He Cometh With Clouds

fter hearing a Rapture Cult pastor on radio recently inadvertently connect two important verses concerning Christ's return, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the unnamed pastor squirm. In the course of a study on Revelation chapter 1, he had spent some time on the following verse:

"Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every see shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. " (Revelation 1:7)

As he apparently wanted to preach out of I Thessalonians, this pastor was hastily forced to go to rather contrived lengths to tell his listeners the coming of Jesus Christ mentioning the clouds in I Thessalonians could not possibly be the same coming of Jesus Christ mentioning the clouds in Revelation. That verse reads as follows:

"For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." (I Thessalonians 4:16,17).

I had the distinct impression he hadn't actually planned on linking the two verses, but when he blundered into it, he became acutely aware of the fact the two verses taken together demonstrate they are both referring to the second coming -- and not the fictional pre-tribulation rapture.

As he became progressively more flustered, he finally blurted out "the Thessalonian reference has to be the rapture because there we'll be caught up, but not in the Revelation verse." This circular reasoning is tantamount to saying `this verse says there's a rapture, so that proves the rapture will occur' -- a leap of illogic that is staggering even by rapturist standards. 

Most cult teachers tell those foolish enough to listen to them that Jesus will be invisible at the so-called "rapture" (another fictional element of the doctrine that has no scriptural support whatsoever) -- thus the Revelational passage in which "every eye shall see him" is usually taken to refer to the real second coming, as opposed to His alleged secret coming.

Yet when we look at this thread that I've entitled He Cometh With Clouds it's obvious that all the "cloud coming: verses are describing the same event. For instance, In Acts chapter one, when Christ ascends with two angels standing by, the text says

"And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight...behold, two men stood by them...Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:9-11).

Since all present saw Him ascend into the clouds, and since He is to come back in "like manner," how can it be said he will be invisible to some, but not to others? In fact, the angel's description is consistent with Christ's own description to the high priest of the Sanhedrin that was to condemn Him to death:

"Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven" (Matthew 26:64).

As the priesthood that rejected Christ, and sent Him to the cross would certainly be characterized as those "which pierced him," a phrase found in the cloud coming of Christ in Revelation, we may connect this coming in Matthew with that coming in Revelation.

In the Gospels, after a lengthy description of the tribulational events that will precede "the sign of thy coming," Jesus plainly stated that

"Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened...And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (Matthew 24:3).

Since all the "tribes of the earth [will] mourn" when he comes "in the clouds" in Matthew, surely this is the sevent in which "all kindreds of the earth shall wail" when "he cometh with clouds" in ame Revelation; and because that same coming in Matthew has Him coming to "gather together his elect," even as Paul told the Christians in Thessalonica they were the "election of God" (I Thessalonians 1:4) just before he told them they would be caught up to meet the Lord "in the clouds [at] the coming of the Lord" (I Thessalonians 4:17,15), these verses are all describing the same event -- the second coming of Jesus Christ.