Why We Believe with Certainty in the Premillennial View (Part 1)

God is Always Faithful

First, God desires for us to know the truth concerning last things. It is not God’s desire that we look at end times as being insignificant. There is so much scripture on the topic that it is obviously important to God that we at least know how things are going to lay out in the future. As I have already instructed the group, the best approach to scripture is to take God’s word for what it says instead of for what we think it says. God is clear enough for us to discern His truth, or He would not have told us to be “a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth” if He did not desire for us to understand what He wrote for us. (2 Tim. 2:15)
God not only gives us His scripture, but also enables us to understand it. He fulfills all of His promises. Since this is true, we are not a people uninformed about those things that are important to God. One promise that He made and has fulfilled in every born again believer is that he would be with us always. He told his disciples, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live your will live also. In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” (John 14:18) How was Jesus going to fulfill that promise? He promised them, and us, that He would “ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of Truth” (Jn 14:16-17a). Jesus told them, “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.” (John 16:12-13) Therefore, God desires for us to understand His word and also empowers us through His Spirit to that end.

God Has His Elect
We believe that those who are saved are saved as a result of God’s choice, not theirs. We are told many times in the scripture that God chooses those who are saved. (1 Peter 1:1-2; Matt. 24:22; Ehp.1:4; 2 Thess. 2:13) God also elected someone else to a cause. God not only elects the church but He also elected the nation of Israel. We see this in many Old Testament texts such as Isaiah 45:4, “Israel, Mine elect. I have called thee by thy name.” Isaiah 65:9, “Mine elect shall inherit it, the promises of God.” Isaiah 65 is completely about Israel as being God’s elect but specifically in verse 22, “My elect shall enjoy long the work of their hands.” Over 200 times in the Bible God is called the God of Israel, and there are over 2000 references to the nation of Israel in Scripture and not one of them means anything other than Israel. (MacArthur, 2007)
Why is this important? Because once we get our outlook on Israel straight we get everything straight. We see the commitments of God straight, and the fulfillment of those promises all understood clearly in the scripture. If we believe anything other than this, we have to do some things with the scripture that do not hold true to being literal in our interpretations of the text. You have to take the nation of Israel out of the picture, and say it is something else, like the church. “Not one reference anywhere in Scripture, and there are over two thousand referring to Israel, means anything other than Israel. There are 73 references in the New Testament, each of them refers to Israel.” (MacArthur, 2007)

The Rapture Must Happen
Once we accept that God is true to his word, and that the nation of Israel is important to God, then blessings of truth seem to all fall together. Scriptures can, as they should be, taken for what they say. If we look at end times, it is not generally a complex study, if the scripture can be taken clearly for it says. Things come together in a clear order. The scripture often times makes reference to end of times. Everything relative to the end times will be initiated by the Rapture of the church. The Rapture, which is the gathering of the church into the presence of the Lord in the air, will start everything. It is followed by the Tribulation. The Tribulation is the time in which God will deal with Israel and all of those who survive that time, Israelites that is, will be saved. The Rapture followed by the Tribulation, and then the Second Coming of Christ with his church. Christ destroys the ungodly and sets up his Kingdom. At the end of the Kingdom, 1000 years on this earth, you then have the Great White Throne Judgment of the the ungodly. These are those who are dead and without Christ, who are raised from the dead and brought before the Great White Throne where the sentence is rendered and they are sent forever into the Lake of Fire. After this God sets up a new heaven and a new earth that exists forever. So there you go. Rapture, Tribulation, Christ Return, Kingdom Age, Final Judgment, New Heaven and New Earth, and it all starts with the Rapture.
How do I know the Rapture is a reality? With everything looked at the way it is suppose to be understood, you tell me what the following text are telling us:

1 John 3:2-3 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. 3 And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

1 Corinthians 15:51-58 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 16 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: 17 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. 18 Wherefore comfort one another with these words.