historian said:
Satan has not been chained and cast into a bottomless pit. He still is very influential in the world today. One only need to look at all the obvious evil that has happened over the past 100 years (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc), the last 25 years (9-11, October 7, etc), or the moral decline of the west today (the sacrifice of tens of millions of babies, the trans cult, the climate cult, etc).
It seems like you are taking a literal interpretation of Satan being "bound and chained and cast into a bottomless pit."
Satan doesn't have a body. None of the angels do. They are pure spirits. This passage, like most of Revelation, is filled with symbolism. ONE of the meanings is that Satan cannot stop the Gospel from being claimed throughout the world.
Amlillennialists believe in the coexistence of good and evil on earth to the end.
historian said:
The idea of the rapture predates the Left Behind books by decades. Those books are from the 1990s (I read all 12) and I remember talk of it in the 1970s. Actually, it has its basis in scripture that's 2,000 years old. Although the word is not used in modern translations, the idea is explicit in Matthew 24, I Thessalonians 4, & other scriptures.
Correct, the rapture does predate the books. It was popularized by John Nelson Darby around 1830 and later spread through the Scofield Reference Bible.
No Church father, no medieval theologian, nor Reformer taught it.
Matthew 24 is not about the "rapture." Jesus gives his response concerning the disciple's questions about the destruction of the Temple.
1 Thessalonians 4:17
After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.This is the common dispensationalism misunderstanding that this is the rapture. It certainly sounds good, but it is not the case.
The key Greek word here is (apantsis) translated as "to meet."
Apantsis was a specific, well-known Greek technical term for a civic custom practiced throughout the ancient Greco-Roman world. Here is exactly what it described:
When a king, emperor, or dignitary was approaching a city, the citizens would go OUT of the city to meet him and then escort him BACK INTO the city in a great procession of honor.
The people did not go out to meet him and then stay outside. The whole point of
apantsis was to welcome the arriving dignitary and bring him home.
We see this in
Matt 25:1-6 in the parable of the Ten Virgins going out and escorting back the bridegroom.
Acts 28-15 - "The brothers heard about us and came from as far as the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns to meet us." The Roman Christians went OUT of Rome to meet Paul on the road and then accompanied him BACK INTO Rome.
Matt 21:1-11 The crowds go OUT of Jerusalem to meet Jesus coming down from the Mount of Olives and escort Him INTO the city. Again
apantsis.Essentially, the passages like 1 Thess 4 are describing the Second Coming of Jesus, not a rapture.
Finally, we passages discuss those taken and those left behind (Matt 24:40-41 and Luke 17:34-36) . We WANT to be left behind. Luke clarifies this in verse 37:
"Where, Lord?" they asked. He replied, "Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather." We don't want to go where the vultures are. That's a place of rotting flesh.
