Dave Hunt: Will The Rapture Occur At The Last Trump?

Will the Church face the Antichrist in the Great Tribulation—or be removed first?
In this episode of Search the Scriptures Daily, Dave Hunt and Tom McMahon examine Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians to clarify what the apostle really taught about the Rapture, apostasy, and the revealing of the man of sin.

You’ll Learn:

• Why Paul never told believers to prepare for the Antichrist (2 Thessalonians 2).
• What 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 teaches about the resurrection and Rapture.
• Why a false letter troubled the Thessalonian church.
• The difference between persecution and the Great Tribulation.
• Why a post-tribulation rapture makes no sense in light of Revelation 13.
• How the promise of Christ’s return is meant to comfort, not terrify, believers.

Key Scriptures:
1 Thessalonians 4–5 • 2 Thessalonians 2 • John 7:37 • Matthew 16:18 • Revelation 13

Stay grounded in God’s Word and the Blessed Hope of Christ’s soon return.

#Rapture #BibleProphecy #Thessalonians #PreTribulation #GreatTribulation #BereanCall #DaveHunt

Will The Rapture Occur At The Last Trump?

Search the Scriptures Daily — Dave Hunt on the Timing of the Rapture

Host (Tom):
You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that’s essential for salvation and for living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.

In this first segment of our program, we’ve been discussing Dave Hunt’s book When Will Jesus Come? subtitled Compelling Evidence for the Soon Return of Christ.

Dave, last week as we reviewed chapter 17, there were things you wrote that we really didn’t have time to address—or at least not explain them fully. Now, one such item relates to the belief—not a belief that we hold, by the way—but the belief that the Church will go through the Great Tribulation before it is taken out of the way by our Lord in the Rapture.

If this is truly the case—and many people, as you know, make a case for it—why didn’t the Apostle Paul, who wrote most of the epistles, prepare the Church to face the Antichrist and suffer through tribulation more terrible than the world has ever experienced?

Dave Hunt:
Well, that’s a good question, Tom. In fact, he didn’t. Paul warns about apostasy, yes, but not about preparing for the Antichrist. In 2 Thessalonians 2 he says that the Antichrist cannot be revealed until “he who now hinders is removed.”

So I don’t know why Paul would warn Christians to prepare for the Antichrist when he clearly said the Church has to be removed first. He explains that: “He who now hinders will hinder until he is taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed.”

Now who could hinder the Antichrist? Only God Himself. But God is omnipresent—He can’t be removed. So what are we talking about?

We explained that Jesus said, “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37). John adds that Jesus was speaking about the Holy Spirit, whom those who believed would later receive, “for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified.”

So at Pentecost and in the Church we have a presence of God the Holy Spirit on this earth that never existed before. That unique presence must be removed. There’s no other way to explain it.

Now, the Holy Spirit Himself will not be absent from the world—He is still here to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment to come (John 16:8). People who never heard the gospel before will come to faith in Christ during the Great Tribulation. They will be saved but will pay for it with their lives.

But Paul’s point is clear: the Antichrist cannot be revealed until the Church is removed. So why would he warn Christians to prepare for facing the Antichrist?

Tom:
So what was the issue in 1 Thessalonians that Paul was correcting them about?

Dave Hunt:
He was correcting them because some believers had died before the Rapture, and the others were concerned. They thought maybe those who had died were lost, and that only those alive when Christ returned would be taken to heaven.

So in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 Paul explains: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”

Then, in his Second Epistle (2 Thessalonians 2), Paul says: don’t be troubled “by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.” In 1 Thessalonians 5 he already said, “You yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.”

Tom:
At that time the Thessalonians were being persecuted. Wasn’t that what had troubled them?

Dave Hunt:
Yes, the Church was always subject to persecution. But the troubling thing was that they had received a false letter claiming that this persecution meant the day of the Lord had already begun.

Now, that’s a very powerful passage for a pre-trib Rapture. Why? If you believed you were going through the Great Tribulation anyway, you wouldn’t be troubled. You’d just say, “Well, let’s get on with it.”

But if you had been taught that the Rapture precedes the day of the Lord, then being told “you’re already in the day of the Lord” would mean one of two things:

1. Paul lied to you, or was wrong, and not inspired.

2. Or—you’ve been left behind.

Both would be very troubling thoughts.

Tom:
Right. Because we don’t see Paul writing instructions like: “Here’s how you deal with the Antichrist when you meet him.”

Dave Hunt:
Exactly. Instead, he goes on to say: “That day shall not come, except there come a falling away [apostasy] first, and that man of sin be revealed” (2 Thessalonians 2:3).

People often misread that as: the day of the Lord cannot come until the man of sin is revealed. What it actually says is: there must be an apostasy first, and then—in that day—the man of sin will be revealed.

Clearly the Antichrist is revealed during the Tribulation, not before.

Dave Hunt (continued):
Further, Revelation 13 says he is given authority over the saints to kill them. A post-trib Rapture would be a classic non-event—there’d be no one left to rapture! Those without the mark can’t buy or sell, they’re hunted, they’re executed. Maybe a few who outran the authorities—but essentially the Church would be wiped out.

But Jesus said: “The gates of hell shall not prevail against [my church]” (Matthew 16:18). Satan cannot overcome the true Church.

Host:
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