LastDaysTwo

PRE-TRIBULATION ~ The Rapture will happen before the Antichrist rises to power. All Christians, and (according to some interpreters) all
innocent individuals, including infants and fetuses, will instantly disappear. As a result, the governments of the world will declare a state of emergency,
which the Antichrist will use to his advantage to come to power. In the Pre-Tribulation Rapture view, there will be no Christians at the beginning of the
seven-year reign of the Beast. Those who will be targeted in the Great Tribulation are people who will become Christians during the reign of the Beast.

MID-TRIBULATION ~ The Rapture will happen when the Antichrist accepts worship at the rebuilt Temple. Thus, Christians will see many signs of
the end, and will warn many people. But the Christians will disappear when the Antichrist accepts worship at the Temple. Many of the people left
behind will become Christians almost instantly and they will be the targets of the Great Tribulation.

POST-TRIBULATION ~ The Rapture will happen at the end of the Reign of the Beast. The church will go straight through the Great Tribulation.
There will be no sudden disappearance of Christians at the beginning of the Reign of the Beast. The Rapture is simply this: when Christ comes down,
the saints will go up.

PART SIX: WHICH VIEW IS RIGHT?

The Post-Tribulation view is the easiest Premillennial view to harmonize with First Thessalonians 4:14-18. Paul taught that "the dead in Christ shall rise
first." Rev. 13:7 and 13:15 state that Christians will be killed by the Beast and the False Prophet. Since the dead Christians are said to rise before the
Rapture, how can the Rapture happen before the Tribulation in which they are killed?

In the Pre-Tribulation and Mid-Tribulation views, one has to say there are two returns of Christ (that is, one invisible return and one visible return), and
three resurrections from the dead (one resurrection of the dead before the Rapture, a second resurrection, when Christ returns, of the dead who died
in the Great Tribulation, and a third resurrection, after the Millennium, of those who died during the Millennium and the Final Battle). This seems too
complex to be realistic.

In the early church, those who were Premillennial were also Post-Tribulation. Of all the Premillennial views, it is the least complex and, in my opinion, it
makes the most sense. None of the Premillennial views allow one to believe that Christ could come visibly at any time. They all share a problem:
unbelievers in the final generation get extra warnings that Christ is coming soon.

However, the Premillennial views do not all share this problem to the same extent. In the Pre-Tribulation and Mid-Tribulation views, unbelievers get a
very large clue that the end is near: millions of people suddenly disappear. In the Post-Tribulation view, unbelievers still see signs of the end, but these
events are more capable of natural explanations. Faith is still required for a person to accept their prophetic significance.

Also, the Post-Tribulation view does not give anyone the impression that God will keep them from suffering. It shares the sentiment of Acts 14:22,
"We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God." Throughout the New Testament, the inspired writers instruct believers in general to
prepare to suffer for their faith, not to expect God to whisk them away from trouble. The Post-Tribulation view agrees with that outlook, appealing to
people to make sure they are well-equipped to "withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand," as Ephesians 6:13 says.

PART SEVEN: SOME INFLUENTIAL WRITINGS ABOUT THE LAST DAYS

From the 400's to the early 1800's, practically everyone who held a view about the Millennium was either Amillennial or Postmillennial. But in the
1820's, in England, Edward Irving began to preach that the Jews would return to their land, and that Jesus would literally reign on earth. He also
taught that all Christians should speak in tongues, and that Jesus had a sinful nature. Before Irving died in 1834, he influenced a preacher named John
Nelson Darby, who founded the Plymouth Brethren denomination. Refining some of Irving's ideas, Darby promoted Premillennialism until his death in
1882.

Meanwhile, in the United States, a Baptist named William Miller became famous in the 1830's-40's when, in his book, Evidence from Scripture and
History of the Second Coming of Christ - About the Year 1843, he predicted that Christ would soon return. After 1844, Miller realized he was
wrong, and he stopped making predictions. In the 1880's, one of Miller's followers, Ellen G. White, wrote a book called The Great Controversy, in
which she proposed that there would someday be a great tribulation: those who worshipped on Sunday would persecute those who worshipped on
Saturday. The book had mainly three points: (1) Protestantism was better than Catholicism, (2) William Miller had been a man of God, and (3) if you
went to church on Sunday, you were wearing the Mark of the Beast. Although over a century has come and gone, and there is still no Sunday-related
persecution, White's book is still published by the group she helped create, the Seventh-Day Adventists, under the title, "America in Prophecy."

Beginning in the 1920's, The Watchtower Society, known as "Jehovah's Witnesses," published a book entitled Millions Now Living Will Never Die.
This book promoted the Watchtower Society's unique view in which an earthly paradise like the Millennium never ends: 144,000 people will live
eternally in heaven, while the rest of the saved will live in an earthly paradise forever (and the unsaved will not exist at all). Prior to 1914, they taught
that Jesus would return in 1914. Afterwards, they adjusted their beliefs and claimed that Jesus returned invisibly in 1914 (Charles T. Russell, the
founder of the Watchtower Society, had previously stated that the invisible presence of the Lord had come in 1874).

The Watchtower Society's predictions look more unlikely every day, especially the prophecy that some people alive in 1914 will still be alive when
Christ inaugurates his Paradise-on-Earth kingdom. Because of this, the original form of Millions Now Living Will Never Die is no longer widely
distributed by the Watchtower Society. Its greatest impact was not its answers, but the attention it brought to the questions it raised. For instance, if
the 144,000 were not a special class of people in heaven, who were they?

In 1909, C.I. Scofield published the Scofield Reference Bible, which included many footnotes about "Dispensationalism," the concept that God
dispensed His grace to mankind through different means at different times. This was really nothing new, but when it came to the last days, Scofield
presented the last seven years before Christ's visible return as a different dispensation. This resulted in some new interpretations. For instance, the
Sheep in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25 were not seen as merciful people living at any time, but were identified as people who
did good works for believers during the Tribulation. Thus, Scofield said, there is no lack of harmony between their work-based rewards and our
salvation by grace, because their judgment day and our judgment day are two different days. The Scofield Reference Bible became popular just as
several young American denominations were forming, and it served as a major textbook for them until each group developed its own educational
system. To this day, along with the similar Ryrie Study Bible, it educates thousands of church-leaders in many countries.

In 1915, Clarence Larkin published Dispensational Truth, which presented Premillennialism in a thorough, systematic way, with charts of events in the
last days. Both Scofield and Larkin were influenced by the Niagara Bible Conferences which had been held in 1883-1897, from which American
fundamentalism emerged as a distinct theological movement.

The Late Great Planet Earth, by Hal Lindsey, was written in 1970 -- a tense time for Israel, and for the United States. It eventually sold over 25
million copies. Lindsey, relying heavily on Larkin's charts, identified the nations led by Satan in the last days: referring to Ezekiel 39:6, he wrote,
"Russia � will have fire fall upon them. � God could allow the various countries to launch a nuclear exchange." [source for all quotations of Hal
Lindsey: The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey & C.C. Carlson, 1970 Zondervan Publishing House]

Some prophetic symbols in the Old Testament were given brand new political identities.

Maps in the book showed how Russia's forces would swoop down on Israel from Greece and Syria while an Arab army attacked from the southeast.
Lindsey interpreted passages in Ezekiel as referring to "the Red Chinese war machine." Daniel 11:40-45, which had been seen as a description of
obscure intertestamental history, suddenly became descriptive of a battle between modern Egyptians and Russians. It was claimed that the book of
Revelation "seems to indicate an all-out attack of ballistic missiles upon the great metropolitan areas of the world." Lindsey concluded his book with
some "forecasts" (not prophecies ~ he made no claim to be infallible): open persecution will soon break out. The U.S. will lose its position of
leadership of the Western world. Western Europe will unite and, led by the Antichrist, will control both Russia and Red China. There will be a limited
use of nuclear weapons. Elsewhere in the book, he stated, "It is certain that the Temple will be rebuilt."

None of that has happened, except the uniting of Europe, which was no surprise; the Common Market already existed when Lindsey wrote. Europe is
more united now than previously, but its member-states number over 14 (not ten), and it is still a bureaucracy, not a dictatorship led by a powerful,
popular individual.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was obvious that the specific proposals in The Late Great Planet Earth did not fit reality. But, helped along
by uncautious writers such as Salem Kirban (author of The Rise of Anti-Christ) and by serious academic works, such as Premillennialism: Defended,
the view remained popular - winning the hearts and minds of many evangelicals largely by default. Equally interesting books promoting Amillennialism
or Postmillennialism were just not being written.

In 1988, Edgar C. Whisenant outdid Lindsey in the How-Wrong-Can-You-Be contest, by publishing 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in
1988. In a brief time, over six million copies were distributed. The booklet was short-lived, but it was important because it accomplished two things.
First, it kept people thinking about the prophecies. Second, it provoked many preachers and scholars to protest both the specific identifications made
by Lindsey and the specific date-setting done by Whisenant.

Because of the failure of Lindsey's forecasts and Whisenant's predictions, Premillennialists became more cautious. Even with the year 2000
approaching, most Premillennialists had learned not to publicly set dates or assign specific identifications to most prophetic symbols. John Hagee, a
TV-preacher and writer, is an exception; he does not set precise dates but he does state categorically that we are now in the terminal generation.
Hagee is the editor of The Prophecy Study Bible. Another exception is Harold Camping, who, using a bizarre interpretive technique, predicts (as of
December 2010) that the end of the world will come in 2011.

The Left Behind books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins have taken many of the ideas of Lindsey (borrowed from Scofield and Larkin, who adapted
them from Darby, who got the idea from Irving), and given them a post-Cold-War setting. The result is a series of novels about what it would be like
to like in the last seven years before the return of Christ in a world in which the Premillennial, Pre-Tribulation Rapture view was right.

Other evangelical authors such as Pat Robertson and Robert Van Kampen have also written novels based on their views of the end-times (Robertson
wrote The End of the Age, and Van Kampen, now deceased, wrote The Sign and The Fourth Reich). However, they have not had the sensational
success which LaHaye and Jenkins have had. (Robertson expressed a suspicion that the world would end in 2007, obviously incorrectly.) The Left
Behind books and movies may be considered a narrative form of Bible commentaries, promoting Premillennialism and a Pre-Tribulation Rapture. Few
such books are likely to become classics -- but of course, their authors did not expect them to do so.

The End