July 20, 2009

"The Word 'Church' Absent from Most of the Book of Revelation"

One of the first articles I wrote here was refuting what is arguably the most commonly heard pretribulational argument, which can be found here. They will claim that since the word "church" is absent from Revelation 4-21, the Church itself is absent from those events.

Since then I have come up with another handful of refutations for such a surface-level argument. I need to update that article with them. I want to highlight one of them here.

The letter of Revelation is sent to churches. In fact seven of them; hence the reason why the term "church" is mentioned many times, 18 total between chapters 1-3. I ask: why would Jesus have his revelation sent to churches if in fact it did not apply to them? I find that odd.

Now it may be objected why would the church be mentioned at the beginning of Revelation, but not throughout it? I respond by asking, why is it demanded that John must mention the term "church" throughout Revelation if he has already established that this teaching is for the churches?

Further, I challenge these pretribbers to be consistent with other epistles. For example, Paul only mentioned the church once in Galatians chapter 1. If pretribbers want to be consistent in their reasoning, then chapters 2-6 do not apply to the Church since the mere mention of "church" is not found in those chapters. Such absurdity will only convince those shackled to their Tradition. The same can be said of 2 Thessalonians. The term "church" is only mentioned in chapter 1. And in Colossians, the term is mentioned in the first and last chapters of the book. Does not the body of the letter to the Colossians apply to the Church?

Well, you get my point...