Perbedaan dan Persamaan Gereja Barat dan Gereja Timur

Addressing The Mid-Tribulation Rapture View

Dear saints,

A sister-in-Christ recently commented that she believes (like I do) that the righteous saints of Christ will be rescued by the Lord Jesus from the coming wrath of God, but she believes that the wrath of God in the end times only begins with the 7 Bowls of God's wrath (Revelation 15-18). Hence, she claims the Mid-Tribulation Rapture view that God will allow His righteous saints to expereince SOME OF HIS WRATH upon the earth in the end times, before rescuing them in the Rapture that will take place before the 7 Bowls of His wrath.

I am sharing my response to her with you, in order that you may also have a clearer understanding of God's divine Will and sovereign plan for the end times, according to the whole counsel of His Scriptures. Please prayerfully consider this teaching message, and ask the Lord to guide you in clarifying your understanding on the timing of the coming Rapture of His righteous saints.

Shalom!

Teaching Message:

1) When Does God's Eschatological Wrath Biblically Begin?

Firstly, I wish to reiterate that the 7 Bowls actually COMPLETE God's eschatological wrath and judgment upon the earth, NOT BEGIN God's wrath, as you seem to believe. Here is what the Scriptures tell us:

Revelation 15:1 (NKJV)

Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous: seven angels having the seven last plagues, for in them the wrath of God is complete.

Yes, the 7 Bowls are referred to as the 'bowls of the wrath of God' (Rev 16:1), but this in itself, does not necessarily preclude the possibility that the wrath of God begins BEFORE the time of the 7 Bowls. Indeed, there is clear evidence in the Scriptures to indicate that God's wrath in the end times actually begins some time before the 7 Bowls. This is also supported by John's statement in Revelation 15:1, because for God's wrath to be completed by the time of the 7 Bowls, His wrath must have started a certain amount of time before the commencement of the last set of plagues. ie. 7 Bowls. Makes sense?

Personally, I know of at least 2 earlier references to God's wrath upon the earth in the end times being recorded in Revelation, and these are the Scriptures:

Revelation 6:15-17 (NKJV)
(in the context of the 6th Seal)

15 And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, 16 and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! 17 For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

Revelation 11:15-18 (NKJV)

15 Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!” 16 And the twenty-four elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshiped God, 17 saying:

“We give You thanks, O Lord God Almighty,
The One who is and who was and who is to come,
Because You have taken Your great power and reigned.
18 The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come,
And the time of the dead, that they should be judged,
And that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints,
And those who fear Your name, small and great,
And should destroy those who destroy the earth.”

Now, some may say that the 24 heavenly elders' declaration in Revelation 11:18 that God's wrath 'has come' indicates that this is the time that actually marks the beginning of God's wrath upon the earth in the end times, following the sounding of the 7th Trumpet, but I have to point out the apparent illogicality of such a position.

As evidenced previously in Revelation 15:1, John states that the 7 last plagues, ie. 7 Bowls, COMPLETE God's wrath upon the earth. Since we need to understand the progression and fulfilment of the 7 Seals, 7 Trumpets and 7 Bowls in a linear time sequence, ie. one after another, most likely with a certain length of time between them, it would seem highly improbable that the 24 elders will declare God's wrath to begin after the blowing of the last Trumpet, ie. 7th Trumpet, ONLY to have His wrath be completed almost immediately in the very next set of end-time plagues upon the earth, ie. 7 Bowls.

Therefore, we have to examine the evidence presented to us in Revelation 6:17, where the peoples of the earth declare emphatically that 'the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?'. Contrary to assertions that this declaration of the commencement of God's wrath upon the earth cannot be truly credible, since they were made by fallible humans, I wish to point out that there is clear biblical evidence to show that the 6th Seal (Rev 6:12-17) is actually the time when the eschatological 'Day of the Lord' begins on earth.

Let us first understand what the Scriptures tell us about the Day of the Lord:

Isaiah 13:9-13 (NKJV)

9 Behold, the day of the Lord comes,
Cruel, with both wrath and fierce anger,
To lay the land desolate;
And He will destroy its sinners from it.
10 For the stars of heaven and their constellations
Will not give their light;
The sun will be darkened in its going forth,
And the moon will not cause its light to shine.

11 “I will punish the world for its evil,
And the wicked for their iniquity;
I will halt the arrogance of the proud,
And will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.
12 I will make a mortal more rare than fine gold,
A man more than the golden wedge of Ophir.
13 Therefore I will shake the heavens,
And the earth will move out of her place,
In the wrath of the Lord of hosts
And in the day of His fierce anger.

Isaiah 2:10-21 (NKJV)

10 Enter into the rock, and hide in the dust,
From the terror of the Lord
And the glory of His majesty.
11 The lofty looks of man shall be humbled,
The haughtiness of men shall be bowed down,
And the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.

12 For the day of the Lord of hosts
Shall come upon everything proud and lofty,
Upon everything lifted up—
And it shall be brought low—
13 Upon all the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up,
And upon all the oaks of Bashan;
14 Upon all the high mountains,
And upon all the hills that are lifted up;
15 Upon every high tower,
And upon every fortified wall;
16 Upon all the ships of Tarshish,
And upon all the beautiful sloops.
17 The loftiness of man shall be bowed down,
And the haughtiness of men shall be brought low;
The Lord alone will be exalted in that day,
18 But the idols He shall utterly abolish.

19 They shall go into the holes of the rocks,
And into the caves of the earth,
From the terror of the Lord
And the glory of His majesty,
When He arises to shake the earth mightily.

20 In that day a man will cast away his idols of silver
And his idols of gold,
Which they made, each for himself to worship,
To the moles and bats,
21 To go into the clefts of the rocks,
And into the crags of the rugged rocks,
From the terror of the Lord
And the glory of His majesty,
When He arises to shake the earth mightily.

From the Scriptures above, it is reasonably clear that the Day of the Lord ushers in a time of God's great wrath and judgment upon the wicked idolaters of the earth. We know that this Day is in reference to the end times of the world, and not some past period in world history, because the prophecies in Isaiah's prophecies above have never been properly fulfilled, eg, mankind have never become so historically decimated in population that humans became rarer than the gold of Ophir, in a time accompanied by terrifying cosmic signs (see Isaiah 13:9-12).

Do we see the striking parallel between Isaiah 13:10 with Revelation 6:12, and the similarity between Isaiah 2:19-21 and Revelation 6:15-16? These indicate to us that the 6th Seal recorded in Revelation 6:12-17 represent the time when the Day of the Lord begins upon the earth, and further Scriptural evidence reveal to us that the Day of the Lord is indeed the terrible time of God's wrath in the end times.

Joel 2:30-31 (NKJV)

30 “And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth:
Blood and fire and pillars of smoke.
31 The sun shall be turned into darkness,
And the moon into blood,
Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.

Amos 5:18-20 (NKJV)

18 Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!
For what good is the day of the Lord to you?
It will be darkness, and not light.
19 It will be as though a man fled from a lion,
And a bear met him!
Or as though he went into the house,
Leaned his hand on the wall,
And a serpent bit him!
20 Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light?
Is it not very dark, with no brightness in it?

Again, we note a striking similarity between Joel 2:31 and Revelation 6:12, along with Amos 5:18, 20, in the description of how the Day of the Lord will begin with a great darkness descending upon the earth, which ties in perfectly with John's description in Revelation 6:12 of the sun turning black like sackcloth, and the moon turning red like blood.

Therefore, I wish to humbly say that the whole counsel of God's Word regarding the commencement of God's wrath upon the world in the end times points clearly to the opening of the 6th Seal, and this will mean that God's eschatological wrath will encompass the 7th Seal, the 7 Trumpets, and the 7 Bowls. I believe that these events tend to increase in intensity as they progress in the time of God's wrath, eg. Trumpets 1-4 are mighty and terrible judgments of God's righteous wrath upon the inhabitants of the earth, but they are not as terrible as Trumpets 5-7, which the angels of God refer to as the three 'woes' (Revelation 8:13).

2) Does God Promise To Rescue/ Save Us From Part Of His Wrath, Or All Of His Wrath?

In the Bible, we can find God's promises to deliver and to rescue us from His coming wrath through the Lord Jesus Christ in the following Scriptures:

1 Thessalonians 5:9 (NKJV)

9 For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,

1 Thessalonians 1:10 (NKJV)

10 and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

The question we need to ask is this: Does God actually mean to rescue us from suffering ALL of His wrath in the end times? Or does He mean to let us experience part of His eschatological wrath, and rescue us from the remainder of His wrath in the end times, which is what many mid-trib Rapture believers hold to?

Again, let us examine the Holy Scriptures to obtain a clearer understanding of God's divine nature and His established pattern of doing things.

In the case of Lot and his family being rescued from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19:15-22, the angels of God explained to Lot that they could not do anything until Lot and his family safely reached a small town called Zoar. What this means is that the holy angels could not let God's divine judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah begin until Lot's family had reached an acceptable place of safety (Genesis 19:23-25).

This tells us that God meant to save Lot and his family from His COMPLETE wrath upon those sinful cities, rather than to let them suffer part of the effects of His wrath by executing some form of gradual destruction and punishment upon the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, before delivering Lot and his family. However, Lot's wife didn't make it, because she turned back to look (longingly) at their former city, defying the Lord's specific command through His angels (Genesis 19:17, 26).

Another good example of how God means to save His righteous ones COMPLETELY from His wrath and judgment is the account of Noah's family and the Great Flood in Genesis 6-8. We see how God caused them to enter the ark, along with the animals, 7 days before the floodwaters came on the earth (Genesis 7:6-10). God did not choose to let them suffer the first few days of continuous rain, before sealing them in the safety of the ark Noah's family had built, because the time of His wrath and judgment upon the earth at that time in history commenced as soon as 'the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened', followed by 40 days of continuous rain upon the earth (Genesis 7:11-12).

Therefore, it will be the same when God fulfils His promise to the true saints of Christ, concerning the time of His rescue and deliverance from His coming wrath upon the earth in the end times. The Lord will rescue us from the complete wrath of God, not part of it, as the mid-trib Rapture believers seem to assert. We need to understand God's intentions based on His divine and unchanging nature. His divine nature and established pattern in delivering His righteous ones from catastrophic wide-scale destruction has typically been to rescue them from the execution of His entire wrath and judgment upon the wicked, and not just part of it.

Leading up to my conclusion, it is entirely biblical to believe that God will rescue us from the WHOLE of His eschatological wrath upon the earth, and not just part of it. As we had previously seen in the evidence presented by the Scriptures, His wrath begins some time in the 6th Seal, and the rescue of His righteous saints in Christ from His end-time wrath upon the earth is evidenced by John's description of what He saw in Heaven in the following chapter 7 of Revelation, immediately following the first 6 Seals.

Revelation 7:9-14 (NKJV)

9 After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands,10 and crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” 11 All the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying:

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom,
Thanksgiving and honor and power and might,
Be to our God forever and ever.
Amen.”

13 Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, “Who are these arrayed in white robes, and where did they come from?”

14 And I said to him, “Sir, you know.”

So he said to me, “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

As we can see from Revelation 7:14, the heavenly elder who addressed John regarding the identity of the heavenly multitude in white robes, ie. righteous saints of Christ, simply explained to him that the crowd of people comprised those who have washed their robes and purified them in the Lamb's blood, ie. consecrated redeemed saints of Christ. Not only so, the elder also told John that these saints are 'the ones who come out of the great tribulation'. Based on our linear chronology in understanding the bulk of Revelation, this fits perfectly with the belief that God will rescue His righteous saints from His divine wrath around the time of the 6th Seal, rather than the Mid-Trib Rapture believer's view of the Rapture being triggered by the 7th Trumpet in Revelation 11:15.

What this means is that if we apply the understanding that the time of God's eschatological wrath upon the earth (ie. the Day of the LORD or Daniel's 70th Week) begins in the time of the 6th Seal, and this Day actually lasts 7 biblical years, according to the prophetic necessity of fulfilling the final remaining 1 week in the prophet Daniel's prophecy in Daniel 9:24-27, then we can see that God truly will rescue His righteous ones from the entire 7 years of His eschatological wrath, and the entire period of 7 years is referred to as 'the great tribulation' by the heavenly elder in Revelation 7:14.

In Christ,
Mark Chen

13 January 2016