… If we understand this birth and ascent to have a particular application to the events that begin the unequaled tribulation, then it follows that this intends a perfecting of the church’s faith in preparation for the final conflict. It is not a change of spatial location, but a deeper apprehension and appropriation of the gospel. It is a revelatory event that comes at the end of a travail that has broken the power of self-reliance in the church in analogy to the removal of Jacob’s strength at the end of his travail (Deut 32:36 with Dan 12:7). The ‘rapture’ of the man child signifies the church’s advance triumph over the veil that obscures the gospel from Israel and the nations (Isa 25:7; 2Cor 3:16). This is true of the church of all time, but it will be profoundly apprehended at the end of the travail that precipitates the final tribulation. …

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… But for ‘the escaped of Israel’, it is the ‘Spirit of grace and supplication’ unto repentance, because they see Him in the sense of 2Cor 3:16-18 unto transformation. It is like Paul when he said, “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal His Son in me, …” ( Gal 1:15-16). It comes by a sudden divine arrest at a pre-set time. “Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is come (Ps 102:13). It’s on a fixed divine schedule (see Dan 8:19; 11:27, 29, 35-36). It is what the old English divines called “distinguishing grace.” Still, such a divine act is no less sovereign because it comes at the end of a divinely arranged process (compare Deut 32:36 with Dan 12:7). Significantly, it comes at the end of Jacob’s strength, just as it comes at the end of ours. Therefore, we see that Jewish hearts are prepared for this divinely pre-determined event, and the church has a crucial part and role in that preparation as witness (see Dan 11:33), just as I believe that Stephen’s testimony and martyrdom had a preparatory influence for the predestined event of Paul’s revelation of Christ on Damascus road. …

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… So we fully affirm that a rapture will occur, but not as it is being taught. Those that teach that the rapture is BEFORE the tribulation (called the “pre-tribulational view. ‘Pre’ means before) see it as escape and exemption from the last persecution, which they confuse with the wrath of God, and point out that believers are not ‘appointed to wrath’ (1Thes 5:9). There is, of course, a clear distinction between tribulation and divine wrath. There is a clear distinction throughout the book of Revelation between the saints endure the wrath of man and those that are called ‘earth dwellers’ that experience the wrath of God. Manifestly, there are many saints in the tribulation period that are not “appointed to wrath,” but this exemption does not require physical removal from the scene (Lk 21:18; Rev 7:3; 12:6). …

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[...] So the phenomena associated with the sixth seal takes us to the day of the Lord, which is at the end of the tribulation, whereas the activity of Dan 8:10 starts at the beginning and continues through the tribulation. It is not incorrect to see the relation of the casting down of the stars as a physical sign that the proud powers of the air are now being dethroned, but I would not let the language concerning the displacement of the stars hinder from understanding the passage to refer to physical phenomena as it will “appear” from our perspective. I think what we are seeing in these references are the visual effects of an all out nuclear war. There are many passages that more than suggest that this is taking place when the Lord returns to “destroy those that are destroying the earth” [...]

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[...] Note that Jesus places the stellar upheaval and eclipse immediately AFTER the tribulation, whereas Joel’s prophecy shows this as happening BEFORE the great and notable ‘day of the Lord’. How then can the day of the Lord be held to include the tribulation if the darkness that comes BEFORE the day of the Lord is said by Jesus to come ‘immediately AFTER’ the tribulation? It simply cannot be done; scripture doesn’t permit it. But it must be done if pre-tribulationism is to survive. [...]

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[...] If ever there was an interpretation getting away with exegetical ‘murder’, it’s certainly preterism. They are forced to separate what God has joined. For example, it is exegetically impossible to separate the day of the Lord from the destruction of Jerusalem. The day of the Lord is the hope of Israel in the OT and the church’s hope of Christ’s return in the new. Orthodox preterists rightly recognize the NT’s references to the day of the Lord as still pertaining to the church’s ‘blessed hope’ of Christ’s return, but inconsistently deny its relation to the tribulation and Jerusalem for entirely dogmatic reasons. To do this, they must deny that the post-tribulational return of Christ described in the synoptics (MT 24; Mk 13; Lk 21) is connected with the church’s hope of Christ return, which, of course, the NT itself unambiguously identifies with the still future day of the Lord [...]

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[...] After establishing Jacob’s trouble as synonymous with a future Antichrist time of unequaled great tribulation, it would be helpful to trace the background of the concept in the larger history and goal of the covenant. This is key to showing its future significance, particularly as it relates to Israel. (The significance of Jacob’s trouble for the church has more particularly to do with the final victory of the remnant over Satan (Dan 11:32-35 with 12:1 and Rev 12:12). Of course the history of the concept of Jacob’s trouble begins with the crisis that Jacob faced upon his learning of the approach of Esau with four hundred armed men. This is the crisis of ultimate weakness that prepared Jacob for his desperate wrestling with the angel of the Lord’s presence at the ford of Jabbok. For Jacob, this was the ultimate, divinely appointed crisis that brought about the new priestly brokenness that would now distinguish the true “Israel” (one that has ‘power with God’) to be a priestly blessing to all peoples (Zech 8:23). [...]

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[...] Leave it to me to write some pretty ambiguous things on the fly like that. I should be more careful to read over what I write before releasing it. No, I’m at no variance at all with Bickle or Art or any other “historic” premill (as distinguished from the pre-tribulational pre mill) on the time of the rapture and resurrection of the church at the ‘last trumpet’. I share that view exactly. I am also at one with all premillennialists that recognize that there will be millennial saints in their natural bodies after Christ’s return. Israel receives the grace of repentance and the pouring out of the Spirit AT the point of Christ’s return (the ‘day of the Lord’ Isa 27:13; 59:21; 66:8; Ezek 39:22-29; Zech 12:10; Mt 23:39; 24:29; Acts 2:20; 3:21; 1Thes 5:4). This is the same time that the living church is translated into glorified immortality (compare 1Cor 15:50-54 with Isa 25:8; 27:13). In other words, the same age transitioning, revelational event that translates and raptures us at the time of His appearing, becomes a transforming revelation of mercy to the surviving remnant of Israel. That’s why they go apart to mourn, while we take our place with Christ and the rest of the “spirits of just men made perfect” in positions of rule. However, I believe that like the angels, the perfected spirits of the glorified redeemed are unseen to the natural eyes of the inhabitants of the millennial earth. That’s my view, as this alone makes sense of any literal reading of many things that scripture shows to be happening at the same time. [...]

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[...] It is not scriptural to expect that the church of the last tribulation will attain to a stature that will so eclipse the earliest church as to provoke the Jew to jealousy in a way never accomplished through the apostles themselves. No, rather, it is as you suggest. There will always be the mixed reaction, and I believe until the end, the response will be predominantly negative, more often anger than emulation. Though, of course, there will always be “some,” but ‘only’ some that will be moved to the kind of jealousy that leads to salvation, but even this will often, perhaps most often, follow an initial reaction of hostility.

I especially appreciated how you put it: “the entire group could not have been anything but provoked just by the mere preaching of gospel of grace that demolishes religious self-righteousness and extends mercy to them who are ‘no people’”. That’s the point. But NOT only Israel’s salvation at the end of tribulation, but the purification and maturation of the church through tribulation (Dan 12:10; Acts 14:22) is all part of God’s strategy to vindicate His name and glory in both as inextricable aspects of the eschatological vindication of the Word concerning both. [...]

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[...] Could it be that this is a clue that the sealed remnant represents a heavenly spiritual corporate entity/ or company that anticipates, as first-fruits, not only the literal gathering of Israel at Christ’s return, but the perfection in love of an overcoming church that “loves not its life unto death according to Rev 12? That is, this is the first fruits of covenant fulfillment, not only of millennial Israel, but also, and even more particularly, this is the eschatological forerunners of the glorious church of Christ as it is about to be perfected through the sufferings of the final test (Rev 3:10). These are free from sensual entanglements, as Samson the Danite was not, and these are free from idolatry, as the tribe that was particularly prone to idolatry was not, and these are vigilant and set for the defense of the gospel, not as Dan that was slack and negligent concerning its duty to participate in the defense of their brethren. They were not their brother’s keeper. But these, in complete contrast of the compromised tribe of Dan, are perfect in their love and faithful unto death. Though hunted, persecuted, even killed, paradoxically, not a hair of their head will perish. They are sealed; already ascended far above the access of principalities and powers, because their faith has found an unshakable resting place. I take this in complete keeping with the eschatological birthing of the man-child (Rev 12), a key to which is Paul’s remark concerning the relationship of travail to the “formation of Christ” in his wavering believers. See what I mean? These are those in whom Christ has been formed to such a degree as to manifest Him in the flesh through their faith and love unto death. [...]

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