Page 136 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

The Rapture Question: Revised and Enlarged Edition
will be examined in connection with Scriptures that deal with
the subject.
Futurist Posttribulational Interpretation
Although the concept of a future Tribulation is not pecu­
liar to the twentieth century, it is probably fair to say that it
was not until this century that it became a predominant view
of posttribulationism. In the early church fathers, as well as in
the Protestant Reformation, this view was not given serious
consideration.
Probably the leading contender for the futurist view in
the twentieth century is George E. Ladd, who published his
work The Blessed Hope in 1956. Ladd assumed premillen-
nialism in establishing a future period of seven years or at least
three and one-half years between the present and the second
coming of Christ. In doing this he attempted to follow a more
literal interpretation of prophecy, especially Revelation 8-18,
which is in harmony with premillennialism as a whole. His
view, of course, differs in a number of important aspects from
that held by the early Fathers and the reformed theology of the
Protestant Reformation. It is Ladd’s point of view that pre-
tribulationism depends on dispensationalism as popularized
in the Scofield Reference Bible, and in rejecting dispen­
sationalism he believes he has undermined the foundation of
the pretribulational interpretation.
Although Ladd’s presentation of a future period of tribu­
lation is in contrast to the normal view' of it in the history of
the church, he devoted a third of his book to the historical
argument for posttribulationism. His major argument is to the
point that pretribulationism was unknown until the rise of the
Plymouth Brethren movement in the early nineteenth century,
that pretribulationism started as a departure from the faith
rather than from sound biblical studies, and that accordingly
it should be discarded as a recent invention. In presenting
this, however, Ladd was covering up the fact that his own
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