Pastor Anderson, first of all, just real simply, where does a person find the rapture in the
book of Revelation?
Well, the first place you're going to find the rapture in Revelation is in Revelation
chapter 7 when a great multitude appears in heaven out of all kindreds and tongues and
people and John is surprised by them being there and he actually asks the question, you
know, whence came they?
Where did they come from?
And then it's explained, they came out of great tribulation, they washed their robes
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
In fact, a friend of mine, he was dating a girl that this was all totally new to her.
She had no background in Bible prophecy.
She'd never even read the book of Revelation and he told her, read the book of Revelation,
not knowing anything about what it teaches or not having a background in Bible prophecy
and just tell me when you think you get to the rapture and she said, Revelation 7 because
this great multitude appears.
That's just kind of an obvious thing when you're reading it that a giant multitude appears
in heaven out of nowhere and the timing is perfect with Matthew 24 because sun and moon
are darkened, the great day of God's wrath has come and then boom, the multitude appears
in heaven before the grass or the trees or the earth has been hurt because at the beginning
of chapter 7, he says, hurt not the earth, neither the sea nor the trees till we have
sealed the servants of our God and their foreheads and so that proves that in the six seals leading
up to that, God was not destroying the landscape.
He was not hurting the earth and the trees and the sea and things like that.
So it's pre-wrath but it's post-tribulation just like Matthew 24 says.
Now I grew up in churches that only taught the pre-tribulation rapture and the teaching
that I grew up with was that the rapture is never mentioned in Revelation.
That's the main thing that I heard growing up my whole life from those who were pre-trib
is just it isn't there, it isn't mentioned.
I find that to be completely ridiculous because the rapture is such an important critical
event.
In fact, if you look at the book of Revelation, it's the key event because in chapter 1 verse
7, the theme of Revelation is given, behold, he cometh with clouds and every eye shall
see him and they also which pierced him and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because
of him, even so, amen.
It's exactly what happens at the time of the rapture because the sun and moon are darkened,
Christ comes in the clouds, all the tribes of the earth mourn, they weep and wail and
then we're caught up together with him.
Saying that the rapture is not even in Revelation is bizarre to think that such a critical important
event as Christ coming in the clouds to gather the elect, to gather the saved, just to say
that it's not even mentioned is crazy.
When I became an adult, I started hearing a different argument because if you go in
different circles of the pre-trib rapture, you're going to hear different explanations
and different arguments.
Then I started hearing this thing of, well, Revelation 4.1, that's the rapture.
Then I became more familiar with that argument.
So I'm just going to read it for you right now, Revelation 4.1, if you want to turn there
also.
This is what pre-tribbers claim is the rapture in Revelation and I've never heard any other
explanation from them and I've heard from hundreds of them, they either say it's not
in Revelation or they point to Revelation 4.1 because if they're going to put it before
the tribulation, they have to find something early in the book and this is what they come
up with.
It says in Revelation 4.1, after this I looked and behold a door was opened in heaven and
the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me which said, come
up hither and I will show thee things which must be hereafter and immediately I was in
the spirit and behold a throne was set in heaven and one sat on the throne.
And this is what they point to.
Well Lacey said, if you can't see the rapture in that verse, you've got some dark shades
on brother and they get up and say, I'm waiting to hear that voice, come up hither, hype man.
These preachers that are pre-trib, they just are really bombastic about how this is the
rapture, it's right there, can't you see it?
Well I don't see it.
Because if you look at Revelation 4.1, first of all, this is one guy being caught up to
heaven.
This isn't all believers, all the dead in Christ, all that are alive and remain.
One guy, John, is told, come up hither and I will show thee, thee is singular, right?
Ye, you, yours, plural, thee, thou is singular.
I will show thee things which must be hereafter and then it says in verse 2, and immediately
I was in the spirit.
So John was not even physically caught up to heaven.
So John physically is on the isle of Patmos the whole time.
He never goes anywhere.
He just physically is on the isle of Patmos, only in the spirit is he caught up into heaven
and seeing all the events of the end times.
His body physically remained on Patmos the whole time.
Well, if I may say, and understand folks, I'm playing devil's advocate here, right?
Nobody throw any tomatoes at me.
What you're missing is the fact that we have, you know, we have seven dispensations and
we have seven church ages.
So we have the seven different church ages in chapter two and three.
You have the Laodicean age, which we are in now.
That's why churches are so lame right now.
They're lukewarm, right?
It's the Laodicean age.
And then after that age that we are in right now, chapter four, yes, it's in the spirit,
but that is a sign right there.
That is symbolic of the rapture.
And so he's taken out and then it goes into tribulation and you never see the church mentioned
after revelation chapter four.
But here's what's funny about that.
He's not taken anywhere.
He's not taken out.
He's still on Patmos.
He didn't go anywhere and he's on Patmos as a persecution.
He's been banished to the isle of Patmos because he says, I was in the isle of Patmos for the
word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.
So he's in exile.
He's imprisoned on Patmos and he doesn't leave.
He remains there.
Only in spirit does he go anywhere and see anything.
So this is symbolic or a picture of the rapture.
It's a terrible picture when a guy just in his mind and in his heart and his spirit leaves.
That's not the rapture.
The whole point of the rapture is that it's a bodily resurrection.
Our bodies are changed.
Our bodies are redeemed.
This doesn't picture that at all.
This whole seven church age thing is garbage anyway because if you look at their breakdown
of the seven church ages, they're basically considering the Catholic church as being a
legitimate church age at some point and then it went sour and then it went bad and then
the Protestant reformation is another great phase and then all these different Pentecostal
revivals in the 1800s, that's like the Philadelphia church age when the door was wide open.
None of it makes any sense if you're actually an independent Baptist.
Not only that, none of it makes sense when you believe that the church is a local assembly
or congregation.
You have to believe in a universal church to have a church age where you could just
paint with the broad brush and say, the church is lukewarm.
We don't believe in the church.
We believe in churches.
Some of them are Laodicean.
Some of them are Philadelphian.
Some of them are like Sardis and on and on.
That's all just made up.
It's nonsense but they have to try to put the square peg into the round hole because
of the fact that they need a rapture in Revelation.
Here's what they come up with.
It's all they've got.
This whole thing about the church not being mentioned after chapter three makes no sense
because the church is made up of the people.
It's the congregation of the saints, the believers.
We do have mentions of the saints because the Antichrist is making war with the saints.
He's wearing out the saints of the Most High.
Just because it doesn't use the word church doesn't mean that those same people aren't
there.
Plus, I like to base what I believe on what the Bible does say, not on what the Bible
doesn't say.
No mention of the church is not an argument.
Let's go by what it says, not by what it doesn't say.
What do you think about that?
Well, that's where I come up with one of the Pastor Anderson rumors.
That's usually where it goes from there.
All right, so you have it in chapter seven.
Are there any other mentions of the rapture in Revelation in your opinion?
Yes, there are.
The way that the Book of Revelation is laid out is that the first 11 chapters go in a
logical chronological order.
There's a narrative that's being told.
Then when you get to chapter 12, there's clearly a reset button.
Everybody acts like, I just invented that, I just came up with that, and there's some
radical new teaching or something like that.
But actually, it's not something radical or new or anything that different because virtually
everybody who has ever studied the Book of Revelation has come to the conclusion that
chapter 12 is dramatically out of chronology because it starts with the birth of Jesus
Christ.
It's not like God is giving us this really hard puzzle to solve.
If we're reading Revelation one through 11 and everything is just flowing in perfect
chronological order, then all of a sudden you get to the end of chapter 11 and it's
like the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ
and he shall reign forever and ever.
There's this ending point, this finality.
Then all of a sudden, we're back at the birth of Christ.
It doesn't take a theologian or a genius or a rocket scientist to figure out, okay,
we just broke from the chronology.
In fact, even pre-trib Bible teachers will usually teach that chapters 12 through 14
are not part of the chronology.
The way that the pre-tribbers interpret the Book of Revelation is they say, well, one
through 11 is in chronological order, then 12 through 14, we have a parenthetical.
That's the way they put it.
Then we jump back into the chronology in chapter 15 right where 11 left off.
That doesn't make any sense.
That can be disproven.
What I'm saying is that they're saying that it's a reset button in chapter 12, but then
when you get to chapter 15, they get back on the original program.
They want to go one through 11, then jump to 15, and then 12 through 14 gets pulled
out and it's on its own program.
They're doing something similar except that what they're doing doesn't make any sense.
Because if you read chapters 12 through the end of the book, it's in chronological order
again and it all flows perfectly and you see a mirror image of the first half.
So the first half of Revelation covers the tribulation.
It covers the rapture.
It covers God pouring out his wrath.
The second half starting in chapter 12 covers the tribulation, covers the rapture, covers
God pouring out his wrath.
And if you put the two side by side, they match up perfectly.
Here's the evidence, okay, that they match up this way and not that 12 and 14 are just
pulled out by themselves.
When you look at the seven trumpets and the seven vials, okay, the pre-tribbers are going
to say first the seven trumpets, then the seven vials.
Here's the problem with that.
If we go to Revelation 16 where we get the seven vials, look at verse number 10.
This is when the seven vials are being poured out.
Verse 10 says the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seed of the beast and his kingdom
was full of darkness and they gnawed their tongues for pain.
Here's why it would make no sense for this to be after the seventh trumpet because at
the seventh trumpet it says the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our
Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever.
So if the seven trumpet sounds and all the kingdoms of the world become Christ's kingdoms,
then why does the beast still have a capital city?
Why does he still have a seed?
How is his kingdom full of darkness?
It's not his kingdom anymore because the seventh trumpet is where it becomes Christ's kingdom.
Why?
Because the seventh trumpet, that's where we have the millennium being set up right
there because that's where it becomes Christ's kingdom.
And plus the simplest answer is usually the one that's right, Occam's razor.
So it's just way simpler to understand Revelation as one through 11 and then it starts over
in 12.
It all fits.
It all makes sense.
When you get these complicated explanations of Revelation where you're having to move
a whole bunch of chapters around and you're getting complicated, it's probably just because
you're trying to force it to say what you want it to say instead of just taking the
cue from the author of that reset button in chapter 12.
So let's go to chapter 14 and let's look at the rapture in chapter 14 of Revelation.
So if Revelation 1 through 11 is one chronology, then in chapter 12 we jump back to the birth
of Christ and have another chronology, then we should expect to find the tribulation in
both halves, the rapture in both halves and God's wrath in both halves, which is exactly
what we have.
The seven trumpets are God's wrath in the first half, the seven vials are God's wrath
in the second half of the book of Revelation.
So look at chapter 14.
It says, and I looked and behold a white cloud and upon the cloud one sat like unto the son
of man having on his head a golden crown and in his hand a sharp sickle.
I mean, there could be no question here that the son of man is Jesus Christ.
He comes in the cloud and he's going to reap the earth.
I mean, it's pretty hard to not see the rapture in this verse.
And another angel came out of the temple crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud.
Thrust in thy sickle and reap for the time has come for thee to reap for the harvest
of the earth is ripe.
And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth and the earth was reaped.
Now the pre-treatable argument I've heard for this one, and tell me if you've heard
something different, is that, well, this is him reaping the earth for some kind of a judgment.
Have you heard that one?
He's taken him to a bad place.
Because Christ is coming in the cloud and he's reaping, but they say, well, this is
a bad reaping.
What it is is, because if you'll notice right after that, it mentions another sickle, the
blood flowing to the horse's bridle.
And what we have here is a separating of the sheep from the goats after Armageddon.
After he comes and he steps on this earth, he's going to reap the good people.
Of course Armageddon's not going to happen until chapter 19.
Well, they're seeing it in 14 because of the blood flowing to the horse's bridle.
And so that's kind of how they say it goes, is this is the whole separating thing like
we see in all of the discourse, I believe it mentions the separating of the sheep from
the goats.
That's kind of how they spin it.
Of course, it doesn't mention him coming and stepping his foot on the Mount of Olives or
anything.
He's in the clouds.
But once again, and here's the thing, there are two reaping's.
This is the key in Revelation 14 is that there are two reaping's, OK, because you have the
son of man that comes in the cloud and reaps the earth.
And then right after that, it says and another angel, verse 17, came out of the temple, which
is in heaven.
He also having a sharp sickle.
And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire, and cried with
a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle saying, thrust in thy sharp sickle and gathered
the clusters of the vine of the earth for her grapes are fully ripe, and the angel thrust
in his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth and cast it into the
great wine press of the wrath of God.
And the wine press was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the wine press
even under the horse bridles by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.
So you have two reaping's here.
You have one reaping where Christ comes in the cloud and reaps the harvest of the earth,
which is obviously he's reaping the good wheat into his barn.
He's gathering the wheat into his barn.
He's gathering the elect.
But then after Christ gathers the elect, you have another angel that reaps the grapes for
the wine press of God's wrath.
Now what you have to understand here is that Christ is not literally going to put a bunch
of grapes into a wine press and step on them here.
This is clearly symbolic because he's not actually going to put all human beings into
a giant wine press and they're like, no, and he's just crushing them down.
What he's saying here when he says that the grapes of the earth, and by the way, human
beings aren't grapes either, right?
When he talks about gathering the grapes of the earth and throwing them into the wine
press of God's wrath and crushing it and stepping on it until blood comes out under the horse
bridles, what that pictures is the entire period of God's wrath.
It's just a picture of he's going to pull out the saints and then he's going to throw
everybody else into the wine press of his wrath.
They're going to drink of the wine of the wrath of God.
They're going to be thrown into the wine press of his wrath.
These are just metaphors for he's going to pour out his wrath on them.
And that's not going to take place in one day.
That's going to take place over the course of several years.
Now, if you have a Scofield Bible, which I grew up reading a Scofield Bible, which is
very strongly pre-Trib, it says right above verses 16 through 20 here, it says that this
is the battle of Armageddon.
I always thought that was weird, why this is the battle of Armageddon.
There's no mention of a battle, there's no mention of Armageddon.
There's none of the same elements of the battle of Armageddon from chapter 19, which is when
it actually happens in chapter 19.
So again, when people talk about this being Armageddon, they're just reading that note
in Scofield's Bible, they're just trying to make it fit.
But in reality, it's just a picture of God pouring out his wrath after the rapture.
And then he gets into the specifics of his wrath in chapters 15, 16 with the seven vials,
and then 17, 18 with the destruction of Babylon, which is the coup de grace after he's poured
out his seven vials, the final thing to take care of is to wipe out Babylon permanently.
So one thing that I want you to cover for maybe someone who's watching, I think this
audience knows.
At the Anti-Anderson Conference, Sam Gipp had a lot of fun at your expense, and mocking
the whole revelation being split in two things, because as he explained it, and in case someone's
mixed up about one through 11, and then it's repeated from 12 through 22, he said that
you teach that chapter one lines up with 12, two with 13, three with 14, and so on, and
then he kind of would show the differences in some of those, and then everybody had a
great laugh.
How could he think that chapter three and chapter 14 are the same thing?
And so explain, kind of explain how it's not that.
That's like saying, if we told somebody, hey, Matthew and Mark are both covering the same
events.
Oh, so you think Mark chapter five is the same as Matthew chapter five?
Obviously, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are covering the same events, but the chapters
aren't going to line up exactly.
We could take 2 Samuel and put it next to 1 Chronicles, but it's not going to be chapter
for chapter, right?
It doesn't take a genius to figure that out, but Sam Gipp is just obviously just talking
to people who don't know how to use the internet, and so they're just going to believe whatever
he tells them that I said, yeah, how can people listen to that guy on YouTube when he says
stuff like that, you know, because they just, the stuff he says is so outlandish.
It's crazy that he'll attribute these things to me, like that I said this, he said that.
That's called a straw man, right?
When you make up what the other side believes, you know, when we talk about the pre-trib rapture,
we talk about what they actually do believe.
We don't just make things up.
They think that the rapture is in verse, you know, 5 of chapter 3.
We don't just make things up.
We basically are telling you, look, this is what we've heard.
They either said it's not in Revelation or they said it's Revelation 4.1.
That's not a straw man.
That's what they actually say and believe, and I've never heard anything different than
that, and if there is something different than that, then, you know, I'll address it,
but they will never address what we actually believe.
They'll just change what we believe.
They'll say that we believe in a mid-tribulation rapture.
You know, last time I checked, the movie is called after the tribulation, not in the middle
of the tribulation, but let's go to Revelation 7 because we looked at the rapture in Revelation
14.
Let's look at it in chapter 7, Revelation chapter 7, and again, the context is perfect.
The sun and moon are darkened at the end of Revelation 6.
People are crying out and mourning.
Chapter 7, we have at the beginning where it says in verse number 3, hurt not the earth,
neither the sea nor the trees till we've sealed the servants of our God and therefore it.
So it's crystal clear here that God is about to pour out his wrath, but he's not doing
it quite yet.
He's not attacking the seas or the earth or the trees or anything like that.
Then if you get to verse number 9, after this I beheld in low a great multitude, which
no man could number, of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues, stood before the throne
and before the lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands.
Let me say this.
The Bible numbers some pretty big numbers, you know, 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands
of thousands.
It numbers over 100 million angels, but this is something that no man could number.
It's just not possible to number this multitude.
Now the pre-tribbers, they'll point to this and say, and this is what the Scofield Reference
Bible would also say here, that these are people who got saved during the tribulation.
These are the tribulation saints, right?
Who's heard that one?
But here's the thing about, and that's all I've heard them say, but really, a number
that no man could number, I mean that many people are going to get saved after the rapture
because after the rapture, God's going to be sending them a strong delusion that they
should believe a lie.
I do believe that people will get saved after the rapture, but it's not going to be some
insane number that no man can number because how many times does it talk about them not
repenting and not giving God the glory, even when he punishes them?
So they claim this is the tribulation saints.
Obviously, that makes no sense.
The reason it's a number no man can number is because this is all believers who've ever
lived.
This is a huge number that is resurrected in that first resurrection and caught up with
it.
And it says that they're clothed with white robes, they have palms in their hands, they
cried with a loud voice, and on and on.
But let's jump down where it says in verse 13, one of the elders answered, saying unto
me, what are these which are arrayed in white robes?
And whence came they?
Whence means from where?
Where did they come from?
That proves that they just got there.
Otherwise you wouldn't say, who are these people and where did they come from?
And I said unto him, sir, thou knowest.
And he said to me, these are they which came out of great tribulation and have washed their
robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb.
Therefore they before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple.
And he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them.
They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore, neither shall the sun light on them
nor any heat.
For the lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them and shall lead them
unto living fountains of waters and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.
And then in the next breath, what happens?
He starts to pour out his wrath on the earth, burning up the grass, burning up the trees,
turning the water into blood.
But all that stuff happens after the saints are caught up into heaven.
Now, even if you were to say, as the pre-trib is, oh, these are people who got saved during
the tribulation.
How many raptures do they have?
Because they have to have their pre-trib rapture just because it's pre-trib, duh, because we
said so.
Okay, that's number one.
But now they would have to have some other rapture between the seals and the trumpets,
because this clearly rolls right into the trumpets.
So they have a rapture at the beginning of the tribulation, according to their logic.
Then they'd have to have one in the middle.
And then in Matthew 24, they're going to be like, well, that's not our rapture.
So it's a third rapture.
Then they have a rapture for the bad people where they're raptured unto destruction.
You've heard that one, gathered for judgment.
So I mean, how many raptures do you end up with?
And that's why dispensational is obviously, hey, seven raptures.
Yeah, I think we're out of time.
Yeah.
So I appreciate that.
But folks, we got them on record, exposed them.
Instead of believing Revelation four is a rapture, the one man's caught up in the spirit.
He thinks it's chapter seven, where a multitude appears before the throne that no man can
number from all over the earth.
So who are you going to believe, folks?
So that's all we have.
Thank you.