I'd like to clarify my position on this. I am one who takes Eileen's position number 1, that only overcomers will be included in the rapture in the same way that only Joshua and Caleb overcame and entered the Promised Land. Understand this: that overcoming does not, in my opinion mean that you have reached some level of righteousness that other Christians have not measured up to - at least not through your works. Joshua and Caleb were no more righteous than their lost contemporaries. Overcoming has to do with believing God and what He promised. J and C believed God and entered. The others did not believe God but feared and would not go in when God offered it to them. The Christians who miss the rapture will do the same offense.   It has nothing to do with your own righteousness but the righteousness that you KNOW you have been given by knowing HIM. You know that HE will not lie to you but will make good on HIS promises to you. You have this confidence because you have spent enough time with Him who promised and you know that you can trust Him. A perfect example also from Joshua and Caleb's day is Rehab the harlot's house. Anyone who stayed with her in that house was saved and lived because of the covenant that was made involving the scarlet chord in the window. A type of Jesus' blood covenant. If you stayed in that house with Rehab then you sere safe. But if you began to lose confidence in that covenant and you decided that you were a sitting duck in that house on the wall, and that some other hiding place would offer a better chance of escape and you therefore left that house, you would end up "ashamed" and dead and your blood would be on your own head. It had nothing to do with how righteous you were (Rehab was a harlot) but everything to do with whether you "overcame" your doubts or not. It is the same exact scenario with us and Jesus Christ's covenant with us. He promised to save us if we trust Him. Everyone who trusts Him will be saved. If you just stumbled out of a bar and met an evangelist and you prayed the sinners' prayer five seconds before and then the rapture trumpet sounded and you are in Jesus Christ, then you will be included. However, if you have been a pastor and have studied the scriptures for 54 years and you think you have thereby earned a high respectable seat in heaven but at the moment of the rapture you find that you are fearful to go out to meet Jesus because of a sense of inadequacy that comes from discovering that you really did not know HIM but you were operating out of the flesh and did not overcome the temptation to do it all in your own strength, then you will be ashamed at His appearing and you will not go out to meet Him and you will surely not go in at the rapture. Jesus is no respecter of persons. The thief on the cross got in the same way that we get in. By faith in Jesus' promise to give us His righteousness. My biggest beef with those of the other opinion is that they teach that once you are in Christ, you cannot get out of Him again. Being in Jesus is like being in Rehab's house. it is the only safe place. You must overcome any fears that might crop up in you about remaining there and do not run out to some other false hope that will try to win you over. Such as your own good performance or however many years you have been going to church or been a pastor. Why then the warning in their own scripture to continue in Him if it is not possible to leave from Him?Notice the charge to continue in Him is so that you will have confidence and not be ashamed at His coming. That is your choice, right there. Do you want to have confidence? Then continue in Him. His sheep are those who hear His voice and follow Him. (I got thrown out of a church once for claiming, among other things, that I hear Jesus' voice. Jesus only promised to give eternal life to His sheep who hear His voice and follow Him. But I got in trouble for admitting that I have that in my life...) Do you want to be ashamed at His coming? Then leave off following Him and start operating out of your own flesh and do your Christian service for some reason other than to please Him. Such as to please men like the Pharisees did. Many Pharisees believed in Jesus but they would not CONFESS Him because they loved the praise of men rather than the praise of God. Are these Pharisees saved? HELL NO they are not! Belief like that is unbelief. Many, many Christians are doing that same thing! Are you? Then get ready to be ashamed! I died to myself one day and took up a very not-fun cross and have borne it my whole life in order to obtain His reward. There is no Christianity apart from the cross that He bore and the one that He invites us to take up and follow Him with. To suggest otherwise is not to preach the truth. This is what overcoming is. To suggest that the Pharisees who believed in Jesus but who would not confess Him publicly, and were not willing to lose their Pharisee position, are still saved is to deny the entire Christian faith. Yet many are doing the exact same thing today and calling themselves saved. Have a clue. Do you believe in Jesus or not? If He is who He said He is then why not really follow Him? When Jesus wanted to wash Peter's feet and Peter would not let Him, that's like Peter trying to tell Jesus how it's going to be and many Christians are still doing that and Jesus said, "If I do not wash your feet, you have NO PART with Me..." Jesus meant it. (Why do you call Me Lord, Lord but do not what I say?) Also when many left off following Jesus He invited any others among His followers to leave likewise. Peter rightfully said "To whom would we go? You have the words of life." We must all decide this every day. Last point, the reason that the church is no longer mentioned after Revelation 3 is because the church is no longer here AS THE CHURCH, but many Christians will still be here and they will immediately from that moment on, be in a different category than they were before. Why else would Jesus threaten the CHURCH that He would REMOVE THEIR CANDLESTICK, Huh? They were a church but now they are tribulation saints. They thought that they were safe but they now weep and gnash their teeth. They will be ashamed and they will not be raptured. Where does it say that the ones who are ashamed before Him at His coming get raptured anyway? HUH? You can be a Christian and be ashamed before Him at His coming and be left here. You will be as Moses who saw the Promised Land (rapture) with his eyes but did not enter it alive but died in the wilderness and then entered. Moses was role-playing a type of these kinds of Christians. (Romans 10:5, Hebrews 3:5 contrast those two verses with Romans 4:5-8 Moses described righteousness of the law which cannot save, when he struck the rock the second time, for which he died in the wilderness and David described the imputed righteousness.) Since Moses was role-playing the type of Christians who miss the rapture, that is why he argued with God to let him in and God said NO, speak no more to me of this matter. Just as Jesus will have to do at the rapture to the Christians who did the same unbelief that Moses was "describing" to use the King James term. You are given perfect righteousness for your faith. Non faith gets non righteousness but leaves you to your own righteousness which is filthy rags. Attempts at keeping the law which denies the faith and New Covenant of Jesus Christ will not be counted as righteousness but the man which doeth those things shall live therby. Fat chance. That's why in Romans 10 we are told that the faith is already nigh us if we speak to the ROCK (Jesus) don't strike it again, crucifying the Son afresh - by returning to the works of the law. Even a miserable Publican who would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven but smote on his breast saying, Lord have mercy on me, a sinner... Was saved instantly and justified instantly rather than the Pharisee who stood and prayed with himself. To sum it up, it's not a measure of your righteousness since you are either 100 percent righteous or 100 percent unrighteous. But rather it is whether you are in Jesus or not. Have you abided in Him? Is He Lord of your life? Or are you doing "for God" whatever you decided that God should like and worshiping Him whatever way you decided He should like? As Jesus told the woman at the well, "Ye worship ye know not what... But true worshipers worship in spirit and in truth." To overcome is to overcome yourself and any temptation to not submit your life to God and what He promised. (I die daily) You can therefore be rapture-ready this instant if you will believe that God saves you through Jesus' finished work. Confess to Him that you need Him and ask Him to save you and keep you and listen to Him and do whatever He commands you to do. He endured and paid our way in and we hold on to our confidence in His promise. Because we have kept the word of His endurance, or patience, in other words, we believe that He finished it for us and we keep the word of that belief, therefore He will also keep us from the tribulation. The Philadelphia saints have done this and learned to keep doing it, not turning loose of their confidence in this. The other churches have for the most part gotten off of the simple faith in Him and placed emphasis on some other works or activity that cancels grace for them and God has no choice but to judge them according to their own works. That's why Jesus says I know your works, but they are not good enough, in essence. You could have perfectly good enough works if you trust in Me instead of your work efforts. Like Joshua and Caleb knew that it was God who would defeat the giants and did not look to their grasshopper efforts to save them. The others looked at their grasshopperness and feared because they did not accept that God would save them. Got it?   Even if you do not accept this view at least you know where I stand. I think this is what other "overcomer" types believe too.   Barry Amundsen