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 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…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 10025. The midtribulation rapture is the view that Jesus will catch the Church up to Himself not before the Tribulation and not at its end, but at its midpoint, roughly three and a half years into the seven-year period. Midtribulationism sits between the pretribulational and posttribulational positions, and it deserves a fair hearing before…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10024. The pretribulational rapture is the view I hold, and it is simply this: Jesus will catch His Church up to Himself before the seven-year Tribulation begins, not partway through it and not at its end. Pretribulationism is not a fringe curiosity but a reading that flows naturally from taking the whole Bible at…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10010. The number 666 has escaped the book of Revelation and taken up residence in horror films, heavy metal albums, and internet conspiracy theories, which makes it one of the few Bible details unbelievers can quote. Behind the noise stands a serious text and a serious question: is the number 666 literal, and what…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 1121. The pretribulational rapture is not, as some of its critics sometimes suggest, a doctrine simply invented out of thin air by nineteenth-century prophecy teachers with no genuine textual foundation behind it. It rests on a specific reading of specific texts, held together by a consistent, literal-grammatical-historical hermeneutic applied to prophecy the same way…