Hello Steve,

>LL>Er, after the "rapture" there will be no more
"believers".

>SA>Well, no "church age" believers, if the church age ends
at the rapture.
>SA>However, there will be fellowservants & brethren of those who
were killed
>SA>for the word of God & the testimony they held, plus the
144,000 servants
>SA>of God from the 12 tribes of the children of Israel, & the
great multitud
>SA>from the nations which came out of great tribulation (Rev 6 & 7).

>LL>It could also be there is no rapture.  Suppose the "church age"
>LL>ended decades or centuries ago.  Would we know?

SA>I think we would. There are a number of clues from various sources that
SA>we are reaching a point at which Jesus Christ would return for the church
SA>to save it from the wrath to come, or, alternatively, "God"
would cause
SA>the judeo-noachides to execute the "blasphemous" /
"idolatrous" Christians,
SA>or Gaia would cause the "negative", "separatist"
Christians to be removed
SA>from the Earth as part of a process of "planetary
cleansing" / via the
SA>"sword of cleavage" etc etc.

We are probably entering a time when there will be very few true
Christians in the world.

SA>Those who are "left behind" are unlikely to miss the
raptured Christians;
SA>there will be enough dominionists, judeo-noachides, new-agers etc to
SA>convince the world that the missing people were unworthy to enter the
SA>millennium due to them being idolators / blasphemers / separatist etc.

Let's say half a million true Christians "escape" the wrath to come.
Out of a world population of six billion, who would miss them?  Who
would even notice?

SA>The timelines for several belief systems might look like this...

SA>Christians [pre-tribulationist]
SA>--------[rapture]--------tribulation-----[armageddon--millennium]-

SA>Christians [dominionist / reconstructionist]
SA>--------[take dominion of the Earth]--[Christ appears]--[millennium]-

SA>Judeo-noachides
SA>--------[appearance of Moshiach]--[millennium]-------------------

SA>New-Agers
SA>--------[appearance of "the Christ" / World Teacher][millennium]--

SA>Moslems
SA>--------[appearance of the Mahdi]--[global Caliphate]-------------

SA>Baha'is
SA>-----[succession of messengers through to Baha'u'llah]--[millennium]-------

SA>The above is, of course, very crude.

Different theories abound.

>SA>Possibly, but they would be unlikely to identify as pagans, unless they
>SA>abandoned their Christian civil religion. Example - G W Bush considers
>SA>that Moslems worship the same God as Christians, which is erroneous, but
>SA>Bush probably doesn't identify as a pagan.

>LL>Islam is sort of like a simplified, or watered-down, version of
>LL>Christianity.  Christians and Muslims do hold some things in
>LL>common. But there are also differences.

SA>Some of these differences are that while Islam accepts Jesus as a prophet,
SA>it rejects him as being God or the Son of God, and rejects his crucifixion
SA>- "They slew him not, nor did they crucify him ..." Koran -
Surah Nisaa V157
SA>[that is from "on-line" sources - my Koran is lying around
here somewhere,
SA>but not where I can find it to verify that verse :)]

SA>AFAIK, the Al Aqsa Mosque has words to the effect that "God is neither
SA>begotten, nor does he beget" - a direct rejection of Gospel of John 3:16

Jews reject the Christian concept of Messiah, having their own version,
which they are still waiting for.

Muslims do not outright reject the concept, giving it a "maybe", since
Muslims regards Jesus (Isa) to be the one who comes again to judge the
living and the dead.  Some Muslims, but not all, view Jesus as never
having died on the cross.  But all Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet.

And then there is a small group of Japanese who believe Jesus is buried
in Japan, having found His way to Japan from Alaska.

--Lee


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