Page 17 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

The Rapture Question: Revised and Enlarged Edition
as a future period of trouble that must intervene before the
Second Coming.5 This view, of course, in contrast to that of
Payne’s, to some extent denies the imminency of Christ’s re­
turn.
Emerging more recently among premillcnarians who arc
posttribulational is the view of George Ladd, who holds that
Revelation 8-16, including “the appearance of the Beast
whom we call the Antichrist, the sounding of the seven trum­
pets and the outpouring of the seven vials which constitute the
Great Tribulation from the point of view of the divine judg­
ment on the world’’ are still future and that the Second Com­
ing and the Rapture cannot occur for at least another seven-
year period.6 This point of view has attracted a number of
followers.
The most recent innovation among premillenarians who
arc posttribulational is the view of Robert Gundry, who has
attempted to merge dispensational interpretation and post-
tribulationism.7
These four differing views of posttribulationism have
been analyzed in this author’s work The Blessed Hope and the
Tribulation, published in 1976. Unquestionably the major issue
on the doctrine of the Rapture is the differing points of view of
those who are pretribulational and those who are posttribula­
tional. Other points of view, however, have also been promi­
nent in the twentieth century.
In recent years there has arisen a modification of post­
tribulationism, known as the midtribulational view, which
holds that the church will be translated at the coming of the
Lord for His church just before the Great Tribulation
prophesied by our Lord, but in the middle of the seven-year
period predicted by Daniel as preceding the coming of Christ
(Dan. 9:27). This view is rather new and as yet has a limited
literature.
The third view, which is popular with premillenarians
who have specialized in prophetic study, is a pretribulational
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