Page 255 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

The Rapture Question: Revised and Enlarged Edition
tion 7 deals with the martyred dead who accept Christ and
then are martyred for their faith. While the 144,000 may he
witnesses, the Scriptures do not indicate this specifically.
Their presence in the world intact is the dramatic evidence of
the keeping power of God. and this is the point of their preser­
vation.
Taken as a whole, the question of the identity and sig­
nificance of the 144.000 is a lost cause for posttribula-
tionism. They either have to spiritualize their identity and
avoid the point of the revelation, or they have to face the
fact that those who are saved in Israel are designated as saved
Israelites, not designated as the church in the time of the
Great Tribulation.
Armageddon in Relation to the Rapture
One of the strange views offered by Gundry is that the
judgments of the Book of Revelation follow Armageddon in­
stead of precede it. Armageddon is described in Revelation
16:12-16 as being the outgrowth of the sixth bowl of the wrath
of God. While most expositors agree that the Book of Revela­
tion is not written in strict chronological order, practically all
expositors would put the sixth bowl late in the Great Tribula­
tion and in point of time almost immediately before the second
coming of Christ. Even Gundry admitted, “The sixth seal
leads us to the final catastrophe of judgment when Christ
returns, for the wrath of the Lamb is just about to strike the
wicked, who arc calling upon the rocks and mountains to hide
(hem (6:12-17).”9 In spite of this climactic judgment, Gundry
nevertheless said, “God's wrath will not stretch through the
whole tribulation.”10 How any expositor taking the Book of
Revelation with any seriousness can read from chapter 6
through chapter 16 and declare that this is not the wrath of
God on a world that has rebelled against Him is hard to
believe.
Gundry’s problem is that he has argued from 1 Thessalo-
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