Page 215 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

The Rapture Question: Revised and Enlarged Edition
that the great judgments of the day of the Lord extend over the
entire Great Tribulation, even though all agree that they
climax at its end.
Gundry’s motive in placing the day of the Lord at the
extreme end of the Tribulation is to get the church raptured
before major events of the day of the Lord take place. In effect,
he was trying to achieve a pre-day-of-thc-Lord Rapture, with
the great judgments at Armageddon occurring immediately
afterward. If Gundry is wrong in limiting the day of the Lord
to the extreme end of the Great Tribulation, however, his view
of posttribulation rapture means that the church will go
through most of the terrible judgments, even if it is raptured
just before the climax. Gundry’s posttribulationism is built on
a faulty concept of the day of the Lord not supported by the
Scriptures that define what occurs in that period.
Posttribulationists especially disagree with pretribu-
lational interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 5:9. Posttribu­
lationists insist that the church is not appointed to wrath, and
with this all pretribulationists would be in agreement.
What the passage is talking about, however, is not wrath in
the abstract or as a single act but as a time of wrath. The
judgments poured out in the Tribulation do not fall on un­
saved people only, for war. pestilence, famine, earthquakes,
and stars falling from heaven afflict the entire population,
except for the 144,000 in Revelation 7 singled out by God for
special protection.
The promise to be kept from wrath, accordingly, is a
promise to be kept from the future time of wrath, that is, the
Great Tribulation. It is characteristic of posttribulationists
that, while they must take the church through the Tribulation,
they try to eliminate it as a time of wrath, especially as a time
of divine wrath, and usually minimize the effect of this on the
saints. Gundry, while holding to a rather literal Great Tribula­
tion, nevertheless attempted to mitigate the severity of it
by denying that it is a time of divine wrath until the very end.
224