When I consider the Rapture of the Church, and when it might occur, I find a couple of things seem to hold true.
One is that there is no place that just says, it happens then, you can only know through the process of elimination.
Another is, after you've ruled out everything it can't be, the only option left is PreTrib.
PERFECT ANALYSIS.
They don't get the TIMING, that is why I unraveled the whole book of Revelation TIMING, via God's gracious blessing of course. When one understands the timing of everything you can not miss the pre trib rapture. I am willing to teach anyone the timing of the Book of Revelation and why that shows us only a pre trib rapture is possible. Many sadly are like the 10 year old who was taught 2 + 2 =5 all of their life and suddenly gets to middle school and is taught its really 4, he just can't understand these teachers thinking, he thinks they are in error. The sad part is none of his math problems will ever be solved until he understands that 2 + 2 = 4.
One more . . . the more likely someone is to call something "symbolic", for instance, the 144,000 sealed Jews, the more likely someone is to call these things symbolic, the less likely to hold to pre-trib timing. The more literally Scripture is taken, the more likely someone will be pre-trib. These seem to go hand in hand.
Well, I don't think this is true per se, now if you are saying God is giving us CODES (like the Woman in Rev. 12) which is not symbolic, but has a CODED understanding (as in SEE Genesis 37:9) then I agree in part, but God gives us a REAL ANSWSER in much of the book of Revelation, but in CODED FORM.
If Jesus comes and first gathers Israel, and then gathers the nations to be judged according as He said, the church has to already be gone from the earth when the great tribulation begins.
If the Revelation is prophetic narrative, and when it says this happens and then that happens, that's the way it is, the church must be gone before any of the trumpets and bowls.
So to continue the one example . . . "the servant of God were sealed", John heard the number, 144,000, all Jewish men. No gentiles there, no women, and only 144 thousand of them. No church present on the earth.
I agree, the Rapture is Pre Trib, BUT.......The 144,000 is a CODE just like the 10 Virgins were.
God uses numbers, He needed to do that in the old testament because they had a primitive language with only 4000 Hebrew words and no vowels, thus God used NUMBERS !! The number 3 is of God, 6 is of man, the number 7 means Godly completion, the #8 New Beginnings, the # 10 Completion and the # 12 Fulness. Any time God MULTIPLIES or times one of these numbers He is adding to the overall emphasis. Understanding this is a MUST in order to understand the book of Revelation. When God says He has saved Himself 7000 men that's 7 x 10 x 10 x 10 (see what God is doing there? Boom) That just means COMPLETION. As does the 10,000 x 10,000 who are the 200 million (Angelic Army, not China), that just means the complete hosts of Heaven are with God.
When God says there are 7 Eyes and 7 Spirits it means God sees all and is everywhere. When Jesus spoke about the 10 Virgins (all Female) it represented ALL Christendom, and when only 5 Virgins make the Marriage, that means half of the so called Church on earth will not be taken by Force (Harpazoed) to Heaven, but 50 percent will be left, as in ONE TAKEN and ONE LEFT (same ratio SMILE).
Therefore, when God says there are 144,000 having already elsewhere said He had only saved 7000 for himself, this only adds up by understanding God's codes. The #12 = FULNESS the #10 equals COMPLETENESS therefore 12 (Fulness) x 12 x 10 (Completeness) x 10 x 10 = 144,000 but it is just God SHOUTING this is ALL Israel who repents, see how He uses the numbers from the old testament to encode what He is saying in the book of Revelation? The 1/3 who repent in Zechariah 13:8-9 is equal to 3-5 million Jews, thus the 144,000 represents a code telling us that in the end times, 3-5 million Jews (There are 10 million Jewish people in Israel and 15 million world wide, thus my number of 3-5 million) will come to know their Messiah Jesus. Then when they see the AoD in Matt. 24:15 they will understand they need to flee Judea for the Mountains. If they were not yet saved at the 1290, how would they know to flee? They do not read Matt. 24. They repent because of the Two-witnesses who show up at the 1335. The 1290 is the AoD (timing....REMEMBER the timing) thus the 1290 event can not be the Anti-Christ because(it's the False Prophet that places THE IMAGE see Rev. 13), he only conquers Israel 30 days later at the 1260. Each number is HOW LONG it will be until all of those WONDERS Daniel had seen in Daniel 11:36-45 comes to an end (via Jesus' Second Coming).
So, the 144,00 in Rev. 7 are the Jews fleeing Judea just before God's Wrath hits via the Rev. 8 Trumpet Judgments which start the Wrath of God, the Seals are not Judgments but Jesus opening the Scroll of Judgements. This is why in Rev. 7 God tells the angels to HOLD UP the four winds (judgments) and that they harm not the trees, sea nor earth until the 144,000 have been sealed (SAVED and the PROTECTED in the Peta and Bozrah area). Then in Rev. 8 the Judgments start (1260) and hurt what? The Trees, Seas and the Earth.
So, the book of Revelation is not symbolic per se, but it indeed is ENCODED. If in WW2 I sent a message that said the Germans will have Hitler in Paris at 3:00 AM on the 21st of November and I sent it via a code that said,
liiw zoope, lupe, *()kv-- hjen, tyoa, then that would indeed be an encoded message, but that message is still not SYMBOLIC, its a real message, if you catch my drift. The two understandings can be conflated if we are not very careful.
P.S. the Virgins are both Male & Female (Christian Church) thus when we are told the 144,000 are ALL male why don't we understand that God is calling them males just like He called us all Female Virgins in the Church, because Israel was married unto God FIRST. The 3-5 million Jews (144,000) will consist of men, women and children, on this earth, whom God will protect, it will look like the Ten Commandments scene when God parted the Red Sea. Amen. Another P.S.
the 144,000 cubits (or whatever it is, really matters not) of the New Jerusalem is just God saying it is what it is, my COMPLETE New Jerusalem.
