RFC: Tribulation Rapture, Acts 1

Acts 1

6 Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. […]

9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

Note much here, but among the times restricted from us knowing include when Israel is restored. Christ will also return in the same way he left. Specifically, the church is comforted knowing exactly the mode how Christ would return to them when he returned.

Also, we have to be careful to focus just on what this is saying as well as what it is not saying.

Jesus will return in the same manner that the disciples saw him go into heaven. So how they saw him go up is how he will be seen returning, but it doesn’t say anything about who will see him. Certainly they themselves won’t, now being dead. Nor does it say only disciples will see him. The focus is only on his manner of ascending/descending and not on the audience.


Objection 1:

Acts 1:6-11. This refers to Jesus' second coming to earth, which will take place at the end of the Tribulation period.

I agree entirely.

A problem remains that we’ve already seen in 1 Thess 4 that Jesus comes down from heaven. Other verses talk about coming down in and with the clouds. 1 Thess 4 is commonly applied to a pre-tribulation rapture. But here, angels are telling the disciples that the way he comes down is the same way he went up. 1 Thess 4, even if a pre-tribulation rapture, calls this “the coming of the Lord”. And Acts 1 here describes the coming of the Lord as well.

We don’t have scriptures that talk about any “coming” that is not fully a “coming”, where in the first Jesus comes down, stops and turns around. It’s all called the same thing. We’re taking “the coming” in one passage and saying this is a pre-tribulation coming, and another as a post-tribulation.

The logical conclusion is that there is only one coming down. These are one and the same events, and they are just prior to the first resurrection.