The Appearing of Christ
                        Exposing the rapture deception
                                       Brian Kelson




                                      Introduction

Paul wrote in his last letter, his second to Timothy, that his ministry was being discarded;
2Ti 1:15  This you know, that all those in Asia have turned away from me, of whom are Phygellus and Hermogenes.

Asia included the Ephesians and the Colossians and on the surface it might suggest that there was a massive turning away from Christ. This is not the case. They had turned away from Paul the apostle of the Gentiles, the one sent to them by Christ.

At the time of writing, Paul would be aware of the persecutions against Christians, particularly by Nero, and was more than likely to die in the same tide of hate. Christians had not turned away from Christ, many were to die for their faith in Him, but within a few centuries from the close of the New Testament era, the church fathers were, for the most part, void of Pauline doctrine. These dark ages for the Christian community lasted nearly 900 years.

The reformation was not the result of anyone reading the Gospels; the reformation came about because Paul was rediscovered. Justification by faith without works resurfaced and the power of the formalized church had diminished.

The literal return of Christ was another doctrine which faded into obscurity and only resurfaced in the years after the reformation.  From about 1800 the “rapture” concept took shape and has become the flagship of most eschatological thinking. This doctrine in all its variations must be exposed for what it is, a masterstroke of deception.

The rapture theory constantly holds Christians in a false state of heightened expectancy as the faithful look for and pass yet another due by date proclaimed by yet another zealous Christian individual or group who claim to have had some “word of knowledge” or “prophecy” about it.

When Paul wrote to the Colossians he said this:
Col 1:23  since indeed you* are continuing in the faith, having been firmly established and steadfast, and are not being shifted away from the hope [or, confident expectation] of the Gospel which you* heard, the one having been preached in all the creation under heaven, of which _I_, Paul, became a servant. ALT.

Paul’s confidence here is that the Colossian had not been moved away from the hope of the gospel which was entrusted to Him by Christ. The hope of Ephesians and Colossians is not the hope of 1Thess.4 and when the Christian community moved away from Paul in his later ministry, they moved away from the hope for us today.

The rapture is not the appearing of Christ. The rapture is a sad and sorry testimony to Christianity’s failure to study Paul carefully according to those Bible study principles so clearly given us.

My prayer is that this book will stimulate honest thinking in the matter of the hope before the Church which is His Body only found in the post Acts epistles of Paul.

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 The Appearing of Christ - Exposing the rapture deception
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