When are tribulation saints resurrected?

Question 10173.

Tribulation saints are the believers who come to faith after the Church has been taken, during the seven year period of judgement that Scripture calls Daniel’s seventieth week. They are among the bravest people the Bible describes, and a great many of them will die for their faith.

So when are they raised? The answer Scripture gives is at the Second Coming, at the threshold of the Millennium, and John shows us the moment.

Who the tribulation saints are

Revelation 7 shows a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, standing before the throne in white robes. One of the elders asks who they are and answers his own question: these are the ones coming out of the great tribulation, who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:14).

So the removal of the Church is not the end of salvation on earth. It is the beginning of the most intense period of evangelism in history, with the 144,000 sealed from the tribes of Israel, the two witnesses in Jerusalem, an angel proclaiming an eternal gospel, and a harvest gathered under conditions of open persecution.

The tribulation saints are that harvest. They refuse the mark, which means they cannot buy or sell. They are hunted by a global system with the technology to find them. Many are executed. Revelation calls them conquerors, and it is hard to argue with the description.

The resurrection scene in Revelation 20

John gives us the moment plainly. He sees thrones, and those seated on them were given authority to judge, and then he sees the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and who had not worshipped the beast. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years (Revelation 20:4).

Notice the sequence. The Second Coming has happened in chapter 19. Satan is bound at the start of chapter 20. Then the tribulation saints are raised, and the Millennium begins with them reigning in it. Their resurrection is the last event before the kingdom opens for business.

John then adds that this is the first resurrection, and that the rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. The line between the two resurrections could hardly be drawn more clearly, and my article on the first resurrection sets out the stages.

Why they are not raised at the Rapture

The reason is simple chronology. The tribulation saints are converted after the Rapture, so they cannot be raised at an event that has already happened. Their resurrection has to come at the end of the period in which they lived and died, and that is precisely where Revelation places it.

This is one of the quiet supports for the pretribulational position. If the Church went through the Tribulation, the categories in Revelation would collapse into one another, and the distinct company of martyrs described in chapters 6, 7 and 20 would be indistinguishable from the raptured Church. John keeps them separate because they are separate.

The saints on earth during that period are also never addressed with the language of the Church. There are no letters to congregations after chapter 3, no mention of the body of Christ, and the pattern of judgement is thoroughly Old Testament in flavour. I set out the wider case when asking what pretribulationism is.

The souls under the altar

Earlier in Revelation, at the fifth seal, John sees the souls of those slain for the word of God crying out with a loud voice, asking how long before their blood is avenged. They are given white robes and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants should be complete.

That scene tells us three things about the tribulation saints. They are conscious between death and resurrection. They are aware that justice is outstanding. And their number is known to God in advance, which means not one of them dies as an accident or an oversight in the middle of the chaos.

It also tells us that God does not treat the cry for justice as unspiritual. He does not rebuke them for asking. He answers with a robe, a promise and a timetable. There is comfort there for every believer who has ever wanted to ask how long.

What kind of bodies, and what kind of reign?

The tribulation saints who are raised receive resurrection bodies, as all the righteous dead do, and they reign with Christ throughout the thousand years. That means the Millennium contains resurrected people in glorified bodies living alongside mortal survivors of the Tribulation who enter the kingdom in ordinary bodies and go on having children.

That combination explains several features of the millennial passages that puzzle first time readers. Long lifespans, ongoing birth and death, and a final rebellion at the end all belong to the mortal population rather than to the resurrected. My article on why anyone rebels after the Millennium deals with that rebellion.

As for the reign itself, John says they were priests of God and of Christ. Priesthood is service and mediation, so their role is not decorative. The people who were hunted for refusing to bow are given responsibility in the administration of the kingdom, which is a reversal worthy of the God who does this sort of thing.

Their comfort and ours

Everything Revelation says about tribulation saints is written to strengthen people facing pressure. The book was sent to churches under Roman power, and it works by showing the throne behind the trouble. The saints who suffer are named, counted, robed and finally raised, and the beast who kills them lasts forty two months.

I find it striking that Scripture never promises those believers deliverance from death. It promises them vindication after it. That is a harder comfort than we would design, and it is the comfort the martyrs of every century have actually leaned on, from the arenas of Rome to the prisons of our own day.

Christians in some parts of the world today do not need this explained to them. They already know what it costs to refuse the demands of a system, and the tribulation saints will simply be the last and largest company in a long line.

What this means before that day comes

If the tribulation saints can hold out under a global regime with no economic access and a death sentence attached to their confession, then most of what we call sacrifice looks rather modest. That is not a rebuke so much as a recalibration.

It also raises an uncomfortable thought about anyone reading this who has heard the gospel and put off deciding. The people saved during that period will be saved at appalling cost, having ignored a far easier invitation while it was open. The mercy is real either way, and the price of delay is not.

If you want to see how salvation works in that period, my article on whether people will be saved during the Tribulation answers it directly, and the answer is a resounding yes.

The 144,000 and the great multitude

Two companies appear in Revelation 7 and they should not be confused. The 144,000 are sealed from the tribes of Israel and protected through the period. The great multitude from every nation is standing before the throne having come out of the great tribulation, which is the language of those who have died in it.

The relationship between them looks like cause and effect. Sealed Jewish witnesses go out under God’s protection, and an innumerable harvest of Gentiles and Jews comes in behind them, many of them paying with their lives. If that is right, then the tribulation saints are the fruit of the most effective missionary movement the world has ever seen.

It also answers a common worry. People sometimes ask whether those who hear the gospel now and reject it will get another chance after the Rapture. Scripture gives a sobering warning about a strong delusion sent on those who refused to love the truth, so I would never tell anyone to count on a second opportunity (2 Thessalonians 2:11).

What we can say is that a vast number will be saved in that period, and that the tribulation saints who die will be raised at the end of it to reign. God’s mercy runs right through the darkest chapter of human history, which is exactly what we should have expected of him.

So, now what?

Let the courage of the tribulation saints do something to your prayer life. Pray for persecuted believers now, because their experience is the nearest thing we have to a preview, and they are your family.

And settle your own position while settling it costs you so little. The tribulation saints wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb, exactly as every believer in every age has done. The same Lamb, the same blood, the same invitation. Why wait for a harder day to accept it?

Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

Revelation 20:4, ESV