Page 156 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

General Posttribulational Arguments
though the word church does not appear; by the same logic, the
church appears in the earlier chapters of Revelation, i.e., in
the Tribulation, under other titles such as saints. Ladd stated:
“If the argument is sound that the ‘saints’ of 13:7, 10; 16:6;
17:6; 18:24 who suffer at the hands of Antichrist are not the
Church because the word is not used and because we are on
Jewish ground, then the bride of 19:6 cannot be the Church
because the word is not used; the people involved are called
saints (v. 8).”27
The fallacy of this argument should be evident. The text
refers to “the wedding of the Lamb” and to the “bride.” It is
on this ground, not the use of the word saints, that pre-
tribulationists find the church in this chapter.
The main point of Ladd’s argument, however, is that the
marriage is announced as a future event. As pretribulationists
think of the marriage as being connected with the Rapture, he
concluded that the Rapture must occur at this point, i.e., after
the Tribulation. As a New Testament scholar, Ladd no doubt
is acquainted with the facts relating to a Hebrew marriage
that make his entire position untenable. As Lenski and others
have pointed out, a Hebrew marriage has three stages: (1) the
legal marriage consummated by the parents of the bride and
groom; (2) the groom goes to take his bride from her parents’
home; (3) the wedding supper or feast. Most Greek scholars
take the Greek word gamos, translated “wedding” in Revela­
tion 19:7, to mean “wedding feast.” With the exception of
Hebrews 13:4, this is the uniform meaning in the New Testa­
ment. Ladd himself alluded to this in referring to the event as
“the marriage banquet” and “marriage supper.”28 It should
be clear, then, that if the marriage supper is in view here, the
wedding has already been legally consummated and the
bridegroom has already come for his bride. As applied to the
church, Romans 7:4 indicates that legally the church is al­
ready the wife of Christ. At the Rapture, Christ will come for
His bride. At the return to the earth, the wedding feast will be
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