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(1) "Rapture" here means "to snatch away...seize forcibly". (See Ac 8.39, 2 Co 12.2&4, Rev 12.5)
(2) Some pre-trib rapture proponents teach that this event will be "secret"...that the Lord's catching away of the Church is not witnessed by those who are "left behind". Presumably this is to cover embarrassing questions raised by Hebrews 9.28 and its unambiguous statement that Christ appears twice, not three times...which pre-trib doctrine requires. Also it is impossible to imagine and therefore believe that the Lord Jesus' "loud summons" or "shout of war", the archangel's "shout", and "one blast from the trumpet of God" will pass un-noticed by all of the earth's inhabitants.
(3) Dr. J. Rodman Williams asks (Vol. 3 "Renewal Theology"), "What will happen to the faith of present believers who have embraced the pretribulation rapture teaching if increased persecution and the Great Tribulation lie ahead? Rather than being prepared to meet whatever may come, such believers run the risk of profound disillusionment and despair."
(4) God's ways are mysterious. That is to say, they cannot be fathomed through human investigation, but are grasped according to the Lord's revelation of them to us...by His grace and power.
(5) "We have to give thanks again and again that poor suppressed Christianity is becoming so alive in calamity...For more than forty years I have been anxious about the petrifaction (turned to stone...paralysis) of the Church. Oh, it had to happen that it should remember its commission afresh." (Ruth von Kleist-Retzow, Germany, 24/2/34)
(6) Lutheranism's historical alliance between "altar and throne", made it difficult for many German Protestants to recognize the need for an absolute divide between their Church and Hitler's State. Nevertheless, this can in no way excuse the (pro-Nazi) German Evangelical Federation's constitutional acceptance of a ban on non-Aryan (Jewish) ministry students and pastors. Roman Catholics had already been withdrawn from German politics through the signing of a concordat..."You leave us alone, and we'll leave you alone!" The Nazis swiftly filled the gaps left, and at a later and convenient moment attacked that Church anyway?
