[Twenty-first in a series of posts on Last Things]
Encore Post:
Jesus had much to say about his return. The signs that we are in the last days are clear. He will return suddenly, so be ready! The angels will descend, the dead will come to life again, and we will all gather before his judgment throne. The lost will then be thrown with the devil and his angels into hell, and we will go with him to live forever. But where is the talk about the Tribulation and the Millennium? Jesus never speaks of seven years of special punishment for the world’s sins, or of an earthly reign at the end of time, much less a thousand-year one. So, where does the talk of a millennium on Christian radio, in endless end-time and prophecy books, come from?
The scheme behind that talk — a rapture that removes Christians from the world, seven years of “Great Tribulation” under the Antichrist, and then a thousand-year earthly reign before the final judgment — is less than two hundred years old. John Nelson Darby first taught it in the 1800s, and the Scofield Reference Bible carried it into countless churches, where prophecy teachers treat the Bible like a giant algebra problem, set dates for the end, and recalculate when the dates fail. (Yesterday’s post traced where this system came from.) Yet the whole view of the end is not accurate.
Scripture does speak of a great tribulation. In Revelation 7, one of the elders asks John who the white-robed multitude are. John answers, “Sir, you know.” And the elder tells him: “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.” The Greek verb form “are coming” is ἐρχόμενοι. It is in the present tense: they are coming out of it — and they will be coming out of it, generation after generation, from the first century onward. The great tribulation is not a seven-year block of time waiting at the end of history. It is the time between the Ascension and the Return of Jesus, the tribulation Jesus himself promised: “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). The white-robed saints are arriving out of it now, washed, as the elder says, in the blood of the Lamb.
God does not promise to spare His people the tribulation. He promises to bring them through it — as He has brought the white-robed multitude, who came out of the great tribulation with their robes washed white in the blood of the Lamb. “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). So Christian readiness is not an escape plan, and it is not a calendar. It is the quiet faithfulness of people who know how their story ends: doing the work God has given them, bearing what He lays on them, and watching for the Lord who will come for them — at the end of days, or at the end of their days. Even so, come, Lord Jesus (Revelation 22:20).
Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog
The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack
Rev. Robert E. Smith
Pastor Emeritus
Fort Wayne, Indiana
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