Over a year ago I wrote an article titled, “A Case for the Prewrath Rapture: the ‘Cosmic Disturbances’.” This article has been one of the more popular in the past year, so those who are new here I would encourage you to read it.
In prophecy discussions you will often hear folks invoke some “key” to unlocking an understanding to prophecy passages. Often that key ends up being someone’s tradition, or one ambiguous passage that is used to filter all other prophetic passages. What you have as a result then is not an unlocking of prophetic mystery, but simply distortion that is even more confusing and misleadding than before.
In my view, the “Cosmic Disturbance” motif is a significant key to unlocking a proper understanding of end-time passages because it is precisely just that: a motif. It is found in almost every major eschatological passage that discusses the Day of the Lord’s wrath. And the consistency is very striking in that it functions as an announcement of God’s wrath upon the ungodly.
There are several ways to introduce the Prewrath position to your friends and family, and the approach that I use most often is tracing the Cosmic Disturbance motif starting with the Old Testament passages, then the Olivet Discourse, and finishing with Revelation’s sixth seal.
I believe that demonstrating the consistency of this motif reveals the coherency of the connection of the Great Tribulation and the Second Coming. In fact, I have had not a few tell me that when they saw this prominent theme and how it functions as an announcement to the Day of the Lord’s wrath, they could no longer hold to the pretribulational view.
Many Pretribulationalists have wrongly assumed that the six seals are God’s wrath and thus part of the Day of the Lord. This is simply assumed and necessary for the Pretrib system because they cannot allow any prophesied events to unfold before the rapture because that would undermine their Holy Grail: Imminency.
The seals are not God’s wrath but precursors to the Day of the Lord. The following is not meant to be an exhaustive explanation of this supposition, but an outline of points.
First, the Cosmic Disturbances of the sixth seal announce God’s wrath upon the ungodly, “The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.” (Joel 2:31)
Second, both the responses from the martyrs in the fifth seal and the ungodly in the sixth seal reveal that God’s wrath is soon to come–they have not viewed it already in the past. The fifth seal martyrs are asking when God will pour out his wrath; and the ungodly in the sixth seal are running to the caves and crying out about the impending wrath.
Third, the fact that there are two groups of people, one group being sealed and the other delivered, just before the seventh seal suggests strongly that they are being sealed and delivered from something looming that will come upon the whole world.
Fourth, the nature of the events in the first four seals are “natural” (but intense) catastrophes (wars, famines, etc.) carried out by “horsemen.” This is in contrast to when the seventh seal (supernatural contents) is opened up and the unmistakable wrath of God is mediated directly by angels via the trumpet and bowl judgments against the ungodly. (By the way, a fourth of mankind is not killed in the fourth seal; there is only, “power over a fourth of the earth.”)
Fifth, the first five seals in Revelation chapter six parallel Jesus’ teaching about this being the “beginning of birth pangs” in Matthew 24:5-8.
Sixth, obviously the fifth seal is not God’s wrath because it specifically speaks of the martyrdom of believers. And since believers are promised protection from the Day of the Lord’s wrath, to argue that the fifth seal is God’s wrath is contradictory.
Seventh, when the seventh seal is opened, immediately it says that there was silence in heaven for about a half an hour. The most plausible explanation for this silence is for all the members of the heavenly court to observe the grave and profound significance of the event that is to follow: The Eschatological Day of the Lord’s wrath. Immediately after this silence it says,
“Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.”
This unprecedented dreadful opening act of God’s wrath is then followed by how the Old Testament prophets characterized the Day of the Lord: fire and destruction. And this is realized in the trumpet and bowl judgments.
[The following is a selection taken from the Parousia #14 newsletter by Charles Cooper.]
“And they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”
It would be difficult to read the New Testament and miss the fact that the Jews were expecting the Messiah to come and free both the nation and Jerusalem from the long years of Gentile domination. Any hope to this effect was dashed by the Lord’s prophetic statements in the Olivet Discourse. Luke 21:24 records a very important prophetic statement concerning Daniel’s people (Israel) and his holy city (Jerusalem). It is this prophecy, which allows us to add the plus to the phrase 490-year-plus delay. The Lord Jesus indicates that Israel’s delay will continue for an undetermined length of time. The Lord designates this period as “the times of the Gentiles.” Times is the Greek term [kairoi]. It may be a technical term, i.e. it means the same thing each time it is used in a certain context. Dr. Darrell Bock writes,
It may be that [kairoi] is a Lucan technical term for the first of these eschatological periods, since the term has this technical meaning when it describes an era with an eschatological… emphasis, such as “times” or “periods”…(9)
This fact can be seen in Acts 1:6 which declares that “the times and epochs are fixed by God’s own authority.” Thus, the times of the Gentilesis a specific time-period, which not only describes Israel’s future, but her past as well. Judah and Jerusalem had already served a 483-year sentence. Now it would continue. The Lord indicates in Luke 21:24 that the AD 70 destruction would mark the continuation of Jerusalem’s trampling. Revelation 11:2 indicates that the end of Jerusalem’s trampling by Gentiles culminates with the end of the second half of Daniel’s Seventieth Week.(10)
Luke states that many of the inhabitants of Jerusalem either will die or be exiled “into all the nations.” “Jerusalem,” on the other hand, “will [continue to] be trampled under foot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” The concept of trampling under foot is a figure of speech. Specifically,
The literal trampling of enemies in warfare accounts for the use of “trampling under the feet” as an image for any victory over one’s enemies… To place “under one’s feet” also implies dominion and rule… Additional meaning of the imagery of being under the feet include disdain, defilement and judgment… Oppression and persecution are also pictured by the image of the foot.(11)
In a true sense, all of the above nuances are applicable in Luke 21:24. History bears out the truth of the Lord’s prediction. Since the Babylonian captivity, Jerusalem has been under the dominion of Gentile nations in one form or another. Her people have been defeated, possessed, rules, oppressed, and persecuted to this very day. The city and the most sacred temple site in all the world is trampled daily by unbelievers and infidels. A false god’s temple and his worshippers show utter contempt for the true God of the heavens. The duration of Jerusalem’s woes is indicated by the clause “until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”
Dr. Darrell L. Bock, research professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, is very helpful in stating the weight of this important clause. He lists three significant conclusions to be drawn:
(1) [that] the city’s fall is of limited duration; (2) [that] there is a period in God’s plan when Gentiles will dominate, which implies that the subsequent period is of a different nature…; and (3) [that] Israel’s judgment now but vindication later suggests what Paul also argues in Romans 11:25-26; Israel has a future in God’s plan.(12)
The Apostle John records in the Revelation of our Lord that the termination of Jerusalem’s woes will occur at the end of the Seventieth Week of Daniel. The 490-year-plus delay for Israel and her city’s ultimate restoration culminates in a final seven-year period. This seven-year period is bifurcated. The first three and a half year segment does not receive much attention in Scripture explicitly. However, the second half is consistently identified in Daniel and Revelation. It is numerically identified as forty-two months; twelve hundred and sixty days; one thousand two hundred and sixty days, and times, times and half a times. In each case, the people or city of God is shown suffering at the hands of the Evil One or his people.
John writes in Revelation 11:2, “Leave out the court which is outside the temple and do not measure it, for it has been given to the nations; and they will tread [trample] under foot the holy city for forty-two months.” The grammatical and theological parallels between this verse and Luke 21:24 establish a clear termination point for the “times of the Gentiles.” Not surprisingly, it is exactly as Daniel 9:24 indicated.
Footnotes:
9. A technical term is a word that has the same meaning every time it is used in a particular context. In this case, kairoi refers to the period extending from the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 until the end of Daniel�s Seventieth Week. Darrell L. Bock, Luke 9:51-24:53, in Baker’s Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament series. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996) 1682.
10. That Revelation 11:2 refers to the end of the second half of Daniel’s Seventieth Week can be proven by recognizing the relationship between the trumpet judgments and the three “woes” of Revelation 8:13. The pronunciation of first woe following the fifth trumpet and the second woe following the sixth trumpet establishes a clear sequential chronology in Revelation 8:1-11:19. The third woe is represented in the seven blows, which finishes the wrath of God. The death of the two witnesses occurs in the context of the second woe. This demands the conclusion of the seven-year period, not it’s beginning.
11. L. Ryken, J.C. Wilhoit, and T. Longmann III, Ed., Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998) 906.
12. Bock, Luke 9:51- 24:53, 1680-1681.
“He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, and as a result he takes his seat in God’s temple, displaying himself as God” (NET).
Here is an instructive article by Daniel Wallace on this question.
Recently, I have been discussing Premillennialism with a good friend of mine who is Amillennial. The subject of what the early church fathers believed was broached. I mentioned to him that it is fact that the very early church fathers in a singular voice affirmed premillennialism (He takes criticism well).
His response to me was incorrect, vague, and containing no historical substantiation,
“There were some Premillers before the completion of the canon, yes. But there were also some orthodox guys who thought Premillennialism was fanatical.”
“Nevertheless, I see a lot of people reading back their own theology into some of the writings of the early church.”
“I think its actually very hard to determine what some of these guys believe, even if some people now days are so confident that they know.”
Claims such as those without argumentation do not lend credibility to the Amillennial position.
I have posted the following article back a while ago, but it is important to post it again because it substantiates the orthodoxy of Premillennialism. Here it is.