Page 183 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

The Rapture in the Gospels
cause the facts seem to contradict a posttribulational Rapture.
In the account of the judgment of the nations, which
Christ appended to His Olivet Discourse, the judgment that
occurs after the second coming of Christ is described as a
separation of sheep from the goats. In the passage, the sheep
arc judged worthy of entering the kingdom because they have
befriended the brethren. A probable explanation is that they
express kindness to the Jews in the Great Tribulation preced­
ing the second coming of Christ. By contrast, the goats are
described as those who did not befriend the Jews, and they arc
cast into everlasting fire.
The prominence of works in this situation is derived from
the peculiar characteristics of the period before the second
coming of Christ. In the Great Tribulation there will be
worldwide anti-Semitism, and the Jew will be persecuted as he
was in the days of Hitler. For a Gentile to befriend a Jew
under those circumstances would be most unusual and would
indicate his recognition of the Jewish people as the chosen
people and would be a by-product of his understanding of
God’s plan and purpose for the Jew in the Millennium. Ac­
cordingly, while kindness to the Jews in most dispensations
would not be too significant, in the context of the Great
Tribulation, it becomes an unmistakable mark of a person
who is a Christian.
Practically all expositors, whether amillennial or prcmil-
lennial, place the judgment of the nations as an event
immediately following the second coming of Christ. Gun­
dry is a notable exception. His view, following Alford, is
that the judgment of the nations, as well as the judg­
ment seat of Christ, occurs at the end of the Millennium.
His motiv'ation in this peculiar view is obvious because it
is an embarrassment to posttribulationists to have a judg­
ment of the sheep and the goats following the second com­
ing of Christ if, as a matter of fact, the Rapture has taken
place shortly before at the Second Advent itself.
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