What About The Rapture?

[Strefanash]

That is in line with my point. If anyone comes through the Great Tribulation as a believer that MUST have the Holy Spirit with them, for it says in Romans that if any has not the Spirit he is not a believer.

Therefore either people come to christ after the RApture in the normal way during the Trib, so the restrainer is not the Holy Spirit in the Church , OR

It is the Church that goes through the Tribulation, with the Holy Spirit as their comforter. In which case the Restrainer is still not the Holy Spirit.

The fact is if we look at church history, it is one of the greatest obscenities in the world. The church has not restrained anything, in fact has often promulgated great evil. So its removal would not constitute the removal of the restrainer.
(and yes, before you protest that the born again true church were different I will ask you to see who St Paul was criticizing in his letters - the church at Corinth etc, or only the non christians hangers on. I myself have committed more evil as a chfristian than before. My attempts to keep the Law stirred up my sin and made it worse. We are NOT the simon pure golden haired ones who can do no wrong. we are usually quite the contrary, as seen in our fruit and in our history over millenia)

There might be a biblical case for pre trib rapture if no believing saints were ever mentioned in scripture as going through the Great Trib, but this is clearly not so

I have to admit that to me the kind contortions of scripture that the pre tribbers need to go through to defend their case is evidence of the falsity of the case

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The elect is Israel? How is this other than appeal to your pre trib case? One becomes the elect by faith in christ, those who have faith in christ are the church.

By definition.

LindaR, you askd me for scripture when i wrote earlier. You had referred to Matthew 24 without quoting it. So i got it out and read it. So i summatized the passage without quoting it. Why did you ask me for scripture here when you did not give me any. I responded the same way you did, by reference not quotation.

THe fact is I am upset by your question "where is the scripture?" I presented a case, reasoning about the natiure of various things and it was totally ignored simply because i gave allusions to scripture rather than direct quotations.

Are you not so soaked in scripture than allusion will do? You give the appearance of wanting to sidestep what I said by noticing that i quoted no scripture.

Am I completely mistaken in assuming a thorough knowledge of scripture ?

THis is not conducive to amicable debate IMO.

I would appeal to you to reread my post wherein I referrred to Matthew 24, and answer the concerns raised.

Otherwise i will simply abandon the discussion of this question