The Great Tribulation

[PeteWaldo]

From Ellis Skolfield:

Matthew 24:21  “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.”
 
The Greek word usually translated tribulation is “thlipsis.” It appears 27 times in the New Testament and in every instance but one, it is in reference to the persecution of God’s people. So one question: When is the last time you prayed for our suffering brethren abroad?
 
Today in Darfur and in the rest of the Sudan, armed Muslim jihadists attack the little Christian villages.
The jihadists go into each hut, taking what they will and killing whom they wish. If they find a Christian pastor, they crucify him. If they find a Christian woman with a baby on her breast, they hack off the woman’s breasts. The woman sits there crying, unable to feed her hungry child, soon to die of starvation. Their cattle have already been stolen, you see, so they don’t have any cows or goats to milk. There are no Supermarkets where they could go to buy food, nor any money to buy it with if there were.
 
Over the last several years, over 2,000,000 Sudanese Christians and Animists have been slaughtered in the Sudan by Islamic jihadists – it’s hard to get accurate figures from remote areas. But that's not bad enough to be classed as "THE great tribulation" is it? Of course not.

Millions more have been martyred in other 3rd world countries, but I guess that’s not bad enough to be classified as "THE tribulation," either.

The Roman empire killed a couple of million and the Catholic Church killed a couple of million more. Between 1939 and 1945 about 2,000,000 Christians and 6,000,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis. A total of over 50,000,000 people were killed during WW2. I keep hearing that wasn't "THE tribulation" either. Not bad enough, don't you see?

In the old USSR, up to 8,000,000 Christians were murdered by the communists in labor camps on the Gulag Archipelago. But great tribulation? Nah, that mass murder doesn't qualify.
 
In the killing fields of Cambodia, the Communists killed over 1,500,000 Christians in atrocities unimaginable, making mountains of their skulls, grizzly piles that are still there today. Great tribulation? Not a chance, it's gotta get much worse than that.

If you are found to be a Christian by the religious police in Saudi Arabia, they behead you. In China and North Korea, untold millions have died for the sake of Jesus. In fact, worldwide, about 30,000 Christians a week are being killed because they wouldn’t deny Jesus as Lord.

And you think because God has spared the church in this country that "THE great tribulation" is still in the future? Have you ever seen a Christian murdered? Seen someone tortured, heard their screams? We know an evangelist in Nigeria, Mustafa by name, who has seen it all, many times. Muslims jihadists killed over 5000 Christians in his city and burned their churches. The jihadists tried to kill Mustafa, too, but the Lord hid him. I haven’t heard from Mustafa for a couple of years so maybe they finally got him.
 
While I was visiting Columbia Bible College, I met an East African who was being led of the Lord to return to his country to start a much needed Christian orphanage. He said, "I know I won't last more than a couple of years before the Muslims kill me," but he is going to build that orphanage anyway. Don’t you realize that it’s just the mercy of God that the great tribulation hasn’t come here yet? We should weep over the American church’s ignorance and arrogance.

Do a billion saints have to die for the Lord before we recognize that they did so during "THE great tribulation"? If it was you being tortured to death or being burned at the stake, wouldn’t that be your great tribulation? Nah, the rest of the church would just close it’s eyes to your persecution and keep on singing, "Happy, happy, happy, when the REAL great tribulation gets here, we're gonna be raptured out of here because we pew-warmers know THE great tribulation isn’t for us, it’s for the lost while we're up in heaven." Really? . . . God help us!

2Tiimothy 3:12 "Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution."

That verse “doesn’t preach” in most American churches, but we might change our view of what THE great tribulation is if our country falls to Islam and it is our wives and our children who have to give their lives for the Lord.

[PeteWaldo]

"The following was Posted to a Christian Forum . . .
 
The epochal era of the Levitical code ended when the veil of the Temple was rent from top to bottom, but that was not the end of Judaism nor the end of the Jewish people, both of which continue unto this day. To correctly understand Jesus' Olivet discourse, we have to stand in His own time just before the crucifixion (32-34 A.D.) and view what He prophesied about the future:

Matthew 24:21 "For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be."

Looking forward from His time, remember? The almost unbelievable persecution of the Jews and true Christians throughout the Christian era needs no amplification. But of equal importance is a verse from Luke 21: Gentiles have controlled the holy land and Jerusalem ever since. So now we read:

Luke 21:24 "And they (the Jews) shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled."

Now look at history: Except for a short Maccabean period in which the kingdom was not reestablished, from the Babylonian captivity on forward, including the time Jesus was on the Earth, Gentiles have always controlled Jerusalem. During the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th centuries, Gentile powers continued to control Jerusalem! The 11th and 12th century Crusaders were still Gentiles. Then Gentiles continued to rule Jerusalem through the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, all the way up until June 6, 1967, when for the first time in 2573 years, Jews again had total governmental control of Jerusalem. So let's read the verse again:

Luke 21:24 "And they (the Jews) shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled."

As a result, the epochal "time of the Gentiles" is over! Now that is not an optional doctrine we can play with to fit our eschatology. Over the holy land in is a new nation called Israel. It is filled with people who recognize themselves as Jews and Hebrew is the spoken language of the land. These Jews even read the Tenach (the Old Testament) which by some fluke is also printed in Hebrew. To deny the existence of Israel is to deny the evidence of our own eyes and there's an old saying, if a doctrine disagrees with observable reality, there is something wrong with the doctrine.

So if the time of the Gentiles is over, what kind of epochal time are we in? Well, for years I searched Scripture from end-to-end and I can find only one other epochal time that could follow the time of the Gentiles: "The Time of the End" of Daniel 12:9. As a result, we must be in The Time of the End!

So forward from Jesus time, we notice there are two epochal times within the Christian era:

Matthew 24:21 "For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be."
Matthew 24:29 "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken."

Whether the above is true or not is not open to debate, those are scriptural givens! So the only question is this: how should we interpret the time after the tribulation? Well, Jesus has not gone to the Cross yet, so the Malachi definition for the Sun is is still valid. Furthermore there is an almost exact duplication of the above in the 6th seal:

Revelation 6:12-13 "And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth."

Maybe this now makes some sense so I’ll say it again: Jesus is the sun (Malachi 4:2), but during the Time of the End, His brilliant light can no longer to be seen on the Earth because of gross sin that surrounds us. The moon has no light of its own (blood cannot reflect light) all the moon can do is reflect the light of the sun, but the Church now fails to do so as it falls into apostasy. And the stars? They are the messengers to the churches, it's pastors and evangelists (Revelation 1:20) who have fallen away from the truth and no longer teach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now looking at the Christian era from other Scriptures previously quoted, we notice those same two epochal times:

Luke 21:24 "And they (the Jews) shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled."
Daniel 12:9 "And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end."

So has the Lord already returned for us to meet Him in the air? Of course not, but we are in the time of the end during which Christians and Jews worldwide will be persecuted worse than ever before." ~ Ellis Skolfield

[Mike S]

I have joined a Facebook Group or two that are in aggreement with a post-tribulation gathering of the church. But many of the group members  are still indoctrinated in the futurist view, and cannot see much, if any, historical fulfillment, even when I plainly point it out to them. It is frustrating me to the point that I may leave the group and not waste my time showing them how the historical view is at least as valid as any other view out there. The group administrators' position is Pre-millenial post-trib, and their statement says that position is not debatable. So when I post, I am having to start with "my view", or "a historical view." Even historicists differ in what the symbolism represents. There are a few in there who agree with some of what I say, but not many. We walk a lonely road with the view that Islam is plying a major role in the time of the end, do we not!

[PeteWaldo]

Sorry Mike, I just noticed this post this morning.

I have joined a Facebook Group or two that are in aggreement with a post-tribulation gathering of the church. But many of the group members  are still indoctrinated in the futurist view, and cannot see much, if any, historical fulfillment, even when I plainly point it out to them. It is frustrating me to the point that I may leave the group and not waste my time showing them how the historical view is at least as valid as any other view out there. The group administrators' position is Pre-millenial post-trib, and their statement says that position is not debatable.

Do they believe Jesus to have prophesied falsely?

Matthew 16:28 Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

Luke 9:27 But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.

Mark 9:1 And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.

What about our brother John who is our companion in THE kingdom of Jesus Christ?

Revelation 1:9 I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Certainly not the only difficulty with reconciling Darby against the Gospel:
http://www.christianeschatology.com/futurism_dispensationalism.htm#futurism_vs_gospel

Brother Ellis on the millennial reign:
http://www.beholdthebeast.com/the_millennial_reign.htm

So when I post, I am having to start with "my view", or "a historical view." Even historicists differ in what the symbolism represents.

Most you'll find on the internet are either in the SDA cult, or are among those who call themselves historicists, that peddle their chosen doctrine as if it were the only historicist view.
It is important to recognize that available evidence suggests that not only the Reformers, but the church throughout its first 1900 years, were historicist.

There are a few in there who agree with some of what I say, but not many. We walk a lonely road with the view that Islam is plying a major role in the time of the end, do we not!

Ah the power of indoctrination! In spite of what we increasingly witness from the false prophet Muhammad's Islamic kingdom beast.

Why not run them through John's 8 beasts too?
http://www.beholdthebeast.com/johns_eight_beasts.htm