5) "The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart;
the devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. " (Isaiah 57:1)
The rapture idea comes from word "taken away" , You can ask then what is the relationship between "taken away" and "perish" ?. Does "taken away" mean "caught up in air" as related to word "perish" ?. The answer is No, simply because there is no connection between "caught up in air" and "perish"...The context means to say that "Good people pass away; the godly often die before their time. But no one seems to care or wonder why. No one seems to understand that God is protecting them from the evil." Now the context makes perfect sense to me. It's not talking about "being caught up in air", it's talking about "protecting them" by allowing them to be taken away by "perishing or dying" !
(Please continue reading Isaiah chapter 57 which proves that "perish" means "die" not "vanish" as given in the context, "......Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death." - Isaiah 57:2)
6) "and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.
" (1 Thessalonians 1:10)
The issue is in word "coming wrath". Does Paul mean by it "tribulation or coming wrath of the Antichrist" ?. Of-course No, The "wrath to come" is the divine indignation which will come upon the guilty. From that Christ delivers us by taking our place, and dying in our stead. It was the great purpose of his coming to save us from this approaching wrath. And that what exactly the audience understood from Paul. Also In Matthew 3:7, it means the same thing for the word "coming wrath". Please check it out.
7) " Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. " ( Revelation 3:10 )
The statement does not refer directly to the rapture. What it guarantees is protection away from the scene of the "hour of trial" while that hour is in progress. This effect of placing the faithful in Philadelphia (and hence, the faithful in all the churches;) in a position of safety doesn't presupposes that they will have been removed to another location (i.e., heaven) at the period's beginning !!!
I invite you to investigate the preposition "ek" in Greek and its meaning when it's followed by a time (or period of time). You will find that "ek" can be translated to "from out of/ out of" when it's not followed by "time" , For example:
(Revelation 3:5) "I will not blot his name out of the book of life,"
(Revelation 3:16) "I will vomit you out of my mouth."
In all cases in bible where "ek" is followed by time (or period of time), it is translated to "from" not "from out of". For example:
In (Luke 18:21) "And he said, All these I have kept from my youth."
(John 9:1) "And passing on he saw a man blind from birth."
(John 9:32) "From the beginning of the age, it was not heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man who had been born blind."
In Luke 18:21, Jesus told the rich young ruler to keep the commandments if he wanted to enter into eternal life. The young man's reply was, "All these I have kept from my youth." The word "from" is translated from "ek" in the Greek, and is followed by a period of time during which he said he had kept the commandments, "kept" being the verb qualified, and from (the beginning of) his youth up to that present time being the time period. Here "ek" points to a point in time from which he had begun to keep the commandments.
In Revelation 3:10. The same for The verb here is "I will keep", "ek" is translated "from", and the time period is "the hour of trial". The understanding then is that God will keep us,from the beginning of the hour of trial onwards. This verse does not say that God will remove the church before the tribulation comes on the world, but rather that he will keep us through it.
SO I realized by experience that preposition "ek" when followed by time or period of time, It is always translated to "from" not "out of". In all translation versions of Rev 3:10 (NIV, NLV, ESV, KJV, ISV, ASV), "ek" is translated to "from" not "from out of/ out of".
8) " Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man. " ( Luke 21:34-36 )
Here the rapture idea comes from word "escape all these things", now the question is What are "these things" ? The things described in verses 34-35. The things which we are exhorted to pray that we might be worthy to escape are not related to the tribulation, but are the “surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life” which have ensnared so many believers !!. Through this understanding, the context makes a better sense.
Finally Jesus's prayer summarized it. In John 17:15, there is no idea of bodily removal of the disciples from the evil world but of preservation from the power of evil even when they are in its very presence. Jesus himself prayed to the father not to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one !!!.
9) " And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. " ( Zech 14:4 )
One of the problems in making Zechariah 14:4 refer to Christ’s second coming is the absence of any reference to Him coming down to stand on the Mount of Olives. The verse states simply “in that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives.” We’re not told by Zechariah how He got to the Mount of Olives. Since we know that Jesus came to earth, and these events are described in the Old Testament, and Jesus did stand on the Mount of Olives, it’s logical to conclude that the reference to the Mount of Olives refers to Jesus’ first coming. This is the literal fulfillment of this prophecy in Acts 1:9–11 where Jesus is taken up into heaven “from the mount called Olivet” in the presence of His disciples . Soon after Jesus’ ascension, the gospel was preached to “Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men, from every nation under heaven” and later to the Gentiles who before Christ were considered “unholy or unclean”. It was in Christ that “the barrier of the dividing wall” between these two groups had been broken down, explained metaphorically by Zechariah as “the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west” (Zech. 14:4). It shows the expression of the Church throughout the whole inhabited world, for it has filled the east, and the western and eastern nations; it stretches to the western sea, it has reached to west and south, and to north and north-east.
