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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Jesus said, “You will be hated by all nations because of My name” (Matthew 24:9 NASB, emphasis added). Why should we expect to be exempt from such tribulation? Does God have special favoritism for the West? For the West where religion is declining, from which pornography is exported and where even Christians are growing increasingly biblically illiterate?
This leads me to what I believe is the most decisive Old Testament text in our discussion, Isaiah 26:20–21 (NIV): Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until his wrath has passed by. See, the LORD is coming out of his dwelling to punish the people of the earth for their sins. The earth will disclose the blood shed on it; the earth will conceal its slain no longer. At a time in the future, when God’s anger will be poured out on the earth, we are not promised escape. We are told to take refuge. The text is straightforward and clear.
The Lord will provide a place of refuge for us right in the midst of the storm (as He did for Noah). He will give us a way of escape from His judgments (just as He did for Lot). He will make a distinction between His people and the world (just as He did for the Israelites in Egypt and for the righteous in Jerusalem). Yet we will not escape all tribulation and suffering for the Gospel.
We are not looking forward to a secret Rapture; we are looking forward to the Lord’s public appearance, at which time He will destroy the Antichrist along with all those who oppose the Gospel, just as we read in 2 Thessalonians 1.
I don't understand why pre-tribbers say the rapture must be secret.
if the pre-Tribulational Rapture idea is biblical, why is there not even a single obvious text supporting it?
When Jesus speaks of one being taken and another being left, the disciples ask, “Where, Lord?” That is, Where will they be taken? Jesus’ answer is that they will be taken, not to where His chosen are gathered, but to where the vultures gather around corpses (see Luke 17:37).
God repays both the wicked and righteous at the same time.
As I (Craig) learned early on while debating Jehovah’s Witnesses, any theological system can appear consistent from the inside. But we have reason to question any system that falls apart when one steps outside it to probe its evidence.
tribulation is the normal experience of believers in this age. Not experiencing affliction is a blessed exception that we should enjoy when we have it, but we should not count on it as if it were our right in Christ. We should always be ready to suffer for Christ and always be ready for Christ’s return.
Why are we not afraid of the Antichrist? Because greater is the Spirit who dwells in us than the spirit of antichrist that is in the world (see 1 John 4:1–6, especially verse 4).
Jesus is honored by our perseverance in testing as well as by what the world considers victories.
With good reason, many scholars identify Rome as the Babylon of John’s day. Rome annually celebrated its founding on seven hills or “mountains,” and regularly called itself the city on seven hills (see Revelation 17:9). Of the empires that ruled other kings (see verse 18), it was the one that John’s audience knew best. It was a naval power (at that time the world’s only significant one) that traded in the very imports listed in Revelation 18:12–13. Rome even had an emperor who persecuted Christians, Nero, who had died yet was widely expected to return (cf. Revelation 13:3; 17:10–11).
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Followers of the Beast conform to his ways, recognizing that they cannot prosper in this life without being part of his system (see Revelation 13:17). Their concern is not with promised hidden manna or fruit from the tree of life (see Revelation 2:7, 17; 22:2, 14, 19), but only with getting ahead in this life.
Because Satan does not know the final hour (see Mark 13:32), he must always have an antichrist in waiting.
The slave trade never would have been abolished in Great Britain and America had Christians been convinced that things were only getting worse and the world was on the verge of total collapse. Why even try?
“If you see someone in need, should you not try to meet that need, whether Jesus is coming back in one year or one hundred years? And if you see something that is wrong and needs to be addressed, should you not address it, whether Jesus is coming back in one year or one hundred years?”
If you kill us, you promote us to glory, where we will one day receive the martyr’s crown. Our death is our honor, and our sacrifice is our privilege. And just as our Savior defeated the enemy by dying and rising, so too we die with Him, knowing that we will also rise.
We overcome because He overcame. His victory is our victory. And you can be quite sure that Jesus is not threatened by the Antichrist—or for that matter, by a trillion billion antichrists.
Sometimes when people discover what they think is a biblical truth, they promote it in a divisive way, as if it makes them better than others who have not discovered this insight.
We should make our life decisions and, insofar as possible, our daily decisions with a view to what they will look like a hundred, a thousand or a million trillion years from now—not considering so much what feels good now as what will count forever.
The Bible does not envision any period, past or future, in which great faith can exempt God’s children from all hardship.
Those who withdraw from the world, stockpiling weapons for impending persecution, make exactly the same mistake as those who ignore the prospect of suffering. If we act either way, we act as though our lives in this world are all we have to live for.
How do we prepare in light of promised tribulation in this world? Not by stockpiling as if we know the times or the seasons (though as noted, having a few supplies for emergencies is always prudent, no matter what the emergency might be). We prepare the same way Daniel and his three friends did: by being faithful in whatever situations we find ourselves now. We prepare for suffering in the same way that we prepare for our Lord’s imminent return: We watch and pray and walk with Jesus Christ our Lord.
