What is the Great Tribulation?

Question 10045.

The great tribulation is the second half of the seven-year tribulation, the final three and a half years of unequalled distress that fall upon the earth just before Jesus returns in glory. Jesus Himself gave the period its name in the Olivet Discourse, and the term has stuck fast ever since. When I speak of it I am not describing the whole seven years loosely, as some do, but a specific and intensified phase that begins at a definite turning point and runs on to the Second Coming. Precision here keeps a lot of muddle at bay.

Getting this distinction right saves us a great deal of confusion when we come to Revelation. The tribulation as a whole runs a full seven years. It is the worse half of the whole seven, and it opens the exact moment the world ruler finally drops his mask, breaks his covenant with Israel, and demands to be worshipped as God. Everything that came before that moment was bad enough. Everything that comes after it is worse by far. That is the shape I want you to carry in your mind as we work through the passages.

What Jesus said about the great tribulation

The phrase itself comes straight from Matthew 24:21, where Jesus warns of great tribulation such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, and never will be again. That is a staggering claim when you sit with it. He is placing this coming period above the flood of Noah, above every war and famine and plague in the whole of human memory. The Greek word for tribulation, thlipsis, means a crushing pressure, and Jesus deliberately stacks the adjective great on top of it to leave us in no doubt whatever about its severity.

He also tells us exactly what triggers it. In Matthew 24:15 He points to the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, the very event Daniel had foretold, and says that when you see it, flee without delay. So this final phase is not a vague fog of dread with no shape. It has a clear starting signal, a desecration of the temple by the Antichrist, and from that point the distress rises to its dreadful peak. I trace that signal carefully in my study of the abomination of desolation, which marks the hinge of the whole period.

When the great tribulation begins

The great tribulation begins precisely at the midpoint of Daniel’s seventieth week. Daniel 9:27 describes a ruler who confirms a covenant for one seven, then in the middle of that week puts a stop to sacrifice and offering and sets up an abomination that makes desolate. That single midpoint act splits the seven years cleanly in half. The first three and a half years carry a false and fragile peace. The second three and a half years, the worst phase proper, bring open and undisguised war upon God and upon His people. The hinge is sharp and the change is total.

Revelation reinforces this timing with its repeated forty-two months and its 1,260 days, both of which equal exactly three and a half years on any reckoning. The beast is given authority to act for forty-two months, the two witnesses prophesy for 1,260 days, and the woman is protected in the wilderness for that very same span. These are not random or symbolic numbers to be waved away. They mark out the great tribulation as a precisely measured period, held firmly in the hand of God and, for the sake of the elect, mercifully cut short before it could destroy all flesh.

What happens during the great tribulation

During this second half the judgements of Revelation reach their very heaviest, especially the seven bowls of God’s undiluted wrath poured out in Revelation 16. The Antichrist rules a global system with an iron hand, the false prophet enforces worship of the beast, and the mark is imposed so that none may buy or sell without it, a theme I open up fully in my study of the mark of the beast. Persecution of the faithful becomes savage beyond anything the world has seen, and many who trust the Lamb in these years will pay for that faith with their lives.

Yet even in these darkest years God keeps a bright witness burning on the earth. The 144,000 sealed servants remain and continue their work, the eternal gospel is proclaimed by an angel, and a countless multitude comes to living faith out of the very heart of the horror. Judgement is fearfully real, but it never once crowds out the mercy of God entirely. The same God who pours out the bowls keeps holding open the door of repentance right up to the return of His Son. Grace and wrath run together to the end.

The purpose of the great tribulation

Why does God permit a period this terrible to fall upon the world? The great tribulation brings the world’s long rebellion to its full and final head, so that judgement falls only when wickedness has completely ripened and there is nothing left to wait for. It also drives the nation of Israel to the very end of herself. Jeremiah 30:7 names this the time of Jacob’s trouble, yet promises plainly that Israel will be saved out of it, and Zechariah 12 foresees the nation looking on the One they pierced and mourning bitterly for Him. This period is the crucible in which a remnant of Israel finally turns to her Messiah.

So the great tribulation is not blind or pointless cruelty, whatever its critics say. It is the sharp instrument God uses to accomplish a deep redemptive purpose, exactly as I argued when I asked what the time of Jacob’s trouble is. Wrath and salvation meet together in this darkest of all hours, and out of it God brings a saved Israel and a saved multitude from the nations into the coming kingdom of His Son. The end He has in view redeems the fearfulness of the means.

Will the Church go through the great tribulation?

I hold firmly that the Church will not endure the great tribulation, nor the seven years that contain it, because she is caught up at the rapture beforehand. The great tribulation is the concentrated outpouring of divine wrath, and Scripture promises the Church a clear exemption from wrath and a rescue from the very hour of trial coming upon the whole earth. The saints who suffer so terribly in these chapters are tribulation believers, saved after the rapture, and not the Church of this present age of grace with her heavenly calling.

This is exactly why I keep watching for Jesus rather than watching for the Antichrist. If the Church had to pass through the great tribulation, I would be told to look for the man of sin first, but the New Testament tells me instead to look for my Saviour and to comfort one another with the hope of His near coming. The great tribulation is surely coming upon the world, but for those who are in Christ the appointment is with the Bridegroom in the air, and not with the beast on the earth. That difference is everything.

How this differs from earlier troubles

People sometimes ask me why this coming distress deserves such a unique name when the church has already passed through centuries of savage persecution and horror. The answer lies in its source and its scale. What comes upon the world in those final years is not simply human cruelty run wild, but the direct, poured-out wrath of God upon a planet that has finally run clean out of second chances. The believers of every earlier age suffered at the hands of men. The dwellers on the earth in that day will drink the cup of God Himself.

That is why Jesus set this period above every other calamity in the whole of history, and why I refuse to treat it as just another hard chapter among many. It stands in a category entirely of its own, an unrepeatable outpouring with a fixed beginning and a fixed end appointed by God. Holding that firmly keeps me from ever cheapening the warning, and it keeps me pleading with people to find their shelter in the Saviour long before that cup is poured out on the world.

So, now what?

The great tribulation is a warning written in the plainest ink God could use, and the only wise thing is to heed it well before it ever arrives. You do not want to meet that hour, and, wonderfully, you do not have to. The One who endured the cross so that wrath fell on Him instead of on you is holding out His mercy to you today. Take it now, in the calm, and the worst chapter of human history will never so much as touch you.

If you already belong to Jesus, let the long shadow of the great tribulation make you tender toward the lost and thankful beyond words for your own rescue. Warn people plainly while there is still light to warn them in, and keep your own eyes fixed steadily on the returning King. The night is coming on the world, but for the children of the day the dawn of His coming comes first. Live as one who is expecting the morning.

And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.

Matthew 24:22 (ESV)