Page 131 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

Varieties of Posttribulationism
true conclusion seems to be, generally speaking, that the early
church fathers believed in imminency and were so interpreted
by the Protestant Reformers, although some were not clear.
Payne represented the majority view of posttribulationism
until the twentieth century, when the more futuristic view of
the Tribulation was adopted by men like George Ladd and
Robert Gundry.
Payne was quite explicit that the Rapture is imminent.
He wrote, “Each morning, as the Christian casts his glance
into the blueness of the sky, he may thrill with the prayerful
thought, ‘Perhaps today!’”16
In the twentieth century there has been a definite swing
away from Payne’s position on the part of most post-
tribulationists in favor of a more literal view of the Tribulation
as a future period. Especially those committed to amil-
lenarianism reject the prophetic outlook of the early church,
which was both prcmillennial and anticipating the imminent
return of Christ.
Payne held with all other posttribulationists, however,
that the Second Coming includes the Rapture and is posttribu-
lational. Accordingly, while agreeing with pretribulationists
that the Rapture is imminent, he disagreed that the Rapture is
pretribulational. The fact that the early church fathers were
posttribulational largely because they held to die doctrine of
imminency is usually ignored by posttribulationists who want
to embrace the posttribulationism of the early church fathers
without following the logic of the imminence of the Lord’s
return that supported it in the early centuries.
One of the great problems of classic posttribulation­
ism—one that has influenced many posttribulationists to
turn away from it—is the impossibility of explaining all pre­
dicted events leading up to the second coming of Christ as
either past or contemporaneous. Payne attempted to solve this
problem by quoting numerous Scriptures that support the
doctrine of the imminence of the Lord’s return. In doing so,
137