I became a Christian in 1971 as a junior in college and one of the first books I read was Late Great Planet Earth which peaked my interest in Biblical prophecy. This along with my Campus Crusade for Christ directorhaving graduated from Dallas Seminary and a good friend going to Dallas Seminary influenced me to accept the pretrib teaching. In 1977 I became a DTS student myself and very little was discussed in our eschatology classes about the other rapture positions, but a friend pointed out some weaknesses from 2 Thessalonians. I read some post trib books by Ladd and Gundry which had some good Biblical support but I was not convinced of that position either. I remained pretrib but in the back of my mind I knew it had problems. In 1992 I was pastoring a church and one of the elders gave me Rosenthal’s book to read. As a former Bible college professor he was a staunch pretrib teacher but he wanted me to be aware of this new view that was now being taught. I read it with some interest but was too busy with other matters, plus the rapture question was already confusing enough and now another teaching seemed to make it even more difficult. But my love for escahtology lead me to reread Marv’s book again and I got a clearer picture of what he was saying. I had questions about it but nobody to talk to, to answer my questions. Five more years go by again and rereading it for the third led to another breakthrough as I focused on the definition of the Day of the Lord based on the OT passages. I now saw the weakness of my previous pretrib understanding of the Day of the Lord did not go along with the OT, being based on other presuppositions rather than the Bible. Again I had no one to go to but I felt I was on to something that was exciting. I was not in a fulltime ministry position at that time and was not aware of the internet sources that could have helped me with the little time I had to study or the other books beside Rosenthal’s. Then in 2011 I became convinced that prewrath is the true teaching of God’s Word and I could defend it because it is so obvious when considering the Olivet Discourse, Rev 6-7, and the Thessalonian epistles. How could we have missed it for all these years? I have taken early retirement in order to do more Bible teaching and missionary work, and prewrath is one of the subjects I feel compelled to share with anyone who is willing to hear. Unfortunately many of my pretrib friends are skeptical and unwilling to really dialogue/debate about the rapture. This past spring I went back to Dallas to talk to some of the professors about the prewrath teaching and was encouraged about being able to plant seeds, Lord willing it will bear fruit in the future. – Tom Keeley
