Okay....I have hesitated adding my .02 because I just don’t like getting into debates on religion. But this....this has got me concerned enough to toss in my opinion.
Let me get this straight: As Christians, we are to be post-Trib-there is no other choice. We are to experience famine, disease, persecution, torture, starvation, and untold suffering for seven whole years....and look FORWARD to it? Welcome it?
Doesn’t that strike people as INSANE? “Yes...become a Christian. You’ll get your sins forgiven...but it’ll cost ya!” Salvation and Heaven isn’t going to mean too much if you’re starved, watching your family get tortured. Unless you’re a masochist, who is going to look forward to that? Who wouldn’t BREAK under that? People say “I’ll never break! I am faithful to God!”.
Behold Example A: Peter. “Even if all should fall away, I will never do so, Lord!”
Look how that one turned out.
I know for a blue-eyed fact that I myself will not be able to take such torture. I will break. There is no doubt. I have told the Lord this many a time. He knows me, and He knows that is what I’ll end up doing if I have to go through that.
Hoagy, there is another interpretation which takes Christ's time context literally. Using that methodology, the Great Tribulation of Matt 24 occurred in the generation of his disciples during the forty and two month siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
"For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be . . . Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." (Mat 24:34 KJV)
An eyewitness to the siege and destruction, Flavius Josephus, a Jewish Historian and Priest, wrote this about the tribulation:
"That neither did any other city ever suffer such miseries, nor did any age ever breed a generation more fruitful in wickedness than this was, from the beginning of the world." [Wars Of The Jews V.10.5]
There was a horrible civil war inside the city that lasted during the entire siege. Jews from the three parts of the city (Rev 16:19) were killing each other and destroying each other's food supplies. The famine became so dire that women were eating their own children. This is Moses prophesying about the event 1500 years earlier:
"And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee: 54 So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave: 55 So that he will not give to any of them of the flesh of his children whom he shall eat: because he hath nothing left him in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee in all thy gates. 56 The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter, 57 And toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates." (Deu 28:53-57 KJV)
Philip
So for 2,000 years people have been persecuted and martyred for Christ and now the rest of us get to skate? I don’t think so. We will all have to account for ourselves when we go in front of the beema seat.