I ask this with all sincerity. I am not trying to be pugnacious. It’s an honest question.
The last couple of days have been interesting. Last week Joel Richardson’s interview with me was posted where we discussed the question of who is left behind in Matt 24.
The main point I wanted to communicate is that post-tribbers and other interpreters who view the wicked being taken and not the righteous without exception refuse to deal with Matthew 24:31.
“And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet blast, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” (Matt 24:31)
The “one taken and other left” illustration and the Noahic illustration are referring back to the separation at the parousia event in Matthew 24:31. Posttribbers refuse to deal with this by building a brick wall between Jesus’s narrative teaching up to v. 31 and Jesus’s application of it after v. 31.
Their response is to ignore it and go outside of the Olivet Discourse and import some other meaning back into this text.
A good example of this is when posttribbers cite the Wheat and Tares parable. Rather than look at the immediate context in Matthew 24 where it shows explicitly that it is the righteous who are gathered in Matthew 24:31, they cite the Wheat and Tares parable, which is not teaching a chronology but the fact of separation. I have written on this here (another argument that posttribs refuse to respond to). Ironically, the parable of the Wheat and Tares shows that the righteous are taken into the Father’s barn, while the wicked are left to be burned.
Related links:
A simple question for those who insist that the wicked are ‘taken’ in Matt 24
