Tribulation and His Coming — Robert B. Thompson

The Great Tribulation and Christ’s Coming

We'll turn to Matthew 24. We're going to read verses 21 through 28. For then there will be great distress unequaled from the beginning of the world until now, and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive.

But for the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened. At that time, if anyone says to you, look, here is the Christ, or there he is, do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect if that were possible.

See, I have told you ahead of time. So if anyone tells you, there he is out in the desert, do not go out. Or, here he is in the inner rooms, do not believe it. For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather. Immediately after, oh, that's where we stopped at. Yes. All right. Now we've been studying on this for two or three sessions, I guess. And the last time, we were emphasizing the abomination that makes desolation, which is back in verses beginning with 15.

And immediately there follows this great tribulation, this great distress. And if you want to know what the abomination of desolation is, you'll have to get the prior tapes. But that'll stir you up. But the point is that it's man making himself God.

And whenever man makes himself God, it produces desolation. It produces tribulation. And it is this abomination that causes desolation, verse 15, that causes the great tribulation. Or it's called here the great distress.

An Unprecedented Time of Distress

Now, it says there will be a time unequaled, a time of distress unequaled from the beginning of the world until now, and never to be equaled again. So boy, you know, worse than the flood of Noah. So there's an interesting verse in Zephaniah.

I don't expect you to find it. It'll be on the board here. It's kind of a skinny book. In Zephaniah chapter 1, verses 2 and 3, I think this may refer to the great tribulation. Says, I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth.

Declares the Lord, I will sweep away both men and animals. I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. The wicked will have only heaps of rubble when I cut off man from the face of the earth.

In other words, all that the wicked have laid up will be gone, will be rubble. So I think possibly that, so we see that this is going to be an unprecedented time of trouble that is coming caused by man making himself God.

That's what it is. Antichrist is man making himself God. There will be a person who sums this all up, and he will do things in the temple that we went to at length looking at the Hebrew and everything and prior tapes.

The Antichrist Spirit and Human Self-Rule

So if you just remember, it's man making himself God. And because that's true, antichrist is in all of us. There's an antichrist spirit in all of us. Whenever we're trying to decide our own way, don't give things to the Lord, don't pray to him for our way, don't commit things to him, then we have an antichrist spirit.

We have a self-seeking, self-motivating spirit. All right, now he says, if those days had not been cut short, so this period will be cut short. It said no one would survive. I mean, everybody on the planet would die.

You know, we've heard a lot of preaching about the Great Tribulation. There is nothing more that you can do to people that hasn't already been done. I mean, you name it, it's been done throughout history.

Every form of torture that you can imagine has been perpetrated on people. So it isn't that the Great Tribulation is going to bring things to people that are worse than have happened to people. That isn't what makes it great.

It's how widespread it is. It's how widespread it is. Not that you can do any more to human beings than hasn't already been done. I don't want to go into the thing that would just make you depressed. But he says, for the sake of the elect, those days should be shortened.

Well, that tells us quite clearly that God's elect will be on the earth during that time. The elect. Then we went into a lot of scriptures last Tuesday night on who the elect are. I'll just give you two.

The Elect of God: Jews and Gentiles

One of them is Titus 1, verse 1. Paul, a servant of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of God's elect. So it's obviously talking about Christians. And people say it's the Jews. Well, there are some elect Jews.

And there are some elect Gentiles. We see that in Romans chapter 10 and 11. But we certainly, according to this verse, are God's elect. And one more is in 1 Peter, chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. What we're talking about now, he says, it would be shortened for the elect's sake.

And I'm showing you that the elect are not just Jews. They're all who are members of God's elect. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ to God's elect. Now, Peter was a Jew, but the book of 1 Peter shows clearly that he's writing to converted Gentiles.

He's writing to converted Gentiles. Later on, he says, to you who once were not a people, but now are the people. He says, chapter 2, who have been chosen. Now, you want to remember that in Christ, and this is important because it isn't often preached, it seems.

But in Christ, there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles. No difference. Once you have Christ being born in you, that which is born in you, that new creation, is not distinguished by any race at all.

It's a new creation. It's a new race. And so, there's no such thing as a Jewish church. It does not exist. The first Christian church was all Jews, Orthodox Jews, who were keeping the law. They were keeping the law zealously.

But they had also accepted Christ. Well, as we see in the book of Acts, little by little, mostly through the apostle Paul, the gospel went from the church, which was all Jewish, to include Gentiles. But when it did, it did not create a Gentile church.

There's only one olive tree, and that is the seed, Christ. So there is only one elect of God, and it is whoever God has chosen. In history past, it was just Jews. Now it's Jews and Gentiles. Bible tells us in the last days, God will turn again to the Jews.

But the word elect means chosen. So in Matthew 24, what the Lord is saying is that for those whom I have chosen, without regard to Jews or Gentiles, for those whom I have chosen, which is you, hopefully, and me, those days should be shortened.

So all talk about Christians don't go through the great tribulation is an emotional issue. It is not an intellectual issue. Any sharp high school student who knows his Bible or her Bible can easily disprove it.

Tribulation as the Purification of the Church

But what I'm pointing out to you is it's nothing to fear. It's nothing to fear. We're so funny. We live in the future and the past. And there's people who everything that's happened to them can possibly happen to them.

And they're saying, I'm so glad I won't go through the tribulation. It is so ridiculous. They're already dying of cancer, and their family's broken up, and everything you can imagine, and they're in great pain.

Well, thank God I won't go through the tribulation. It is so nonsensical. We have nothing to fear. There's a purpose for the great tribulation. There's a purpose for it. And it is to purify the bride.

That's the purpose of it. Because right now, the bride is mixed into the Babylonian structures, and it's Laodicean in its nature, lukewarm, and it's a mess. And anybody who studied church history will tell you that whenever the church comes under martyrdom or suffering, it purifies the church.

And you may have seen this in your own life, that when you have no trouble, you get foolish. Did you ever notice that? Well, maybe that's just true of me. But if the pressure wasn't on me all the time, I'd be getting foolish, saying things I shouldn't say, and set myself back five years.

But pressure and pain keeps us praying. How many have noticed that? So there's nothing to fear in tribulation. Acts says you must, through much tribulation, enter the kingdom of God. It does us good. Suffering, according to 1 Peter 4, 1 and 2, purifies us from sin.

The Greater Danger of Temptation and Worldliness

The thing to fear is temptation. And in the end time, there's going to be something called the hour of temptation. And that will be a time of a great and ready access to sin. And that's the thing to be feared, is temptation.

Because because of temptation, the love of many will grow cold. The love of Christians doesn't go cold under tribulation. It grows cold when they have ready access to pornography and to fornication. And that's what causes Christian love to grow cold, or to making a lot of money.

Making a lot of money and material goods will kill your spirit quicker than anything else. The rich have a terrible time entering the kingdom if they can enter at all. So in America, we have ready access to sin.

We have ready access to money. And these two things are to be greatly feared. Greatly feared. Because without realizing it, they chip away. See, Satan is so clever. He doesn't do things all at once. Here's a little bit of time.

And the first thing you know, you're so busy. Well, I don't have time to pray. I don't have time to read my Bible. And then you know what will always follow? You get mad at people in the church. So when you see yourself getting mad at other Christians, you're going to say, whoop, I'm getting cold.

Guarding Spiritual Inheritance Through Perseverance

Because that's the way Satan works. But I want to say a word of warning to all of us. The Bible says, he that sows sparingly will reap sparingly. And it is possible to be saved and yet lose a great portion or all of your reward.

Or all of your reward. So I exhort you, don't trifle with the American culture because it will, it will rob you of a great portion of your inheritance. Because it's so easy to get into the stock market and into entertainment and sin and science and other things.

It's so easy. And we don't recognize these as the problem. They're a tremendous problem because we only have so much time and so much strength. And it's going to be spent somewhere. And we have to take care of our families.

And we have to make our way in this world. But what the average American considers is making his way in the world is not making his way in the world. It's a surfeit of material things. And that's to be feared.

It's to be greatly feared. Not tribulation. Tribulation only causes you to seek God. The message that we won't go through the tribulation, which is totally unscriptural, is pitched to the carnal man. It's not pitched to the spiritual man.

He's not afraid of suffering. It's pitched to the carnal man, particularly the carnal Americans. Oh, good. I won't suffer. I can keep on with my way of life and then not suffer. It's not pitched to the spiritual man.

The spiritual man hears you when you begin to talk about the danger of riches and of sin. Then the spiritual man hears you. The natural man will hear you when you talk about being spared from suffering.

You see there? The spiritual man isn't afraid of suffering. He knows what it does for him. He doesn't like it. But he looks back on his life. He wouldn't trade one bit of suffering he's experienced because he sees what is done within him.

Is that true of you? Would you? Don't you appreciate the things you've suffered? You see what they've done for you? They've cast you toward God. They've given you a breath of compassion for people who also are suffering.

It's made you patient. All kinds of good things. Calms your spirit down. Suffering does all kinds of good things for us. But if we deliberately avoid suffering, first of all, we have to sacrifice our integrity to do so.

In order to avoid suffering, you have to sacrifice your integrity inevitably. And then what happens is we never grow. We don't realize it. But we have possessed our joy, usually at the expense of someone else.

And we never grow. You don't start growing until God begins to demand of you to deny yourself. And you're willing to do that rather than to take your joy at the expense of other people. What I'm talking about is very critical to the Christian life.

Self-Denial as the Path of Christian Growth

You have to be willing to deny yourself. It's a very basis of salvation. Very basis of it is denying yourself, taking off your cross. Apart from that, you don't grow. That's the trigger. That's the dynamic that causes growth, is when you go through the day and you, in the name of Jesus, and because it's the right thing to do, because you don't have any real choice other than by sinning.

But you take the hit. You go through it. Cause you to grow. So God knows what he's doing. And he's made us all little gods, according to the scripture. And the only way God can deal with little gods is by destroying their ability to be their own god.

Because he can't have other gods running around in the creation unless they're totally obedient to him. Do you see that? So it's suffering that does that. So there's no fear of tribulation. And every seasoned, mature Christian has been through plenty of denial, plenty of perplexity, plenty of pressure.

Because that's how you get there. And there's no other way. And we know that when we go to the doctor. We know we may go for a painful procedure. But we look beyond that. And we say, well, I sure don't like this.

And I prefer not. But if this is what it means to bring me up to help on the other side, I'll put up with it. Now, you see, babies can't do that. See, they only know the immediate. Well, the needle's hurting now.

So therefore, it's bad. So therefore, I'll scream. So you see, that's the difference between a baby and an adult. An adult is able to time bind. They're able to say, well, yes, this is going to hurt. But what I want is on the other end of this thing.

So I'll take my hits. And I'll look for the little flowers. There are always little flowers along the way if you don't feel sorry for yourself and start looking for them. There's always some grace for the day to get you through.

And that's an adult. But a baby Christian, and they can be 70 years old, a baby Christian will not do this. Anything comes up they don't like, they start blaming people and start saying, how can I get out of this?

Everything, as a baby, just like a baby would do if you took him down to get vaccinated. How can I get out of this? I don't want this. Well, because they're babies. And God wants us to be mature and realize when God brings us through suffering and pain and perplexity, frustration, then we look up to God and make sure we're not bringing it on ourselves.

And we look up to God and God is saying, this is the way, walk ye in it. You know, and there's no relief in sight. And you say, thank you, Lord. I know that the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.

I trust you. And I know that life is both pain and pleasure. And if you try to make it just pleasure, you lose your soul. I'll tell you another little trick, too, that is helpful to understand. Sometimes we're in great pain and distress and pressure about things.

Victory in the Midst of Affliction

And we pray and we pray and we pray and it doesn't go away. It just seems to hang in there day after day, month after month, year after year. And we pray and we pray and we pray and we pray. More often than not, more often than not, before God removes that circumstance, He will give you perfect victory in the middle of it.

So you'll find it doesn't go away and it doesn't go away and you begin to accommodate it by prayer and reading your Bible and however. And you get so, OK, you know, the edge of the cross gets worn down and it's not biting your shoulder and you're just kind of used to it and everything.

And finally, it's livable. Situation hasn't changed, but it's become livable. And that's when God removes it. That's so funny, but that's what He does. He gives you victory in the middle of it until you're a conqueror right where you are.

Now, this isn't always the case, but I dare say it's more often than not the case because the Lord delights in finishing His work through the trouble so that it isn't troubling you that much anymore. Most of our trouble is coming because there's something being triggered internally.

And when that's finally lit, God says, I don't know if this anymore, He removes it. I remind you of a story with Brother Fullerton. He was an old man that was a great inspiration to us. He was walking quite a distance to the Bible school and he got so tired he could hardly move one foot in front of the other.

Persevering Under God’s Direction

Well, he was in his 60s and he'd had tuberculosis. And so he said, Lord, can I sit down? The Lord said, no, keep going, keep going. Can I? So pretty soon, you're going to feel pretty good. Stepping along, you know, and he's got his second wind and his legs fell all right and everything.

And the Lord said, now rest. He said, but I don't want to rest. Rest. So, I don't know, I get the feeling sometimes that the Lord likes to be in charge. Did you ever get that feeling? Well, be comfortable because there's no temptation taking any of us.

But God, oh, and that's saved and unsaved people. There's no temptation taking anybody, but such as is common to man. But God is faithful, who always makes a way of escape for us. So we do not fear tribulation because that's what Jesus said, pray if it doesn't come on the Sabbath day.

Pray it doesn't come in the winter. None of the things of God are inevitable. They all yield to prayer. And your situation and my situation are not inevitable. They will yield to prayer. So never, never, never think God does not hear you when you pray.

He does hear you. And he set the machinery in motion to answer that prayer. God has to answer it because the covenant is, if you ask anything in my name, I will do it. Well, that can't be broken. But you say, I don't see it.