Jim started his Rapture talk with Titus 2:13, "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" in the King James. He said that dispensationalists see "blessed hope" and "glorious appearing" as two things, not the same thing. "Blessed hope" is the rapture and "Glorious appearing" is the parousia, Christ's second coming. The footnote in the New American Bible says on this verse:

The blessed hope, the appearance: literally, "the blessed hope and appearance," but the use of a single article in Greek strongly suggests an epexegetical, i.e., explanatory sense. Of the great God and of our savior Jesus Christ: another possible translation is "of our great God and savior Jesus Christ." Titus 2:13, footnote #3

For a group that prefers to let "Scripture interpret Scripture", I am amazed at the tendency to ignore such self-explanatory expressions in the sacred text. In my experience, a literal approach does not allow for these internal cues. A few weeks ago, in a study, the "troublesome" verse , Matthew 24:28, "Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather" came up and even the study leader had no clue on the verse's meaning. There was a tendency among those at the study to allegorize the verse, to let the corpse stand for something and the vultures for something else. I thought that allegory was a hermeneutic repudiated by biblical fundamentalists. To save them from their medieval method of interpretation, I offered that the proverbial saying simply means that Christ's return will be visible to all, obvious and unmistakable.

Later, I scurried home to check my commentaries to make sure that I didn't say anything too wrong. Here's what I sent via email to a couple of people: the person who raised the question about the verse and the two study leaders, one of whom replied to say that she agreed with it:

There seem to be two alternatives, not necessarily mutually exclusive, in interpreting the proverb in Matthew 24:28. The predominant way involves Matthew 24:27, so I include both verses here, from the King James Version, for convenience:

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together. (Matthew 24:27-28, KJV)

The approach that I gave at the study sees Matthew 24:27 & 28 as a doublet, like in Jewish poetry (e.g., the Psalms): the two verses are saying the same thing with different words or different images.

In support of this, a footnote in my Bible says of these two verses: "The coming of the Son of Man will be as clear as lightning is to all and as the corpse of an animal is to vultures." ( -- or "eagles," as in the King James Version, I do not quibble about "vultures" vs. "eagles," in this verse.)

The editor of the Sacra Pagina commentary series on the New Testament, Daniel J. Harrington, SJ, says in his volume on Matthew's Gospel, page 338: "As Matt 24:27 shows, his (Christ's) coming will be as clear and public as the lightning flashing across the sky. [...] The point of the proverb in this context (in Matt 24:28) is to stress the clear and public nature of the coming of the Son of Man."

And so you will find elsewhere: the NIV Study Bible (Zondervan), Reformation Study Bible (R. C. Sproul, Ligonier Ministries), and the like.

But a nuanced perspective that you may encounter attempts to allegorize the proverb. Hendriksen's commentary on Matthew published by Baker House is typical of this allegorizing approach. On page 861, Hendriksen writes, "When morally and spiritually the world has degenerated to such an extent that it resembles carrion, in other words, when the Lord judges that the world's cup of iniquity is full, then, and not until then, Christ shall come to condemn that world."

Along these lines, C. I. Scoffield says in the Scoffield Study Bible of this verse, "Where moral corruption exists, divine judgment falls."

The Spirit of the Reformation Study Bible (Zondervan) combines the two in its comments on Matthew 24:28: "Just as the carcass inevitably results in the gathering of carrion birds, so will the wickedness of people certainly result in their judgment. Or perhaps the proverb simply means that the sign of Jesus' coming will be as clear as the fact that carrion is around where vultures gather."

Personally, I espouse the view that I shared at the study - that this proverb speaks of the clear and unmistakable coming of Jesus at the end of time - because I hesitate to allegorize the proverb. But, certainly, others feel that the meaning of the verse is profitably expanded in allegory.

Of course, I lapse into biblical fundamentalism from time to time ... it requires less leg-work, less reading, less study, less thinking - it's much easier than taking the trouble to figure out what the passage means. But my church doesn't allow me to interpret the Bible literally, at least officially. We are a little schizophrenic on that point at times.