The Pretribulation Rapture Position

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04 The Open Door to Heaven

The Pretribulation Rapture Position
From: Rapture Get Right or Get Left, and God’s Master Performance by Hilton Sutton, p. 55; 65, 66.

“If you search for a single verse of Scripture which states specifically that the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ and the catching up of the Church is prior to the Tribulation, your search will be in vain. There is no such verse. But by studying the whole of God’s Word (which you should do), you will discover that the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ is a certainty. The taking up of the Church to meet Him in the air is for sure, and it very definitely comes before the Tribulation Period can begin.

“In Revelation 1 we read that John, when in the Spirit, heard a Voice from behind which sounded like a trumpet. He turned to discover Jesus, from Whom the Voice had come.

“In Revelation 4:1 we read of a second encounter. Again John hears a Voice which sounds like a trumpet. When it speaks, he is immediately in the Spirit and in heaven at God’s throne.

“Although John was not taken bodily to heaven in the same manner described in Second Corinthians 12:2, his spiritual experience began with the same event awaiting all believers: a rapture. John’s experience parallels the Rapture of the Church described by Paul in First Thessalonians 4:16,17.

“Notice that John, according to Revelation 4:1, was looking or watching, and the Voice which he heard commanded him, ‘Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this.’ The things he would later witness could only take place after his arrival in heaven, again showing wonderful agreement with Luke 21:36: (‘Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son Man’).”

Revelation 4:1,2
1     After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things.”
2     Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne.

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