Q: Will the Church go through the Tribulation Period?
Q (3 of 3): [Dr. Mike] Thanks for the informative Q&A about the Rapture of the Church and Christ’s Second Coming. You touched on an important subject to a lot of us: The Tribulation Period. Can you provide Scriptural references to the Body of Christ escaping the Tribulation?
A: Like most theologians and Bible scholars, I [too] believe that the Bible clearly teaches in prophesy that the Lord’s Church will be removed before the start of the Tribulation Hours, which is the judgment of a Holy God, poured out on an unbelieving world. As a matter of fact, it’s the one major event that pushes the world into the great Tribulation, after Christ returns in bodily form, in the air, for His waiting Church, to reward them according to their earthly works.
Some of the major Scriptures that we use for justification are found on the Book of Thessalonians:
1Thessalonians 4:13-18, “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.”
2Thessalonians 2:1-12, “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 a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. 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,