The Lamb Holds the Book
Few subjects in the Bible have produced more charts, more fear, and more wrong guesses than this one. Yet God did not tell us about the last days to frighten His children or to entertain the curious. He told us so that we would be ready, so that we would warn the people we love, and so that when the world seems out of control we would remember who is in control.
When John was shown the book of what was to come, he wept, because no one was found worthy to open it. Then an elder told him, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book (Revelation 5:5). John looked and saw a Lamb, and the judgments that follow come from that Lamb's hand (Revelation 6:1). The Tribulation is not the day the devil wins. It is the beginning of the day he loses.
We believe that after the Rapture of the church, the world will pass through seven years of tribulation. God will pour out His wrath on a rebellious world. A final Antichrist will rule and demand worship. A great multitude will be saved, many at the cost of their lives. Israel will be brought to her Messiah. Then Christ will return in glory, destroy the beast, and set up His kingdom.
This study will not give you a date, a name, or a chart to memorize. God gave prophecy to prepare us, not to turn us into predictors. If you build your life around anything, build it around the Gospel, because the Gospel decides whether a person will face these days at all.
The seven years of Daniel's seventieth week, after the Rapture of the church, when God judges a rebellious world, the Antichrist rises and falls, multitudes are saved, and Israel is brought to her Messiah. It ends when Christ returns in glory.
If your neighbor had to face these days without Christ, what would you want to tell him this week?
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For Deeper Study
- The Revelation of Jesus ChristAmazon John F. WalvoordA classic dispensational, pretribulational commentary on the whole book by a longtime president of Dallas Theological Seminary.
- Who Is the Antichrist?Amazon Mark HitchcockA readable question-and-answer tour of the Antichrist passages by a dispensational pastor and prophecy teacher (2011).
- The Great Tribulation: Past or Future?Amazon Thomas Ice and Kenneth L. Gentry Jr.A dispensationalist (Ice) and a Reformed preterist (Gentry) debate the question (Kregel, 1999). Read it to hear the preterist view answered in this study in its own words.
- Revelation: Four ViewsAmazon Steve Gregg, ed.A parallel commentary that sets the preterist, historicist, futurist, and spiritual readings side by side. Gregg is a radio Bible teacher and a partial preterist, but the book does not press one view; we hold the futurist reading.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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The Rapture of the Church
Before the seven-year Tribulation, Christ will come in the air for His church, raising the dead in Christ and catching up living believers to meet Him.
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