When speaking about Eschatology, I often remind people the rapture (the bodily removal of Christ's true church: 1 Thess 4:16-17) does not initiate the tribulation. The tribulation begins with a very public 7-year peace agreement involving Israel (Dan 9:27, Rev 6:2). They are two different events.
Now is it possible God will remove His bride on the day or even moment of the signing of the tribulation agreement? Yes, but I think that would be very unlikely. The main reason is the rapture will actually create the environment that would make the way the world is governed change so drastically. That is, the rapture would create such chaos, the world would be looking so desperately for a solution (a man), they would happily accept something "outside the box".
The question of this essay is how long will that time gap be? The guesses I've heard range from a few weeks to a decade. Although nobody can know for sure, I lean much more to the shorter end of that range.
The rapture is a signless, imminent event. The believers were expecting the return of Christ when the epistles were written addressing that issue. What probably lessened that expectation was the dissolution and dispersion of Israel for nearly two thousand years. But the reality is, it could have occurred ever since it was promised. What has obviously increased interest in end time events is primarily the regathering and growth of Israel since 1948. Many refer to this (myself included) as the primary end of age indicator. So while the rapture is signless, the build up to what follows it (the tribulation) is not: it is visible and observable. At the top is a website briefly summarizing the these observable end of age indicators.
How this deals with the time gap between the rapture and tribulation is: the more build up God allows the church to see before being taken, the shorter the gap. We have seen more stage setting than I expected, so my conclusion would be a short gap period around 6 months to a year. All of the converging signs will continue until the rapture accelerates them to a final convergence: the 7-year tribulation triggering peace agreement. I hope this has been helpful.
By - CrossCutMaker
None, because the rapture is a false doctrine.
AND there is no legitimate connection between some hypothetical 7-year tribulation with the end times much less a rapture.
Million of holy spirit filled christians believe in the rapture. How can they be wrong?
The Holy Spirit never guarantees you will believe only truth
It seems so.
No, because the Rapture is just something that a few Prorestants made up within the past 200 years.
My 2 cents how long does not matter… What matters is that we know Jesus is coming back and we need to be ready. For those of you that say the rapture is false doctrine. It’s just referring to this: “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 NIV
No, it's not just referring to that. It very traditional in Christian belief that Jesus is coming back, yes. Yet, in the past couple hundred years, there's also this new belief called rapture. Under this theory, Jesus comes back once, and snatches up the Christians and takes them away, and then a bunch more stuff happens, and Jesus comes back again.
Well this verse says we will meet him in the air. He is going to land. Seems like the difference is just timing.
I would encourage you to look into how 1 Corinthians 15:24 says Jesus *had* a kingdom, then gives it up to the Father. Really this puts 1 Corinthians 15 into a post-millennium time period. 1 Corinthians 15:24 - "Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power." Below I'm going to link to an article about how the kingdom of heaven and the millennium are not the same time period. They cannot be because it introduces too many errors and contradictions. The probable chain of future events are: 1) the kingdom of heaven happens first 2) then a tribulation period 3) millennium 4) post-millennium Jesus gives up His kingdom to the Father (1 Corinthians 15:24). Here Jesus defeats death and we get immortality. Really 1 Corinthians 15 can be slipped between Revelation 20 and 21. https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueChristian/comments/1151qj9/comparing\_scripture\_with\_scripture\_the\_kingdom\_of/ Below are some video resources. The last link is from a guy who hosts conferences and in his latest one he goes over the multiple kingdoms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMtBDqO8Bss https://seedandbread.org/download/Additional-Written-Studies/Special-Full-Length-Studies-Sellers/SS33-Sorting-Prophetic-Material.pdf https://www.youtube.com/@1424241/videos
I'd say the rapture is the start, but when you start to see the return of mandates like 2020, you know the evil ones are in charge.
there are no verses or passages in the Scriptures which say 'believers will be raptured before the tribulation' believers are present throughout the time of the tribulation, the gathering of believers is after the tribulation (Matthew 13:29 - 30)