Over the past several weeks the premise we have been working from has been this: in my view, the book of Revelation is written to encourage suffering Christians. That single premise is the thread that gives the book meaning for every generation. If it were only about the future, then the people who first read it could never have benefited from it; and if it were only about the past, then we could never benefit. This is the one premise woven throughout the whole book, and it applies to every Christian in every generation: enduring suffering for Christ because of His faithfulness, His victory, and His control of all things.

Today we come back to that premise, because it is raised right here in the text. The question before us is whether John, when he speaks of the great tribulation, is pointing to a specific season at the end of time—a seven-year period at the end of the ages—or whether he is speaking of tribulation in general, the kind that affects all Christians in every age.

A word for the record before we go further: this is a very involved, complex book, and I am trying to acquaint us with the different viewpoints on this subject at this point in the series. I am not necessarily trying to convince you to adopt one view or another. I hold a particular belief, and I will share that with you, but I will do so at the end. There are others who hold different beliefs, and we will return to those. So I do appreciate your patience as we work through it.

For those who would like a bit of extra help, and we are sorry we did not bring these out before—Scott Richey has placed some brochures on the back brochure rack, and we did not even realize they were there. The one I am referring to is a Rose Press publication on the four views of the end times: dispensational premillennialism, historical premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism. It is thorough, and it may help you follow the complexity of what we are discussing. It also shows that this is not just your pastor talking about all of this; this is the genuine variety of Christian belief about the end times. We have a few more on order—at the moment we have only one in hand, but Scott has ordered more, and hopefully they will arrive before next week. They are free, so if you would like a copy, please grab one.

With that, I have to begin again by unpacking what is called dispensationalism, a particular view of the end times. It is the view promoted by men such as John MacArthur, John Hagee, David Jeremiah, and Pat Robertson. These men are, or were, dispensationalists. It has been the most popular view over the course of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. That does not, of course, make it the most biblical point of view—but it is the most widely held, and for that reason we must explain it, because if you have heard anything about the end times, it is highly likely that what you heard came from a dispensational angle.

The Rapture and Its Purpose

So how does the dispensational view work? On this view, at the end of the seven letters the tribulation begins, and the church age ends in between. The rapture comes: the church goes, and the tribulation begins. The rapture, as most people know, divides that gap. It comes first, and then the tribulation begins—seven years of tribulation, and then Christ returns. In a simple, schematic way: the end of the seven letters, then the rapture, then a seven-year tribulation, and then Christ comes back. That is the outline of the most popular view of the end times.

Here, though, the question is: where is the biblical basis for the rapture? The single most important thing to know is that the English word rapture does not appear once in the Bible. It was an interpretation that was developed, and popularized, in the 1700s, in England, among a group called the Plymouth Brethren. It was taken up almost immediately afterward by Charles Scofield in the Scofield Bible, and that is how it came to be widely believed among Christians in the last two centuries—although many of you will argue that the Scofield Bible was the very thing that popularized it.

The Greek Word Behind the Rapture

Believers in the rapture will tell you that the teaching is based on the Greek word harpazo, which occurs first in the New Testament in 1 Thessalonians 4. The word means, in its most literal sense, to snatch or catch up. And so the idea is that there is a moment, before the time of trouble—before the great tribulation—when all believers are snatched or caught up out of this world. Because we are taken to be with the Lord, we are spared the time of trouble.

There are a couple of things to know about harpazo, though. When you go into a Greek dictionary and you look up the word, you will find that the word is used in the New Testament thirteen times. Five times it is used in a sense we could call a “rapture” sense—the sense of being snatched away or taken up. Of those five, three are found in Revelation. In 1 Thessalians 4 it is, of course, of the church being caught up. And in Revelation 12 we read of the woman who gives birth to a male child, and the child was caught up to God and to His throne—that is, the Lord Jesus Christ is taken to be with God, and God is about to protect Him from the great dragon.

The other two occurrences are of a man in 2 Corinthians, chapter twelve, Paul: I knew a man in Christ… whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows—how that such a man was caught up into the third heaven… caught up into paradise, and heard inexpressible words. So the word is used in three of these passages of someone being taken into the presence of God or into the presence of the heavenly realms.

That is the extent of the so-called “rapture” verses in the New Testament—and it is only a handful of them. And that takes us to the real difficulty. If I believe in a rapture, I need to ask myself very carefully what that rapture is supposed to be for. You have two groups: pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation, and post-tribulation. Pre-tribulation is the most common. The rapture comes first, and then the tribulation happens. It comes before the tribulation.

Is the Rapture Meant to Spare Us?

What is the purpose of the rapture? The most common explanation is that it is to spare the church from the tribulation. If that is the purpose, then I would expect to see it taught in Scripture. But the opposite is true. When Jesus speaks about the time ahead of His death, He tells His disciples plainly what is coming: In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart; I have overcome the world. (John 16:33) In John 15, and again in John 16, He says, These things I have spoken to you so that in Me you may have peace; in the world you will have affliction. That is the promise: the world has an end, but we do not; that is the hope. The expectation in the New Testament is never that Christians are taken out of the world; it is that they live in the world for a set time and then depart.

And the proof text that I think most directly speaks to this is Acts 14:22, in Paul’s company as he is taking the gospel forward: having strengthened the souls of the disciples, and having exhorted them to continue in the faith, saying—and this is the crux—We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God. In other words, the New Testament does not teach that the tribulation of this age is something we will be removed from. On the contrary, it teaches that we must go through it. I would add to that 1 Timothy 3:12, where Paul says that a leader must have a good reputation, that he is the husband of one wife, that his children believe, that he is not arrogant, not given to wine, not pugnacious, and so on. The idea there is that the Christian life, including the life in leadership, is marked by suffering for Christ, not delivered from it.

So what is the cross, then, if not the model of the Christian life? Jesus’ suffering, His taking upon Himself the sins of the whole world and dying as a sacrifice for sin—that is the very meaning of the Christian life. And Paul will tell us as much in Romans 6: I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And again in Philippians: That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming conformable to Him in His death. That is the life that is being lived. That is how the first believers lived. That is how the first believers were martyred. And yet we are expected to believe that, in some future age, God will snatch His people out of the world and spare them from this.

These Have Come Out of the Great Tribulation

So here is the thing, though. If the rapture really does come before the tribulation, it does not answer the question we started with. Because read the text again: the elder asks, Who are these clothed in white robes, and from where have they come? and John is answered, These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. (Rev 7:13-14) These people are not taken out of the tribulation before it happens. They have come out of it. They have been in it, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Those words, coming out of the great tribulation, are the hinge of the whole discussion, and they cannot be bypassed by a rapture that comes before it.

Now, last week we spoke of two groups: the 144,000 and the innumerable multitude. And I want to be careful here. From a non-dispensational standpoint—and this is my personal position—I think these two are two descriptions of the very same group of people. The 144,000 is, in my view, a figure of speech for the people of God, and the innumerable multitude is simply those same people appearing in their fullness, as men and women, from every nation and tribe and people and tongue. If you hold that reading, then there is no puzzle here at all.

But if you reject that view—if you do not think of them as symbolic of the whole people of God, and hold that they are an actual number, an actual group—then we are left asking a very real question: who are these people? And that is where the third option arrives. It is the dispensational answer, and it says: these are people who are saved during the tribulation. They are the tribulation saints, the men and women who survive the worst period in human history and come out the other side. I believe that is the wrong answer, and let me give you the reasons. There are three problems with the idea that these people are saved during the tribulation.

It Breaks the Flow of Revelation

The first problem is that this reading disrupts the sequence of the book. Let me say up front that I am fairly convinced Revelation is sequential. The seals are opened in order—first, then second, then third. The first, then the second, then the third. The horns come in order. That is the way the structure works. Now if these are people who are saved at the end of the tribulation, and if the very next scene shows them standing in heaven—for that is what John sees, them standing in heaven, before the throne—then we have jumped to the end of the tribulation, up into heaven, and then we would have to come all the way back again. That is uncomfortable, and I do not like it. That is the difficulty of this reading.

To be fair, I should give you the other side of it. There is a point of view—and it is one I have met in a few places—that says the seals, the trumpets, and the seven bowls are not sequential at all, but concurrent. On that view, you go to the end, and then you come back, and you see the very same events from a different perspective. I do not hold that view. I do believe the same thing can be seen from two different perspectives—that is true—but you do not have to go back and forth, all over the place, to make it work. I believe it holds together in order, and I think that is the simpler and better reading. So that is the first of the three problems: this view pulls the sequence of the book out from under us.

It Ignores the Work of the Church

The second problem with the “saved during the tribulation” view—and here I am quoting a source I have used in preparing this—is that it sets aside the work of the church up to that point. The argument is put this way:

Dispensationalists view this throng as tribulation saints—people saved in the last seven years of the tribulation. Such a teaching makes little sense and brings little comfort. The apostles spent decades preaching the gospel to the world. Yet are we to believe that in some future age, without the witness of the church and without the power of the Holy Spirit, so many will be converted that no one can number them? That would make the work of the apostolic age insignificant. Romans 10 asks it plainly: “How shall they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?” The Holy Spirit works through the church.

That is a serious objection, and I do not think it can be waved aside. If the great saving of the world happens in a future age apart from the church and apart from the Spirit, then the whole witness of the apostles, and the whole work of the church in every generation, has not been the real and necessary channel of the gospel. The book itself—Romans 10, and the whole New Testament—says the opposite: faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the word of Christ, and the word is carried by a church sent out by the Spirit.

It Clashes With a Hardened Heart

And then we have the third problem, which is perhaps the most direct of the three. It is that this reading clashes with the hardness of the human heart. How can so vast a multitude come to Christ in only seven years, when the book of Revelation labors the point, time and again, that people—even in the face of the worst suffering the world has ever known—do not repent? In one passage, after the plagues have come, the book records that the people of the earth “did not repent of the works of their hands; they did not repent of their murders, or their sorceries, or their sexual immorality, or their thefts.” (Rev 9:20-21) And again, later in the book: “They cursed the God of heaven by their painful sores and by their plagues, but they did not repent of their deeds, and they did not give God the glory.” (Rev 16:11) They gnawed their tongues in torment. Even then, they did not repent of their deeds.

And in the sixth seal, it is even starker. The people cry out, not to God, but to creation itself: “They said to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of the One who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who will be able to stand?’” (Rev 6:16-17) In the face of the coming of the Son of Man, their first thought is to be hidden from Him. That is the picture the book paints of the human heart under the worst judgment the world has known.

Now, here is the point I want you to see, because it is not a new thing. This is a description of how the human heart is. It is older than the book of Revelation. Turn to Genesis. In chapter six, Noah sees the wickedness of the whole earth. Then comes the flood. Then God makes a covenant with Noah and his household—the covenant in chapter nine. And then, if you read on to chapter ten, you have the genealogy of the sons of Noah, Shem and Ham and Japheth. And in chapter eleven, you come to the tower of Babel: “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach to the heavens… And the Lord said, ‘Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’”

Here is the thing that ought to stop us still: the other peoples of the earth have historic records of a great flood. The memory of it was carried in their traditions. So the descendants of Noah could not have lost the memory of the flood in four generations. And yet, generation after generation, defied God again, again and again. That is not a new pattern; it is the steady, patient working of human sin. And if that has been so from the very beginning of the race, how are we to believe that a single seven-year season is what breaks through—what saves a multitude no one can number—if the whole history of the race has been this? It is not convincing. There is a line from the book of Hosea that captures this exactly: “When Israel was a child I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” And then—and the tragedy is the response—“The more I called them, the further they went from me.” That is the heart of the matter. That is the human heart, and it is why this reading of the innumerable multitude as “saved during the tribulation” does not hold up.

What Did the “Great Tribulation” Actually Mean?

So what is at issue when we say John speaks of the great tribulation? Is he speaking of a seven-year period at the end of the age, or is he speaking of the entire season between the first and second coming of Christ—a season in which Christians of every age face tribulation? That is the question, and it is the question we must resolve before we can say who these people in Revelation 7 are.

Where, though, does the idea of a great tribulation come from? Not from a modern view. It comes straight out of the book of Daniel, and then straight out of the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ. Turn to Daniel, chapter twelve. At the end of the book, the angel speaks to Daniel, and the vision is given that, at that time there will be a great tribulation, such as has not been since there was a nation. At that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name is found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to everlasting shame. (Dan 12:1-2) And then the last line: But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book until the time of the end.

Now, a lot of the book of Revelation can be seen as an explanation—or an opening—of that sealed book. It seems a reasonable interpretation that the book of Revelation is, in one sense, the unsealing and the explanation of what Daniel was told to seal up until the end. But the point I want to flag here is this: the “great tribulation” is a name that does not come from a modern interpretation. It comes from the Old Testament prophet, and it is picked up by the Lord Himself.

Because when the Lord speaks in the Gospel of John, chapter five, He takes up the very same words: Do not marvel at these things; for the hour is coming in which all those who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come out; those who did the good deeds to the resurrection of life, and those who did the evil deeds to the resurrection of condemnation. (Jn 5:28-29) Same voice, same “hour,” same “come out.” And then in the Gospel of Mark, chapter thirteen, the Lord puts it on His own lips, in a teaching to His disciples: In those days there will be such a great time of tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created, until now, and never will be again. (Mk 13:19) That is on the lips of the Lord. He is affirming Daniel. He is saying this is a coming time of tribulation, a great tribulation, such as was not and will not be again.

The Destruction of Jerusalem

So here is the question we have to answer. Are these futuristic to the people who first heard them, or are they futuristic to us? To the original hearers they sounded futuristic, and they must have sounded futuristic to us. But the problem is, they cannot be futuristic in the way modern dispensationalism wants them to be. Because Jesus ties them to something that has already happened.

Turn to Mark 13. Read the words from verse fourteen onwards: But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be—let the reader understand—then let the ones who are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let the one who is on the housetop not go down or enter into the house to take anything out of his house; and let no one who is in the field turn back to take his cloak. And woe to the pregnant and to the nursing. And pray that your flight will not be in the winter or on a Sabbath; for then there will be great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and never will occur. (Mk 13:14-18)

There are things in that passage that can only make sense for a first-century audience. The “abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be”—that is a phrase Jesus picks up from Daniel, and it refers to a pagan prince—a Gentile prince—taking up residence in the temple. But there is no temple in Jerusalem today. If that phrase is still to be fulfilled in our day, then there must be a temple in Jerusalem. And there is not. So if the abomination of desolation is not a first-century event, then Jesus is talking about a temple that never existed. That is a reading I do not think holds together—and I would ask any dispensationalist who says this, “well, but the temple will be rebuilt”—where is the text for the rebuilding of a Jewish temple in which a Gentile prince stands where he ought not? That is not in the book of Revelation. It is in the book of Daniel, and Daniel is pointing to the destruction of the temple.

And then the fleeing. “Let those in Judea flee to the mountains,” Jesus says. “Let the one who is on the housetop not go down,” not because of a global seven-year tribulation, but because of a destruction that is specific, and local, and imminent. “Woe to the pregnant and the nursing.” That is a specific warning. That is not the picture of a global war. That is the picture of a city under siege—of a destruction that has to be fled, that has to be escaped from, and that hits the vulnerable hardest.

And here is the number that will tell you what Jesus was talking about. The Jewish historian Josephus gives us the account of the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70. And his number is this: a million Jews were killed in that single siege and destruction. That is not a small thing. Compare that to the six million Jewish men and women who died in the Holocaust—which of those numbers sounds more like the worst tribulation of the age? A million in a single destruction, in a single city, in a single generation, is the “great tribulation” that the Lord was warning His disciples of. And it happened. It happened in the year 70.

A Season That Began and Has Not Yet Ended

Now I will be honest with you—this passage is where the reading becomes a little awkward, because Jesus speaks of this tribulation in two different ways, back to back. In verse nineteen He speaks of it futuristically: in those days there will be great tribulation. And then in verse twenty-four He speaks of the very same tribulation in the past tense: In those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the heavens, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds, with great power and great glory. And then He will send out His angels, and they will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the earth to the other. (Mk 13:24-27)

So here is what the passage says, put plainly. Jesus is describing a tribulation that has already begun—begun in the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70—and that will end only when He returns, the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and great glory. It is one and the same tribulation. Verse nineteen’s “tribulation” and verse twenty-four’s “after that tribulation” are the same event. And yet—he has not come back yet, has He? We are still here. The church is still here. The world is still here. If that tribulation was only the year 70 AD, then where is the Son of Man? I do not see Him. I do not see the gathered elect. I do not see the angels. So there is a gap. There is a time of waiting. And that time of waiting is the time we are in.

And I think the simplest and most faithful way to hold the two together is this: the great tribulation is not a single seven-year period at the very end of the age. It is the whole span between the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 and the coming of the Lord. It began with the destruction of the temple, and it does not end until the Lord comes. And in the middle of that span, men and women are persecuted, and men and women are saved, and the church goes on carrying the gospel from one generation to the next, until the day the Lord reveals Himself. That is the season in which these people in Revelation 7 have come out. They have come out of the tribulation of this present age. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. And that is why, in my opinion, the innumerable multitude and the 144,000 are not two different groups of people, and they are not a group of people who were saved in a seven-year season at the very end of history. There is a great difference, and it is the difference that the whole book hangs on.

Application: What We Can Draw From This

So all that being said, how do we translate it into practical application, given the complexity and the difference of view? I am going to give you four points. And they are not small points. They are the points that carry the whole thing.

Be Gracious Toward Believers’ Differing Views of the End Times

The first point is this: be gracious toward the different views of the end times that Christians hold. And I have to be careful here, because I do not think we can simply wave it all away and say, “well, it’s all the same.” Some things must not be waved away. We do not oppose, in this discussion, a view of the end times; we oppose a view of the world. There will be a political figure in this country who will say, essentially, “I have the right to choose to kill my baby.” And I want to be clear where I stand. That is not merely a question of abortion. That is a view of the world that says to a human being—a person in the most vulnerable of all stages—“you do not matter.” And that is the kind of teaching we should oppose, adamantly, always. That is not a matter of graciousness; that is a matter of the dignity of a human being. But the “right to kill my baby” is not a view of the end times, and it is not what we are discussing this morning. This morning we are discussing a view within the church, and in that case I would say, let us be gracious.

And here is a line I carried in preparing this. Someone once asked Martin Luther what he would do if he knew Jesus was coming the next day. His answer was, “I am going to go out and plant a tree.” Because the work needs to be done even if Christ appears tomorrow. That is the posture we should have. Not that the end times are a distraction, but that they are not a license. We are to be gracious to one another in the church, while we guard what the Lord has told us, and while we keep working the work we have to do.

Resist Any Teaching That Postpones Your Need for Salvation

A second point, and I will be direct, is this: resist any teaching—from within the church or from outside it—that postpones your need for salvation. Because here is the danger. If I tell you that you can be saved in the tribulation, then I have just given you a very comfortable reason not to be saved today. And a great many of us have been comfortable at various points of our lives. And that is not what the gospel is. The gospel is this: Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation. (2 Cor 6:2) And I would say to any of us who has ever said, “I have plenty of time, Pastor,”—I would say this: I have seen pastors fall dead in the pulpit. I do not say it lightly, and I do not say it to shock you. I say it because we do not know the day or the hour. We do not have a promise of another morning that we can bank. If you are not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, then this is not a matter of speculation about the end times. This is a matter of you and your soul. And I think the gospel calls you to come to Him today, not tomorrow, not after the next view, not after the next book. Now is the day of salvation.

Resist Any Teaching That Downplays the Church and the Holy Spirit

A third point, and this is one I would say as my own warning to the church, is this: resist any teaching that downplays the church, or that downplays the Holy Spirit, in the work of salvation. And I say that because I have seen, in my own life, and in the life of this church, the opposite. I have seen God do things—not things I can measure, but things I can see—in the lives of men and women who were carried by the church, and by the ministry of the Holy Spirit, into a knowledge of the Lord. And I would say this to the church, and I say it with love: we are not a collection of individual choices. We are a body. The Holy Spirit does not work only in you. He works in us. He works through the Word, and He works through one another. And the world has done an incredible job in the last fifty years of telling every single person, “it’s your choice whether you go to church, it’s your choice whether you give, it’s your choice whether you read the Bible.” And I would gently say to us that we have, in small ways, accepted that framing. And I don’t think we should. The Holy Spirit works through the body. And the body is the church. And this is the book that was written, in my view, for a church that was suffering, and for a church that was being called to endure suffering for the name of the Lord. Not a collection of individuals, but a body, a family, a people, who are washing their robes and making them white in the blood of the Lamb. That is who we are.

Be Clear in a Confused World

A fourth point, and the last, and perhaps the simplest, is this: in a confused world, be clear. Because that is what the world needs. I was driving, listening to the radio, and I heard a song—a pop song, a country song, it was playing in the car—about a “girl crush.” And then, the very next song, it said, “we need a move of the Holy Ghost.” And I thought, in a way, I laughed, and then I stopped laughing. Because, honestly, our culture is confused. It is confused to the point that it can go from a song about a “girl crush” to a song about a move of the Holy Ghost, and not even notice that it has just crossed two worlds. And that is the world we are in. And in that world, the church—the local church, and the universal church, the church of all the saints who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb—is the one stable, clear, unchanging thing we have. The songs come and go. The views come and go. The political seasons come and go. But the gospel, and the people who carry the gospel, do not. Be clear. Be gracious to one another. And press on into the work that the Lord has given us. That, as I see it, is what the book of Revelation is about, and that is what these three acts are for.

And with that, my friends, I am going to close. Thank you, Father.