Among the Lord’s people who love and look for His personal coming again, there are differences of view as to the time and manner of that coming. These differences are not unimportant–no one who values divine truth could think that–but they need to be kept in perspective. The prime matter, surely, is whether we are looking for the Lord’s return, and living in the light of that hope. We should cultivate a sense of gracious unity with all who share that hope, which today probably includes most conservative evangelical Christians.
As others have written: “It is often forgotten that those who expect the Great Tribulation before the Rapture and those who look for the Rapture first, are alike futurist in their general interpretation of prophecy. They hold much in common, differing mainly as to the order of events yet to be fulfilled.”
On the other hand, the minds of many of the Lord’s people have been disturbed by these differing views; and this has contributed to the vital truth of the blessed hope losing, to some extent, its place in the faith and affections of the saints. The time seems opportune to set out clearly and carefully the reasons why we still believe that we shall be caught up before the Tribulation comes.
First, let us be clear as to the issue. By the Church we mean in general the body of Christ, and in particular, for the present enquiry, those members of the Church who will be alive on earth when the Lord comes, for obviously most of those which Christ calls “His own” are already with Him awaiting the resurrection.
By the Great Tribulation we mean that terrible time of trouble spoken of by certain of the prophets and notably by our Lord. “For those days shall be tribulation, such as there hath not been the like from the beginning of the creation which God created until now, and never shall be” (Mk. 13:19). (See also Mt. 24:21 where the expression “Great Tribulation” occurs without the article and Rev. 7:14 where each word has the definite article.)
Will any members of the Church be on earth to endure that time, or will they have been removed to heaven before it comes? And, since that time (as most agree) is associated with the Apostasy and the rise of the man of sin–identified by some students with the Antichrist (2 Thess. 2:3)–ought we to expect the Lord to come until these have come to pass? Are there certain events which must take place before the Lord comes for His own; or are we right in looking for Him at any time?
This is not a question merely of theological interest for experts; it is one of deep and practical importance for every Christian. There must be some clear answer in the Word upon which the simple Christian can rest his faith and hope.
THE EARLY DAYS
The saints of the first days were expecting the Lord within their lifetime; that is the impression we gather from a reading of the New Testament; and it is the general view of Christian scholars.
We are not to think that those early Christians were well versed in prophetic truth. For the most part they were simple and uneducated, but they had been taught from their conversion to “wait for God’s Son from heaven,” and this they did. Indeed, it would seem that some of them went too far in their enthusiasm and were giving up their work and becoming impractical. The apostle had to correct this tendency (see 1 and 2 Thess.). The saints of those days lived under the sense of the Lord’s impending return.
Let one quotation suffice: “The entire thought of Paul is dominated by the expectation of the speedy coming of Christ” (Hastings, B.D., under Parousia, p. 678). If this was so then, why should it not be so, at this late hour, with us too?
IMPORTANCE OF PAUL’S WRITINGS
While we rightly believe that the man of God needs all Scripture for his complete equipment, and we should seek to get the mind of God in His Word as a whole, it is well to remember that God raised up Paul as the apostle of the Gentiles and the minister of the Church (Col. 1:25). It surely follows that all that is essential for the life of the Church is to be found in his writings. It may also be found elsewhere; but it will certainly be there. This means that we do well to approach other parts of Scripture–especially difficult parts such as the Book of Revelation–in the light of what we find in Paul’s epistles.
It is useful to bear in mind that although the Gospels narrate events which took place before those of the Epistles, the Gospels did not circulate in the Church till fairly late in the middle of the first century. That means that the early Church for a long time had only Paul’s epistles (and possibly that of James). If the Church was to expect to go through the Tribulation, which had been spoken of by the Lord, and later recorded in Matthew and Mark, how is it that there is no statement about this in Paul’s epistles, and no counsel as to how the saints should behave under such a terrible experience?
Arguments from silence can admittedly be unreliable, but surely here is a fact that is difficult to explain away. It is incredible that Paul would not have made explicit reference to it if the Tribulation had to do with the Church. Moreover, the language of Paul in the first Epistle of Thessalonians can certainly be understood to imply that the Church would not see that day: we believe that it goes further and teaches this. He speaks of “Jesus our Deliverer from the coming wrath” (1:10) and “God has not appointed us to wrath but unto the obtaining of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (5:9).
Supporting this view is the emphatic contrast in chapter 5:1-8 between “ye” and “us” (the saints), and “they” and “them” (the world) who will not escape the judgment of the day of the Lord. No doubt endeavors have been made to put a different construction on these passages, and to produce arguments against what certainly seems to be their plain meaning. But these epistles were not written for theologians, but for simple saints who needed comfort and assurance. We should read them in that light.
Two points may be made here: (1) “The wrath to come” is clearly a technical term in the New Testament, well understood by even John the Baptist’s hearers (Mt. 3:8), for the governmental, temporal judgment of God to be poured out on the ungodly in this world–not the final judgment of the lake of fire; and (2) the preposition “out of the coming wrath” can be helpfully compared with that in 1 Corinthians 3:15–“He himself shall be saved yet so as through (the) fire”–the prepositions in Greek being ek and dia respectively. Anyone can understand the difference between being saved through the fire which burns up all but the man himself, and being saved from it: between Noah being saved through the waters and Enoch saved from them.
THE DISPENSATIONS ARE DISTINCT
The next point is one relating to dispensational and prophetic truth, but still one simple to grasp. It has been well said that a dispensation is a stewardship in which man is tested in respect of some specific revelation of the will of God. The dispensations distinguish God’s methods with man at different epochs. It is clear from Luke 4:19 that our Lord in the synagogue at Nazareth closed His reading from Isaiah 61, 11-12 at the words, “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” In the prophecy, the next words are “and the day of vengeance of our God.” This present dispensation is one of grace–it is the “day of salvation” and God is not now acting in positive judgment. The Son of God on earth was the Vessel and Agent of God’s grace; He, therefore, did not read further.
When He ascended up on high, the Church became the vessel of that grace and the agent of its message in the gospel. But this period will be succeeded, as all Scripture shows, by the day of judgment, when God will act in judgment on and in this world; and the day of grace will then have ceased. The two epochs are entirely different and do not overlap. While the Church is here, it is the day of grace and of salvation; when that day is over the Church will not be here. It is surely consistent to believe that it will have been taken to heaven (in accordance with 1 Thess. 4:13 ff and Jn. 14:3).
The prophetic technical term for that judgment period is the day of the Lord frequently mentioned and described by the OT prophets. (Compare 2 Thess. 2:2 and note rv.) The “day of the Lord” is the period covered by the judgments of the “seals,” “trumpets” and “bowls” of chapters 6 to 19 of the Book of Revelation. And by common consent of all students, it is within the period covered by those chapters that the Beast, the Antichrist, appears. The clear presumption is, that the Church will have been removed before he emerges. (That is not to say that we may escape all persecution or the pressure of preliminary events which will culminate in his appearing).
The distinction made by some between “the wrath” and “the tribulation” is quite invalid. The Tribulation is much more than persecution by the Antichrist: the whole period is “the day of vengeance of our God” and is characterized by “wrath,” “tribulation” and “distress.”
Here again, let it be said, that the clear object of the apostle’s teaching on this subject in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 was not to show Christians how to behave in the days of the man of sin and the “day of the Lord,” but to make it clear that that day which they feared had come had not arrived, because the “apostasy” had not occurred and the “man of sin” had not appeared.
THE QUESTION OF AN INTERVAL
The Word clearly states that the destruction of the man of sin will be by the personal advent of Christ: “whom the Lord shall bring to naught by the manifestation of His coming (parousia)” (2 Thess. 2:8). It follows that, if (as some think) “our gathering unto Him” and our return with the Lord at His appearing in glory are to be coincident, we must be on earth all through the judgment period, for that period culminates, as many scriptures show, with the personal revelation of Christ (see Mt. 24:29-30; 2 Thess. 1:7-10; Rev. 19:11-16). If we are not to be on earth then, but to come with the Lord from heaven in His glorious train (1 Thess. 3:13), we must have gone to be with Him first. That means there must be an interval between, on the one hand, the resurrection and rapture of 1 Thessalonians 4, and, on the other, Christ’s appearing in glory. “The answer to the question whether the rapture is to precede or to succeed the Great Tribulation largely depends on whether there is anything in the Scriptures to indicate an interval, of longer or shorter duration, between the meeting of the redeemed with the Lord, and their return with Him. If there is no such interval, if the return with the Lord is to be immediate, then it seems clear that the Tribulation must precede rapture. But if it can be demonstrated from Scripture that there is to be an interval, then the conclusion seems inevitable that the rapture precedes the Tribulation, since it is quite clear that the second advent brings it to an end” (The Promise of His Coming, Hogg & Watson, p. 61).
There are several lines of proof that Scripture does suppose such an interval. We will take here only one, the word translated coming in our New Testament. The English word “coming” suggests only a critical event, but this is not the meaning of the Greek word parousia, which word it is most important for us to understand correctly. Its literal meaning is “a being present,” from par eimi–to be present. In Philippians 2:12, Paul speaks of his parousia, his presence at Philippi, in contrast with his apousia, his absence from that city. As Hogg & Vine say in their joint work on the Epistles to the Thessalonians: “Always, wherever it occurs, parousia refers to a period of time more or less extended: the usual translation is misleading because ‘coming’ is more appropriate to other words…the difference being that whereas these words fix the attention on the journey to and arrival at, a place, parousia fixes it on the stay which follows the arrival there…Where it is used prophetically, parousia refers to a period beginning with the descent of the Lord from heaven into the air” (1 Thess. 4:16-17).
This word thus understood throws a flood of light on the question we are considering. If the parousia begins when the Lord comes for His own into the air, and embraces the time between then and the moment when He appears in glory, when the “epiphany of His parousia” destroys the great adversary (2 Thess. 2:8), then we have an interval between the stages of Christ’s coming firmly established.
We may well link this meaning of parousia with the word of Peter (2 Pet. 1:16) where he tells us that the transfiguration was an exhibition of the “power and coming (parousia) of our Lord Jesus Christ”; that is, it was an illustration of the parousia–and a deeply instructive one. The Lord went up the mount with the three disciples; they stayed there together for a period, presumably the night, and came down together the next morning. Certain things happened while they were with Him in the holy mount; and while they were there, other things were happening at the bottom of the mount. The favored three were with Him in the glory cloud, and when that had passed, they returned with Him to the scene below.
So it will be when the Lord comes for us. We shall be caught up to “meet” Him in the air; we shall be “with Him”–and then, at the moment appointed by the Father, we shall appear with Him in glory and take part in His triumphal revelation to the earth. How long the interval will be we do not know.
WHAT IS OUR REAL HOPE?
Finally, there is the practical aspect. To those of us who believe that the Lord is coming for us before the Day of the Lord and its attendant horrors, His coming is indeed a blessed hope, full of “strong consolation” and heavenly comfort. If, however, we have to face that terrible time–the Lord Himself urges some who belong to another dispensation to pray to escape those things (Lk. 21:36)–would it not be very much better for the aged and sick among the Lord’s people, to speak of no others, to pray to be “taken home to be with the Lord” before the time of trouble comes? Were this so, would not death take the place of the blessed hope of His coming? But need we or any of His own of this Church age, pray such a prayer when there is His own clear promise, “I also will keep thee from (out of) the hour of trial, that hour which is to come upon the whole world to try them that dwell on the earth” (Rev. 3:10)? Note, not out of the trial only but out of the very hour of it. Precious promise, indeed!