Page 257 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

The Rapture Question: Revised and Enlarged Edition
the 144,000 are orthodox Jews who are converted at the time
of the Rapture. Gundry described the 144,000 in these words:
“That unconverted part of the Jewish nation who by God's
special protection will physically survive the tribulation (Rev.
7:1-4) will repent, believe, and be saved as they see their
Messiah descending. But they will have missed the rap­
ture.”11 This position is utterly without scriptural support and
is held by Gundry alone among posttribulationists. The more
consistent general approach of posttribulationism is to spirit­
ualize the 144.000 and equate them with the church, as does
Ladd. Nothing seems to be clearer than that at the time of the
second coming of Christ, which includes the Rapture in the
posttribulational view, it will be too late, and it is an hour of
judgment rather than an hour of salvation.

The Marriage of the Lamb in Revelation 19:1-10
Immediately preceding the second coming of Christ is the
announcement of the marriage feast of the Lamb. It was the
custom in a wedding to observe three stages. The first was the
legal marriage where the parents of the bride and the bride­
groom agreed on the marriage. The second followed im­
mediately or sometime later when the bridegroom came to
claim his bride, as illustrated in the parable of the ten virgins.
The third stage of the wedding was the wedding feast, which
chronologically followed stage one and two. If the stage in
developments has reached the wedding-feast stage at the time
of the second coming of Christ, it implies an earlier coming of
the bridegroom for the bride in keeping with the pretribula-
tional view.
Gundr)’ cast this aside abruptly, “We should not expect
to find rigid consistency in the biblical use of metaphors. To
press woodcnly the marital relationship of both Israel and the
Church to the Lord would be to say that God is a bigamist.”12
Pretribulationists do not press this analogy but simply
claim that it is in keeping with the pretribulational view. If the
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