The Day of the Lord

As we endeavor to take a closer look into the difference between the tribulation and the wrath of God, we need to look closer into an event that is mentioned several times in both the Old and New Testament. The phrase “the Day of the Lord” is widely accepted by Bible theologians as God’s wrath that occurs at the end of the age. I agree with this as well, but there is a big difference between main stream theologians’ timing of the Day of the Lord and mine.

First, it should be noted that no one knows for sure the exact length of the Day of the Lord. We can look at the phrase and compare it to the phrase that describes a king’s rule. I am sure that you have heard the phrase, “In the year of king such in such”. This just referred to the reign of a specific king and did not mean a literal year. I believe that this is the same for the day of the Lord.

Most bible teachers today claim that the day of the Lord begins at the beginning of the tribulation. Of course as I mentioned in the previous post that most of these teachers believe that the tribulation and God’s wrath are one in the same. Now I can take two scriptures in the New Testament and prove that the day of the Lord happens after the tribulation. Acts 2:20 teaches us an important fact about the day of the Lord. It says that the sun and moon will turn to darkness BEFORE the great day of the Lord. This is very important because obviously the sun and moon are going to darkness only once in the future. Well we can compare this verse to Matthew 24:29 that states AFTER the tribulation the sun and moon will be darkened. So if we put these two verses together it is fair to come up with the conclusion that the day of the Lord happens after the tribulation and not before or during.

I read a book that was supposed to interpret every prophecy in the Bible. The author, who has since gone on to be with the Lord, was a well respected, intelligent person. He was chancellor for a very well known Bible seminary for many years. He stated in his book that the day of the Lord occurs at the beginning of the tribulation. I was amazed to find that he completed left out Acts 2:20 and Joel 2:31 in his book. One of my good pastor friends had a good saying about theologians like this. He would say that, “most Bible theologians don’t let the Bible get in the way of their beliefs”. Such a sad, but true statement.

Tribulation or Wrath?

There are many different opinions in the eschatological circles about the tribulation and God’s wrath. We are enlightened by John in the book of Revelation about a series of events that are going to happen at the end of time that would terrify even the bravest saint. John was imprisoned on the island of Patmos when he wrote the book of Revelation, and as a result many scholars believe that he had to write his visions in a code like form to be able to get the message through Roman soldiers to the churches in Asia. This leaves many questions about the events mentioned by John, and without comparing these events to other scriptures confusion could set in.

One of the keys to understanding the events that John has prophesied about is understanding the difference between tribulation and God’s Wrath. The popular theology today is to lump both events into the tribulation. At first this theology makes sense, but when we study the apocalyptic scriptures deeper we find that the theory loses its validity. First look at Matthew 24:37-38 and Luke 17:26-30 so that we can understand in more detail what happens when Jesus returns. Many people look at these scriptures as proof that the tribulation and God’s wrath are the same. These arguments seem valid until we take a closer look at what they are revealing.

First we must understand that Jesus was definitely talking about His return because Matthew 25:37 says, “…so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man”. Now let’s ask ourselves a simple question, “was the flood and judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah a tribulation?” Of course not, but that is what we are led to believe by modern day teachings. There is no question that these judgments were the wrath of God on mankind. One proof of this is a simple little statement that is commonly overlooked in these passages: “Then the flood came and destroyed them all”. They were all destroyed suddenly. This is a direct contradiction to the belief that the tribulation is spread out over a period of seven years and people survive to the end of the tribulation.
A good example of tribulations throughout history would be the slavery of the Hebrew children in Egypt, the Israelites’ exile to Babylon, the persecution of the church in 70 AD, and more recently the Holocaust.

We will look at more differences between tribulation and wrath in the next few post. We will also take a look at why this is so important for us to establish an accurate end time theory.