People like simplicity. I know I prefer it. Place the issue of Jesus’ return in front of someone and ask them to tell you their view, and almost invariably they want to know, “What are my choices?” It’s a good place to start. Well-educated preachers are taught, when researching a passage of Scripture, to consult a commentary—good ones offer different options on what the Bible may mean. From there, the preacher has a baseline from which to begin and develop his own beliefs.
Considering what others have said is a good place to start, but not necessarily a good place to finish. What about the return of Christ? Probably, because we like simplicity and dislike ambiguity, we have managed to boil what must be thousands of variations down to just three views. Pretribulational, Mid-Tribulational, and Post-Tribulational made the cut. It reminds me of small, medium, and large; vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry, smoking or non-smoking, etc. You get the idea.
But let us remember: Where did these “options” come from—Pre, Mid, and Post? From the men who developed them. These theological options are not “God-breathed,” as Paul says the Bible is. Therefore, they may be a good place to start, but not necessarily a good place to finish.
We really are victims of our preference for simplicity. What if you worked at McDonald’s and somebody asked for a “medium and-a-half Coke?” They decided they wanted something between a medium and a large. “There’s no such thing,” you’d reply. Actually, there is such a thing as the ability to thirst for a different amount than McDonald’s idea of small, medium, or large. It’s just that McDonald’s is not prepared to handle that request.
Alright, what if somebody asked you to consider a view on a biblical topic that wasn’t one of the currently popular three views? Not “small, medium, or large?”—containers, by the way, invented and created by people, not God. Would you reject it, because it’s unfamiliar? What’s wrong with another size? Is it “wrong, because we haven’t done it that way before?” Are those three sizes automatically our only options, because that’s just the way we do it nowadays?
Well, Starbucks doesn’t think so. Try ordering a “medium coffee” there. Furthermore, there were no “small, medium, and larges” in Moses’ day, or Jesus’, and most likely not one hundred years from now, either. Are you getting the point that there is nothing “magical” about “small, medium, and large?” Medium is a size of beverage, but it isn’t the only size, nor is it one of three only sizes. On the same token, there is nothing “magical” about Pretribulational, Mid-Tribulational, and Post-Tribulational. These are popular views, simply because they’re popular. Granted, they each have their own merits. But stronger arguments may favor “another size”—“a medium and-a-half,” if you will.
What if another “size” was proposed—another explanation of Christ’s return? Is it automatically wrong because it isn’t one of the “three?” If it is, then stop shopping at Starbucks.
