A pre-tribulation conversation.

Spoiler: I don’t believe in a pre-tribulation rapture.

I'm going to get some pushback for this one, I know that already. I am not a pre-tribulation believer.

I once was only because that’s what I was told I had to believe. But it never made much sense to me with everything else I knew.

I have since learned to read for myself and take the church out of the Bible.

A young Christian came to me this week with questions about death, and wondering when we die, do we go to heaven right away or do we wait for judgment? That led to some pre-tribulation questions.

Simple enough question to answer. I pointed her to three key verses.

Revelations 20:4–5 “ I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection.”

John 3:13 “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven — the Son of Man.”

Matthew 24: 9–14 “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

Then, I realized the answer wasn’t as simple as it should be.

I had to give her a heads up: if she goes online and looks up that dreaded word “rapture” she was going to see and get overwhelmed with all the different theories and doctrines on the tribulation that are out there.

I told her my honest opinion. Americans have simply become lazy over time, and afraid of what it means to be a Christian during the end times. And I think that because they are Christians, they somehow think they are above everybody else. (Not everyone, but there is a bit of that mixed in there.)

Those three reasons are truly where I think this whole pre-tribulation theory gets such strength from and keeps growing as a popular belief despite it never being a part of any teachings before the 1800s. That and movies popularizing such a concept for cinematic effect.

Fear and entitlement are what it comes down to.

Nothing more and nothing less.

Nowhere in the Bible does it teach us pre-tribulation rapture; you have to do a lot of linguistic gymnastics to get to that point. Matthew 24 straight from Jesus's own mouth makes it abundantly clear that some of us are going to go through the tribulation, and by some of us, I mean those of us who are dead before it happens.

Why are people taking Jesus out of the Bible?

This 👇 next part, ladies and gentlemen, is the result of somebody who reads their Bible and does not worry about what men say. She has not been tainted with the politics, drama, and doctrines of “the church” yet. She tests everything. She even tests what I say, which is exactly what I expect her to do and what I tell her to do.

“I mean it just logically doesn’t make sense to have all the Christians disappear, because during the end times I’m pretty sure it says that evil will be ruling over the earth during that time and its like how would people be able to come and know Jesus if none of His disciples live on the earth to share His word.”

Right there. 👆

The rest is all acrobats on paper. Christians will go through the tribulation whether you want to acknowledge that or not is up to you, and we won’t miss when it starts.

“At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other,”

© Jane Isley

First published in Never Stop Writing on Medium.

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© Jane Isley