Tribulation Riddle

     When Jesus taught His disciples about what was to come after His death and resurrection, He told them that the Temple He had just visited for the last time would be completely destroyed shortly. On top of that, Jesus described the difficulties and persecution they would face afterward. He called these signs of the age the beginning of sorrows and tribulation. The Greek word for tribulation is the feminine form of the noun for distress, which is why Jesus referred to the signs of this age and His coming as birth pains.
       He went on to explain, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Matt. 24:29-31).
        End-Time Lesson: Jesus is very clear here. He will come again after the tribulation. We will know that the tribulation is over when we see the final sign in the sun, moon and stars over the whole earth at one time. If you read through the list of the signs, they include conflict, warfare, ethnic cleansing, pestilence, famine, earthquakes, and persecution. In Revelation 1:9 John refers to himself as our brother and companion in the tribulation. So we know that the early Church experienced the tribulation of those Days.
        The early Church saw these signs, and we are still seeing these same signs as the mystery of lawlessness continues. Laying aside any preconceived ideas we may have about the timing of the tribulation and the rapture, we must ask ourselves, have we seen the final sign of total celestial darkness over the whole earth at one time? No. So we must conclude that this age has not yet come to an end.
          This also means that the tribulation of these Days is not yet over. So why is there so much confusion over this issue? It may surprise you that there is no Scripture that directly talks about a 7-year tribulation. That idea comes from a misinterpretation of the 70 Weeks Prophecy concerning the future of the Jews recorded in Daniel 9. The key sticking point is the final 70th Week. The prophecy correctly prophesied when Jesus the Messiah would come, to the exact year. It also foretold that the people would be scattered and their Temple would be destroyed by the “people of the Prince.”
         The whole chapter is about the Messiah and the things He would do, including bringing a restful end to the sacrifices. But some Bible teachers couldn’t accept the fact that the Jews would destroy their own Temple, so they introduced another person into the prophecy, even though there is only one subject grammatically in the passage. Still, they decided to insert the Antichrist because it made more sense to them that this other evil character would destroy the Temple. However, this does not fit the rest of the prophecy that lists the objectives to be accomplished. Only Jesus the Messiah could accomplish the divine tasks.
        This addition to God’s Word itself generated even more confusion because of other events that had to happen. It led to various theories of a pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation, mid-wrath tribulation, and a post-tribulation rapture. Since we know God is not the author of confusion (1 Cor. 14:33), we must be willing to lay aside our man-made misinterpretations and go by what Jesus taught.
        We have to recognize the extent of the “tribulation of those Days.” The only way the apostle John could be in the tribulation and we can be in the tribulation is that it is an extended period of time. It spans the two great Days or 2,000 years of the Messianic Age—what Jesus referred to as a prophetic Today and Tomorrow (Lk. 13:32).
        Four times in John 6 Jesus said He would “raise us up at the last Day.” We know the last Day is the Day of the Lord, the 7th Day when counting from Adam and the 3rd Day when counting from Christ. So we know the general timing of His return. From Jesus’ own words, we now know the kairos signs that must be seen. We now have the double witness of the time and the season. This means the rapture cannot be an any-moment, signless event. Our Lord will come again only once; there cannot be a “sort-of” coming before His second coming. Jesus warned us not to be deceived by false declarations of His coming (Matt. 24:4-5).
         When we let Scripture interpret Scripture, we lose nothing that a pre-tribulation rapture provides. We are gathered to Christ before the mark of the beast and the command to worship his image. We do not experience the wrath of that Day, but we do execute it as the heavenly court. We don’t have to contrive an unscriptural secret coming in order to make the prophetic passages fit together. No passage needs to be forced into place. No passage needs to be ignored. God’s inspired Word fits the pieces together for us.