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[Alexandr Korol]

There is also an attempt to relate all of this to the timeline of the Great Tribulation. No one understands which event happens first, which comes later, or whether all of this will happen simultaneously. Further, it states: ‘The term “rapture” is taken from the Synodal translation of the Bible, from the words of the apostle Paul addressed to the Christian church in Thessalonica: “Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” – 1 Thess. 4:17. According to the Baptist theologian I.V. Kargel, the Rapture “contains within itself the highest triumph into which the Church will enter here on earth, that is, the triumphant victory over death and the grave, the entry with Him, the Exalted Head of the Church, into His glory, which He had before the creation of the world, and the glory that will be given to Him as the Son of Man after the entrance of His Church.”
The history of the doctrine of the secret rapture: “Supporters of the view that the Rapture of the Church is an event separated from Christ’s glorious coming by a significant period of time find confirmation for their interpretation of this verse in some of the early Church Fathers. For example, the author of “Lectures in Systematic Theology,” Henry Clarence Thiessen, found similar statements in the treatise “Against Heresies” by Irenaeus of Lyons and in another well-known early Christian work, “The Shepherd of Hermas.” According to Thiessen, Irenaeus of Lyons suggested that the Rapture of the Church would occur during the period of the Great Tribulation, while the author of “The Shepherd of Hermas” placed it before the beginning of the Great Tribulation. However, Thiessen also found contradictory statements by the authors within these same works. From this, he concluded that in the early centuries of Christianity, ‘there was some confusion on this matter.’ According to Thiessen, the lack of clarity in the teaching of the early Church on this issue can be explained by the fact that Christians at that time lived in a state of constant expectation of the Lord and were not concerned with the possibility of future tribulations. Later, with the rise of Constantine the Great and the Church’s attainment of state status, ‘the Church turned to allegorizing those passages of Scripture that speak of the Lord’s coming. At the same time, along with the rejection of a literal Millennial Kingdom, they also began to reject the concept of tribulation or to present it in allegorical images,” Thiessen wrote.”