According to pretrib logic, Israel is raptured at Rev 7:4. Of course I am being facetious with the title of this post, using absurdity to illustrate absurdity. The mere word Israel (Ἰσραήλ) is not found between Rev 7:4 and 21:12, so according to pretrib logic, if you apply the same standard to the word church, then you need to apply it to Israel.
Pretribulationism maintains the naive and sloppy interpretation that simply because the actual word “church” (ekklēsia) does not appear in Rev 4–21, as it is mentioned many times before Rev 4, it is assumed then that the church will be raptured before the events starting in chapter 4.
This form of argumentation is called the “word-concept” fallacy, an assumption that studying a word (or phrase) is the same as having studied the entire biblical concept. It is also known as the “concordance” method of interpretation: simply open up a concordance and finger down the page looking for usages of the word “church,” while excluding other terms that describe the church. It can be a beginning point for study, but word (or phrase) studies should certainly not end there. The problem with this method is that it does not take Scripture in a normal, natural, customary sense; hence, it is naive and completely ignores context, and it ignores other rich terms that describe members of the church: saints, elect, servants, Bride, etc.
I have written on this issue a few times previously, see:
Avoiding the Word Concept Fallacy – A Lesson in Biblical and Theological Interpretation – Ep. 12
