Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 10035. Babylon in Revelation is one of the richest and most debated images in the whole book, a figure that appears as a gorgeously dressed prostitute in one chapter and a doomed merchant city in the next. When I speak of Babylon in Revelation I mean the great world system of rebellion against God,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10034. The bowl judgements in Revelation, sometimes called the vial judgements in older translations, are the last and most severe of the three great series of judgements in the Tribulation. Where the seal judgements and the trumpet judgements struck in part, the bowl judgements fall in full, for in them the wrath of God…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 10033. The trumpet judgements in Revelation are the second great series of judgements that fall on the earth during the Tribulation, following the seal judgements and exceeding them in severity. When seven angels sound seven trumpets, one after another, the natural world is struck with devastating blows, and I want to take the trumpet…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10032. The seal judgements in Revelation are the first of three great series of judgements that fall upon the earth during the Tribulation, and they open the whole terrible sequence. When the Lamb breaks the seven seals of the scroll, wave after wave of judgement is released, and I want to walk through the…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 10031. The abomination of desolation is a phrase that comes straight from the prophet Daniel and is picked up by Jesus Himself, and it describes a supreme act of sacrilege that marks the turning point of the Tribulation. When I speak of the abomination of desolation I mean the moment the Antichrist desecrates the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10030. The two witnesses of Revelation 11 are among the most vivid figures in all of prophecy, two men clothed in sackcloth who prophesy in Jerusalem during the Tribulation, are struck down by the beast, and then rise from the dead before a watching world. I take the two witnesses to be two literal…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10029. Are the Jewish people still God’s chosen people, or did their election end when the nation rejected its Messiah? I answer without hesitation that Israel remains God’s chosen people, because the calling that made them so was never conditional on their performance and has never been revoked. This is one of the places…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10028. The partial rapture theory teaches that only those believers who are watchful, spiritual and ready will be caught up when Jesus comes, while carnal or careless Christians are left behind to pass through the Tribulation as a kind of discipline. It is an unusual view, held by a sincere minority, and I want…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10027. The pre-wrath rapture view is a more recent proposal that places the catching away of the Church late in the Tribulation, after most of it has run but before the final outpouring of God’s wrath in the closing months. It became widely known through the writing of Marvin Rosenthal and Robert Van Kampen,…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 10026. The posttribulation rapture is the view that the Church will pass through the entire seven-year Tribulation and be caught up only at its very end, meeting the returning Lord and coming straight back to earth with Him. Posttribulationism is probably the oldest of the rival timings, and it is held by many sincere…