Apologetics Session 24 - Eschatology - Part 3

I just ask God that you would give us a good time tonight. We're gonna have a good time of fellowship and learning. Lord, that you would speak to us through your word and that we would be able to talk about what's to come.

I just, I thank you so much for the time and I pray that you would be with us. In Christ's name, amen. All right, so we've had two sessions so far on eschatology. We've covered, in the first session, essentially the entire book of Revelation, which was for sure a whirlwind tour.

And then we went through sort of the main millennial views, the sort of three primary views, which are represented up here, of premillennial, amillennial, and postmillennial thinking around the position of Christ's second coming and the millennium.

We have gone through some very specific views around, you know, in concert with these sort of three overarching views, we've gone into some specific views, postmillennial preterism, postmillennial hyperpreterism, and then we started to go through the dispensational premillennialism.

That one, first we went through dispensationalism, which I'll probably review again tonight, just very briefly, and we sort of ended at mid-tribulation premillennialism. So the idea is that there's the millennium and the positioning of Christ's coming in relation to that millennium, and then there's the rapture and the positioning of the rapture within your particular view.

So the first view that we went through was postmillennial preterism. Just by way of review, this is a postmillennial view that is very optimistic. It views that the tribulation has already happened, it actually happened a very long time ago, culminating in the destruction of the temple in 70 AD by Rome.

It holds that Satan is currently bound in that he can't prevent the gospel from going forward. It believes that the millennium is either happening now or will happen very soon, and it is not necessarily a literal thousand years, although some preterists may believe that it is, and it's just when that thousand years starts.

Again, it's a very optimistic view, and we talked at length about how, because of their view, which is that the second coming of Christ is not going to occur until the world is one for Christ, they're very evangelistic in their belief.

So that is something that, regardless of your eschatological view, you should probably be, which is very evangelistic, looking to win the world for Christ. Pastor Jeff talks all about this all the time when he talks about the means for salvation, although when you think about Calvinism, and he just talked about this yesterday in yesterday's sermon, when you think about Calvinism and the sovereignty of God, that God still ordains the means for salvation, which he uses us to accomplish.

So preterists look at the world very optimistically. They believe that everything up into Revelation 20, and verse six, has already happened, and that the only things that are in the future are things after, starting at Revelation 20, and verse seven, so just, again, by way of review, Revelation 20, six, is blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection, over such the second death has no power, that they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.

And then verse seven is, and when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison. So this is their view, and we talked about the justification for this view, being that Revelation is sort of apocalyptic language, which we talked about as being poetic hyperbole, and an example of this was Psalm 6, 6, where it talks about David saying, I'm weary with my moaning, and every night I flood my bed with tears, right?

So he wasn't literally saying that he floods his bed with tears. That's an example of sort of poetic hyperbole, and is how preterists view a lot of Revelation. So when you see something in like Revelation 6, 14, where it says the sky vanished like a scroll and is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place, well, clearly, that's not a literal thing that has happened, but they view that as having already happened, and so they view that as sort of poetic hyperbole.

So that's kind of how the preterists justify it, and we talked about how they'll utilize quotes from Josephus, talking about different things that happened when the Romans were attacking Israel up to the destruction of the temple, and they'll use that to kind of draw parallels to some of the language in Revelation.

So we talked about when Josephus was talking about the Roman workmen who were leveling the roads for the soldiers so that they could walk through, that's something that they take as like removing the mountains, right?

They were essentially removing the protections from Israel. Preterists also have a very small view of Revelation insofar that when it talks about the world, they believe that it is talking really only about Israel, that it's not actually talking about the whole world, and so they'll look at things through that lens and kind of take it from there.

So there were other examples that I gave. Again, this is all on the video. This was last, I guess it was two weeks ago, but the last session, we talked about some of the examples that they had there. They also believe that Nero Caesar was the first beast or the Antichrist, and one of the sort of neat things that I don't necessarily think is all that relevant, but one of the things that they take is that in the Hebrew language, if you remember, they use Hebrew letters to represent numbers, and when you take the Hebrew name Nero Caesar, which is Neron Caesar, that those numbers equal 666.

So that's one of the things, and that there was the beast, it talks about Revelations, persecuting for 42 months, and Nero did persecute for about 42 months, dipping Christians in tar and setting them on fire and all kinds of terrible things.

The problem comes in when you talk about the second beast, creating a statue for the first beast, forcing the world to worship it, and the statue talking and leading and causing the world to worship it.

It's kind of harder to justify those types of things. So we went through some slides around preterism, and some of the, like I said, with these views, I try to steelman most of them, except for the one that's heretical, I try to steelman most of these rather than strawman them.

So some of the big things with preterism are all the discourse where it talks about all these things happening soon, this generation will not pass away, that type of language, which is sort of something that lends credibility to this view.

The one thing that it also does require is a very early dating of Revelation. So if the destruction of the temple was in 70 AD, the dating of the writing of Revelation would have to be somewhere around 65 AD.

During, you know, part of the problem with this is this was also during Nero's reign and would be like right in the middle of that. Also, most early Christians held the date to be somewhere in the 90s AD, rather than in the 60s AD.

So it requires a pretty early dating of Revelation. And I did talk about how that preterists, they're very prominent preterists, they're very respected theologians, such as R .C. Sproul, Doug Wilson, James White, Jeff Durbin.

These are people who I've personally listened to and respect, they're strong reformed theologians who hold the preterist view. Then we talked about hyperpreterism, which is the only heretical view that we covered.

As I said in the early parts of this session, you know, these views, my views, I hold fairly loosely. I'm happy to be convinced that my view is incorrect. But, well, I don't know if I'd be happy that it was, because I generally don't want to go through a tribulation, but regardless, I'm open to my view, let's put it that way, I'm open to my view being proven wrong.

However, you know, so in general, we don't look at these eschatological views as something to divide over, and we should be gracious to one another, but they are important and we should debate them. But hyperpreterism is the one exception of the views that I'm covering here that is actually heretical, because hyperpreterism views all of revelation as having already occurred.

And like we said, it views, it contradicts the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed. It views that everything in the Bible has already been fulfilled, the second coming has already happened, we're now living in the eternal kingdom, there is no literal resurrection, there's no eternal life, we're in the new heavens and the new earth, congratulations, everyone.

And it denies central tenets of Christianity. So this one is the one heretical view that we should actually divide over because this one can't be true. So that brings me back to the premillennial dispensational view.

So again, premillennial, meaning that the millennium hasn't happened yet or isn't in the process of happening. And it's dispensational in that it holds to dispensationalism rather than covenant theology.

Covenant theology teaches things like replacement theory, that the church replaces Israel, and so when the New Testament is talking about Israel, it's actually talking about the church. It holds that there's a covenant of works and then a covenant of grace.

I don't really have a problem with that so much, but the replacement of Israel with the church brings lots of curious questions to mind around 144 ,000 that we talked about when we were going through Revelation, talked about 12 ,000 Jews from each tribe.

And so when you argue with somebody who holds to covenant theology and this whole replacement theory, you have to say, okay, which tribe am I? If I'm one of the 144 ,000, which tribe am I, since I'm not ethnically Jewish?

I don't know how you answer that question. But dispensationalism offers seven dispensations that the Bible's essentially divided into the seven dispensations, one being innocence for Eden, post-Eden, which is conscience, post-flood, which is civil government, the promise, which is Abraham, Moses and the law, the church age, which we're in currently, which is Jesus, and then the millennium, which is the theocracy that's to come.

So premillennialism holds that Jesus will return in the future, reign for a literal 1 ,000 years. The first resurrection of the saved is at the beginning of that millennium, followed by the 1 ,000 year reign, and then at the end of the millennium, Satan is released, deceives those who he can, and has a final rebellion, and then the judgment, and the second resurrection happens.

And so that's kind of, very briefly, the order of things. And regardless of your view of the rapture, that still holds true. The question of the rapture starts to come in when you start looking at pre-tribulation, pre-wrath, or mid-tribulation pre-wrath, and post-tribulation views of when the church will actually be raptured prior to the millennium.

So we went through pre-tribulation arguments, which, again, try to steel man the argument here. So the pre-tribulation arguments the first and foremost was the 1 Thessalonians 5, one through 11 passage, which talks about how we're not destined for wrath.

So it talks, it says, now concerning the times and seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you, for you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

While people are saying there's peace and security, then suddenly destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief.

For you are children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night.

Those who get drunk are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love. And for a helmet, the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath.

That's the important one, verse nine. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through Jesus Christ who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with him.

Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. So that's really, we talked about it when we went through Revelation. Does anyone remember the sort of three big slides that I went through?

What those three events were? There were seven what's, followed by? Seals. Right, so there was the seals, the trumpets, and the bowls, right? The seals was, we talked about the scroll of the Lamb. And John was, as he's in heaven, he's in his vision, he's in heaven and he's crying because no one is worthy to open the scroll.

And then they said, stop crying, because Jesus was there and was worthy to open the scroll. And we talked about how scrolls in those days were sealed seven times, right? So, you know, land deeds, wills, et cetera.

And so as the seals are being opened, different events are happening, right? And, you know, so when you talk about the wrath, the trumpets are generally looked at as wrath. The bowls are generally looked at as wrath, but the wrath doesn't really begin until really after the sixth seal, right?

And so when it says we're not destined for wrath, that says, okay, well, at least up to that point, we're pretty safe saying that if we're not destined for wrath, then we're not destined for any of those trumpets or bowls, right, and the seventh seal as well.

So all that does is save us, though, from that, right? So from a pre-tribulation view that says, okay, well, that saves us from part of the tribulation, but not all of the tribulation. But the pre-tribulation argument, you know, over and above that also talks about, in Revelation 3 .10, when it says the church will be spared from the hour of trial.

This is Jesus, it says, this is Revelation 3 .10, because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world to try those who dwell on earth.

Another is that the seven-year tribulation is specifically a time for God to work with the Jews and not necessarily the church. God's messenger, Angel Gabriel, speaks of this in Daniel nine. The tribulation is referred to as Daniel's 70th week.

And so in Daniel 9 .24, it says, 70 weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.

Paul also speaks about it in Romans, where once the final Gentile is saved, the church is raptured, blinders removed from the eyes of the Jewish people. So this talks about, because the church actually isn't mentioned after, I think it's Revelation four, the church really isn't mentioned much after that.

It's really all about God working with the Jewish people. And then another argument is Luke 21 .36, where Jesus said, but stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place in this day before the Son of Man.

So it's talking about escaping. So pre-tribulationists will use these passages to argue for the rapture of the church before the tribulation. Tribulation is actually structured into two three-and-a-half-year segments.

So the full tribulation is seven years. The tribulation is broken into the first three-and-a-half years and the second three-and-a-half years. And if you, actually, I'm probably gonna bring up a timeline when we talk about pre-wrath here in a minute that talks a bit about it as well.

But there's the pre-tribulation stance, which is that prior to the tribulation, God will rapture his church, then the tribulation will occur, which is inclusive of all seven seals, the trumpets and the bowls.

There's mid-tribulationists who think it's right at the midpoint, which is sort of when the Antichrist is revealed. There's post-tribulationists, which we'll talk about in a bit. I think it happens at the end.

And then there's also a view that is sort of just after mid-tribulationists that is a pre-wrath, which says that Christians will go through all of the tribulation up to the point of wrath, of God's wrath being unleashed on the world, and then will be raptured.

And so that's kind of the gist of where that goes. Pre-tribulationists use these verses as arguments. Mid-tribulationists, and this is kind of where we left off last time, mid-tribulationists believe that it happens right at the middle, which is essentially at the fifth seal, the opening of the fifth seal.

And they'll generally point to the chronology given in Thessalonians 2, one through, yeah, 2 Thessalonians 2, one through three, which talks about the man of lawlessness. So, now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to that effect.

You guys can probably remember this from the pastor's sermon where he talked about how there must have been people who were writing letters impersonating the apostles. Let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction.

So, Cornerstone, what are the three things that have to happen? Pastor Jeff does this all the time from the pulpit. What are the three things?

Apostasy? Apostasy, antichrist, abomination of desolation.

Abomination of desolation, revelation of the antichrist, and then the day of Christ. So, mid-tribulational views teach that the antichrist will not be decisively revealed until the abomination that causes desolation, right?

Which occurs right at that midpoint. And so, in Matthew 24, 15, it says, so this is Jesus, so when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel standing in the holy place, let the reader understand.

And in Daniel 9, 27, which is the reference that Jesus was talking about, it says, and he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering.

And on the wing of abominations shall come the one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator. So, Pastor Jeff talks about this all the time, he's sort of prepped us, I guess, for this stuff.

So, quick question. Yeah, yeah, go for it. So, on the lineup on the top, so there's three bubbles.

On the top. Yeah, it's hard to see, but yeah, you've got, you've really only got the three views here, which is the pre-trib, mid-trib, and post-trib. Views right up there where it's got this box that talks about the tribulation, and it talks about the churches being raptured either in the pre-trib, mid-trib, or post-trib.

This particular view, I got, the references for where I got all these pictures is in the Word document that, since today will be our last session on eschatology, I'll send out to everybody. So, you'll have references to where I got a lot of these images.

There are tons of images online, but this one doesn't cover pre-wrath. So, it's one that we'll add to as well, but the pre-wrath, you would see basically as a dot just next to that middle dot, right?

It would literally be just right next to it, but between the post-trib and the mid-trib.

And then the one that drops down below, the Lulun. Lulun?

Lulun says Christ returns. Oh, okay. So, Christ returns at the end of the tribulation, right? Which revelation pretty clearly spells out right before he establishes his millennial kingdom, New Heavens, New Earth, New Jerusalem, all of that, right?

And then, after the millennium, you've got the final rebellion, and then the final judgment, where you end up with believers and unbelievers going to their respective places. Versus a post-millennial view, which would say that all this stuff has happened already, where the sort of tribulation happened back before 70 A .D.

We're now in, essentially, this church age where society progressively improves. Again, their optimistic, very optimistic view. After which, the world is won for Christ, and Christ comes back a second time for the final judgment.

Now, in a post-millennial view, the church, at some point, is gonna be raptured, only to come right back down immediately to have the judgment, right? So, and then we're gonna talk, amillennialism is the last one we're gonna talk about, so we'll get to that bottom one here in a minute.

But the mid-tribulationists would use Daniel 7 .25, which says the Antichrist will have power over the saints for three and a half years to bolster their point of basically being raptured, being around for the tribulation to be raptured.

So Daniel 7 .25 says, he shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and shall think to change the times and the law, and they shall be given into his hand for a time, times and half a time.

Daniel's super confusing, too, so. I'm sure my father-in-law could probably step you through it with his time. Like I said, he spent, I think, a year doing this, so. So they assume that this is the first half of the tribulation, and that the saints spoken of are the church.

So there's a couple of assumptions that are made. They also interpret the day of Christ as the rapture, so the church will not be caught up into heaven until after the Antichrist is revealed. One of the other things that mid-tribulationists talk about is that foundational to mid-tribulationism is that the trumpet in 1 Corinthians 15 .52 is the same trumpet mentioned in Revelations 11 .15.

The trumpet in Revelations 11 is the final in a series of trumpets, and it's essentially the last trumpet, and so the trumpet of 1 Corinthians, so it's the last trumpet of 1 Corinthians 15. But the problem with this is that the trumpet in Corinthians is a call of God, whereas the ones in Revelations are judgment, right?

It's not calling people home, it's essentially causing judgment on the earth. So the trumpet that's the call of grace to God's elect, whereas the other one's a pronouncement of doom on the wicked, right?

So they have different purposes, so it's hard to conflate them. So that leads us into, so we've done pre-tribulation, we've done mid-tribulation, now we've got pre-wrath. So the pre-wrath view is similar to mid-tribulation, but with a difference.

So the timing of the rapture is super, super close to mid-tribulationists, but mid-tribulationists hold it right at the middle of that 3 1⁄2 years, which is essentially at the fifth seal. But pre-wrathers will view really the rapture having to do with when the beginning of the day of the Lord is, which they would argue is just after the sixth seal.

And so the pre-wrath rapture theory views the trumpet and bowl judgments as the wrath of God, which they clearly are, and that the church is exempted of that, we just talked about that with 1 Thessalonians 5, 9, but the first six seal judgments are not considered the wrath of God, they're viewed as the wrath of Satan or the wrath of the Antichrist.

The wrath of God is really viewed at that seventh seal and beyond, right? Because the seventh seal, if you remember, was silence in heaven because of the horror that was happening, and then you've got the seven trumpets, which, if you remember, was like a third of the sea, a third of the fresh water, the sun, the moon, and the stars were a third darkened.

It was like thirds, right? A lot of sort of judgments for that. And then you finally have the bowls, which is everything in the sea dies, and everything in the fresh water dies, and the sun is blackened, and the moon is blackened, and the stars fall out of the sky, and it's just like way worse than it was with the trumpets even.

But the first six seals was like the four horsemen of the apocalypse were the first four, right? But the wrath of God doesn't actually happen until you get to that seventh seal. And there's no direct mention of God's wrath until the sixth seal is broken in Revelation 6 .17.

So according to the pre-wrath rapture theory, the church will be present to experience those first six, but nothing beyond that. So the rapture must occur at that time. So if you compare Revelation 6 with Matthew 24, the pre-wrath rapture theorists identify the first seal judgments with this description of the end times in Matthew 24, four through 14.

Do you wanna read that for me? Matthew 24. Matthew 24, four through 14.

Four through. 14, 10 verses. And Jesus answered, see that no one leads you astray, for many will come in my name saying, I am the Christ, and they will lead many astray. And you will hear wars and rumors of wars.

See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.

All these are but the beginning of birth pains. Then they will deliver you up to the tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all the nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another.

And many false prophets will arise, and then many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures till the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

So in the pre-rapture view, they view this whole passage as Jesus describing what Christians will go through in those first six seals prior to the wrath of God being unleashed on the earth. Because again, you go back to that 1 Thessalonians where it says we're not destined for wrath.

So the view here is that we suffer some persecution, some of the tribulation, but we are spared from the wrath of God, which will be horrendous. So Jesus refers to these events as the beginning of birth pains in verse eight.

In verse 29 and 30, the sign of the Son of Man appears in the sky, and it's at this time, according to the pre-wrath rapture theory, that the rapture occurs. So that's essentially a nutshell version of pre-wrath.

I have a cool timeline that if we have time at the end, I'll probably go through real quick, that actually it's like an animated thing where you can scroll through it, and actually I think it's pre-wrathrapture .com or something, where it goes through this cool little thing where you can cycle through and it talks about the timeline and sort of categorizes that timeline in the beginning of birth pains, the wrath of Satan or the Antichrist, followed by the rapture and the wrath of God.

Let me just bring something up. Maybe the thought, which you just discussed, is the seals, the scroll of the Lamb, is not literally opened until the seventh seal is opened, because they sequentially opened the seal.

Maybe that's what their thought is, that when you get to the seventh seal, now it's the scroll of the Lamb.

Well, yeah, when you look through the seals, I just brought the seals slide up, you've got the first four seals, which are the four horsemen of the apocalypse. You've got the white horse, which is conquest, although it was a peaceful conquest.

Then you have the red horse, which is war. Then the war is followed by famine, which is the black horse, and then finally death, which is the pale horse. The fifth seal is the souls of the martyrs calling out for justice, and then the sixth seal is essentially the earthquake, and the sun turns black, and so before there was a pause, and then finally the seventh seal, which is silence in heaven.

The view here would be that if a mid-tribulationist, they would say basically at the souls of the martyrs, right at that fifth seal, that's when the rapture happens. Pretty fast, it's like, okay, just right after that.

A little bit after that, right, is where you would get that. Whereas you've got the trumpets, which are clearly judgments, right? You've got hail and fire, fiery mounds, blazing star, darkness. You've got tormenting locusts.

You've got mounted warriors, and again, giving Paul a pause. Then you've got the two witnesses, and then God reigns in heaven, and then you've got the bowls of wrath, which are way worse than the trumpets even, right?

You've got the land, the bowl poured out on the sea, which kills literally everything in the sea, all the rivers and springs in the third bowl, and so forth and so on, right? And you've got darkness. It's poured on the throne of the beast, right?

So all that worship the beast are stricken, and they're stricken so much that they wish for death and can't find it, right? Like they're in agony, and they wish for death and can't find it. And then, you know, seventh bowl, and end game, right?

So yeah, so then we get to, so that's in a nutshell. Now there's, each one of these views, we could literally spend weeks and weeks and months and months studying each one of these views. Don't smile back there.

My father-in-law actually did a study, and I think it lasted, what, a year? Was it a year? It was a pretty year. And he gave me a lot of his materials for, and it was just on the pre-wrath view. And there's like probably two pages just of scripture verses with talking about that.

So when I said at the outset, this is a one-on-one class, it's definitely a one-on-one class, right? We're just going through the very, the very, you know, sort of topical view of this, right? It's very top level.

But that's effectively the pre-wrath view. One of the arguments that pre-wrathers will make, though, versus, over the pre-tribulation view, is that we shouldn't, one of the debates, right? You should consider a pre-wrather and a pre-tribber as brothers, right?

It's not apostasy or heresy to believe that. But one of the arguments that pre-wrathers will make is that the pre-tribulation view sets Christians up to believe that they're spared from any and all tribulation, rather than having to endure some tribulation only to be spared from God's wrath.

And I think that's a reasonable argument to make, because if, you can see how it would shake someone's faith to believe that you're gonna be spared from tribulation only to have to go through it if the pre-tribulation view is incorrect, versus if the pre-wrath view is incorrect and the pre-trib view is correct, the pre-wrather gets spared from it anyway.

Their faith is shaken. So it's a good, it's another way of thinking about the view. I'm on the fence between the pre-trib and pre-wrath. I really like the Preterist view because of its optimistic, you know, evangelistic view, but I can't get behind reading Revelation in the way that Preterists read Revelation.

It makes a lot more sense from a pre-millennial perspective to think of all of this apocalyptic things happening in the future. Also, it's, I think, a more literal reading of Revelation than it is, you know, for Preterism, where you're having to sort of stretch the apocalyptic interpretation to kind of its breaking point.

Are there specific denominations, like you mentioned R .C. Sproul and a couple of other names, do they fall into certain denominations in that way?

They do, they do. So Presbyterians are generally amillennial of Preterists, whereas if you look at some of the other, like Baptists, you'll see a lot of them are pre-millennial, most of them pre-tribulation, but pre-tribulation is just the most popular view, pre-millennial view, so it tends to be, but even in this church, we have people who are pre-tribulation, pre-millennialists, and people who are pre-wrath, pre-millennialists.

I don't know of any Preterists in our church, but there are, you know, like R .C. Sproul was a Preterist, even though a lot of Presbyterians are amillennialists. All right, so post-tribulation, this is still a pre-millennial view, but post-tribulation means the church is gonna go through the entire tribulation, including all of the judgments.

So it teaches that the rapture occurs at the end or very near the end of the tribulation, and at that time, the church will meet Christ in the air, and then do a U-turn and come right back down for the judgment, right, because the second coming happens at the end of the tribulation, just before the establishment of the millennial kingdom, and Christ comes and does the initial judgment before the final judgment at the end of the millennium.

So the church would then be raptured at the end of the tribulation, and then, like, say hi to Jesus in the air, and then spin around and come right back down for that first judgment, because it talks about when Jesus comes in the second coming that there's all of the people on the white horses, you know, all of the saints coming with him in that second coming.

So when he comes down, so this would be that the rapture and the second coming would be simultaneous. It would happen exactly at the same time. So according to this view, the church goes through the entire seven-year tribulation, Roman Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, and many Protestant denominations espouse a post-tribulation view of the rapture, which is something I learned going through this study.

I didn't realize that Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox were both post-tribulation. Matt? This is probably a, what do you call those kind of questions.

That don't require an answer? Rhetorical, rhetorical. Yeah. How do they deal with the fact that we are not destined to wrath? It's a good question.

Wrath comes somewhere. It's a good question. That First Thessalonians passage is pretty stark. I don't know how they get past that, but I know that they hold to these views.

Again, we could dive. Well, Catholics don't read the Bible, I don't think. For real. A lot of them don't.