What is midtribulationism?
Question 10025
Midtribulationism is one of several evangelical positions on the timing of the Rapture relative to the Tribulation period. It holds that the Church will be raptured at the midpoint of the seven-year Tribulation, after the relatively milder first half but before the intensified judgements of the second half, sometimes called the Great Tribulation. Understanding this view and its arguments is important for a fair assessment of the eschatological debate, even where we ultimately disagree with it.
The Position Stated
Midtribulationism places the Rapture at the three-and-a-half-year mark of Daniel’s seventieth week. The view was articulated most fully by Gleason Archer, and Norman Harrison’s The End: Rethinking the Revelation was among its earlier expressions. The essential claim is that the first half of the Tribulation is characterised by human and satanic opposition rather than divine wrath, and that the specific outpouring of God’s wrath does not begin until the second half. Since the Church is promised exemption from God’s wrath (1 Thessalonians 5:9) but not from tribulation in the general sense (John 16:33), the Church may be present during the first half without violating the wrath-exemption promise.
The midpoint is significant in Daniel’s prophecy. Daniel 9:27 describes the coming prince making a covenant for one week (seven years) and breaking it in the middle of the week, when he causes sacrifice and offering to cease and sets up the abomination of desolation. The midtribulationist argues that this breaking point, and the intensified events that follow, is where the Rapture occurs. The “last trumpet” of 1 Corinthians 15:52 is sometimes identified with the seventh trumpet of Revelation 11:15, which sounds at or near the midpoint, providing a textual link between the Rapture and the middle of the Tribulation.
Where the View Has Strengths
Midtribulationism deserves credit for taking seriously the biblical distinction between tribulation and wrath. The New Testament does promise believers tribulation in this present age (John 16:33; Acts 14:22). Not every form of suffering or opposition is the wrath of God. The view also takes the Tribulation’s two-phase structure seriously, recognising that the second half is qualitatively worse than the first. It interacts genuinely with the trumpet imagery and attempts to harmonise the Rapture texts with the sequence of Revelation.
Where the View Fails
The difficulties are substantial. The identification of the “last trumpet” in 1 Corinthians 15:52 with the seventh trumpet of Revelation 11:15 is not as straightforward as it appears. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians around AD 55, decades before John received the Revelation. Paul’s readers could not possibly have understood his reference to a “last trumpet” as pointing to a specific trumpet in a book that did not yet exist. The more natural reading is that Paul is using trumpet imagery familiar from the Old Testament and Jewish eschatological expectation, where the trumpet signals the gathering of God’s people. The trumpets of Revelation are judgement trumpets; Paul’s trumpet is a gathering trumpet. They serve different functions.
The attempt to confine God’s wrath to the second half of the Tribulation does not hold up under the text of Revelation itself. The seal judgements, which occur in the first half of the Tribulation, are opened by the Lamb (Revelation 6:1), and the sixth seal explicitly identifies what is happening as “the great day of their wrath” (Revelation 6:17). The wrath is not reserved for the second half. It pervades the entire seven-year period from the opening of the seals onward. If the Church is exempt from divine wrath, it must be exempt from the entire Tribulation, not merely from its intensified second half.
Midtribulationism also undermines the imminence of the Rapture. If at least three and a half years of identifiable Tribulation events must occur before the Rapture, then the New Testament’s repeated insistence that Christ’s return for the Church could happen at any moment loses its force. The exhortation to “watch” and “be ready” (Matthew 24:42-44; 1 Thessalonians 5:6) presupposes that no datable prophetic events must intervene.
So, now what?
Midtribulationism is an earnest attempt to do justice to the biblical data, and those who hold it are often careful students of Scripture. The position reflects a genuine concern to avoid placing the Rapture in a location that seems arbitrary relative to the prophetic timeline. Where it falls short is in its handling of the wrath question and its inability to preserve the imminence that is central to the New Testament’s presentation of the Rapture. The pretribulational position better accounts for both the scope of God’s wrath throughout the Tribulation and the New Testament’s consistent posture of expectation. Christians can disagree on this with mutual respect, but the weight of the evidence points to a Rapture that precedes the entire seventieth week, not merely its second half.
“They said to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.'” Revelation 6:16 (ESV)