[...] The great tribulation is not called ‘unequaled’ simply because of some unprecedented degree of human suffering. Though the ‘scale’ of human suffering will indeed be without precedent during the last tribulation, what individuals might face personally cannot be worse than what others of our brethren have faced throughout history without a rapture. The the final tribulation is said to be without equal because it extends to all the natural order. So, of course, human suffering will be co-extensive with the upheaval of a creation that has come to its greatest time of travail.

Therefore, it is not the ‘degree’ of personal suffering that makes this tribulation exceptional from all others, but its ‘scale’ of impact on the world of nature. So I ask: Do we detect a certain selfishness, or subtle presumption of moral superiority in the modern church’s expectation of exemption from a last repeat of the same kind of persecution that their ‘fellow servants and their brethren’ have faced in every age (see Rev 6:11)? I must say that such a doctrine sounds suspiciously accommodating of a soft and untested church that has embraced the cross only in theory as a historical fact in Jesus’ experience, and not as the invariable pattern of the very ‘way’ of God in the experience of every believer before and after Christ (but see Act 14:22). [...]

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Dear friends, I want to recommend a comparatively new book on the rapture question. It is clear and concise, the best thing I’ve seen since Ladd and Gundry. This is not only for those who have unresolved questions concerning the rapture, but for those interested to give answer and help others with this critical question [...]

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[...] In an instant, I have exactly who to recommend on Daniel. First, and most accessible would be S.P. Tregelles’ “Remarks on the Prophetic Visions in the Book of Daniel,” available through Sovereign Grace Advent Testimony in Essex (on line at sgat.org).

Second, or perhaps even first in importance is a much more rare book entitled “Prophetic Interpretations” by P.S.G. Watson. It is available to view on line through the Dallas Theological Online Library, Antiquarian Books. Unfortunately, they have it where it can only be leafed through; it can’t be copied to be printed. If upon your preview of the book, interest should happen to soar, I would be happy to take my xerox copy to a printer here and have a copy made to be sent. I could let you know the cost. But look through it first, and see what you think. In my view, no one is so good as Watson on the case for ‘futurism’ and a literal hermeneutic, particularly in regards to the ‘abomination of desolation’ and the centrality of its place and role in the unfolding of last days events. [...]

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But compliance with the mark is a statement of an already existing condition that is only being manifested, namely, total and irreversible spiritual reprobation. The outward mark becomes the sign and seal of an irreversible threshold that has already been crossed. The mark is irreversible only because those that take it show that they have already passed into an irreversible union with the spirit of Satan. The scriptures speaks of those that are ‘past feeling’, and that have grieved the Spirit to the point of no return. There’s a mysterious threshold here that we see again at the end of the millennium. I have reason to infer that the false church in its steadfast resistance to the last prophetic testimony will not be able to repent past a certain point (I think the middle of the week), so that while a multitude that no one can number is being saved all throughout “the tribulation, the great one” (Mt 24:21; Rev 7:14), the false professing church of apostate ‘Christendom’ will have passed into final reprobation and may become some of the most rabid persecutors and treacherous betrayers of the true church.

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… With the new revelation has come a new language. But this is where we need to exercise caution. We learn from the doctrine of Christ’s pre-existence that for something to be newly revealed does not mean that it has come newly into existence.; This is an important distinction when we are speaking of Christ and the church. Much has come to light in the gospel that had real existence before the dispensation of the fuller revelation. This applies as much to the ‘body of Christ’ as to Christ Himself and the unity of persons in the Godhead. …

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[...] Note that the unequaled trouble lasts a brief 3 1/2 years and ends in nothing short of the resurrection of the righteous (Dan 12:1-2, 11-13). So Jeremiah’s reference to a coming ‘time of Jacob’s trouble’, also described as without equal (Jer 30:7) is shown in Daniel as concluding the last half of the final week of years. In language almost identical to Daniel and Jeremiah, Jesus refers explicitly to Daniel’s prophecy of the abomination of desolation as marking the start of the unequaled tribulation (Mt 24:15, 21), which ends with His return (Mt 24:29-31), as also Paul in 2Thes 2:1-8. Most of John’s revelation is primarily occupied with the same brief period of 3 1/2 years (Rev 6-19). [...]

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… Just as the anointed offices of priest and king meet perfectly in Christ in Zech 6:13, so here is the combined witness of Moses and the prophets all pointing to the perfection that is in Christ. This does not mean, however, that I expect the literal Moses and Elijah to show up in the streets of Jerusalem for the final witness, although certain of the same phenomena associated with their ministries are reproduced in the tribulation judgments. It is enough to see that whoever the witnesses are, they come, like the Lord’s reference to John Baptist, “in the spirit and power” of Elijah, not necessarily the literal individual (which creates more problems for interpretation than it solves). …

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… Notice the the Lord’s unique use of ‘you’ in His indictment. It is the same in Stephen’s apologetic. It is the generic ‘you’ of corporate solidarity, hence an abiding generation. It is a generation that does not escape judgment, regardless of its particular location in chronological time, ‘UNTIL’ …. This is why Jesus could speak of a future day of public acknowledgment of His messianic dignity, and describes it in terms of the generational ‘until YOU will say.’ It is why He could indict His own contemporaries as present in the killing of the prophets in the very persons of their fathers (“whom you slew”). And it is why Zechariah can speak particularly of the last generation of Jewish survivors of the last tribulation as ‘looking on Him whom THEY have pierced,’ as though they were the actual historical murderers of the Messiah…

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The question is who are “the people of the prince that shall come?” Are we to understand this of the Romans that destroyed Jerusalem in 70AD? Does this mean then that we are to trace the coming prince to Roman descent and ancestry? Or, could this refer more particularly to the ‘immediate’ people of a yet future Antichrist that will once more destroy the city and a yet future sanctuary? I take the latter view. Of course, the strength of the former view is that in Dan 2 & 7 the fourth kingdom is clearly Rome. For this cause, many expositors believe they must locate the rise of the Antichrist out of a ‘revived Roman empire’, and therefore expect the Antichrist and his ten nation confederacy to originate in Western Europe among the common market countries. I do not believe this view is necessary for the following reasons: …

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… So I see the mark as the antithesis of the seal of God. It is the mark of final reprobation, and in the middle of the week when all restraint is removed, something appears to happen where those that are particularly set against God and His covenant will be utterly given over to the manifestation of sin in the flesh, so that what has happened with the Antichrist is also being released in those that share spiritual union with him. Impulses once only conceived and restrained by government or conscience will now have unhindered expression in the demonic rage against the people of the covenant, both church and Israel. It is part of God’s plan that evil be revealed in the flesh for its exposure that it might be condemned in the flesh. My wife, Connie, suggested to me, and I agree, that it has something to do with God’s intention to educate the universe of angels and humanity through the demonstration that is wrought out in history. …

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