Role: Executive Director of The Pre-Trib Research Center |
Dr. Ice is Executive Director of The Pre-Trib Research Center. He founded The Center in 1994 with Dr. Tim LaHaye to research, teach, and defend the pre-tribulational rapture and related Bible prophecy doctrines.
Dr. Ice has co-authored about 30 books, written hundreds of articles, and is a frequent conference speaker. He has served as a pastor for 15 years. Dr. Ice has a B.A. from Howard Payne University, a Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary, a Ph.D. from Tyndale Theological Seminary, and is a Doctoral Candidate at The University of Wales in Church History. Dr. Ice lives in Justin, Texas with his wife Janice and is a member of the Chafer Theological Seminary faculty.
The Olivet Discourse, I believe, is Christ’s message about the 70th-week of Daniel or the tribulation period. Jesus begins His discourse in verse 4 when He warns about the possibility of being deceived by false Messiahs. Does this warning refer to the inter-advent age or does is it a parallel to the first seal judgment of Revelation 6:1–2 as a reference to a false Messiah—the antichrist?
As I continue to look at the Olivet Discourse and futurism, we are seeing that if part or all the events prophesied in Matthew 24:4–12 refer to the inter-advent age—which is the current church age—then imminency is impossible. Yet, all pretribulational rapturists believe that the New Testament Epistles teach us to look for Christ Himself, which indicates that no event or series of events must occur before Christ can come in the clouds and take His church with Him to the Father’s house. Let’s take a look at imminency passages...
In the New Testament Epistles, church age believers are told to “wait,” not “watch,” since there are no signs preceding the “any moment” or imminent rapture event. The only thing one could watch for in relation to the rapture would be the Lord Himself. The rapture and the second coming are two separate events. If earthquakes, rumors of war, wars, famines, etc. relates to the end of the Church Age in the Olivet Discourse, instead of relating to the tribulation and the subsequent second coming of Christ, then the statements about waiting for Christ in the Epistles would appear to be meaningless...
As we have seen previously, the posture of a church age believer is “to wait for His Son from heaven (1 Thess. 1:10)”. Thus there cannot be the possibility of the fulfillment of Old Testament predictions during the current church age. These prophecies cannot begin to take place until after the rapture of the church, since we are told to be “looking for the blessed hope [the rapture TDI] and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus” (Titus 2:13). This means that if God has planned other events to take place before the rapture, we would be looking for those events rather than Christ Himself. This leads to questions about how prophecy relates to the beginning and ending of the church age...
Further evidence of a futurist retreat toward historicism within some otherwise futurist circles, can be seen by those who insist that Psalm 83 is a war that will take place before the rapture, during the current church age and not in association with the tribulation. Historicists believe that Old Testament prophetic passages can be fulfilled during the current church age. Consistent futurists believe that future Old Testament prophecy will start to be fulfilled after the rapture of the Church, except the prophecy of the rapture itself. Bill Salus champions this view in his book entitled Israelestine...