“Beyond the meeting in the air, what is the purpose of the rapture?

First, Revelation 3:10. The tribulation comes to test those on the earth. But the church has no part in this, because we have already been tested. Whatever constitutes the tribulation, and whatever your view of Revelation 3:10, we all agree that the church is kept, protected, and guarded during this time, in a special way that unbelievers are not. If we were on earth, this would make us observers of what is going on around us.

Next, the passages about the twenty-four elders show them as active prayer participants in the great battle of the ages. Read Revelation 4:9–11, 5:8–10, 11:15–18, 19:4. Do you see yourself in the picture? What role does God have laid out for you? I think He’ll put you where you can do some good.

But, you say, what about tribulation saints? They’ll be on the earth, and they won’t be mere observers, will they? Of course, not. As Daniel 12:10 says, “Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried….” These need the trial to bring them to faith. But you, have you been purified and made white by the blood of the Lamb? Have you been tested since you’ve been saved? Have you kept His word regarding patience? Then you don’t need to be put to the test all over again.

God sees the tribulation you go through now. He knows every little test of patience you have. He remembers every time you lean on His Word. Yes, because you have kept His Word close to your heart, He also will keep you close to His heart and trust you, rather than test you, with a place of honor.”

READ MORE: “The Purpose of the Rapture”http://www.rapturesolution.com/beechick/Gray/Purpose.htm
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“Distinction between Israel and the Church

The final principle related to the pre-trib position is the biblical truth that God’s single program for history includes two peoples, Israel and the Church. This view has been systematized into what is known as dispensationalism. While the basis of salvation (God’s grace) is always the same for Jew and Gentile, God’s prophetic program has two distinct aspects. Presently, God’s plan for Israel is on hold until He completes His current purpose with the Church and Raptures His Bride to heaven. Only pretribulationism provides a purpose for the rapture. That purpose is to remove the Church via the Rapture so God can complete His unfinished business with Israel during the seven-year Tribulation period. Therefore, if
one does not distinguish between passages which God intends for Israel from those intended for the church, then there results an improper confusion of the two programs.

It should not be surprising that God’s single plan for history has a multidimensional aspect (Ephesians 3;10) that we know as Israel and the Church. If human novelists can weave multiple plots throughout their stories, then how much more can the Great Planner of the universe and history not do the same kind of thing?

Those commingling God’s plan for Israel and the church destroy an important basis for the pre-trib rapture. The Bible clearly teaches that the church and Israel have in many ways different programs within the single plan of God even though both are saved on the same basis.”

READ MORE: “Why I Believe the Bible Teaches Rapture Before
Tribulation”
Thomas D. Ice http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi…
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“Dr. Renald Showers explains the significance of viewing the Tribulation as a period of Israel’s history.

“All other views of the Rapture have the church going through at least part of the 70th week, meaning that all other views mix God’s 70-weeks program for Israel and Jerusalem together with His program for the church.”

Population of The Millennium by mortal believers

The pre-Tribulation Rapture interpretation best explains this important feature of God’s future plan. According to Jesus’ teaching on the Mount of Olives, there will be a judgment of the nations (Sheep and Goats – Matthew 25:31-46) just before the Millennium, just prior to the commencement of the thousand-year reign of Christ (Revelation 20:1-6). This taking of some and leaving of others is not the Rapture, but it corresponds to the Parable of The Wheat and The Tares (Matthew 13:24-30). In that parable, the tares are collected FIRST, and tied into bundles to be burned (later – The Great White Throne judgment), then the wheat is gathered into the barn. The wheat represents true believers who have survived the Tribulation period, and are thus permitted to enter the Millennial Age.

If the Rapture took place at, or near the end of the Tribulation, all believers would have glorified bodies, and there would be no righteous mortals left to enter the Millennium!”

READ MORE: “The Rapture of the Church” http://ldolphin.org/kingdom/ch4.html
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Chapter 11. The Church
“Dispensational Truth
or
God’s Plan and Purpose in the Ages”

By CLARENCE LARKIN

“I. What the Church Is NOT.
1. It is not a continuation of the “Jewish Dispensation” under another name.
As we have seen in the chapter on the Jews, the Jews have been shunted to a sidetrack that the “Main Line” may be clear for the passage of the Church. Jesus said “The Law and the Prophets are until John.” If the Scriptures put Moses and Law in one Dispensation and Christ and Grace in another let us respect the Divine order and not join together what God has put asunder.”

READ MORE: https://www.blueletterbible.org/study/larkin/dt/11.cfm
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“The Apostle Paul calls attention to Israel’s unique place and privilege constantly in his epistles. He declares that their peculiar promises include the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, the promises, the fathers, and the privilege of being the people of whom Christ should come (Rom 9:4, 5). Now, it is obvious that Paul is referring to Israel in unbelief when he refers to those who have these privileges, for he declares: “I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: Who are the Israelites…” (Rom 9:3, 4). He declares that they even in unbelief “are Israelites,” and relates to them all the peculiar privileges of Israel. It is evident that the institution of the church did not rob Israel in the flesh of its peculiar place of privilege before God.

This declaration is given added weight by the fact that in Ephesians 2:12, Gentiles are expressly declared to have been excluded from the promises given to Israel: “That at that time ye [Gentiles] were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.” The passage goes on to state their privilege as Christians in the church. It is noteworthy that Paul does not say that the Gentiles came into these same Israelitish promises when they were converted; rather he pictures a work of God bringing Jew and Gentile into a new order entirely-“one new man” (Eph 2:15). It may be concluded without further argument that the distinction between natural Israel and Gentiles is continued after the institution of the church-Israel is still a genuine Israel, and the Gentiles continue to fulfill their part. While this fact of the Scriptures is more or less admitted even by the amillennialist, the significance is not adequately realized. The continuance of Israel and Gentiles as such is a strong argument against either one being dispossessed of their own place. Israel is not reduced to the bankruptcy of the Gentiles-to become “strangers from the covenants of promise” (Eph 2:12), and the distinction between the two groups is maintained on the same sharp lines as before the church was instituted. then goes on to compare their fall with their fulness: “Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?” (Rom 11:12). In other words, if the blindness which has fallen upon Israel nationally during this present age was the occasion for great blessing for the Gentiles, the “fulness” of Israel will bring a richness of blessing which will be “much more.” Now, obviously, there can be no fulness of Israel if they have no future. Their fulness will come when the present condition of blindness is lifted.”

READ MORE: “5. Is the Church the Israel of God?”
by John F. Walvoord
https://bible.org/seriespage/5-church-israel-god
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See also: “Does the Church Fulfill Israel’s Program?” (Parts 1-3) by John F. Walvoord
http://walvoord.com/series/332
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“Revelation 5:8–14 shows a choir that starts out small, becomes huge, but ends with worship by the small groups (the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures) that began the singing. The passage manifests an antiphonal arrangement, just as do the Song of Moses and Psalm 136.

We argued that verses 9–10 also display an antiphonal arrangement. The Nestle-Aland and UBS texts follow a solecism of one manuscript, which is a practice that reasoned eclectics
normally reject. In fact, they commonly argue that following a pair of manuscripts (the practice of thorough-going eclectics) is extreme and should be avoided. However, in Revelation 5:9, reasoned-eclecticism is abandoned in favor of something more radical than thorough-going eclecticism.

One would imagine that the internal arguments that would be adduced would be powerful. Instead, Metzger and others seem to have totally neglected the antiphonal arrangement that characterizes the singing in Revelation 5. The fact that Metzger regards the use of third person forms in verse 10 while verse 9 has a first person form to evidence unsuitability. The question arises as to why only a handful of scribes would replace the third person forms in verse 10 with first person forms. Maybe the idea of unsuitability only convinces those who overlook the antiphonal arrangement of the passage.

Furthermore, they conveniently forget to mention that the scribe who copied Alexandrinus could easily have drifted mentally as he finished one column and started another. He left a word out of his text.

Internal and external evidence leads to the conclusion that the passage is antiphonal.

Elders sing:
You have redeemed us to God out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

Living Creatures respond:
You have made them kings and priests to our God. They shall reign on the earth.

With this understanding, the passage teaches the following eschatological sequence:
1. Rapture: Revelation 4:1,
2. The Bema (after 4:1, but before the twenty-four are called elders: 4:4),
3. Singing about the declaration at the Bema that the elders will rule as kings (5:10),
4. Christ opens the first seal (6:1).

Revelation 5:9–10 is a wonderful demonstration that the rapture precedes Daniel’s seventieth week. The twenty-four elders will be rewardable church-age believers, who will reign as kings and priests in the Millennium.”

READ MORE: REVELATION 5, THE TWENTY-FOUR ELDERS, AND THE RAPTURE:
By Dr. John Niemelä
http://www.pre-trib.org/…/…/Niemela-Revelation5TheTwenty.pdf
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Related video: 14 – 2006 CTS – John Niemela – 24 Elders and the Rapture: Revelation 5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nrsxCL-Bq4