… If we understand this birth and ascent to have a particular application to the events that begin the unequaled tribulation, then it follows that this intends a perfecting of the church’s faith in preparation for the final conflict. It is not a change of spatial location, but a deeper apprehension and appropriation of the gospel. It is a revelatory event that comes at the end of a travail that has broken the power of self-reliance in the church in analogy to the removal of Jacob’s strength at the end of his travail (Deut 32:36 with Dan 12:7). The ‘rapture’ of the man child signifies the church’s advance triumph over the veil that obscures the gospel from Israel and the nations (Isa 25:7; 2Cor 3:16). This is true of the church of all time, but it will be profoundly apprehended at the end of the travail that precipitates the final tribulation. …
The Rapture: If and When?
… So we fully affirm that a rapture will occur, but not as it is being taught. Those that teach that the rapture is BEFORE the tribulation (called the “pre-tribulational view. ‘Pre’ means before) see it as escape and exemption from the last persecution, which they confuse with the wrath of God, and point out that believers are not ‘appointed to wrath’ (1Thes 5:9). There is, of course, a clear distinction between tribulation and divine wrath. There is a clear distinction throughout the book of Revelation between the saints endure the wrath of man and those that are called ‘earth dwellers’ that experience the wrath of God. Manifestly, there are many saints in the tribulation period that are not “appointed to wrath,” but this exemption does not require physical removal from the scene (Lk 21:18; Rev 7:3; 12:6). …
The Falling Stars
[…] So the phenomena associated with the sixth seal takes us to the day of the Lord, which is at the end of the tribulation, whereas the activity of Dan 8:10 starts at the beginning and continues through the tribulation. It is not incorrect to see the relation of the casting down of the stars as a physical sign that the proud powers of the air are now being dethroned, but I would not let the language concerning the displacement of the stars hinder from understanding the passage to refer to physical phenomena as it will “appear” from our perspective. I think what we are seeing in these references are the visual effects of an all out nuclear war. There are many passages that more than suggest that this is taking place when the Lord returns to “destroy those that are destroying the earth” […]
Crucial Timing of the Day of the Lord
[…] Note that Jesus places the stellar upheaval and eclipse immediately AFTER the tribulation, whereas Joel’s prophecy shows this as happening BEFORE the great and notable ‘day of the Lord’. How then can the day of the Lord be held to include the tribulation if the darkness that comes BEFORE the day of the Lord is said by Jesus to come ‘immediately AFTER’ the tribulation? It simply cannot be done; scripture doesn’t permit it. But it must be done if pre-tribulationism is to survive. […]
The Little Horn, the Beast, Gog and Anti-Christ
[…] Yes, the ‘prince that shall come’ is indeed the ‘little horn’ that comes out of the fourth beast of Dan 7. But the same ‘litte horn’ (and I must insist that he is indeed the same on solid exegetical evidence) comes “no less” out of a division of the third kingdom (see 8:9). So I think it is a mistake to overly emphasize the ‘territorial’ aspects of the successive beast kingdoms, but to see rather the more generic, ‘organic’ nature of their relation. Notice that the kingdoms are not represented as ceasing to exist, but each lives on in its successor, so that at the end, all are destroyed at once as all existing at once. That’s what the language of the passages seem to represent. The kingdoms are viewed as unit, the beast-like kingdom of man. They are distinguished and identified according to their impingement on fate and fortunes of Israel as usurpers of the theocratic kingdom of David (Dan 2:44). I see them in a more ‘organic’ relation to the doctrine of the principalities and powers in chapter ten, the real ‘powers’ behind the kingdoms of this present evil age, and their defeat as the real issue of Israel’s restoration. But even on territorial grounds, Rome certainly included most of the eastern Arab lands that could produce a figure that could marshal the Islamic world against Israel. So I see Titus and the 70AD destruction of the temple and city as only a pre-typical fulfillment of a yet future destruction of city and sanctuary by the actual contemporary people of the Antichrist. […]
