10. How to Live in Light of Post-Tribulationalism

10

How to Live in Light of Post-Tribulationalism

Now I will confess that in those early years in the Lord, my friends and I occasionally questioned if he got every detail right (we once joked that if the Lord ever lost track of the schedule of the events during the Tribulation period, as long as He had Larkin’s charts, He would figure it out). But overall, we thought Larkin had things amazingly right, although one of his charts caused me to wonder. The chart was called “The Failure of Christianity,” in which Larkin explained that “Christianity has not kept pace with heathenism.” He wrote,

It is evident that there are more than . . . 100 times as many persons born into the world each year, as there are persons ‘new born,’ and that thus far Christianity, as a world converting power, is a failure, all of which proves that, if after 1900 years of gospel preaching the world is not converted, it is not God’s purpose to convert the world by the preaching of the gospel in this age, but simply to gather out an ‘elect body’—the church.

I asked myself, “Is this really God’s plan? The failure of Christianity? What kind of divine strategy is this?”

More Than Conquerors

In their eyes, the collapse of the society is not only inevitable, it is imminent. The end is both very bad and very near, so the best thing we can do is get our own houses in order and win as many lost souls as possible. But, while the emphasis on winning the lost is admirable, it is hardly a full-fledged, Great Commission emphasis, since Jesus did not simply call us to win the lost but to make disciples. This, in turn, leads to the question, “How should disciples live? Should they not be the salt of the earth and the light of the world?”

So the first common problem in the traditional pre-Trib mentality is a hopeless attitude which sees the world as going downhill only. And even if this theology was right—which I question—who says we are living in the last generation? What if there are several (or more) generations after us? What if we have not entered the time of the last great falling away? In that case, why should we be so pessimistic? The slave trade never would have been abolished in Great Britain and America had Christians been convinced that things were only getting worse and the world was on the verge of total collapse. Why even try?

This pessimistic end-time theology also begs the question, “If you see someone in need, should you not try to meet that need, whether Jesus is coming back in one year or one hundred years? And if you see something that is wrong and needs to be addressed, should you not address it, whether Jesus is coming back in one year or one hundred years?”

The second common problem among many dispensationalists is the defeatist attitude when it comes to the Church. Jesus will come back to rescue us before it is too late! He will save us from the Antichrist! Our greatest hope is to escape before things get really hot!

What kind of mentality is this? How does this comport with the biblical teaching that Jesus is Lord, that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Him, that He is with us always, even to the end of the age, that His name is higher than any other name, that He is sitting at the Father’s right hand until His enemies are put under His feet, that all things hold together by His powerful Word, that He is King of kings and Lord of lords and that, consequently, we are more than conquerors through Him, overcomers by our new, redeemed nature? As expressed by John, “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 John 5:4 ESV ).

And note carefully that John did not say, “Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world—with the exception of the Antichrist, whom we can’t overcome”; or, “Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world—with the exception of during the Great Tribulation, when we can’t overcome.” To the contrary, in the first century, John could already write, “Children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard, ‘Antichrist is coming,’ even now many antichrists have come. We know from this that it is the last hour” (1 John 2:18 HCSB ).

What, then, makes us think that the climax of this age will be any different? That the same promises will not prevail? That the name of Jesus will not carry the same authority? In Luke 10:19, Jesus said to His disciples, “I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you” ( NIV ). He did not say, “I’ve given you authority to overcome all the power of the enemy—with the exception of the Antichrist. And nothing will harm you—other than the Great Tribulation.” That is not what Scripture teaches.

There were antichrists in John’s day, there are antichrists today and there will be a future Antichrist, the evil godfather of them all. And he will wreak destruction on many. But even if he mows us down because of the testimony of our faith, he loses and we win. As Revelation 12 describes, there was war in heaven, because of which Satan and his minions were cast down to earth. At that time John

heard a loud voice in heaven saying, “The salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the ruling authority of his Christ, have now come, because the accuser of our brothers and sisters, the one who accuses them day and night before our God, has been thrown down. But they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their tes timony, and they did not love their lives so much that they were afraid to die.”

Revelation 12:10–11 NET

If you kill us, you promote us to glory, where we will one day receive the martyr’s crown. Our death is our honor, and our sacrifice is our privilege. And just as our Savior defeated the enemy by dying and rising, so too we die with Him, knowing that we will also rise. What weapon can the enemy bring against us? And if, in Jesus, we have power to resist Satan himself, why should we fear one his servants (namely, the Antichrist)?

Some dispensationalists would point to Daniel 7, where the prophet recounts what he saw in a vision of the end of the age, referring to the end-time ruler as the “little horn” and speaking of this final war against God’s people:

As I was watching, this horn waged war against the holy ones and was prevailing over them until the Ancient of Days arrived and a judgment was given in favor of the holy ones of the Most High, for the time had come, and the holy ones took possession of the kingdom.

Daniel 7:21–22 HCSB

But note here that the ones who will take possession of the Kingdom and rule as God’s servants are the same ones who have been persecuted and killed. We have not been raptured out, and our defeat at the hands of the Antichrist is only temporary, and, in reality, it is only an apparent defeat. Even this satanic persecution is being used for our good:

Those who are wise among the people will give understanding to many, yet they will die by sword and flame, and be captured and plundered for a time. When defeated, they will be helped by some, but many others will join them insincerely. Some of the wise will fall so that they may be refined, purified, and cleansed until the time of the end, for it will still come at the appointed time.

Daniel 11:33–35 HCSB , emphasis added

Now, I am quite aware that some dispensationalists will say, “The issue is the wrath of God, and we are not appointed to wrath. We’re really not concerned about the Antichrist.”

But since we have already demonstrated that God can protect His people here on the earth while His wrath is being poured out, why are we still afraid? Why do we fear the Great Tribulation—or any tribulation? And for believers being killed or tortured to death today, what can the Antichrist do that will be worse than this?

One of my closest friends is an Indian brother, and he told me that in 2017, four of his pastors working in tribal regions in India were martyred. A few years earlier, as persecution rose in the Indian state of Orissa, Hindu radicals rounded up pastors and their families, pouring gasoline on their wives and children and threatening to burn them to death if they did not deny Jesus. What will the Antichrist do that is worse than this?

Another friend of mine serves as a missionary in Nigeria, educating the poorest of the poor. In early 2018, she told me that the slaughter of Christians there is “happening every day. The worst this year was the New Year’s Day massacre, followed by a mass burial of 73 victims. There have been many attacks since then. Villages razed, girls and women raped, men butchered. Cutlasses have been replaced by AK-47s. The military has, at times, seemed complicit.”

A 2016 report claimed that

while much media attention has been focussed on Islamic State and the plight of persecuted minorities in the Middle East, 11,500 Christians in northern Nigeria were killed in five years between 2006–2014, and 13,000 churches were destroyed, forcing 1.3 million Christians to flee to safer areas of the country.

Have these Christians not experienced very real tribulation? Will the Antichrist do anything worse than slaughtering, raping, torturing, starving and abusing children, women and men?

The truth be told, since the first days of the New Testament Church, adversity and persecution have been the norm. And to this day, in countries like North Korea, an antichrist-type system exists, meaning, if you do not bow down to the government, you could die. Yet the martyrs of the past are not calling out from their graves and urging us to be cautious and fearful. Instead, they are urging us to stand strong, to be of good courage and to speak the truth boldly and without compromise.

The Voice of the Overcomer

On that same trip, we also washed the feet of pastors and church planters who had been persecuted for preaching the Gospel, one of them nearly beaten to death. He had won so many Hindus to the Lord that he was savagely attacked and lay in a coma for five days. To make things even worse, in the hospital where he lay unconscious, a doctor had been bribed to kill him. But his family found out and rescued him, taking him out of the hospital while he was still in a coma, after which he gradually recovered at home.

Subsequently, he went back to the same area and began preaching again, winning to the Lord and baptizing the first man who had assaulted him, along with many others. He was then attacked once more and had to go into temporary hiding, but he was resolute in his desire to return and preach. When I interviewed him through a translator he showed no fear and considered it an honor to suffer for his Master, even bursting into song. We could learn something from this pastor!

I still remember vividly what happened on that day when we washed everyone’s feet. (There were two martyrs’ widows there, along with one of their teenage daughters, plus all the pastors.) The music had been somber, and there were many tears being shed. But then, once we were done, the music suddenly changed, and in a moment, the men were jumping and dancing and leaping and celebrating. It is because they realized, “We have the privilege of being persecuted for righteousness! We have the honor of being treated like Jesus! What a high calling! What a joy!” It was really a sight to see.

About ten years before that, I was in India during another wave of heavy persecution, at which time an Australian missionary and his two sons, a family working with leprosy patients, were burned to death while they slept in their car overnight. This sent shock waves through India, but it was just one horrific act among many others.

Persecuted leaders had traveled up to 48 hours to get to our meetings, and every day, we poured encouragement and faith into their hearts, feeling privileged to serve men and women in this way. One day, one of the pastors stood up to share his own story. He recounted how the persecution began in his state a few months earlier when a local pastor was murdered and hung up on a tree as a public warning to others. Since then, every single day, he received a phone call saying, “Look at your wife. Look at your children. You will never see them again. We are going to kill you.”

And how did he respond? He stood tall and strong with a big smile on his face and said, “Why die a natural death when I can die a martyr’s death? For me to live is Christ and to die is gain” (quoting Philippians 1:21). This reminds me of the words of an Iranian pastor who was killed for his faith. Years earlier he had said, “What a waste of a death to die a natural death.” Do you think believers like this are afraid of the Antichrist?

Do Not Discount the Plain Sense of the Scriptures

So, for example, when you show Jehovah’s Witnesses some of the New Testament verses that say we can know that we have the hope of heaven and ruling with Christ, they respond, “But that’s only for the 144,000 sealed. Those verses aren’t directed to us.”

Really? Says who? There is not a stitch of scriptural or historical evidence to support this notion, yet they are convinced of it because they have brought another system of interpretation to the text. And that system overrules the plain and obvious sense of the Word.

Now, when it comes to dispensationalists, I am not comparing them to a cult, nor am I questioning their relationship with the Lord. As both Craig and I have emphasized elsewhere, some of the finest believers on the planet hold to a pre-Trib Rapture, and it was people like this who helped pray us into the Kingdom. So, again, I am not comparing pre-Tribbers to a cult.

But what I am saying is this: It is cult- like to discount the clear testimony of hundreds of Scriptures because of a questionable system of interpretation. Specifically, there is zero support for the notion that all the verses I’ve cited or referenced in this chapter about our victory in Jesus hold true at all times and ages except for the Tribulation period when the Antichrist rules and reigns . Not a chance. They will apply until Jesus sets up His Kingdom here on this earth. Until then, we will be in a ferocious battle with the forces of darkness, but through Jesus our Lord, we will overcome.

Here is how it was expressed by the German Christian leader Eberhard Arnold (1883–1935):

The early Christians were revolutionaries of the Spirit, heralds of the last judgment and the coming transformation; they had to be ready for martyrdom at any moment. Their witness meant they had to reckon with being sentenced to death by state and society. Therefore, “martyrs” were those witnesses ready to die for their faith, those who bore this testimony before kings and judges with the steadfastness of soldiers of God. They were martyrs, that is “confessors,” even if they did not have to die. To give witness is the essence of martyrdom. Martyrs uphold the truth of their testimony as eye-witnesses of the Lord and his resurrection. They see Christ and become his prophetic spirit-bearers. Through the Spirit, the blood-witness of the martyrs becomes part of the decisive battle waged by Jesus, the battle in which he himself died as champion and leader of the future. By dying, he finally judged and routed the hostile powers of the present age. Put to death by the most devout Jewish people and the Roman state, Christ fettered and disarmed the demons and their darkness through his cross. Since then, each new martyrdom—each new dying with Christ—becomes a celebration of victory over the forces of Satan.

Victory is in our blood, spiritually speaking, which is why over and again in Revelation, Jesus gives promises to those who overcome, to the victors, using the Greek word nikōn , which is translated as: “him who overcomes” ( NKJV ); “the victor” ( HCSB ); “the one who conquers” ( ESV ); “the one who is victorious” ( NIV ); “him winning the victory.” In Jesus, we are expected to overcome. Just look again at these glorious promises from the Lord:

To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

Revelation 2:7 ESV

To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.

Revelation 2:17 ESV

The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. And I will give him the morning star.

Revelation 2:26–28 ESV

The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels.

Revelation 3:5 ESV

The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.

Revelation 3:12 ESV

The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.

Revelation 3:21 ESV

We overcome because He overcame. His victory is our victory. And you can be quite sure that Jesus is not threatened by the Antichrist—or for that matter, by a trillion billion antichrists. (And do not forget Revelation 12:11, which we quoted earlier: We overcome by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of our testimony and by not loving our lives even to the point of death.)

Then note how this all comes to climax in Revelation 21, which first speaks of the glories of the New Jerusalem and then states:

The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

Revelation 21:7–8 ESV

I encourage you to embrace the mentality of the overcomer, the conqueror, the victor—through Jesus, who is victorious over all.

Be Strong in the Lord!

Jesus told His disciples that He would build His Church and that the very gates of hell would not overcome it (see Matthew 16:18). And while there is considerable discussion about the precise meaning of some of His words (what, exactly, are the “gates of hell,” and are they primarily offensive or defensive?), there is no debate about the Lord’s overall message: His Church—His unique, Messianic, Spirit-empowered community of Jewish and Gentile believers—would be victorious. But of course! Light always overcomes darkness in the end (see John 1:5).

Paul certainly knew what it felt like to experience tribulation, as did many of the believers to whom he wrote. They hardly imagined the message of the cross to be the key to financial success and earthly fame! Yet in the midst of intense and unremitting persecution, Paul could pen these words:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:35–39 ESV

And note carefully where he starts: tribulation , that Greek word thlipsis that we studied before (see chapter 5). Tribulation shall not separate us from the love of Christ—even “Great Tribulation.” Not a chance.

We might be killed all day long. We might be rejected or hated or excluded. We might be imprisoned or tortured or beheaded. We might be deprived or starved or abused. So be it. In all these things “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Or, as translated by others, “we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us” ( NASB ); “we have complete victory through him who loved us!” ( NET ); “overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us” ( NLT ). Amen!

And note carefully where the emphasis is placed: It is through Christ who loved us —not through our own courage or faith or power or perseverance. No, it is out of our weakness that His strength is perfected (see 2 Corinthians 12:9–10), which is why we are called to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might ” (Ephesians 6:10 ESV , emphasis added).

In ourselves, we would likely cower and cringe at the Antichrist. But Jesus in us stands strong, and we find our strength in Him. Or, to put this in the form of a series of questions: Is the power of the Antichrist greater than the love of Christ? Is the intensity of the very worst tribulation superior to the strength of the Lord? Is the Word of God true or not? Shall tribulation separate us from the love of the Messiah or not? Are we more than conquerors through Jesus or not? Has God made us overcomers or not?

I urge you to put away a theology that dismisses a multitude of God’s promises because of a highly suspect, biblically flawed view of the end times. Whatever lies ahead, however hellish it might be, in Jesus, we will overcome, whether by life or by death. His love is greater than all!

The Night Is Almost Past

And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy . And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved .

Acts 2:17–21 ESV , emphasis added

Do you see it? The last days will be marked by the great working of Satan and the great working of the Spirit, and we know who prevails when Satan and the Spirit collide. What is more, a straightforward reading of the New Testament indicates that the last days began with the death and resurrection of Jesus and will end when He returns. In other words, we have been in the last days for the last two thousand years (see 1 Corinthians 10:11; Hebrews 1:2; James 5:3; 1 Peter 1:20; 1 John 2:18—which shows that Paul, the author of Hebrews, James, Peter and John all agree). And the last days are times of parallel extremes, where in the midst of gross darkness glorious light rises (see the promise to Israel in Isaiah 60:1–3). They are also times of great harvest, both of the good and the bad:

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 13:47–50 ESV

Paul also describes this end-time harvest, but here, he focuses on the salvation of a multitude of Gentiles along with the nation of Israel:

Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”; “and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.”

Romans 11:25–27 ESV

The greatest harvest of souls into the Kingdom of God is still ahead. That is why, from a New Testament perspective, things are getting brighter, not darker. In the words of John,

Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

1 John 2:7–8 ESV , emphasis added

Or, as expressed by Paul,

Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand . So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Romans 13:11–12 ESV , emphasis added

The Name of Jesus Is Being Exalted Worldwide as Never Before

Estimates for the world population in AD 100 range from 150 million to 300 million, but if we use a figure of 250 million, that means that if there were 10,000 Christians at that time, there was only one believer on the planet for every 2,500 people. Yet the New Testament mentality is one of great faith and victory, not despair and defeat.

Now, I have seen other estimates that put the number of believers in AD 100 much higher, claiming that there was one believer for every 360 people on the planet. And based on the book of Acts alone, I would say those higher figures are more accurate. Even so, one out of 360 people is a very tiny percentage. But look at what has happened since! It speaks of anything but the failure of Christianity.

As I (Michael) noted in The Revival Answer Book , which was published in its first edition in 1997:

Writing in the November 1990 issue of Missions Frontiers , Ralph D. Winter stated that in the year 100, after the glorious period of the Acts and the early Church, there was approximately one true, gospel believing Christian for every 360 people on the earth; by 1900, there was one believer for every 27 people; by 1989, one for every seven; and at the present rate of growth, by the year 2000 there will be one in three ! Even if you differ with these statistics, claiming, e.g., that by 1989 more realistic numbers would indicate that there was one believer for every fifteen people on the planet (and I’m not aware of many missiologists who would share such a pessimistic outlook), or that, by the year 2000, there will be one believer for every ten people on earth, that still would represent an absolutely supernatural and exponential increase in the spread of the gospel and the growth of the Church. Yes, it’s harvest time!

Or, to look at this from another angle and with a small variation in statistics, here is a chart supplying “Milestone Dates in the Growth of True Christianity.” According to the compilers, it offers “at the dates indicated, a comparison of 1) the number of Bible-believing Christians and 2) the total number of people in the world.” Examine this carefully and begin to rejoice!

One per hundred (1%) by AD 1430 (One to 99 after 1430 years)

Two per hundred (2%) by AD 1790 (One to 49 after 360 years)

Three per hundred (3%) by AD 1940 (One to 32 after 150 years)

Four per hundred (4%) by AD 1960 (One to 24 after 20 years)

Five per hundred (5%) by AD 1970 (One to 19 after 10 years)

Six per hundred (6%) by AD 1980 (One to 16 after 10 years)

Seven per hundred (7%) by AD 1983 (One to 13 after 3 years)

Eight per hundred (8%) by AD 1986 (One to 11 after 3 years)

Nine per hundred (9%) by AD 1989 (One to 10 after 3 years)

Ten per hundred (10%) by AD 1993 (One to 9 after 4 years)

Eleven per hundred (11%) by AD 1995 (One to 8 after 2 years)

What this means in practical, down to earth terms—and it is staggering—is that “there are 78,000 conversions each day and 16,000 new churches planted each week.” Stand up and shout for joy, my friend. It’s harvest time!

And here is the best thing of all. These stats are quite outdated. The Gospel is spreading at a much more rapid rate today. The Prayer Foundation shared these exciting statistics, along with sobering needs: (Note that some of these amazing statistics are actually understated , not overstated.)

The Traveling Team shares this exciting news:

The number of people who are being presented the plan of salvation every day is now at least 260,274. . . . Every day now the average number added to the body of Christ worldwide averages 174,000. 3,500 new churches are opening every week worldwide.

Our annual growth rate of church planting is presently at more than 8% per year. We only need 11% per annum to allow us to place a living Christian fellowship––a local church––as a witness in every community in the entire world. We have seen countries like Singapore have a 10% increase of those who have seen Christ come into their lives.

In the 1980s 10% of Korea and 10% of Chile turned to Christ, and over 10% in Indonesia––the largest Muslim country in the world. Indonesia is now over 25% Christian.

Even if some of these statistics are too optimistic, they present a very different picture than one of a defeated and demoralized Church. This is not the failure of Christianity, this is the triumph of the Gospel, to the point that in one day , around the world, far more people come to faith in Jesus than may have come to faith in Him in the first seventy years of Church history. And this is exactly what we should expect, since Revelation 7 speaks of “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages,” described as “the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9, 14 ESV ). Elsewhere, Revelation describes an army of two hundred million (see Revelation 9:16), but here, it speaks of “a great multitude that no one could number,” which would mean it had to be much, much bigger than two hundred million. The greatest harvest is still to come!

Ironically, there are dispensationalists who believe that there will be a great harvest of souls during the Great Tribulation, even though the Holy Spirit has been taken from the earth and even though people who come to faith in Jesus will be killed (beheaded!) for their faith. Not only is this belief illogical, it is unscriptural: The Gospel is spreading throughout the world at an ever-increasing pace, with the Spirit’s help, not without the Spirit’s help, and in the midst of great darkness and evil and apostasy, God’s light is shining brighter by the day.

Can we look at our Lord and Savior Jesus—the ultimate Overcomer and Victor—and expect anything less?