Page 137 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

Varieties of Posttribulationism
view is quite different from that of the early church or the
Protestant Reformers and that if pretribulationism is wrong
because it is less than two centuries old, then so are his views
on posttribulationism. The relevance and force of the histori­
cal argument will be considered later, but it is significant that
Ladd emphasized the historical argument as the basis for
posttribulationism.23
Dispensational Posttribulational Interpretation
A new development in futuristic posttribulational in­
terpretation appeared when Gundry published his work The
Church and the Tribulation. This volume advanced an argument,
never before seen in the history of the church, which attempts
to combine dispensational interpretation with post­
tribulationism. In his argument he took another step away
from imminence and to a large extent developed further what
George E. Ladd had introduced in his work The Blessed Hope.
While following in general many of the familiar argu­
ments of posttribulationism, Gundry was forced by his prem­
ises to adopt unusual exegetical and logical arguments which
no one has ever advanced in quite the same way before. Ac­
cordingly, his work is another major contribution to the varied
concepts of posttribulationism existing today.
The peculiarity of his work is that he attempted to distin­
guish the church and Israel in a way that has never been
advanced by previous posttribulationists. The major feature of
his argument, however, is the attempt to combine dispensa­
tional distinctions between Israel and the church with the
conclusion of a posttribulational rapture.
In his work he particularly attacked the doctrine of im-
minency as held by pretribulationists and by posttribu­
lationists such as J. Barton Payne. In supporting his argu­
ments he resorted to somewhat dogmatic definitions as, for
instance, regarding the tribulation period as a time of satanic
wrath but not a time of divine wrath, a distinction that just

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