The Pre-Tribulation Gap

  1. Review: Will the Rapture take place before the Tribulation?
    1. 1 Thess. 5:9-10 (summarize)
    1. 2 Thess. 2:3-8 (summarize)
    1. Revelation 3:10 (introduce and explain)
      1. Believers are kept not just from the “trial” but from even the “hour of trial.” This indicates that Christians will not be preserved through the Tribulation but out of it.
  2. Are there reasons for believing in such a gap?
    1. The Day of the LORD is not synonymous with the 7-year Tribulation (Daniel’s 70th Week). 2 Peter 3:10 indicates that the Day of the LORD begins with Christ’s return and will not end until all evil is removed from creation. The 7-years belonging to the false covenant are only a small part of this.
    1. The Seals could very well happen over the course of years. The rise of the Antichrist, his conquests and the attending hardships will not happen in a moment.
    1. The Two Witnesses and the Trumpets are probably the same plagues (described a little differently in separate places). Since the Witnesses appear to be in the first half of the Tribulation, this moves up the Trumpets and so the Seals as well.
    1. The martyrs of the 5th Seal ask when God will avenge them. Why ask if the Tribulation had already started and they knew how many days it would be?
    1. Key reminder: The Seals are the wrath of God and Christians will not experience them. They do differ in a sense from the later judgments: the inhabitants of Earth do not recognize them as God’s wrath until the Sixth Seal. Yet the lawlessness of the Antichrist is supernaturally permitted, and Christians are saved from it too (2 Thess. 2).

Author: James Buddy Smith
Ark of Hope
Jasper, Georgia