Page 200 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

The Rapture in I Thessalonians 4
Thessalonians arc told to be comforted and encouraged by the
fact that the Rapture could take place at any time and that if
so, they could be reunited with their loved ones who had died.
To offer this as a comfort to them, if as a matter of fact, they
had to survive the Tribulation in order to enjoy the Rapture
and in the process face rather certain martyrdom, makes the
exhortation of 1 Thessalonians 4:18 a hollow one indeed, if the
posttribulationists are right.
A final point is the exhortation to comfort. Probably the
main reason for many pretribulationists’ holding to a Rapture
before the Tribulation is the exhortation of 1 Thessalonians
4:18. In the light of recent posttribulationists’ taking the
tribulation more literally and seriously than before, it becomes
all the more clear that the hope of Rapture at the end of a
period of great suffering and trial, in which probably most
Christians will die, is hardly a joyful expectation. Instead of
exhorting Christians to comfort, posttribulationists should be
preparing Christians for martyrdom. While some post­
tribulationists like J. Barton Payne spiritualize the Tribula­
tion and feel that we are already at its close, most contempo­
rary posttribulationists agree that the Tribulation will be a
very realistic period of human suffering, even though all of
them, to some extent, attempt to mitigate the severity of the
period.
An unusual approach offered by Gundry is that he at­
tempted to define the Tribulation as a time of satanic wrath
instead of divine wrath and by this means to make it less
severe for Christians. It would seem that Gundry was arguing
on the wrong side of his own cause, for if the period is a time of
satanic wrath, it is obvious that Christians will experience it.
If it be solely a time of divine wrath, it might be that
Christians in the Tribulation would be exempt. In proving
that it is a time of satanic wrath, Gundry increased his prob­
lems rather than mitigating the suffering.
As previously pointed out in the study of the Tribulation,
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