Both the Rapture and the Onset of the Day of the Lord’s Wrath Occur on the Same Day. In other words, these two events will occur back-to-back on the same day without any time gap or intervening course of events. The rapture will take place, then on that same day the Day of the Lord’s wrath will begin and continue for some undetermined duration of time finally culminating with the battle of Armageddon.
(At the end of this article I have provided a PowerPoint presentation on this subject for download.)
This is such a pivotal truth to understand. The pattern of God’s deliverance of his people and subsequent immediate judgment of the ungodly is nothing new, going back to even to the days of Noah and Lot.
This Biblical truth though causes many problems for the pretribulational advocate. They believe that the rapture initiates the 70th week of Daniel (a.k.a. “The 7 Year Tribulation Period”), and they also claim that the entire 7 years is the Day of the Lord’s wrath. And given that they believe in an imminent (any moment) rapture, which means that no events must happen before the Lord’s return, they by necessity believe that no events must happen before the Day of the Lord’s wrath.
But does the Bible teach that there are no events that must happen before the Day of the Lord? A cursory examination demonstrates at least four clear necessary events that must happen before the Day of the Lord.
- Joel 2:31 “The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.”
- Mal. 4:5 “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes.”
- Israel must be a nation and thus back in its land since much of the Day of the Lord’s wrath is in the context of national Israel and the nations who oppose Israel. As well, some temple-like complex must be built.
- (1) A specific apostasy must occur, and (2) the man of lawlessness (Antichrist) must be revealed. 2Th 2:1-3 “Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have come from us, saying that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for [that day will not come] until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.”
These Biblical texts are problematic for the pretribulationist. So problematic that some have tried to resolve this difficulty by asserting that even though the rapture initiates the 7 year “Tribulation period,” the Day of the Lord does not begin immediately after the rapture and thus they create a “gap” of time between the rapture and the Day of the Lord. In this scheme they have the rapture as still imminent, and they take those events that must precede the Day of the Lord by placing them in that “gap” of time between the rapture and the Day of the Lord.
First, this attempt does not work since it is a tenet of pretribulationism that the entire 7 year period is God’s wrath. And since God’s eschatological wrath in both the Old Testament and the New Testament is identified with the “Day of the Lord,” to assert that part of God’s eschatological wrath after the rapture is not part of the Day of the Lord is not only Biblically unwarranted but is indicative of one’s tenacious tradition when the evidence says otherwise.
Second, and most important to our purpose in this article, is that Scripture clearly teaches in four definitive Biblical passages that there is no gap between deliverance of the righteous in the rapture, and judgment of the ungodly in the Day of the Lord—they are back-to-back events.
Citing the first passage in which our Lord is speaking of his Return:
Luke 17:22-27 Then he said to his disciples, “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. Men will tell you, ‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’ Do not go running off after them. For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all…
What Old Testament passage is Jesus referring to? That’s right:
Gen 7:11-13 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark.
To make sure that Jesus is not misunderstood about the “same day” truth that he is applying to his Return, he cites the Lot and Sodom episode:
Luke 17:28-35 It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. “It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day no one who is on the roof of his house, with his goods inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything. Remember Lot’s wife! Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. I tell you, on that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.
Again, which Biblical text is Jesus referring to?
Gen 19:23-28 By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. Then the LORD rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the LORD out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the LORD. He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.
Peter as well has no “gap” in mind when he exhorts the believer to look forward to that day, which will bring deliverance for the godly, but judgment for the ungodly:
2 Peter 3:12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.
In our last passage, Paul, coming off the heels of the Day of the Lord discussion in 1Thess. 5, writes a second letter to the Thessalonians who had misguided thinking that the Day of the Lord has already arrived. Paul is unequivocal when he states that at the same time when God delivers the righteous who have been experiencing affliction, Jesus will be revealed to punish the wicked:
2 Thessalonians 1:6-10 God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.
So those passages undermine any notion that there is a gap between the rapture (God’s deliverance of the godly) and the Day of the Lord (God’s judgment on the ungodly). This is the consistent pattern or motif found throughout scripture.
Download PowerPoint on this subject (Feel free to modify it for your teaching purposes)
