to Daniel’s seventieth week?
The scope of this article does not allow for discussing the chief deficiencies of other positions. This task I leave to other writers for the time being. However, the central purpose of this discussion is to describe the superiority of pretribulationism as taught in major eschatological texts such as Matthew 24–25; 1 Thessalonians 4; 1 Corinthians 15; and Revelation 3, 6–18. It will not be the weight of any one reason that makes pretribulationism so compelling, but rather the combined force of all the lines of reasoning.

The entire letter to the Thessalonians was written to assure them that they had not missed the rapture and were not now going through THE Tribulation, The believers in Thessalonica were being persecuted, and they thought that they had misunderstood the timing. Paul wrote to assure them that they had not missed it, nor would their dear departed ones.

Check out the reasoning and resources linked here and be confident in the Hope that we, the Church, will not be present on earth when Jesus hurls His wrath upon the earth.