Pre-Rapture Tribulation

We need to coin a new term, Pre-Rapture Tribulation. What really comes first? Tribulation, or the rapture? Most American Christians believe in a pre-tribulation rapture. That belief has been around for a long time, and it leads to a false sense of peace and safety. These believers expect to be taken up by Jesus before God pours out tribulation and judgment upon the unbelievers left behind during a seven-year great tribulation.

That is not the way it will happen. We must take the risk to study the Scriptures and challenge that entrenched belief. We need to throw away countless books written about the last days that are built on the foundation of a seven-year tribulation, with the rapture preceding it. We need to heed God’s true warning. Extreme tribulation will indeed be a mark of the end of the age, but it will not be relegated to a seven-year period that the Church evades. We need to understand that Jesus will return to rescue his beloved bride who will go through that period of testing and purification. Hence, a new term must become part of our vocabulary as we teach and discuss the end times – Pre-Rapture Tribulation.

Failing to understand and believe God’s warning of impending tribulation has consequences. Our hearts and minds will not be prepared to trust God in the midst of sword, famine and plague, while we anxiously hope for Jesus to return to redeem us and catch us up to Himself. Furthermore, we may be unprepared to lovingly encourage and help one another to endure to the end.

At our recent family Christmas gathering I shared the story of the birth of Jesus. Then I talked to them about Christ’s second coming, and the turmoil and upheaval that will precede it. As I mentioned the prospect of coming tribulation, I happened to glance at my high school granddaughter. She wrinkled up her face in anguish and disbelief at the thought of turmoil and distress. Then a couple days later our college age granddaughter called Grandma and asked her, “When does Grandpa think the rapture is going to happen?” Carol told her that it may happen as soon as the next ten years. Overhearing the conversation, I was somewhat grieved that she was still hoping and expecting to blissfully be raptured before that extreme tribulation that Grandpa had mentioned on Christmas night.

That little glimpse in to my own family’s response to the concept of pre-rapture tribulation made me realize, yet again, how very, very difficult it is to change the heart and mind of American Christians regarding the true nature of the last days. The prophecies that God gave us about the last days are to warn us, to prepare us, so that we will remain faithful. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will not fear!” Help me, Lord, to trust you, always.