Page 87 - Eschatology - Student Ebook

Study Section 11: What happens after the Rapture of the Church?

11.1 Connect

Our God is slow to anger and forgiving. That is His nature. But a day will come when His
anger will spill out against those who live in rebellion against Him. There are those who
stick their hand up in His face and defy Him to judge. Well, He also is a God of justice and
wrath against sin. And soon, in the future, the world will experience His wrath in a period
called “the time of Jacob’s trouble.” Great prophetic detail is given in God’s Word about
what will happen during this awful time on earth. He will remove His church and the restraining power
of the Holy Spirit from the world, and man’s sinful nature will go unrestrained. It will be a time of
famine and starvation, pain, anarchy, warfare, and massive loss of life.

It is such a time that people will try to commit suicide, but not be able to die. Our minds cannot fathom
the extent of destruction that awaits the world in the future. Your neighbors and perhaps relatives will
experience God’s wrath if they do not know Him as their Savior and Lord. As we study these things, we
should be motivated to tell them about the wrath to come and share with them the Gospel, their only
way out.

11.2 Objectives

1. The student should be able to explain the seventieth week of Daniel and how it fits into
prophecy.

2. The student should be able to explain what the tribulation period is in Bible prophecy.

3. The student should be able to describe each of the seven seals and seven trumpets of judgment to be
poured out on the earth during the tribulation

11.3 The seventieth “seven years” of Daniel.

Daniel 9: 25-27 Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to
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restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven
weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a
[e]
troubled time. And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall
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have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the
sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are
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decreed. And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he
shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes
desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.”

Daniel prophesized two major events in this passage. He told us when the Messiah would come and
would be “cut off.” The word to build Jerusalem came from Cyrus, King of Persia in 538 BC. With 483
years having passed from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem to the cutting off of the Messiah, this leaves

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