Two Kinds of Believers

WE face the question squarely: Who will be raptured at Jesus’ coming, which we believe to be imminent? Some tell us that the Church will have to pass through the tribulation. This is called the post-tribulation rapture. Then there are others who ay that the Church will pass through only a part of the tribulation, and will be raptured somewhere in the middle of that awful day. This has been called the mid-tribulation rapture. Still others there are who say that only the sanctified believers, those who have had a second blessing and a second work of grace, will be raptured; all the rest, the carnal believers, will have to pass through the tribulation period to be purified. These we call partial rapture-ists. Now the teaching of the Lord Jesus concerning Noah and Lot brands every one of these theories as an unscriptural error, and we shall seek to show this to you from the word of God.

Remember the Noah and Lot were both saved out of the judgment before it fell. Noah was a spiritual believer who walked with God and was safely hid in the ark in comfort and in peace. Lot was a carnal, Worldly believer, out of fellowship with his Lord, but he too was taken out before the judgment fell. There was of course a vast difference as we shall see, in how they were saved but both escaped the judgment and condemnation which fell upon the earth.

Remember, too, that the flood and the destruction of Sodom are pictures of the judgment of God at the return of the Lord Jesus Christ to our Lord’s own words. They are types of the tribulation. If the words of the Lord Jesus. concerning Noah and Lot mean anything whatsoever, they mean that all believers will be caught away before the tribulation starts. Lot the worldly believer, was taken out before, as well as Noah, the spiritual believer. How anyone with an open Bible before him can in the face of this clear revelation teach that the Church must pass through all or part of the tribulation only illustrates how our enemy even deceives the children of God, and seeks to rob them of that blessed hope of the rapture of the saints before the judgment of God falls upon this wicked earth.

Adapted and modified excerpts from Studies in the Life of Abraham by M. R. De Haan (1891-1964)
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
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