Page 253 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

The Rapture Question: Revised and Enlarged Edition
the 144,000 John means to identify spiritual Israel—the
church.”6 As most posttribulationists do, he called attention
to the omission of the tribe of Dan from the list, as if this
supports the concept that the church is mentioned.
A study of the various renderings of the twelve tribes in
both the Old and New Testaments illustrates the fact that one
tribe is always omitted in order to keep the number to twelve.
Sometimes this is the tribe of Levi. Here it happens to be the
tribe of Dan. The problem is that if the two sons of Joseph,
Ephraim and Manassch. are considered separate tribes, it
brings the number to thirteen. Accordingly, the omission of
Dan here is really not significant and offers no support for
denial that these are actually Israelites,
In contrast to the normal posttribulation spiritualization
of the 144,000 as being representative of the church, Robert
Gundry takes the position, never advanced by anyone else
insofar as this writer knows, that the 144,000 are orthodox
Jews, unconverted, but finallv destined to be converted at the
time of the rapture of the church when they are given a second
chance to be saved. This strange view is necessitated by
Gundry's attempt to combine dispensationalism and post-
tribulationism, in which he tries to maintain that Israel is
Israel, not Gentile Christians. In his discussion, however, he
takes the untenable position that the 144,000 who are de­
scribed as “the servants of our God” are actually unsaved
orthodox Jews. He conveniently omitted the phrase “of our
God” from his discussion of these servants.7
Not only is Gundry's identification of the 144,000 as or­
thodox unsaved Jews a strange interpretation, but it depends
on his questionable doctrine of a second chance after the Rap­
ture. He supported this concept that the Jews will be “con­
verted immediately after the rapture as they see their Messiah
descending to the earth,”8 though they have rejected Christ
before the Rapture, as is indicated by a number of Scriptures
(Zech. 3:8-9; 12:9-13:1; Mai. 3:1-5; Rom. 11:26-27). An
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