This week I posted poignant statements from George Eldon Ladd from his book The Blessed Hope. I will post one more.
Ladd points out a biblical absurdity within the traditional pretribulation interpretation that is related to the pretrib view that the Holy Spirit is the Restrainer (there have been exceptions to this of variant views within pretribulationism). They claim:
Within a period of seven years, the Jewish [144,000] remnant, although lacking the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit—for according to the [pretribulation] theory, the Spirit has been taken out of the world at the Rapture of the Church—will evangelize the entire world with this announcement [Matt 24:14] about the coming kingdom. This task the Christian Church, indwelt by the Spirit of God, has failed thus far to accomplish in two thousand years (147, emphasis mine).
In essence, pretribulationism teaches that even though occurring after the event of the Cross and Resurrection, during the seventieth week of Daniel people will not only be able to get saved without the Holy Spirit, but the largest revival in human history will occur without the Holy Spirit!
You sure have to sacrifice a lot of biblical truth to maintain pretribulation imminence theology!
