In your response to a question claiming that in some places the Bible seems to indicate the Church’s presence for at least part of the tribulation, you said, “If you do a word study on 1 Thes. 1:10, you’ll see it promises that Jesus will rescue the Church from both the time and the place of God’s wrath in a manner that requires our prior departure.”

I can understand why some would think that this gets us out of the tribulation, but in John 17:15 Christ prayed that: ” My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.” If so, could 1 Thes. 1:10 actually mean that we will be rescued from the wrath of eternal death?

The traditional view of Hell is the only “truth” in life I hate. Being separated from God forever and all he is and all he made is one thing – being trapped for eternity with your own emotional feeling of grief and sadness because of regret and all that goes with sin is also another thing I can grasp – but being tortured in physical, excruciating pain is quite another. Why did God have to make it physically painful? Isn’t separation from faith, hope and love and beauty enough?

First of all, I want to commend you for the great web-site. It really helps me put things into perspective. My question has to do with the reason for the rapture. Is the rapture of the church for protecting the church believers or is it God’s willingness to take His children out of this world to appease the unbeliever’s desire to rid the world of any godly influence?

I’ve always been taught that the judgments (of Revelation) happen one by one, after the rapture. But a few of the Bible Prophecy sites I read have given links to other theories that they don’t happen in any sort of order, and that they could happen 2 or 3 at a time kind of. I was wondering how do we know which this is? Also, there seems to be a very big debate on whether the Iran/Russia attack on Israel will happen before or after the Rapture. Anyway to know for sure which will happen first?

There is teaching out that the House of Esau were the ancestors of the modern day Palestinians and that prophecy teaches these people are to be totally destroyed by Israel according to a judgment prophesied in the O.T. Is this correct? I have just discovered this site and am thoroughly enjoying the teaching. So many questions I’ve had are being answered.

Just because the people of earth declare the 6th seal God’s wrath doesn’t mean God sees it that way. The earth people may be fooled into thinking the 6th seal is Armageddon and then view the antichrist as savior. they may believe the Millennial age has begun not knowing the trumpets and bowls are yet to come.

Since there have been approx. 2000 years since Paul’s revelation of the rapture one can conclude it was never “imminent” until now ( post 1948 or 1967 ). Also, God is patient and doesn’t want anyone to perish. Jerusalem seems to be center of the the world to Daniel’s 70th week. Can’t it be possible God didn’t start the clock ticking on the last generation until 1967? Fits the bill to God’s nature that he would give as much time as possible. I have read your article “why the rebirth of Israel is a sign of the end times” but Is Israel really Israel without Jerusalem? I can see the foot steps but I can’t hear them. Guess I’m still gun shy from the 1980’s when my dad fell for Hal Lindsey’s “imminent” rapture alert.

The little scroll in Revelation 5 has writing on both sides and 7 seals. The common interpretation is a scroll with writing on both sides is always a judgment of wrath. Let’s go with that. What about the seals? Do they have writing on both sides? The seals are made of wax. The scroll is made of parchment. The purpose of the seals is to keep the scroll from being read. The seals have no writing on them. The seals are not the scroll, they just keep the scroll from being read. If such is the case, then there is no reason why the seals can’t be judgments of God, but not wrath judgments.

Concerning Joel 3:14, “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision!….” What is it “they” are deciding?

I have been truly blessed by your website. I want to personally thank you for allowing the Lord to use you in such a tremendous way. There are so many things that I have learned here and one of them is to trust your judgment. I have a question about the person called Maitreya. Can you give me some insight on this person and how his being in existence and seemingly waiting for something shows us how close Jesus coming for his bride actually is? Thanks in advance for your help.