Part 1: Continuing our End Times Study of The Revelation

Sorry guys and girls for the delay in posting over the past three weeks, but as most of you know we were in Romania on mission for the Lord. Well, we be back and I sure want to continue our study of the end times, with focus on The Revelation. My last post relative to this topic was a post from the Prophet Daniel. I will revisit Daniel in a few weeks when we get to the discussion on the 1000 year reign of Jesus on the earth, after the Tribulation. At that time we will be summarizing the discussion relative to whether or not the rapture is real, which it is, or the 1000 year reign of Christ is a literal 1000 years.

Therefore, where are we with The Revelation. I want to thank David for filling in for me in Amy and my time of being away. I know he did a great job. I think we are ready for chapter 12 of Revelation which is covered in Chapter 8 of our Study Guide. In order to move forward I will need to go back and review what we have seen sense we lift chapter 5. So here is a very quick review, along with a little forward look at how all this is laid out in Revelation concerning the Tribulation. We have already discussed that the church is already gone. Since we teach and believe that the scripture teaches that the church will be "caught up" just before the rapture. (1 Thess 4:13-18)

1. Chapter 5: We read about John's vision of seeing the Lord in His throne room in glory. We specifically saw that there was a book to be opened of whom only "The Lamb that was slain" (vs 12) was worthy to break the seals. This book has seven seals and the opening of these seals, and dealing with what happens as a result, will be the discussion from Chapter 5 to 16. These seven seals will be opened during the Great Tribulation (Rev.7:14; Daniel12:1; Matt24:21)
Our author of the study guide, John Macarthur, points out that we cannot put a time frame on any of the seal periods, but that it appears from the text that seals 1, 2, 3 and 4 were during the first half of the tribulation; the 5th seal was a period of transition; and seals 6 and 7 were the seals of the last half of the tribulation. As we read into this period of time it should produce in us a grateful heart that God's plan is not for us to be a part of it. Our basis for believing in the pretribulational rapture are:

1)The church is not mentioned in Revelation 4-18;
2)In Revelation 12, a pause in the discussion of the tribulation and a look backward to the present, the Lord chooses not to include the church but to only mention Israel, Satan, and Jesus;
3) The options to a pretrib. rapture do not seem to make sense, since to believe in a rapture after the fall would require us to believe in a rapture at the end, which would contradict the Scripture in Matt. 24 and 25. In that text, which is just before the Lord returns, those taken out are not Christians but are a lost;
4)If Christians are raptured out at the end of the tribulation then there would be no one present to populate the world during the 1000 year millennium.
5) The epistles have no warnings at all about the believers going into the time of the tribulation.
6)As we have already mentioned, 1 Thess 4:13-18 demands that there be a rapture.
7)Also, if the believers in Thess. 4:13-18, who Paul was trying to comfort, believed in a post-tribulationist rapture then they would not have been worried about their dead loved ones, they would have rejoiced for them dead believers who would not have to go through the great tribulation.

2. Chapter 6: We see the results of the opening of the first six seals. At this point we are already in the last half of the seven years tribulation. Let's look at what happened as a result of the opening of the first six seals.
Seals 1,2,3,4,5,6,
1.Antichrist; 2.War; 3.Famine; 4.Death; 5.Prayers of the Martyrs; 6.Great earthquakes.

3. Chapter 7 Chapter 7 is like the Lord knew we would need a break from all that was being said, so in this chapter we have an interlude, during which time we look at what happens to those who are saved during the tribulation. We see in this chapter two groups.
a. The first group is mentioned in vs.4 and is numbered 144,000. We are told in verses 5-8 that these are all from the twelve tribes of Israel, so they are all Jews.
b. The second group is mentioned in vs. 9 and is described there and in verse 14. This group is of all types of people and are beyond numbering. God says that they are a multitude and they are all slain/matured during the tribulation. This group is very special to God as we see in verses 15-18.