Page 221 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

The Rapture Question: Revised and Enlarged Edition
the object of the individual wrath of God (which is disputed by
none) and the idea that the church docs not even enter the time
of divine wrath and is removed before that time begins. This is
why he holds that the wrath of God begins only at Armaged­
don at the end of the Great Tribulation.
This unusual and extreme position becomes an untenable
hypothesis when all the facts are considered. If the church is
going through the Great Tribulation, it will go through the
time of wrath designed not to purge the church but to deal
with the Christ-rejecting world. The problem is that such
catastrophes as war and famine, as indicated in the second
and third seals of Revelation 6. do not single out unsaved
people only. A fourth of the earth's population will be de­
stroyed. as indicated in the fourth seal, and this also extends
the divine wrath to the entire human race. The prospect of a
church’s going triumphantly through the Great Tribulation
relatively untouched is not supported in the prophecies of the
Book of Revelation, as indicated by the martyrs in chapters 6
and 7.
The content of Revelation 7:9-17, which Gundry at­
tempted to place after the Second Advent without any sup­
porting evidence, is another plain indication of the extent of
the saints’ martvrdom in the Tribulation. These passages
clearly give a picture of heaven, not of the millennial earth
(compare Rev. 7:11 with Rev. 5:8). Saints are no longer in
their natural bodies as those who have survived the Tribula­
tion but rather are presented as those who have died in the
Tribulation and who “have come out of the great tribulation.”
To project this scene into the period after the Second Coming
to either the Millennium or the eternal state has no exegetical
support in the context.
Though the Book of Revelation does not have a strictly
chronological order, the context is relevant. In chapter 7 the
contrast is between the 144,000 of Israel, who are sealed and
protected through the Great Tribulation, and the multitude of
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