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God Himself promises us that there will be a specific event during which He will take His Church off this earth and out of the time of judgment that He will rain on the earth:

I Thessalonians 4:14-18

14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

15For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

16For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

17Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

18Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

1 Corinthians 15:51-52

Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

The above New Testament quotations describe the Rapture of the Church. The blessed hope of the Christian is Christ taking him to Himself forever, as He promises in John 14:2,3, “In my father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”

The Olivet Discourse recorded in Matthew 24 and 25 gives us the certainty we are looking for. The disciples asked Jesus, “Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” Here it is clear that it is about the end of the age that the disciples were asking about. The Tribulation, then, is that short period of time – seven years – that immediately precedes the “end of the world,” or age.

The Lord gave the general course of events in the world from His time to the end of this age. He enumerated a series of prophesied occurrences which have characterized the world. False teachers, wars, famines, pestilences, and earthquakes spoken of in Matt. 24:4-7 have been happening since our Savior uttered those words, only with increased intensities in the last century.

Persecutions described in verses 9-13, as applied to Christians, began almost immediately after the establishment of the Church on Pentecost. The fulfillment of this part of the Olivet Prophecy is well documented, , and will no doubt continue with increased severity in the near future. God said that Christians would suffer tribulations in this world- this is, after all, a fallen world with Satan as the "god" of this age (to paraphrase God). Nowhere in Scripture are Christians told that we will be rescued from Satan's evil during our time on this earth. We are promised, however, that those who know Christ as Savior will not be on earth to go through the judgments that God will rain on those who reject Him.

Also, know that the Bible tells us the the One Who restrains evil will be removed before the Antichrist is revealed. “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth” – or restrains – “will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed” (2 Thess. 2:7, 8a). The restrainer of the Antichrist is the Holy Spirit. Nothing and nobody in the world can do the job of restraining Satan, who is the force behind the Antichrist. The Holy Spirit has been doing the work of a restrainer since the days of the apostle Paul. Only an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent Being can do that. When the Holy Spirit, in His capacity as the Restrainer, is “taken out of the way,” then the Antichrist will be free to reveal himself, for God will now allow it. Now, the “taking out of the way” of the Restrainer from the world scene is the same as saying that the Church is raptured – taken away from the earth – because the Holy Spirit works primarily through the Church in controlling the outbreak of apostasy in the professing Christendom and in the world.

When the Church is taken away, then the Great Apostasy will be complete and the Antichrist will reign supreme over the whole world.

God promises to deliver His children prior to the Tribulation by transporting them to heaven. Consider the following:

“… to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come” (1Thess. 1:10). “For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ” (5:9). The wrath to come is the Tribulation, exhaustively described in Revelation 6 – 18. By the time the First Horseman rides (Rev.6:1) the Church (Rev. 2 & 3) will have been transported to heaven (Rev. 4:1).
Christ to the Church: “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which will come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth” (Rev. 3:10). This is a promise from Jesus to the faithful in Philadelphia. We know that Philadelphia is an end-time Church, the sixth of the seven Churches. The Philadelphian Era of God’s Church covers the period from about 1750 to Rapture. God’s promise is clear-cut – “I… will keep thee from the hour of temptation,” – or the time of trial – “which shall come upon all the world.” “The hour” refers to the short period of seven years when God’s righteous judgments will be poured out on sinning mankind. How can anyone mistake the meaning of that scripture? God will deliver the Church from the Tribulation. And the means is by transporting her to heaven: “Come up hither…” (Revelation 4:1).
In 2 Peter 2:4-10 the apostle spoke of “judgment” on the world of the ungodly during the days of Noah and Lot, wherein God saved the just from the outpouring of judgment, for “the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished” (v. 9). The conclusion that we can derive here is that God will deliver His own – the godly – before He allows the global “day of judgment” – the Tribulation – to begin, just as He did to Noah and Lot. We are therefore assured that the Church will not go through the coming Tribulation. God’s promise will never fail. We are expected to believe that; can we do otherwise?