Page 87 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

The Necessity of Intervening Events
ally arrives on earth. The judgment of the Gentiles results in
the purging of unbelievers out from among believers and
leaves believers untouched. This judgment also distinguishes
the individuals involved on a racial basis. The “brethren”
refers to Israel. The “nations” refers to non-Israelites. At the
translation of the church, by contrast, there are no racial dis­
tinctions whatever. The judgment of the Gentiles deals
primarily with unbelievers who are cast into everlasting fire.
The reward given to believers at the judgment of the Gentiles
is entrance into the millennial kingdom. Christians in this
present age enter a spiritual kingdom when born again and
arc never brought into judgment relative to entrance into the
Millennium. Believers at the judgment of the Gentiles enter a
millennial kingdom at the time of their judgment, following
the Second Advent.
Gundry has advanced the position that the judgment of
the nations is at the end of the Millennium. Motivation for this
peculiar view is to remove the problem of the mingling of the
goats and sheep at the beginning of the Millennium, which
would be impossible if a rapture of the church had taken place
immediately before this. The extreme difficulties of har­
monizing Gundry’s view with the text of Matthew 25 will be
presented in the discussion of the posttribulational argu­
ments.9
In the judgment of the Gentiles and the judgment of
Israel, the mass of detail points to the fact that separation of
saved from unsaved is accomplished by a series of judgments
occurring chronologically after the Second Advent. These
judgments deal only with those living on the earth at the time
of the Second Advent. None of those involved are translated or
resurrected. Their reward is entrance into the millennial king­
dom. At every point of comparison the evidence points to the
translation of the church as a prior event utterly different in
character and one that requires an interval of some years
between it and the judgments of Israel and the Gentiles. It
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