Not Afraid of the Antichrist: Why We Don't Believe in a Pre-Tribulation Rapture

by Michael L. Brown

My point in recounting this tragedy that tore at my heart is simply to illustrate that we in the West have too easily bought into the lie that because God loves Christians, we will be spared tribulation.

Pre-Tribulationalism says that believers will be snatched from this world to heaven suddenly and without warning. Can you find even a single Scripture that explicitly says this?

Pre-Tribulationalism says the Rapture will come before the Tribulation. Can you find even a single Scripture that explicitly says this?

Jesus commissioned the Church to make disciples of the nations (see Matthew 28:19–20) and declared that the end would come when the Kingdom had been preached among all nations (see Matthew 24:14). If the Church is raptured before the Tribulation, then people converted during the Tribulation will have to take over the job. Can you find even a single Scripture that explicitly says this?

Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 are explicit about any unexpected coming only after the Tribulation. Can you find any explicit reference to a coming beforehand in these passages?

The book of Revelation does not describe Jesus’ return before chapter 19, and first mentions a resurrection of the righteous believers in chapter 20, where it is called the “first resurrection.” (The meaning is debated, but by definition all premillennialists, which include all pre-Tribulationalists, see that as a bodily resurrection.) Some argue for an implied pre-Tribulational Rapture of all believers earlier in the book, although it is not clear in t...

Can you find any explicit biblical justification for the following distinctions associated with pre-Tribulationalism? Two Second Comings (or stages) (se...

Two first resurrections (see John 6:40; Revelation 20:4–5) Two judgment seats of Christ (see 2 Corinthians 5:10 vs. Matthew 25:31–46) Two last trumpets (see 1 Corinthians 15:51 vs. Matthew 24:31; possibly Revelation 11:15) Two gatherings of God’s people (see 1 Thessalonians 4:16 vs. Mark 13:27; Matthew 24:31–40) Two rewardings of the righteous (see 2 Corinthians 5:10 vs. Matthew 24:46–47) Two classes of believers (the Church, spared tribulation, and...

So far as we can tell from their surviving work, the earliest Church fathers in the second century were premillennial and post-Tribulational. That is, they believed that Revelation 20 described a literal future thousand years, but they believed that they were currently in the Great Tribulation2 or (in the case of the Didache or the Shepherd of Hermas)3 about to go through it. For example, the late second-century bishop and Church father Irenaeus wrote of “the resurrection of the just, which takes place after the coming of Antichrist, and the destruction of all nations under his rule.”4 Supporters of this post-Tribulational-but-premillennial position included writer-bishops such as Papias and Irenaeus, as well as a defender of the faith named Justin, who was eventually martyred. (This is why he came to be called Justin Martyr.) Although Justin did observe that not all Christians shared his views about the future thousand years, he seemed unaware of any other views about the Tribulation.