Page 249 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

The Rapture Question: Revised and Enlarged Edition
the promise is to keep them from the time of persecution, not
keep them through the persecution, and this seems to rule out
contemporary experience of persecution.
Another fact is that the members of the Philadelphian
church died long before the Great Tribulation ever came and,
of course, were kept from entering the Great Tribulation sim­
ply by the fact of their death. While these considerations
somewhat qualify the force of this passage as it supports pre-
tribulationism, it gives no comfort at all to the posttribu-
lational view. If, as a matter offact. the church had been taught
that there was a Great Tribulation ahead, and the Philadel­
phian church was promised that it would not come to that
hour of trial and temptation, the only possible way they could
interpret this in keeping with the concept of immincncy of the
Rapture would be that they would not be here when the
Tribulation would take place. If they believed in the rapture of
the church as an imminent possibility, their natural conclu­
sion would be that the promise was that the Lord would come
for them first if the Tribulation came during their lifetime.
While this passage may not be decisively in support of pre-
tribulationism. it offers no support at all for posttribulationism
and is another source of major embarrassment.

Revelation 5:9-10
Another passage debated in the pretribulational-versus-
posttribulational argument is the significance of the twenty-
four elders in Revelation 5:8-10. Here a problem exists be­
cause of the difference in the Textus Receptus and the manu­
scripts normally used in the revised versions of the English
Bible. According to the King James Version, the twenty-four
elders seen in heaven sing a new song that, following the
Textus Receptus, is as follows: “And they sung a new song,
saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the
seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God

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