Waking Jonah

Concluding this series on the Prewrath rapture with some final comments by Charles Cooper from the Prewrath Resource Institute…

[Part 27 of a 27-Part series. Click here for Part 1.]

Show: Nowhere to Run
Full Video: Charles Cooper Interview – Prewrath Rapture
Date: 2/2/11
Host: Chris White
Guest: Charles Cooper
Notes: You can hide one person on this earth, but you can’t hide millions… we are talking about millions and millions of believers; It would be a whole lot harder to hide one million people than it is to hide one person; The purpose of the book, “Fight, Flight, or Faith: How to Survive the Great Tribulation“, was to show that during this time there are going to be lots of people killed for their faith; The book of Revelation tells us that a significant number of them will be beheaded; We’re told this is going to happen… God already knows who’s going to be beheaded–this is something He is allowing; Revelation 6 says there are a significant number of individuals who end up under the throne of God in heaven, waiting for Him to avenge their death on the earth; Reading the book of Revelation, it is unmistakably clear that God already knows–in fact, intends–for a particular number of people to be killed in relationship to this period; Dying doesn’t seem to be the issue of concern with God–what seems to be of paramount importance is our faithfulness… whether we, in the face of intense persecution, can stand our ground by faith, and trust Him that what He is allowing is exactly what He wants for our lives; The purpose of the book is to call you to develop some faith muscles–it is better to prepare now; The same faith that would deliver you during the great tribulation, is the same faith that can deliver you now; “By faith” living is what believers have always been called to–the Word of God is explicit, “the righteous shall live by faith“–not your guns, not how well you hide, but by faith; Faith does not mean your stupid, faith is not pacifism… faith is trusting God to give you clear directions about what you should or should not do, at the moment you walk into crises

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Chris White from Nowhere to Run interviews Charles Cooper from the Prewrath Resource Institute about the timing of the rapture…

[Part 26 of a 27-Part series. Click here for Part 1.]

Show: Nowhere to Run
Full Video: Charles Cooper Interview – Prewrath Rapture
Date: 2/2/11
Host: Chris White
Guest: Charles Cooper
Notes: The Prewrath position states that the church will go through the persecution of Antichrist, which is before and distinct from the wrath of God; “Fight, Flight, or Faith: How to Survive the Great Tribulation“, by Charles Cooper; Argument to those who insist that God would ordain it–and that we should be preparing for–an intense guerilla war in response to the persecution of Antichrist; That is a dangerous philosophy to take… that God actually would want us to arm ourselves with all the weaponry that we can have at our disposal and that we are to slaughter, kill, and do everything we can to the wicked when they come to harass us because of our followership of Christ; That is not a New Testament model; We don’t see the New Testament champions of our faith–Peter, James, John, the apostle Paul–responding that way to Rome and the persecution that they suffered; Paul, Peter, James–these pillars of the New Testament–were all martyred; Thousands of believers were cast into the colosseums, fed to the lions, etc., who did it with a smile to honor their privilege of suffering with Christ; People need to understand how intense and how unique that period is; Think of all the scenarios of people who simply will not be able to go hide somewhere; The logistics of it simply just don’t bear out

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Chris White from Nowhere to Run interviews Charles Cooper from the Prewrath Resource Institute about the timing of the rapture…

[Part 25 of a 27-Part series. Click here for Part 1.]

Show: Nowhere to Run
Full Video: Charles Cooper Interview – Prewrath Rapture
Date: 2/2/11
Host: Chris White
Guest: Charles Cooper
Notes: The greatest danger for people that hold a pretribulational view of the rapture is: The possibility of a significant number of believers being caught off-guard, or caught unawares, and perhaps the disappointment of what they believed, may lead some of them to panic, abandon the faith, try to engage in conduct that perhaps will put them in compromising situations, etc.; It may lead unnecessarily to the death of millions of people because they were unprepared spiritually–they didn’t develop the faith muscles necessary to resist the unparalleled persecution that the New Testament associates with the period that immediately precedes Christ’s return; The issue really revolves around people learning how to live by faith under any condition, such that if our generation is called upon to be that final generation, that millions and millions of true followers of Jesus Christ will not suffer death needlessly simply because they didn’t have the muscles necessary to stand by faith in the face of intense persecution; This is a problem that is probably uniquely Western; The churches of Europe, Africa, and Asia would have very little of a significant change in their life if we went into that final period–they know how to endure under intense persecution; The church in the West–and particularly the American church–is so weak when it comes to persecution that thousands and thousands would die needlessly simply because they don’t know what to do, because they never anticipated being here; Christians panicked and went to pieces after 9/11 and were not able to stand in the confidence and the quietness of their faith, simply because they never thought it would happen; Rather than going into denial and self-preservation, etc., we need to do as Christ instructed for His believers to do, which is to stand by faith and trusting in the sovereign will of God–that God has it under control, that He has His people in His hand, and that nothing can touch us that He does not allow by His own sovereign election

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Chris White from Nowhere to Run explains the Prewrath rapture perspective…

[Part 24 of a 27-Part series. Click here for Part 1.]

[*To get the most out of this teaching, please see the full video presentation by clicking on the link below.]

Show: Nowhere to Run
Full Video: The Prewrath Rapture – The Rapture Puzzle Solved with Matthew 24
Date: 4/2/11
Host: Chris White
Notes: A visual idea of what the Prewrath view is stating; The rapture takes place at an unknown time after the midpoint… it could be hours, or it could be years; The great tribulation is the time period between the abomination of desolation–which occurs at the midpoint–(this includes the 4th, 5th, and 6th seals of Revelation) and it is cut short by the rapture, which begins the Day of the Lord and God’s wrath, which is the 7th seal in Revelation, in which the scroll is finally open and the wrath begins; It is evident that God’s wrath is poured out after the Day of the Lord begins, but it is the wrath of Satan that takes place before the Day of the Lord; The Bible teaches that we will suffer persecution, but it also teaches that we will not suffer God’s wrath; Many Americans are not going to be ready for the persecutions of this type, and many will fall away, just as Jesus predicted; Jesus makes it absolutely clear that the reason that they will fall away is because of the persecution that they were unprepared for, in conjunction with the false prophets who offer a way out of the persecution by a type of religious compromise; The biggest struggle that this view has is people not understanding what exactly it teaches; Additional resources: Books – “The Rapture Question Answered Plain and Simple“, by Robert Van Kampen, and “God’s Elect and the Great Tribulation“, by Charles Cooper; Websites – PrewrathRapture.com, PreWrathMinistries.org

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Chris White from Nowhere to Run explains the Prewrath rapture perspective…

[Part 23 of a 27-Part series. Click here for Part 1.]

[*To get the most out of this teaching, please see the full video presentation by clicking on the link below.]

Show: Nowhere to Run
Full Video: The Prewrath Rapture – The Rapture Puzzle Solved with Matthew 24
Date: 4/2/11
Host: Chris White
Notes: A few verses later, in 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul talks about this enigmatic “restrainer”; He talks to the Thessalonians like it’s old news; Paul may have gotten his understanding of the identity and purpose for the restrainer from Matthew 24; 2 Thessalonians 2:3, 5-8; The pretribulational view teaches that the restrainer is the Holy Spirit, and that He will be removed with the church at the rapture; There is a scriptural problem here, though… the logic of the restrainer being the Holy Spirit and being removed at the rapture is an impossibility; The scriptural order is: 1) the restrainer is taken out of the way, 2) the Antichrist is revealed, 3) the church is raptured; The answer to the question of who the restrainer is lies in the book of Daniel, in a parallel verse to Matthew 24:15-22; Daniel 12:1; Zechariah 13; It actually appears that Michael stops restraining at the abomination of desolation; Daniel 7:25; Revelation 12:7-10, 12-14; Jude 1:9

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Chris White from Nowhere to Run explains the Prewrath rapture perspective…

[Part 22 of a 27-Part series. Click here for Part 1.]

[*To get the most out of this teaching, please see the full video presentation by clicking on the link below.]

Show: Nowhere to Run
Full Video: The Prewrath Rapture – The Rapture Puzzle Solved with Matthew 24
Date: 4/2/11
Host: Chris White
Notes: The parousia is a multi-staged event, so the rapture is theologically inseparable from the Day of the Lord, as it is the very first event in the Lord’s parousia; Paul is speaking about the rapture as well as the Day of the Lord; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4; The “falling away”, or “apostasia” in the Greek–the term is only used one other time in the New Testament, in Acts 21:21, where the word “forsake” is the word “apostasia“; In the Septuagint, it’s used five times in the Old Testament (Josh 22:22; 2 Chr 29:19, 33:19; 1 Mac 2:15; Jer 2:19), and every time it means “apostasy” or “rebellion” in a religious or political sense… never in a spacial or physical sense

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Chris White from Nowhere to Run explains the Prewrath rapture perspective…

[Part 21 of a 27-Part series. Click here for Part 1.]

[*To get the most out of this teaching, please see the full video presentation by clicking on the link below.]

Show: Nowhere to Run
Full Video: The Prewrath Rapture – The Rapture Puzzle Solved with Matthew 24
Date: 4/2/11
Host: Chris White
Notes: 2 Thessalonians 2:3; Paul reminds them that a “falling away” must happen first; This word is used exclusively in the Bible as a falling away of faith; The Greek word is “apostasia“; Matthew 24:9-12; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4; This is a clear refutation of the pillars of pretribulationalism–namely, that there are no events that need to happen before the rapture; It would also mean that the Antichrist must be revealed before the rapture; That word “coming”, or “parousia“, is the same word used in 1 Thess. 4, when Paul is definitely talking about the rapture; 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10; Paul’s theology was that the rapture and the Day of The Lord were logically inseparable, back-to-back events; This verse only makes sense if you know that Paul considers the rapture happening on the very day that the Day of the Lord begins; The subject in verse 1–the rapture–never changes; When Paul says the “day of Christ” and “that day”, He’s talking about the “parousia”, which starts with the rapture

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Chris White from Nowhere to Run explains the Prewrath rapture perspective…

[Part 20 of a 27-Part series. Click here for Part 1.]

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[*To get the most out of this teaching, please see the full video presentation by clicking on the link below.]

Show: Nowhere to Run
Full Video: The Prewrath Rapture – The Rapture Puzzle Solved with Matthew 24
Date: 4/2/11
Host: Chris White
Notes: Matthew 24′s relevance to the church; Beside the book of Revelation, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians are the most prophetic books in the New Testament; Just like Revelation Chapter 6, the Thessalonian letters make the same Prewrath case in the same sequence as Matthew 24; Primarily what Paul taught the Thessalonians in regard to the rapture amounts to a Bible study of Matthew 24; This shouldn’t be a surprise because Paul tells us that his teaching on the end times came from the Lord in 1 Thess. 4:15; Connection between these classic rapture passages and our Lord’s plain and simple teaching; 20 parallels in 1st and 2nd Thessalonians and Matthew 24, put together by Alan Kurschner; These parallels are not supposed to exist if Matthew 24 is not for the church; These two passages are talking about the exact same events, and in the exact same sequence; 2 Thessalonians 2 is by far the most difficult passage for a pretribulationalist; 2 Thess. 2:1-4; Paul says that neither the falling away, nor the Antichrist revealing himself in the temple had happened, and so therefore the rapture could not have happened yet either; Paul is essentially reminding them of the Bible study he gave them of the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24); He is about to remind them of what events need to happen before the “gathering together”; This exact same phrase in English–”gathering together”–and the Greek–”episynagōgē“–are used by Jesus in Matthew 24 to refer to the rapture; Paul says, “Don’t you remember that before the “gathering together”, Jesus told us that the abomination of desolation that Daniel spoke of must happen”, (which if you look it up in Daniel–as Jesus instructed them to do–you will see that this is when the man of sin sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God); So Paul says, “You haven’t seen that happen yet, have you? Well then, that’s a sign that the “gathering together” hasn’t happened either.”

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Chris White from Nowhere to Run explains the Prewrath rapture perspective…

[Part 19 of a 27-Part series. Click here for Part 1.]

[*To get the most out of this teaching, please see the full video presentation by clicking on the link below.]

Show: Nowhere to Run
Full Video: The Prewrath Rapture – The Rapture Puzzle Solved with Matthew 24
Date: 4/2/11
Host: Chris White
Notes: We’ve already seen how the rapture in Matthew 24:31 compares to all the other rapture passages, as well as how much it doesn’t compare to the Armageddon passages that pretribulationalists say that it refers to; This view causes some major problems with the text in Matthew 24; Jews are not hated because of the name of Christ; The word “elect” is never used in the New Testament to refer to Jews; Matthew 24:15-20; “your flight” is happening either way–just because these two verses mention Judea and the sabbath, it does not mean that this chapter is for Jews… they’re only speaking of the events concerning a very important event called the “abomination of desolation”

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Chris White from Nowhere to Run explains the Prewrath rapture perspective…

[Part 18 of a 27-Part series. Click here for Part 1.]

[*To get the most out of this teaching, please see the full video presentation by clicking on the link below.]

Show: Nowhere to Run
Full Video: The Prewrath Rapture – The Rapture Puzzle Solved with Matthew 24
Date: 4/2/11
Host: Chris White
Notes: The sign has been given warning the world of God’s impending wrath, the righteous are now raptured and safe in heaven, and now the Day of the Lord–the wrath on the wicked–should begin; Revelation 8:1-7; Silence in heaven; We see the contrast here… while the six seals were bad–wars and famines, persecutions–it pales in comparison to just Day 1 of the wrath of God, in which a third of the trees are burned up and all the green grass is burned up; There’s enough evidence to convict that these two passages (Matthew 24:37-39 and Revelation 8:1-7) are parallel to one another; Matthew 24 is for the church; Matthew 16:18; Matthew 18:15-20; Matthew 24:31,36

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Chris White from Nowhere to Run explains the Prewrath rapture perspective…

[Part 17 of a 27-Part series. Click here for Part 1.]

[*To get the most out of this teaching, please see the full video presentation by clicking on the link below.]

Show: Nowhere to Run
Full Video: The Prewrath Rapture – The Rapture Puzzle Solved with Matthew 24
Date: 4/2/11
Host: Chris White
Notes: Revelation 7:9; This multitude is clothed in white robes; It appears that these people have bodies… people who are redeemed by Christ won’t have bodies in heaven until after the rapture according to 1 Cor. 15:15-52; Contrast that with the 5th seal, where they were only described as having souls–they were only given white robes and told to wait a little while longer; A great multitude from every nation suddenly showing up in heaven with bodies can only be the rapture; Revelation 7:14; Matthew 24:21-22, 29-31; If this parallel continues, we should expect to see the beginning of the wrath of God next, in the 7th seal

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Chris White from Nowhere to Run explains the Prewrath rapture perspective…

[Part 16 of a 27-Part series. Click here for Part 1.]

[*To get the most out of this teaching, please see the full video presentation by clicking on the link below.]

Show: Nowhere to Run
Full Video: The Prewrath Rapture – The Rapture Puzzle Solved with Matthew 24
Date: 4/2/11
Host: Chris White
Notes: The wrath of God starting at the 6th seal causes many problems for the pretribulational idea, because for them, the wrath of God was supposed to start before any of the 6 seals began; Revelation 6:17; Mark 14:41-43; The context in the Revelation passage is obvious–the men are hiding themselves because the day of the Wrath of the Lamb has come, and it’s about to begin; The sign they saw was what Joel said would happen before the Day of the Lord; Also, we see in Luke that the reason why these men were hiding was that they were in expectation of what was about to come; So if this parallel exists, we should now see the rapture at this point; Matthew 24:30-31; This happens immediately after the sun, moon, and star sign that we just saw in Matthew 24; One of the simultaneous events in Revelation chapter 7 is that a multitude of people from every tribe, peoples, and language, which could not be counted by man, appears in heaven; We see this same terminology in chapter 5 about people from every nation, tribe, and language are the ones who are redeemed by Christ from the beginning of time

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Chris White from Nowhere to Run explains the Prewrath rapture perspective…

[Part 15 of a 27-Part series. Click here for Part 1.]

[*To get the most out of this teaching, please see the full video presentation by clicking on the link below.]

Show: Nowhere to Run
Full Video: The Prewrath Rapture – The Rapture Puzzle Solved with Matthew 24
Date: 4/2/11
Host: Chris White
Notes: Matthew 24:29; If we continue to use Matthew 24 as a guideline for the book of Revelation, we would expect to see this exact same sign there too–the sign that the Day of the Lord and the wrath of God is about to begin; In fact, that’s what we see in Revelation 6:12-17; Luke 21:25-28; He talks about this idea of men who are terrified for what is about to happen, just like in Revelation 6; Believers will take a totally different view of this event, and will not hide, but look up in expectation; That is because the rapture will happen just before the Day of the Lord begins; The very next seal (the 7th seal) is the introduction to the 7 trumpets, which proves that they are chronologically linked to the seals; The rapture will be an event that everyone will know about–the idea of a secret rapture is not biblical at all; This event–the Son of Man coming on the clouds with power and great glory–is an event that everyone will see; All the other lights in the sky have been darkened… people will definitely know when the rapture happens

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Chris White from Nowhere to Run explains the Prewrath rapture perspective…

[Part 14 of a 27-Part series]

[*To get the most out of this teaching, please see the full video presentation by clicking on the link below.]

Show: Nowhere to Run
Full Video: The Prewrath Rapture – The Rapture Puzzle Solved with Matthew 24
Date: 4/2/11
Host: Chris White
Notes: Matthew 24:15, 21-22; Verse 15 is the first time in Matthew 24 that we can put a time as to where we are in the scheme of things; The abomination of desolation is the midpoint of the last 7-year period; Daniel’s 70 Weeks; Final 7-year period begins when the Antichrist makes a peace agreement with Israel; At the midpoint (3 1/2 years in), he will declare himself to be God in the temple; We know more about the midpoint of the final 7-year period than any other time in prophetic history; It’s the beginning of a great persecution of the elect–the entire section here is telling people to flee because of the persecution that will start at that point; Daniel 11:31-35; God has a particular plan in the deaths of these martyrs, which is also exactly what we see in the next seal in Revelation 6:9-11; This seal is entirely about martyrs, and that’s exactly what we see happening in our Matthew 24 verse; The most interesting part of the 5th seal is that the martyrs are asking God how long it will be until He judges those that are killing them; This would seem to indicate that all that has happened so far in the seals (wars, famines, etc.), are not part of God’s judgment; Matthew 24:22; These souls are not going to have to wait very much longer for God to avenge them–in fact, it will happen in the very next seal; Death and the 5th seal martyrs are a match 

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