Lesson 218 – Three-Quarter Tribulationism (continued)

© Charles A. Clough 2003

Charles A. Clough
Biblical Framework Series 1995–2003

Part 6: New Truths of the Kingdom Aristocracy
Chapter 5 – The Destiny of the Church

Lesson 218 – Three-Quarter Tribulationism (cont’d)

27 Feb 2003
Fellowship Chapel, Jarrettsville, MD
www.bibleframework.org

I wanted to go back in the notes to just point to certain things, Table 9 on page 127 because I am afraid we’ll lose the forest for the trees if we don’t just review a principle here. What we’re trying to do is look at how to relate the end of the historical period, the end of history as we know it, and relate two stories: the story of Israel and the story of the church. We’ve recognized that these are two different stories. Israel is a nation; a nation has laws, statutes, a penal code, what we call civil sanctions for non-compliance with the Law. The church doesn’t because the church is not a nation. These are two different kinds of entities, and the big thing is, how does history terminate with these two stories?

We said that the Israel story as we see it in the Old Testament looks forward to a time of tribulation, and that time of tribulation is that period of history which, by suffering, prepares the nation for the Messiah. Then the Messiah will come and set up this Kingdom; this is a Messianic Kingdom. But there’s this Tribulational period that precedes that, to get two things in that Tribulation. Number one is the nation Israel has to be willing to accept their Messiah. All that wasn’t clear in the Old Testament, lots of the details. But by the time of the Gospels and by the time of the end of Jesus’ ministry when He said, His closing words to the nation: Israel, you’re not going to see me until you say “Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord.” These are the last words of the Lord Jesus Christ to the nation Israel. And He gave them the ultimatum that until He is nationally welcomed there will be no return. So in order for Him to be nationally welcomed something has to happen to the nation because the nation doesn’t accept Jesus as the Messiah. So whatever happens, the Tribulation is a time when God applies the pressure in a geophysical and political way to that nation.

Not just Israel is involved, but the Gentile nations are also involved in this Tribulational period because the other purpose of the Tribulation is to put pressure on all nations to decide whether they recognize Israel as the priestly nation. That’s why the Lord Jesus Christ has the separation of the sheep and the goats. He’s talking about judging people going into the Millennial Kingdom based upon their response to the Word of God promulgated through Israel, through Jews.

That’s one story, on page 127 we have the story of the church and the church looks forward to a time when it’s going to be raptured with the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the second story. There’s an instantaneous transformation and resurrection that happens, in “the twinkling of an eye.” So there’s some future time in history when a very stupendous event is going to take place. Now the problem is, how do you tie these two together, such that when you get done, it fits the text of the Scripture? On page 127, I’ve tried to remind you again of certain distinctions that are made in Scripture about this future time period. I’ve labeled the left side of the chart as the Rapture; the right side of that chart as the return. The return summarizes the idea of Jesus as the Messiah returning to His nation and therefore certain things are mentioned there. If you skim down, several of the things I want you to remember as we review a little bit. On the second row on the right side where it says: Judgment of nations with everyone in natural bodies and inauguration of the Kingdom on earth,” that’s a state, a state of existence. So when this Messianic Kingdom begins it begins with people in natural, not resurrected, in natural bodies. Why do we say that? Because people are going to have babies in the Millennium; resurrected people—there is no marriage so resurrected bodies don’t reproduce. Mortal bodies reproduce; not resurrection bodies.

We have other notices; we have death in the Millennial Kingdom. So we know from that that the Millennial Kingdom prophecies are talking about people in natural bodies. We have a way of dealing with that. The way amillennialists sometimes do is to allegorize those passages and say well, it really doesn’t mean that, it’s just emblematic of the eternal state. But you can’t get so greasy with the way you interpret the text here; it doesn’t allow you to do that.

Another thing to notice on the right column which is important, the fourth one down, where it says: “Unbelievers are removed and believers are left,” and that’s the motif, John the Baptist, the baptism of fire, etc. Notice who is taken; the people who are taken are taken away because the people who are left are going to be the nucleus for the Kingdom of God on earth, so that you wouldn’t want to take the believers away in order to set this up. However, on the left side you have the fact that believers are removed and unbelievers are left.

The point of Table 9 is this: if you look at all the Scriptures you seem to be dealing here with two distinct things that are happening. One thing that is happening is Jesus is doing something and terminating the church. The other thing, the return, is His program of ending history with regard to Israel and the nations. So that’s the problem that as you work with these pre-trib, post-trib, mid-trib, three-quarter trib, that’s what’s going on in the background. It’s trying to get these two stories together.

We’ve already dealt with the post-tribulational people, on pages 126–129 we dealt with their idea, the post-tribulationalists, post means after, after the Tribulation the Rapture will occur. So their picture is that you have Daniel’s 70^th week, and then at the end of Daniels’ 70^th, week you have both the Rapture and the return, the end of both Israel and the church. That’s post-tribulationalism. In other words, what they’re doing is they’re saying that those are two parts of the same event and they’re very quick. We gave you some reasons why that particular synthesis has problems. We’ve gone through that so I think you should be familiar with it. Basically what it is is that you’ve got the church existing during this entire period of the Tribulation when the Bible says the church is going to be exempt from the wrath of God. Now you’ve got to do something about this. And post-tribulationalists do it one of two ways, there are only two ways of doing it, and that is that you have to somehow protect the church from the wrath of God during this period of time, but the problem with doing that is when you read the Book of Revelation do you find believers in the Book of Revelation not affected by the wrath of God? You find them persecuted, martyred and everything else. So it doesn’t fit.

The second way they do it is to consider this whole period not the wrath of God; the wrath of God is just the last few minutes of the Tribulation. That doesn’t fit. So there are a number of issues that have come up, plus the fact that you’ve got other things because part of this church story isn’t just the Rapture, you’ve got the Bema Seat judgment, and you’ve got the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, two more events that have to happen. And they have to happen before the Messiah comes back to His Kingdom because when He comes back to His Kingdom what does He bring with Him? He’s bringing with Him His bride. He’s bringing with Him the saints in white robes so all of this has had to have taken place pretty fast. That’s the problem with the post-tribulation position.

Then we went to the Three-quarter position. I’m calling it Three-quarter Tribulationalism, not Pre-Wrath, although that’s the title of one of the two books that outlines the position. The reason I’m doing that is because if you look carefully, all of these events are Pre-Wrath. There is not one of these positions that isn’t pre-wrath, meaning that the church is taken out of prior to the wrath of God, because they’re constrained by that Scripture. Post-tribulation might be said in some of its forms not to do that. The deal with Three-quarter Tribulation is … again, here’s the period, seven years, same period, and what they do is they recognize there’s this halfway point where abomination of desolation occurs, etc. but they’ve replaced the Rapture over here in the second half of the Tribulation; so that’s why we call it the Three-quarter, you’ve got two quarters here and one quarter there, so it’s three-quarters; that’s why we call it the Three-quarter Tribulation position.

Figure 8. The Three Quarter Tribulation Scenario of Van Kampen and Rosenthal that divides the period into three parts. The Rapture occurs half-way through the second 3.5-year period of the 7-year span of Daniel’s 70^th Week.

We diagramed that on Figure 8 on page 129. If you look at that diagram there are certain things that have to fit to make that diagram work, to make that scheme work you have to set it up so that the wrath of God occurs only in this last period. That constrains how you’re going to move the text around and the details. This is your anchor; the wrath of God is that last quarter. What happens in the diagram is that the seals … there are three series of judgments in the Book of Revelation, the breaking of the seals, there are the trumpet judgments and the bowl judgments or the vial judgments and there are seven of each. There are various arguments about how these all fit together but the point is there are these three judgments.

The seal judgments are the first set and you notice on the diagram that the first four seal judgments are placed in the first half of the Tribulation. Why? Notice in the second part seal judgments five and six occur. Why do they do that? Because the sixth seal, in the sixth seal there’s a statement made, “behold the wrath of God.” So that’s an explicit text; now we’ve got the text thing, the wrath of God is here. That’s why if you hold to the Three-quarter position you have to have the first five seals that way and you have to make the seventh seal on the other side of that point, and that’s where they locate the Rapture.

Follow the text on the bottom of page 129, “Daniel’s 70^th week is divided into three parts instead of the customary two halves of three and a half years each,” normally most prophetic schemes of lots and lots of different schools don’t do this. This is absolutely unique to the Three-quarter position of making this seventh week in these terms. It’s usually made just two; that’s something to observe about it. “The term ‘tribulation’ as a title for this seven-year period is dropped” and the word “Tribulation” is now attached to this thing, that first half of the second part. “Moreover, the meaning of the term is changed to exclude any of God’s judgments.”

Why do they have to do that? Look at the diagram. Where is the Rapture of the church? The Rapture of the church is located in this scheme, right here. If you have the Rapture of the church who is still on earth at this point in time? The church, so you can’t have the wrath of God there so they’ve got to make the wrath of God over here. But the Tribulation is spoken of, the way they interpret Matthew 24, because they’ve identified the Rapture as occurring in Matthew 24, so Jesus said the Great Tribulation is coming, so now you’ve got to make the Great Tribulation this side of the Rapture. But if you do that you can’t have the Tribulation being the wrath of God. So you’ve got to make the wrath of God on one side of the Rapture and the Tribulation on the other side. That’s one of the problems here; the definition of “Tribulation” is required to be changed.

Turn to Revelation 6 because this is an anchor text with this particular position. Again, this is not a class in eschatology, although it’s getting to sound that way, if it were we’d go through this in far more detail. All I’m trying to do is get you acquainted with these different positions so you at least can recognize them when you read things and when you have Bible study. Revelation 6:17, this is what is spoken of by the people in verse 15, so go to verse 15 first and read through verses 15, 16, and 17.

Verse 15, “And the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man,” these are universal terms; these are chunks of human society, everybody, the rich, the poor, the free, the slave. The idea here is that everybody in the human race is saying this. Verse 16, “and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; [17] for the great day of their wrath has come; and who is able to stand?”

Just think about this apart from all this detail. Just imagine this moment in history. Here you have millions of people on the planet, different nations, different people, utterly different circumstances, some living in cities, some live in the country, some very well-educated, some no education, people speaking all different kind of languages. But this text tells you that they all have a fear, and not only do they have a fear, they know the source of the fear because notice how in verse 16 they ascribe the source of the fear, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.”

What does that tell you about the hearts of the people who would say such a thing? Do they have a relationship with God? Absolutely not! They, as sinners, are in deep and profound fear of the wrath of Almighty God. It’s fear, I mean, what greater fear can you have than what you see expressed in this passage of Scripture. Everybody is afraid; they’re afraid! And not only are they afraid, they know exactly what they are afraid of. All the veils and the curtains and the sweet words and all the bologna talk is all brushed aside, now sin emerges. Now everybody is really shooting straight here, we fear God and we fear that One that sits on His throne.

There’s no ambiguity about who Jesus is in this hour, everybody knows who Jesus is, now let’s stop the bologna talk, let’s get straight, everybody knows who Jesus is at this point in history and they know they are in trouble. They know they are under the wrath of God, they know they are sinners. And not only are they sinners but the time for escaping from the consequences of sin is rapidly coming to a halt here. So that’s the recognition.

Then in verse 17 they make the statement about the wrath of God, “the great day of their wrath has come,” notice how theologically precise this statement is. These are unbelievers; they’re not Unitarians anymore. I mean, they recognize distinctions in the Godhead, the day of “their,” plural, “their wrath has come; and who is able to stand?” What happens in Three-quarter Tribulationalism is that this verse, verse 17 is said to be a prediction of the next seal, that is, the great day of the wrath is about to begin is the way verse 17 is interpreted in this view. This is the end of the sixth seal and the beginning of the seventh.

The problem here is that historically most people have said that verse 17 is retrospective, not forecasting; it’s looking back and verses 16 and 17 are expressing a conclusion of people who have sat there and watched seal after seal after seal judgment and the world is unraveling, politically, geophysically, in every way, and they’re watching sights that have never been seen before in history and they’re coming to the conclusion from the first prior judgments that the wrath of God has come, this is the day of the wrath of God. They are becoming aware of this. It’s not that this hasn’t been the wrath of God and now it’s really going to be the wrath of God; it’s rather it’s a conclusion from these previous elements. But the Three-quarter position holds that verse 17 is prophetic, it is an announcement of what is going to happen. The question, of course, is “How would unbelievers be prophets and know that the wrath of God is going to come different than what they’ve already experienced?”

The paragraph on page 130, “Since the ‘wrath of God’ is mentioned in Revelation 6:17 in connection with the sixth seal judgment, that seal must be pushed forward into the second half of Daniel’s 70^th week. Customarily, the sixth seal has been understood to occur by the midpoint of the 70^th week, not later.” But now because of this idea of wrath, Rosenthal and Van Kampen have to push the sixth seal halfway through the last half of the Tribulation. “By pushing that seal forward in the 70^th week, little time remains for the seventh seal, the seven trumpet judgments and the seven bowl or vial judgments.” Now everything is getting squashed in the last fourth quarter, you’ve pushed everything up that way. “As a result,” there’s not enough room in the Three-quarter trib position to get the bowls done by the end of the 70^th week. So part of their position is they’ve got to spill those over into the 75-day period after Christ returns when He’s trying to clean up and get things ready for the Millennium, and that’s kind of incongruous.

So that’s one of the problems. I know this may frustrate some of you who aren’t acquainted with prophecy and don’t worry about all these details. If that’s where you’re at right now … this presumes quite a bit of knowledge of the Scriptures, but if you don’t get anything out of this discussion, at least get this out of it, that when you change an interpretation of a verse over here, you’re going to change other things. You can’t play with the text over here and just interpret any way you want and not have repercussions across the board. You’re dealing with a system, an integrated system here. And if you do that, that’s fine, I’m not saying don’t examine things, but just understand if you examine a verse and it could mean this or it could mean that, you’d better think to yourself well if it means that then what happens to this verse, this verse and this verse. That’s the way you want to think about these things.

Turn to Matthew 24:22, this is another text that has an unusual spin to it in the Three-quarter position. If you feel bogged down by these details, just understand when we’re all done with these views we’re going to go into what the application of prophecy to the Christian life is, and it’ll be very practical and you’ll see then that this eschatology stuff does have some practical implications. In Matthew 24:22, here is a statement that Jesus makes that the Three-quarter position takes up, runs with it in a way that no one ever ran with it before and comes to a very interesting conclusion. Jesus has been discussing the horrors of this time, verse 19, “woe to those who are with child and to those who nurse babies in those days!” For pregnant women and women who are nursing, [20] “pray that your flight may not be in the winter, or on a Sabbath.” When you have to get out of Jerusalem, remember Matthew 24 deals with Jews in Jerusalem, not Greeks in the Aegean area, the whole context of Matthew 24 is right there at the Temple. And he’s talking about fleeing.

Now why would it be bad for the women who are pregnant and women who are nursing? We’re talking about a mass refugee situation here, they are told to evacuate from the city of Jerusalem. That’s travel, and it was difficult for a pregnant and difficult for women who would be nursing their babies in that day. They didn’t have SUVs to go out into the desert with here; we’re talking about people having to walk, put on the back of a mule. Get out of Jerusalem, Jesus says, and you’d better pray that it’s not going to be on a Sabbath either, because on the Sabbath you’ve got rules that say how far you can travel and how you can travel, or how you can’t travel is a better way of putting it. So He’s telling them you’d just better pray that it doesn’t happen under these circumstances, because this stuff … He says we really are talking serious stuff here and you want to be able to be flexible and move when you have to move.

Then He says, verse 21, “for then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, or ever shall.” That “great tribulation” traditionally has referred to this second period of time here. But in the pre-wrath Rapture it can’t refer to the whole second half because you’ve already taken up half of the second half with the wrath of God. So now what are we going to do with the Great Tribulation? We’ve got to shorten it; we’ve got to compress it so that instead of being three and a half years long it’s one half times three and one half long, i.e. it’s in this period. How is this done in this view? Because of verse 22, “unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days shall be cut short.” The idea there is that it’s not forty-two months long; it’s been cut short. Why? To alleviate suffering.

Now we’re going to go through the critique of this viewpoint starting with the last paragraph on page 130, here’s the first point and here are the problems this position runs into. All positions run into problems, it’s just you have t pick your problems and minimize them. So here’s the three-quarter position. I’ll draw a diagram, here’s the beginning of the Tribulation, mid point, end point, and there’s the Rapture; Rapture, return. So the three-quarter Tribulation, on a positive note, does distinguish the Rapture from the return. At least they’ve got that straight that those are two different things. Here’s the first problem.

“Three-quarter Tribulationism starts, unfortunately,” with some bad exegesis, and winds up, because it has bad exegesis, it winds up creating secondary problems that nobody else has. This view, it wasn’t noticed when it first came out because people read the book and said ooh, isn’t that a neat idea, but after people began to study it they said wait a minute here, we’re creating more problems than we’re solving, so I’m going to go through some of those.

“From Table 8 we observed that Israel looked forward throughout the Old Testament with dread to a time of tribulation.” What did we do weeks and weeks ago? We went through Old Testament history and I was showing you out of the Old Testament how this occurred. “Old Testament revelation supplies sufficient information to understand clearly the meaning of the term. During Old Testament history God caused various judgments that prepared Israel for the ultimate judgment or tribulation yet to come.”

Let’s pause here and draw upon your memory bank of what went on in the Old Testament. When God judged Israel, what were some of the ways He judged it? He judged it by famine, Elisha, a famine; He judged Israel by sending armies from Babylon in, the prophet said that’s a judgment of God. So in the Old Testament the judgments of God consisted of both the wrath expressed indirectly, i.e., both indirect judgments which would be men, armies, and direct judgments which would be things like famine, earthquakes, disease, etc. It’s very, very clear. If you want proof of this go back to the original Mosaic Covenant and find the place where cursings are described, Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 28. When you look there what do you find? Both direct and indirect judgments are called cursings. So there should be no problem if you know the Old Testament coming into this discussion that when the wrath of God occurs it can occur either indirectly through people and armies or it can occur directly through nature.

Continuing, “During Old Testament history God caused various judgments that prepared Israel for the ultimate judgment or tribulation yet to come. As we pointed out in discussing Table 8, these Old Testament divine interventions consisted of both human armies and geophysical catastrophes. Therefore, Three-quarter Tribulationism’s attempt to separate the 70^th week events into purely human invasions and persecutions that occur in the first two sections of Figure 8 and divine geophysical catastrophes that occur only in the third Day-of-the-Lord section is artificial and unbiblical.” What they have to do, remember, it gets back they can’t have the wrath of God prior to the Rapture point. But they’ve got the Tribulation prior to the Rapture point. So how do you have the Tribulation prior to the Rapture point without getting hit with the wrath of God? So what these folks do is they redefine wrath of God to refer only to what kind of judgments? Direct miraculous natural interventions; see the picture, so that everything that occurs here is the wrath of men. That’s the idea.

We’re in Matthew so turn to page 131 and Matthew 24:7. We’re talking about this earlier period. What do you observe in verse 7 that is not due to human agents? Look at verse 7; these are judgments. Famines and earthquakes—are those caused by people or are those caused directly by God? They’re caused directly by God. But this school has to somehow get around verse 7 because 7 is talking about back here, not even in the Great Tribulation, but you’ve got the wrath of God here. Do you see the problem? You can’t get away from this thing, it’s like glue, it’s like fly paper, you step on it and it just sticks to your shoe. Whatever you do with these prophecies in here you wind up getting stuck with this wrath of God issue. And it doesn’t solve the problem to try to play games with redefining what wrath means. So that’s the first criticism of the Three-quarter view. It violates the Old Testament custom, norm and standard that God’s wrath is by either direct or indirect channels, it can’t be separated.

On page 131 we go to the second item of critique of this position. “The Old Testament concept of tribulation includes the metaphor of birth pains. The Old Testament metaphor of birth pains includes all of Daniel’s 70^th week, not part of it.” Jesus explicitly labeled the first part of the 70^th week as a time of … and look at Matthew 24:8, “But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.” He’s talking about the first half of Daniel’s week here. In other words, the baby, the Kingdom, is being delivered but there’s a birth pain going on here and Jesus is saying here, right here, is the beginning of the birth pangs. “Jesus explicitly labeled the first part of the 70^th week as a time of the ‘beginning of birth pains.’ Paul confirms this usage (1 Thessalonians 5:3). This birth-pain metaphor encompasses all seven years as a time of tribulation. The term ‘tribulation’ as a title for the entire 70^th week, therefore, is legitimate.” That’s why it’s used. Yes, the Scriptures don’t use that word in a technical sense, but the reason theologians and Bible students use the word is what else are you going to call it? It’s seven years here of hell on earth. You’ve got to have a name for it; if you don’t like Tribulation call it Hell on Earth but call it something that fits what’s going on.

The problem is that you’ve got … the word “Tribulation” has a meaning explicitly connected with birth pangs and pregnancy, and delivery of the baby, and it’s used throughout the whole 70^th week. That’s the second criticism, that is, that all of the 70^th week is considered to be child birth. It’s as though the universe goes through what a woman goes through when she delivers her baby. It’s as though the whole universe is pregnant with the Kingdom. And it goes through this paroxysm of delivery to get this Kingdom born. And to show that it’s not just people going through it, the whole physical universe does this. There are famines, there are earthquakes, the sun and the moon act differently, meteorites come to the earth, there is chaos, there is astro-chaos, so it’s as though the whole universe throbs at one with man trying to get to this point of delivery.

The third criticism, next paragraph: “Three-Quarter Tribulationalism correctly holds that the expression ‘Great Tribulation’ begins after the midpoint of the 70^th week. … Because of its confused notion of tribulation, however, this view can’t allow the tribulation of the Great Tribulation to last a full 42 months.” So we’re zeroing in on the third criticism and we’re saying look, it’s talking, correctly so, that the Great Tribulation begins right here, we agree with that. But as you see, they can’t permit the Tribulation to go; they’ve got to compress it to get it on the other side of the Rapture so we can get the wrath of God over here. And they use Matthew 24:22 to say it’s been shortened. Now watch what happens, this is the kind of stuff you get into here.

“To try to resolve this dilemma, Rosenthal seizes upon Jesus’ remark about the Great Tribulation being shortened. Interpreting this remark as a modification to the prior-announced 42-month period,” in other words, God announced a period 42 months long in Daniel 12; what Rosenthal is saying is that that 42 month announcement has been changed and shortened. Whereas other guys would come out and say what Jesus is saying in Matthew 24:22 is that 42 months is a short period of time, we could have had the Tribulation last longer, but we shortened it to 42 months so you only have to worry about 42 months. But Rosenthal says no, that’s not what it means; he’s saying it was announced at 42 months and then after that announcement God chose to shorten it further. So there’s the original shortening or there’s the second shortening going on here. If there’s a second shortening now you create a problem.

Follow again in the text: “Interpreting this remark as a modification to the prior-announced 42-month period, he concludes that the Great Tribulation will last less than 42 months.” He’s got to to get the room in there. But “another problem now arises. The text of Revelation 12:7–17 that was written decades after Jesus’ remark still requires the Great Tribulation to last a full 42 months.” Turn to Revelation 12:7; this is a whole section that deals with this last period. “And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. And the dragon and his angels waged war.” You see, the horror of what happens at the end of history reveals how sin has affected the physical universe out there that we look at every night when we look up and see the stars and the moon. We look as though outer space is peaceful but the picture that you get in the Bible is that outer space has angelic warfare going on in it. It’s not just on earth, this thing, this sin issue has spread, has contaminated the whole cosmos.

That’s why it can’t be solved by a political program. Something like communism is going to solve the world’s problems? That was the big dream of Marx, we’re going to solve everybody’s problems because we’re going to change the government and get a new policy. You know, if you’ve got a problem in the whole Milky Way the policy in Washington, D.C. doesn’t have much relevance. That’s the big picture the Bible wants us to see, that sin is so deep into reality that it is a joke to think that you can ever get Heaven on earth, the kingdom to come, that you can ever get that except by divine intervention … except by divine intervention.

So there is war in Heaven, the angels against the angels. This is the stuff of epics. You can think of The Empire Strikes Back and that sort of thing and we say those are cute little dramas. But what propels men to write epic literature, whether it’s The Lord of the Rings in an imaginary medieval type context or whether it’s The Empire Strikes Back in an astro-fantasy, what grips the heart of men and women to write those stories is deep down we know there’s a cosmic drama going on around us. Deep down we’re aware of that. Now we all suppress it to various degrees, even the people that write those stories probably suppress it. But when the creativity of the human soul erupts into artistry they can’t help but bear witness to the fact that we know there’s something like this going on and it’s got to be resolved. So you see those themes. In Star Wars it was eloquent, it had a lot of paganism in it, the Force, etc. being impersonal but in spite of all the paganism there was the stories of the councils of people from different galaxies discussion.

You’ve got that council right there in the Book of Kings in the Old Testament. It’s the angels that come together with an angelic council meeting with the Lord Jesus Christ and they’re sitting on His left hand and His right hand and He calls a council meeting and says look, I’ve got a problem down on planet earth, I’ve got this dimwit down there called Ahab, and I want to grease his slide. So who’s going to get the grease gun and take care of him? So there’s a discussion, the Hebrew text says the angels are sitting there discussing.

This would be an amazing story if you could just portray this as sort of a 60 Minutes “what did the angels do last night?” They have this meeting and they sit there and they discuss the whole issue. The Hebrew indicates that there is a discussion that goes on; some angels say let’s do it this way and another angel says no, I’ve got a better idea, we’ll do it this way. And finally one angel stands before this cosmic council of angels and he stands before the Lord and he says I will do it; I will become a lying spirit in the mouth of all those prophets. And the Lord says fine, go to it.

Can you imagine being a witness to that kind of a story and this one angel gets inside of and influences hundreds of people? Did you ever wonder why an idea catches on and a whole mob gets involved with an idea and it’s the same idea here. What’s gripped these people, we say. There’s an evidence of it, right there, one demonic force and somehow like an amoeba they can split and all of a sudden go into this person, this person, this person, this person, this person, this person and all of a sudden they’re in agreement. [blank spot]

… That’s why we have to get serious. That’s what the passages, if you don’t get anything else out of them, they’re witnessing to the terrible complexity of what sin has done in our creation, and the cosmic dimension, when the Bible says that Jesus is the Savior, it’s not just talking about saving you from a few pimples here, not even just saving you personally. When we say Jesus is Savior we are talking about things that impact the angelic realm, that impact the physical cosmos out to millions of light years. That’s what we’re talking about here. This thing that Jesus does is not just something to sing about on planet earth. It has a cosmic dimension to it.

In the middle of this testimony we have Michael, the war and the angels, verse 8, “they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven.” Now verse 9, an amazing event, “And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” Do you see what makes it hell on earth during the Tribulation? Do you see why the Bible says this will be a period of history that no historian has ever seen before? No human being, no man, no woman, no child, no one has ever witnessed what is about to take place on earth at this point in time, because at this point in time Satan himself with all of his angels, gathered from all the areas of the cosmos, are suddenly concentrated right here on planet earth because this is the focal point, this is the fulcrum of the universe in the plan of God.

So here they are, they all come down, and notice in the middle of verse 9 what Satan does. Notice one of his titles; it says he’s the Devil, he’s Satan, and he deceives the whole world. That’s one of the functions; the whole world is operating with deception, there’s a deceiver. You say how do we people screw up so bad in history? How do we get these massive movements going? How can people be so stupid to buy into communism? Communism took a country that had more natural resources than any other country in the world and they wound up they couldn’t feed themselves, they couldn’t drill oil, they couldn’t fix the tractors on their farms, they couldn’t go into a store and evaluate the value of things on a shelf, they had to be told by what some committee said it was worth. Look at what they did, all in the name of “we’re going to bring paradise in on earth.” Yeah, you brought paradise all right, you destroyed one of the largest country, more acreage than any other country, which was the Soviet Union, more riches, more natural resources, gold, oil, whatever it was the Soviet Union had it, and they couldn’t even get it together to feed themselves. That is stupidity.

You can come to places like Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Do you know why Haiti is poor? Because 100 years ago, 200 years ago they had a tree tax, so what are you going to do to decrease your tax bill? You’re going to cut your trees down; if you’ve got 100 trees and you’re taxed on every tree, well I’m going to get rid of that tax load real quick; get me a saw. So they chopped down their trees. In a tropical climate with heavy rain what do you suppose happened after they chopped the trees down. Erosion, all the soil washed into the ocean, now they can’t feed themselves and can’t grow stuff. Duh!

What causes the human race to get a case of the stupids in so many places and be so consistently stupid, “he who deceives the whole world?” We have a group of nations right now in New York who can’t get along inside their own countries and they’re thinking we’re going to bring in world peace with a council on the east side of New York City when you’ve got revolutions, you’ve got disputed elections. Here we are, a great democracy and we can’t even count our votes; we looked like a banana republic in the last election. This goes on all over the place. The problem is bigger than you and me and all the good intentions. That’s why we need a returning catastrophic transformation by the Lord Jesus Christ. So that’s what’s talked about here.

Verse 10, “And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, ‘Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come,’ ” I wonder what that voice was, whether it was the Holy Spirit or what, “ ‘for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them before God day and night.’ ” Now take a look at that, take a good look at that one. What is Satan doing about you, if you’re a believer? It says he accuses us before the throne day and night. How is he able to accuse you? How is he able to accuse me? Because we sin; every time we sin he’s like a prosecuting attorney, some little tattle-tale twit that goes into the presence of God and says oh, did you see what he did yesterday, did you see what she did yesterday. God, you have no business allowing these kinds of people in your presence. And this goes on day and night, look what it says, “day and night.”

What is the legal response to this? What right do we have to come before the throne of grace boldly? Because of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and only because of that. It reduces down to the simplicity of the gospel. The answer has to get stuck in his face again and again is it’s not our righteousness. I don’t stand boldly before the throne of grace on the good works that I’ve done and you don’t either. We stand there because of what Jesus has done and that has to be the point. All this comes out here. He “accuses them before our God day and night. [11] And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even to death.” In context these are special believers here. [12] “For this reason, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and the sea; because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing he has only a short time.” See, there’s the “short time.” A short time, because he’s going to get creamed here in a little bit.

Verse 13, “And when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who give birth to the male child.” Who was it that gave birth to the male child? Israel, so guess where the assault is going to happen when Satan and his angels come down to earth, they are fixing to do what? Think about it strategically. Why would it be neat if Satan could destroy Israel? If Satan destroyed Israel there would be no nation to say what to the Lord Jesus Christ? “Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord.” So as Satan comes down, apparently what he says to himself, okay, you knock me out of heaven but I’ll tell you what, I can still throw sand in your gears, I can still jam your machine God, because I can do down here and I’ll eliminate Israel; then watch your Messiah come back. Hatred, brilliant hatred, brilliant intelligent hatred for the things of God.

Verse 14, “And the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, in order that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she was nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent.” Notice this, “for a time, times, and half a time.” That is three and a half years. So this whole Tribulation period is 42 months recorded in Revelation 12, which was written after the Olivet Discourse of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the Tribulation, which is announced in Daniel was 42 months, and if was really true that Jesus said it was shortened to less than 42 months, question: how come in Revelation 12 it’s back at 42 months again? The answer is because it isn’t shortened to less than 42 months; 42 months is the shortening. It could have been longer than 42 months, but God kept it to only 42 months, so that the saints could endure and the elect [could] be saved. So there’s another example of this paragraph of why this view sets up all these other problems that we didn’t have before we started this whole thing. Now we’ve got more problems. The idea of exegesis is to try to reduce the problems, not keep on increasing it.

What we said on number 3 is that the Tribulation, the Great Tribulation has to be equal to 42 months. We know that because Revelation 12 confirmed it after Matthew 24. At the bottom of page 131 a fourth criticism, “Other examples of unnecessary secondary problems created by Three-quarter Tribulationalism could be cited. Let’s look at a few more. This view insists that the cry of unbelievers after the opening of the sixth seal that the wrath of God has come is an anticipatory comment, not a conclusion from past experience. If it were a conclusion from the unbelievers’ past experience, then that would mean the wrath of God had already come,” we went through that verse. How did people who are calling for the rocks to fall on them know that it was the wrath of God? Because they had experienced the previous seal judgments. If they’ve experienced the previous seal judgments and they’re coming to the conclusion that those previous seal judgments are the wrath of God, then the wrath of God must be prior to the seventh seal. So we have the problem of the fact that the wrath of God precedes the seventh seal, and if does, now this scheme doesn’t work.

“That in turn would require the Rapture to precede the sixth seal or earlier. Logic would then dictate that the Three-quarter Tribulation position collapses into the older mid-Tribulation position to be discussed in the next section. But how can Revelation 6:16–17 be an anticipatory comment? How would unbelievers recognize that a completely new kind of catastrophe was about to occur - a catastrophe directly from God rather than the previous catastrophes that supposedly arose from man alone?”

We’ll finish this next time and get into actually what was the forerunner of the Three-quarter position. Years before the Three-quarter position ever was a thought the mid-trib position was there. So we’ll finish up with the Three-quarter and then we’ll go to the mid-trib. But I hope as we go through this we have these little times to enjoy some of these texts that become critical to the discussion and maybe some of you who aren’t acquainted with this area of the Bible will get stimulated to do some reading, thinking and praying about it, because this is your history. This is the history of the human race. This isn’t just a weather forecast that might not come true; this is God’s decree that shall come true, period!

Question asked: Clough replies: Why is this there degree of differences, and I think one of the reasons is we think this way but… let me back up a minute. There’s this sort of funny quip that you hear in Christian circles, that one of the evidences for God’s existence is the church, because no one else could possibly run things. It’s a funny thing but it actually is true, that the church, we act like dumb sheep and have for a number of centuries and that’s what we’re called in the Bible, is sheep. But in all fairness I think you have to say that it’s easy for us in the 21^st century looking back and saying gee, it’s obvious what the gospel was, why do the Roman Catholics and the Protestants have to fall out. It wasn’t for them, because the church is growing through history and the church grows by getting it together, but the act of getting it together is really tough. The early church, like we’ve reviewed, had 400 years before they really thought it through as to who Jesus was. I mean, it’s pretty amazing, we look back and say well isn’t it obvious. Well, it’s obvious to us only because we were told it in clear terms and we were guided to that understanding. I think it’s like in school sometimes, after you’ve learned your elementary arithmetic then gee, that equation is obvious but to someone walking in the room at that level is going to say gee, I don’t know what that’s all about. So it’s pedagogical.

That’s why I’ve urged you to think of all the disagreements that are going on in eschatology as part of the divine pedagogy; that we are at that period in church history where this has become an issue and it’s being worked out. And the process of working it out is to try everything that doesn’t work, and by process of elimination you find after a while well gee, that doesn’t work, we tried that and that doesn’t work, we’ve tried that, so now what does work. And that process takes time and thought. This is hard stuff; this is not easy material. The passages, particularly in the book of Revelation, do have a lot of symbology in them. We’re talking about things that haven’t yet taken place in history.

Maybe it would help in our thinking about the question you raised would be to think how an Old Testament person who lived at the time of Jesus, who didn’t yet know yet about Jesus, maybe he was living there, maybe he’d heard some messages from John the Baptist, but in his head he remembers what the rabbis have taught about the Messiah from the Old Testament; he’s never met Jesus yet. Now he’s sitting there and he knows that the Messiah, from Isaiah 53 has to suffer, but then he also knows from Daniel 7 and other passages that Messiah is going to reign in glory and wonder. So how does he put those together? They had a hard time putting it together. In fact, history tells us that there were elements in Judaism that actually held to two Messiahs; they could not get those things together and they held to a son of Joseph which was a suffering Messiah and the son of David which was the guy who would come and be the grand king. But we now know that it wasn’t two Messiahs, it was two events in the life of one Messiah. To us in retrospect, oh yeah, you know, that’s obvious. Well it wasn’t then.

So I think that’s our problem right now is that we’re heading into this history. It’s going to be obvious to people who live in the Millennial Kingdom what happened and they’ll probably think back, gee, what a bunch of dorks you guys were that didn’t get this together, it’s so clear to us. Yeah, you’re Monday morning and we’re in the football game on Saturday afternoon; we’re in the middle of it here. I think that’s why it’s true and that’s why you have to exercise caution and not make unnecessary hostile comments to other Christians who hold these positions. The best way of discussing them, I think, is to ask questions, instead of saying oh well, you’re an idiot. That doesn’t exactly promote fellowship.

Question asked: Clough replies: That’s a good point. She has brought up the issue that we have the indwelling Holy Spirit, so why, in light of the indwelling Holy Spirit that’s supposed to lead us into all truth, why is it that all this stuff goes on? I think the answer it to look back, as I said what we’re seeing today in the eschatological discourses we’ve seen before in the other areas. We saw it in the Middle Ages over soteriology; we saw it over Christology, so whatever it is that’s causing problems, it’s not just in our generation. It’s been featured in all the generations of the church, which then makes you suspect that there’s a method in the Holy Spirit’s madness of teaching. Good teachers will sometimes let their students go down wrong trails to teach them something. That’s part of teaching, and I think that’s the way, I’m certain that’s the way the Holy Spirit did it in His own way in the Old Testament, for example.

Ideally I guess you could argue correctly, so that if we were perfectly attuned to the Holy Spirit and didn’t sin, [and didn’t] get out of fellowship and waste time, we probably would make a lot more rapid progress in following Him. But I think that in light of who we are, flubbering saints, the Holy Spirit lets us kind of wander around a little bit as far as the teaching goes. Good teachers will do that. It’s hard when you’re a teacher to sit there when you know the answer and you want somebody to learn and you try to make it as clear as you can, you get frustrated when they get frustrated and don’t get it, and sometimes you put so much time into a lesson, you’ve got it so clear and then after you get done somebody will say something and it will tell you that good night, were they here or were we in a different room when we were doing this? We’ve all had that experience, and I think some of it may be sinful and some of it is just the human condition of learning. Learning is painful.

For example, why is there the passage in Hebrews that says Jesus learned His obedience from suffering? You can’t say Jesus was sinful. But yet it seems that the things He learned He learned through suffering. Why did Jesus have to go through suffering to learn? Is there something that suffering is a necessary part of learning? I don’t know but there’s stuff that’s going on in the background here; it’s not because … I don’t think it can be simplistically answered by just saying oh, if we would listen to the Holy Spirit more carefully. I think the problem is that’s it’s not us as individuals, it’s the corporate the church, all the [can’t understand word] of believers, the world somehow knitted together in this body and we do our best as individuals, of course, to listen to the Holy Spirit. But sometimes maybe He can’t teach us this because of something else going on over here and He’s not going to teach us this lesson until somebody else gets that lesson.

Question asked, something about passed down from generation to generation: Clough replies: Yes, and then that’s where tradition… see tradition can be good and bad. If you think about, if there wasn’t a fall and you had Adam and Eve have children and they pass the family tradition on to those children, the idea is what tradition you can pass to your kids let them start on your shoulders so they don’t have to relearn all this stuff you had to learn and they can get going. You know, gee, there’s five different ways to bang your head on the wall and I learned it from mom and dad that if I’m going to bang my head on the wall, pick a new spot but I’m not going to do it the same place they did. Well, that gets so fuzzy, as we know who’ve had kids, because we see them sitting there and going through the same thing that we went through. What a waste of time. But that’s because that’s where tradition could have been good had the tradition been truthful.

But you’re correct in saying that each individual can’t accept things merely on the basis of tradition; we have to accept things because in our heart we have come to conclude that is God’s word for us, period! That is truth, and that’s why Christianity can never be inherited, and yet that’s what happens so often is we inherit a tradition because we honor our parents and we naturally kind of go along with what they believe. But there comes a time when God holds us accountable for truth, He’s not going to say “oh gee, your mommy told you that.” I don’t think that’s going to sail.

Question asked, you had said we were going to come back with Christ and rule during the Millennium and Revelation 13 talks about … someone said that’s the angels, not us so I did a little study on the white linen text and found out that that’s a picture of righteousness in Christ so obviously that would be saints and not angels, but is there any other place in Scripture where angels are portrayed as being clothed in Christ’s righteousness. Clough replies: I think that where angels do occur, the question being do angels have the white robes, the white robe is an emblem that goes back into the Old Testament. One of the clearest instances is in the Book of Zechariah, with the high priest Joshua. I think it’s in Zechariah 9, somewhere around there, where the high priest Joshua is … the Hebrew text is very earthy when it wants to present a picture and the picture that is being presented there of this priest is that his garments are covered with manure and he’s walking in the presence of God and God tells the angels change his clothes. The idea is he was given, the priest was given a brand new garment. And that surely is the picture of the imputed righteousness. But as far as angels sharing that we have no theology anywhere in the Scriptures that speak of redemption in the angelic realm.

Question asked: Clough replies: Angels probably are involved, the good angels are involved because we saw in the passage tonight Michael had a big war. And that war continues because you know in the book of Daniel when Gabriel was sent to give Daniel his answer it took Gabriel three weeks to break through Iraqi defenses, because that was the country that he was in at the time. Now what does it mean when that happens. You know, you say what the heck are these angels doing that they’re actually almost in physical contact with each other? That’s the thing that God hasn’t seen fit to get us all spooked about, is what’s going on in the angelic realm.

We have these strange, I can think of two passages right off the bat, I’ve always puzzled at these passages because it’s just like little tidbits God throws out. Like the passage in Corinthians that talks about women and their authority position in the local church, and he says, “Do that because the angels are watching.” What? We’re talking about church policy here, what do the angels have to do with that? Something. Then we’ve got the passage in Ephesians 3 where it says the angels are sitting here watching and learning from us about the wisdom of God. What are they learning about? They’re learning something about God by watching us. So we’re being watched by these unseen eyes and it gives you this funny feeling. Why are they so interested in us? It’s not because of us, obviously, it’s because of the God they worship and they’re interested in seeing what He’s doing in our lives. What God is doing in our lives is not just horizontally related to other believers, it’s also related to these thousands of eyes around watching us.

I think that explains why sometimes there are weird things that happen in your life where there’s suffering, out of the clear blue. What’s the best example of that, the book in the Old Testament where suffering suddenly came into someone’s life? It was Job and the whole first chapter in Job sets it up by saying there was a discussion in heaven; that’s what led to this thing and here Job’s walking along and boom, the whole place is falling apart. And it was because of something that’s going on up there. Now true, God never does one thing, He always does ten thousand things at the same time superficially, but what He was also doing is Job benefited in his own personal sanctification through that experience. But the Bible is clearly saying that the trigger had nothing really to do with Job in one sense; it was an argument Satan had with the Lord. So what’s that all about?

The point I want to leave you with tonight in all this, and that is the eschatological literature makes you think about this, passages that we read tonight about the war of the angels. It enlarges your vision so that you see that there’s more to live than what we see. There are issues out there and that’s why we have to be careful to adhere to the Word of God and when the Bible tells us to not use gimmicks to do things, just stick with the Word of God because as God says, I’m not going to tell you all the reason, you just do what I told you to do how I told you to do it, relying on the resources I’ve given you and don’t try all these other things, the gimmick stuff. I think why He wants us to do those things is because of these other things that are going on around us that someday we’ll understand but right now we don’t understand. But it’s nice to be aware that there are bigger issues here than just what’s going on with my car and my cat.