Episode Details

Chris White interviewed me a few years ago on his program to respond to pretrib teacher Jimmy DeYoung and Brannon Howse on certain pretrib objections to prewrath. I played a brief clip from this interview covering the common pretrib objection that argues since there is absence of the word ‘Church’ (Ekklēsia) in Revelation 4–21 that supports a pretribulation Rapture.

This objection is easily refuted by the following points, most of which I gave in this short clip.

Pretribulationism maintains that since the actual word “church” (ekklēsia) does not appear in chapters 4–21, but is mentioned many times before chapter 4, it is assumed then that the church will be raptured before the events of chapter 4. This is very bad argumentation that is made in popular books, but rejected even by scholarly pretribulationism. Nevertheless, it is often the popular arguments that are influential so I will address this here.

This form of argumentation is called the “word-concept” fallacy, an assumption that studying a word (or phrase) is the same as having studied the entire biblical concept. It is also known as the “concordance” method of interpretation: simply open up a concordance and finger down the page looking for usages of the word “church,” while excluding other terms that describe the church. It can be a beginning point for study, but word (or phrase) studies should certainly not end there. The problem with this method is that it does not take Scripture in a normal, natural, customary sense; hence, it is naive and completely ignores context. I will start with showing the absurdity of this argument by being absurd, followed by a few sensible responses.

First, it may be asked why would the mention of “church” occur at the beginning of Revelation, but not throughout the book? It is erroneous to think that a New Testament writer is required to mention the term “church” throughout his writings to establish the application to the church. Paul only mentioned the term “church” once in the first chapter of his epistle to the Galatians. Do not Galatians chapters 2–6 apply to the church? The same can be said of 2 Thessalonians; the term “church” is only mentioned in chapter one. And in Colossians, the term is mentioned in the first and last chapters of the book. Does not the body of the letter to the Colossians apply to the church? So this method consistently applied is senseless.

Second, the word “church” is absent from the books of Mark, Luke, John, 2 Timothy, Titus, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, and Jude. Does that mean those books do not pertain to the church? It is patently misguided to demand that the New Testament writers must only use the term “church” to discern if a passage applies to the church.

Third, the word “church” is absent from rapture passages: 1Thessalonians 4:13–17 and John 14:1–4. Following their logic, are we right to conclude that the church will not be raptured? Of course not!

Fourth, the word “church” is absent from the heavenly scenes in Revelation 4–5. But heaven is the one place we would expect to find the church where pretribulationism