Ask Pastor Mike Live

Focal Point Ministries: I told you I wasn't going to forget your question. Do you believe in the pre-tribulational or post-tribulational rapture? Here is the thing: we all believe in the rapture. I like the way you asked that because post-tribulational rapturists sometimes think, "Well, I don't believe in the rapture." We have to believe in the rapture because the rapture is in the scripture. The church is going to be taken up to meet the Lord in the air. So the question is when.

That is a good question and it is well-worded. That is the way I would like to answer the question. I am going to say I am pre-tribulational, not because I think the church is supposed to be protected from tribulation. We are going to have tribulation. Jesus says we are going to have tribulation. We are going to get tribulation from the world.

The tribulation designed for the end of time is what the Bible would describe as the time of Jacob's trouble, or the 70th week of Daniel, which was decreed for Israel and Israel's people. It is before the promises of God reassembling all 12 tribes in the land. It seems to me, in my understanding of scripture, that the last 70th week is when God turns his attention to the tribes of Israel.

It begins in Revelation chapter 6 by naming 144,000 very special agents of God's saving work with no mention of the church in this period of time, but just saints that are being won to Christ because of the 144,000. That seven-year period is going to be split in two, as it says in Daniel chapter 9. We are going to have the first half and the second half, and it is going to get worse as we go through it.

This is the time that Jesus spoke about in Matthew 24, the Olivet Discourse. All that is going on with the temple that is functioning in Israel, with Israel being persecuted and running into Edom and Petra and hiding from all the wrath that is being poured out against them. That remnant is going to be saved when Jesus comes back to put his feet on the Mount of Olives, as Zechariah says.

We are going to see a very different arrival as God completes this season of life before we start the millennial kingdom, as he prepares his own people. This is what I think Romans 11 is talking about. The preparation and salvation of the people of God takes place on the earth for seven years as God turns his attention primarily to Israel, to turn them from rejecting Christ to accepting their Messiah, while the church is engaged in the marriage supper of the Lamb, at least the beginning of it, and probably going through the Bema Seat judgment.

Here is where people say, "If you don't believe in a post-tribulational rapture, then you're trying to live this kind of Americanized escapism." I am not. I expect to be persecuted. In our world, we are being persecuted more and more. Certainly, in other countries around the world, you lose your life just for reading a Bible in public or passing a Bible to someone who has a Muslim background. We know we are going to have tribulation in the world.

The kind of tribulation that is described starting in Revelation chapter 6 is a kind of tribulation that is coming from God to the earth as the last generation is represented of God's anger toward what has been going on. Just like the flood in that one generation, he is saying, "I've had enough of all that the world has become." It is reserved for fire, as it says in 2 Peter 3.

John, that is why I am a pre-tribulational rapturist. I'm not an escapist, but I am one who believes that the 70 weeks of Daniel, the time of Jacob's trouble, and the preparation of Israel is all something that the Bible says the church is going to be taken up before that to meet the Lord in the air. The Israelites and all those Gentiles saved in the tribulational period will meet the Lord on the ground, and he will come and set his feet down on the Mount of Olives as Zechariah 14 says. That is my quick answer on that.