Page 138 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

The Rapture Question: Revised and Enlarged Edition
docs not hold up on careful investigation. His view of the day
of the Lord is also peculiar in that he begins it at Armageddon
at the end of the Great Tribulation but somehow manages to
keep the church out of the judgments that relate to it. A major
point in his argument is that the church is referred to in the
Olivet Discourse rather than Israel, and he finds the Rapture
in Matthew 24. He attempts to solve the problem of the vari­
ous judgments of the righteous which are presented in Scrip­
ture as appearing at differing periods of time by combining
them in one divine judgment at the end of the Millennium.24
He also approaches the problem ofposttribulationists who arc
premillennial with some original suggestions regarding how
and who will enter the millennial kingdom. Another novel
feature is his view that the Rapture is an event occurring just
before Armageddon but somehow included in the formal sec­
ond coming of Christ to the earth itself.
While Gundry accuses pretribulationists of being illogical
and basing their views on the wrong reasoning and insufficient
evidence, many pretribulationists will return the compliment
because Gundry. like a skillful debater, often seems to disre­
gard logic. His views will be considered more in detail in later
discussion in connection with the various passages that he
offered in support of his position.
In Gundry’s view, more than that of any other post-
tribulationist, there is a clean break with what has tradition­
ally been considered the posttribulational arguments. In
contrast to practically all other posttribulationists, Gundry
attempted to combine dispensationalism with post-
tribulationism. while other posttribulationists feel that- dis­
pensationalism leads logically to pretribulationism. If
pretribulationism can be questioned because it is less than
two centuries old, Gundry’s position is also vulnerable by
being very recent.25
The fact that posttribulationism divides into at least four
schools of interpretation that are inherently contradictory on
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