Here are my slide presentation notes in pdf format on the rapture in Matthew 24:31. I very much enjoyed the fellowship at the conference.
Pretribulationists believe that “gather his elect” is a reference to the regathering of Israel at the end of the 70th week of Daniel. Preterists, on the other hand, interpret it as the Christian mission beginning in AD 70 to gather in God’s people to the Kingdom through evangelization. I showed, instead, that the Prewrath position is the most natural and consistent reading, demonstrating that this is indeed the rapture.
Revelation
This presentation will be challenging for those who believe that the way to survive the Great Tribulation is to fight. This will also be a reality check for many western believers, particularly those who have been taught an escapist theology. Cooper examines the Biblical principles that the Church must apply during this awful time — and fighting is not one of them. This is a session from the 2009 2nd Annual Prewrath Conference in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
“There is coming a time when injustice is the order of the day — and we will have no remedy.” – Charles Cooper
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A Response to David Reagan and His “Revelation Infers A Pre-Wrath Rapture?”
Recently, Dr. David Reagan has written a very brief critique of Prewrath here. As is custom of other pretribulational critiques of the Prewrath position, his article shows that he does not understand the Prewrath position, and I suspect he has not read any primary literature but has relied on skewed secondary sources.
Before I interact with his article, I want to preface a few words.
I have asked Dr. Reagan to engage in a public debate since I believe it would be beneficial for God’s people. He rebuffed my request for having meaningful interaction on a public level calling it a “total waste of time.” If he is not interested in public debate, then I think it would be good at least to have a written dialogue. Dr. Reagan and I can engage in meaningful interaction on our respective blogs. I will post his articles on my blog, and he can post mine on his blog. Then we can post each others’ respective rebuttals and so on concluding with closing articles. We both will have a word maximum on each article so it will be a fair exchange. This way, his readers will read my articles on his website, and my readers will read his articles on my website. If Dr. Reagan is averse to public meaningful interaction, then surely he cannot be against having a beneficial dialogue in writing.
Moving on to the article.
I come from the school of thought that credible scholarship requires at least two things: First, it requires that the one critiquing a position understands not just what the other position claims, but the reasoning behind the claims. Reagan has done neither.
Second, good scholarship requires interacting with both the claims and the reasoning. Again, this is lacking from Reagan’s article. If I failed at both of these activities my reputation as a researcher and theologian would diminish quickly.
As a prewrath rapturist, I am disappointed at the strawman that Reagan creates. I do not recognize almost any point he says that I am suppose to believe as a Prewrather. It is similar to a Muslim saying, “Christians believe the Trinity, which teaches that there are three Gods.” False representation is a sign of a failed argument.
Nevertheless, let us interact with his article.
He starts off saying:
“Can an argument be made for placing the Rapture near the end of the Tribulation?”
This is not what the Prewrath position affirms. Notice that he does not cite any prewrath documentation so his readers can verify his assertions.
The Prewrath position places the rapture sometime during the second half of the 70th week of Daniel. Jesus says we cannot know the exact day or hour (Matt 24:36). The rapture can occur anytime between a period near the midpoint and toward the end of the 70th week. Here is a chart that is available at our site that Reagan could have easily linked to.
Next, he writes:
“The cornerstone of this concept is that the terrifying events during the first half of the Tribulation are due to the wrath of Man and Satan, and not to God.”
The “cornerstone” of the Prewrath position is the first half? Um…I am stupefied. Prewrath teachers affirm that this period is the most insignificant. This is not to say that there will not be trials for believers at this time. But Reagan gets it completely wrong. Prewrath teaches that the terrifying events due to the wrath of Man/Satan are during the Great Tribulation, which occurs during the second half.
I am seriously not trying to be hard on Dr. Reagan. Whoever fed him distorted secondary sources on the prewrath rapture mislead him. But Reagan is to blame as well since his incompetency of not checking out the most basic facts of the Prewrath position undermines his credibility. Given that the Prewrath position is the fastest growing rapture position today, I would think that he would be on top of current issues.
Next, Reagan asserts that the Prewrath rapture undermines the sovereignty of God. I find this odd since all the writers on our prewrath website are Calvinists. He writes:
“This concept raises a serious theological problem because it questions the sovereignty of God. It assumes that Man and Satan can act apart from God’s will, when the fact of the matter is that neither can do anything God is not willing to permit.”
I truly do not see how Reagan is making a connection here that if someone believes that the Church will encounter Antichrist somehow requires a denial of God’s sovereignty. Believers are being persecuted even today, does that require that God is no longer sovereign? His reasoning is incoherent. He then writes:
“Any carnage wrought by Man or Satan during the Tribulation will still constitute the wrath of God.”
Essentially, his argumentation is such: “The 70th week of Daniel is entirely God’s wrath, therefore, you are wrong.” This is the classic logical fallacy called petitio principii, or most people know it as begging the question, where a conclusion is taken for granted in the premises.
And Reagan did not even bother to inform his readers of the most definitional tenet of Prewrath, which places a distinction between the Antichrist’s Great Tribulation and the Day of the Lord’s wrath.
Incidentally, Reagan misunderstands the theology of sovereignty. It is not that God merely “permits” actions; instead he ordains them, or authorizes them. Case in point are the four malevolent horsemen who are sent out. The term used is edothē (was given), which is the divine passive indicating God’s authorization–not merely “permission”–indicating God’s sovereign power over everything including forces of evil.
Next he writes:
“There is another serious problem with the pre-wrath Rapture concept. It relates to the fact that all the wrath of Revelation is specifically portrayed as the wrath of God. Where do the seal judgments originate? The answer is from the throne of God as Jesus opens each seal of the scroll that was in the Father’s right hand (Revelation 6:1). And where do the trumpet judgments originate? The same place — from the throne of God (Revelation 8:2). When we arrive at the bowl judgments in Revelation 15:1, we are told that with them, ‘the wrath of God is finished.'”
Reagan reasons that the seals must be the wrath of God since they originate from the same place that the trumpet and bowls originate from. This reasoning is flawed since God ordains all things from his throne, not just wrath. And did not Reagan just affirm above that God is sovereign over all things? And this would include suffering of believers. And a believer cannot suffer unless it is ordained by God’s wisdom. Further, Reagan does not discuss any specifics distinguishing the seals from the actual content of the scroll. I have written an article showing that the seals are not God’s wrath here.
In addition, for Reagan to be consistent he must agree that believers suffer God’s wrath since the fifth seal is martyrdom. But this cannot be the case since God has promised believers exemption from his wrath. This is very problematic for pretribulationists who try to make the seals God’s wrath.
Next, he makes another blundering misrepresentation of the Prewrath position:
“The seal judgments are viewed as the wrath of Man and Satan, occurring during the first half of the Tribulation.”
Occurring during the first half of the Tribulation? This is in error. What is definitional of prewrath is that the fifth through the seventh seal occur during the second half, not the first half. And all prewrath teachers agree that the placement of the first four seals are not essential to the Prewrath position.
He writes:
“There is no justification for putting the trumpet judgments at the end of the Tribulation. “
This is not what Prewrath affirms; he is again repeating this error. I addressed this above.
He concludes with saying:
“One final problem with the pre-wrath concept of the Rapture is that it disputes the fact that there is no purpose for the Church being in the Tribulation. The Tribulation is the 70th week of Daniel, a time devoted to God accomplishing His purposes among the Jewish people, not the Church.”
There are a couple of reasons why God would have his Church persecuted: (1) To refine his bride to become spotless (2) And to encourage other believers to stand firm in faith during persecution. These reasons are foreign to many western believers, particularly those in pretribulational escapist churches–but they are true, Biblical, and they exhort us to heed to what is coming upon us.
In addition, he calls the 70th week of Daniel a Jewish week. It is actually a Gentile week. This is the time of the Gentiles–490 years was decreed for Gentiles to trample on the Jews. And when that time expires, then salvation will come to the Jewish nation. God will be working sovereignly with his Bride, the Church, refining their faith; and, at the same time, he will be working with the Jewish remnant who will be included into the one people of God at the end of the 70th week of Daniel.
Thomas Schreiner Moves To Premillennialism Away From His Former Amillennnialism Mainly Because of Revelation 20
I don’t know what position Tom Schreiner holds on the rapture. My guess is that he is post-trib, but I could be mistaken. And I do not know if he has actually considered the Prewrath position.
I want to qualify a couple of statements he makes:
He states in this sermon that the timing of the rapture is not clear in Scripture. Of course, we would disagree with him since we believe that the Bible is very clear that the Church will encounter the Antichrist’s Great Tribulation and will then be raptured followed by the Day of the Lord’s wrath upon the ungodly of this world.
One other element that I would disagree with him on is that he believes that when Satan is thrown to the earth with wrath in Revelation 12 Schreiner thinks that happened at Christ’s First Coming at the cross. I believe that it happens at the midpoint of the seven year period when Michael the Restrainer is removed and the Great Tribulation begins. Also, unfortunately, he spiritualizes the mark of the beast. But historical premillenialists tend to be inconsistent in certain areas such as this. You just have to filter the good from the bad.
Nevertheless, Schreiner does an excellent job in exegeting Revelation 20.
Here is the audio sermon.
What Did the Early Church Fathers Teach on the Timing of the Second Coming?
This presentation on what the early church taught was given last October in O’Fallon Missouri at an eschatology forum. There are three speakers who had twenty minutes each to give their case: Steve Gregg (Preterist), Charles Cooper (Prewrath), Thomas Ice (Pretribulational).
I have included Steve Gregg’s presentation because I want you to hear what a preterist case sounds like. It goes something like this:
“Ok, I grudgingly admit that preterism was never taught in the first three hundred years by a Church Father. But who knows!…maybe one day someone may stumble upon in the sands of Egypt an early Church document with preterist teachings, so therefore we can never be too sure what the early Church taught on this subject.”
What Gregg also does is he invokes sparse preterist writings from the Church Fathers from AD 300-700 to cast doubt on what the early Church taught, as if they have the same weight as futurist writings from the first and second generations of the Church!
In the second presentation, Cooper demonstrates that the early Church clearly taught that the Church would encounter the Antichrist’s Great Tribulation. Cooper even cites in support the authoritative church historian Larry V. Crutchfield, who, himself is a pretribulationalist!
In the third presentation, Ice focuses on the premillennial issue. Prewrath is premillennial as well so we can agree with Ice’s points on that issue.
However, Ice makes a false claim by asserting that the early Church Fathers believed in imminency. They certainly did not believe in imminency in the pretribulational sense that the Church would be raptured before the Antichrist’s Great Tribulation. And some believed that the Church would be raptured soon because they thought that they were in the midst of the Great Tribulation! So Ice’s statements are misleading and incorrect.
The only early citation that Ice attempts to produce is a statement from The Shepherd of Hermas, in which he reads his pretribulational system into this ancient document. He (selectively) cites a statement from Vision 4 that says that if someone has enough faith they can escape a great tribulation. What Ice does is anachronistically reads “escape” as a rapture. But there is nothing in the text that suggests a rapture. In fact, the “escape” in that context indicates a physical escape leaving the person on earth (see Vision 4:2). Nor does Hermas place the Return of Christ before the Great Tribulation. Further, Hermas actually makes statements of enduring the Great Tribulation:
“Blessed are those of you who patiently endure the coming great tribulation and who will not deny their life.” (Vision 2:2)
“Therefore those who endure and pass through the flames will be purified by them…The white part is the age to come, in which God’s elect will live because those chosen by God for eternal life will be spotless and pure…You have also the foreshadowing of the great tribulation that is coming” (Vision 4:3)
It should also be mentioned that like so many of the other early Church Fathers’ exposition of Scripture, this document instead is not didactic intending to interpret what the Bible teaches on the Second Coming — it is part of a vision. The fact that this is the only citation that Ice can produce within the first four hundred years of Church History is very telling.
Ice also invokes a later Church document called Pseudo-Ephraem and purports that there are pretrib statements. This has been thoroughly refuted in this Parousia Newsletter.
In summary, the term “Prewrath” is new, but its essential teaching goes back to the early Church writers, contra preterism, pretribulationism, and amillennialism.
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