Copperhead
Well-Known Member
None of your quoted scriptures say the Lord will take His people to heaven. Or anywhere else in the Bible.
Are you sure your read those passages?
Isaiah 26:19-21 (NKJV) Your dead shall live;
Together with my dead body they shall arise.
Awake and sing, you who dwell in dust;
For your dew is like the dew of herbs,
And the earth shall cast out the dead.
20 Come, my people, enter your chambers,
And shut your doors behind you;
Hide yourself, as it were, for a little moment,
Until the indignation is past.
21 For behold, the Lord comes out of His place
To punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity;
The earth will also disclose her blood,
And will no more cover her slain.
John 14:2-3 (NKJV) In My Father's house are many mansions [chambers]; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 (NKJV) For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.
While the exact wording you choose to use is not there, the concept is pretty clear from these passages. One cannot find "trinity" in the scripture also, but the concept is throughout the Bible. The passages above are all interlinked with each other. And the timing is shown in Isaiah as being before the Lord comes out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth.
And Isaiah ties into 2 Thessalonians 2:3. In every English translation prior to the KJV, and in the Latin Vulgate, the passage says "departure", not a falling away or "rebellion".
2 Thessalonians 2:3 (1599 Geneva Bible) Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a departing first, and that that man of sin be disclosed, even the son of perdition.
Davy changed the text of that passage to "a falling away" in a previous post claiming he got it from BibleGateway and I was deceiving others. Here is a link to BibleGateway to confirm the version I posted from my Olive Tree software on 2 Thessalonians 2:3...
Bible Gateway passage: 2 Thessalonians 2:3 - 1599 Geneva Bible
And the context of the passage is laid out in Verse one....
2 Thessalonians 2:1 (1599 Geneva Bible) Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our assembling unto him,
2 Thessalonians 2:1 (NKJV) Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him,
As many well known Greek Scholars, like one of the premier Greek Scholars of the 20th Century, Dr. Kenneth Wuest, along with W.E. Vine and many others have shown, apostasia in the passage of 2 Thessalonians 2:3 can only mean simply "departure". There has to be a definite subject to what is being departed from to make the claim that it means a departure from the faith, "falling away", or "rebellion". There is no such subject in the verse. So one, following proper hermeneutics, has to rely on the context of the passage, which is shown in verse one.... our gathering unto Him.
That the "departure" can be reasoned as a gathering unto him and occurring before the son of perdition / lawless one is revealed is further supported later in the same passage of 2 Thessalonians 2....
2 Thessalonians 2:7-8 (NKJV) For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming.
This all supports Isaiah 26 where the dead are raised and the Lord is telling his people to enter their chambers, the chambers that Yeshua (Jesus) claims He is preparing in His Father's house, which is heaven.
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