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Dr. Alan Kurschner talked about the identity of the 24 elders in Revelation 4–5. Pretribulationism argues that the body of twenty-four elders “represent” the church, and therefore it is evidence that the rapture will happen before the “tribulation period.”

I responded to a couple of their key arguments and showed that they are not very good arguments, including an argument made from textual variants in the King James Bible. The pretribulational interpretation is subjective to claim that the elders represent the church. The lack of an instance of the rapture in Revelation 4-5 and the picture of the result of the rapture in Revelation 7 shows that the prewrath position is the most natural understanding.

[I want to make an additional point that I did not make in the show. For the sake of the argument, let’s say the elders do represent the church (even though there is no hint of it in Rev. 4–5), it does not follow that the rapture had already taken place in the vision of Revelation 4–5. If anything, it would show that the rapture does not take place before the depiction of the scene in Revelation 4–5 since the redeemed people of God are absent in that heavenly scene.]