The Purpose of the Great Tribulation

And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; (Romans 5:3)

The Christian Church will be on the earth throughout the great tribulation according to the Scriptures. The spirit of humanism has entered Christian thinking, giving rise to the doctrine that God loves the Gentile believers of the wealthy nations of the twentieth century so much more than He does the saints of all other centuries and countries that He is not willing that these favorites of His should suffer to any extent.

The "any-moment pre-tribulation rapture" error apparently was brought forth as a "revelation" in the middle of the nineteenth century.

How unscriptural! How lacking in the realities of history! How self-centered!

God never does anything without a purpose. His purpose often is set forth in the Scriptures.

If God will send great tribulation upon the world there is a purpose for it. Perhaps we can find in the Scriptures God's purpose in sending great tribulation on the inhabitants of the earth, and also the provisions God has made for His elect during the period of the tribulation.

Let us turn to the Book of Isaiah:

In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel. And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem: When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning. And the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain. (Isaiah 4:2-6)

The key to understanding the purpose of tribulation, whether great or small, is the expression, "In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious."

A parallel statement is as follows:

Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God. (Isaiah 62:3)

The Scriptures state that the Christian Church, the Wife of the Lamb, God's Israel, the good olive tree, will be perfect.

That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. (Ephesians 5:27)

Paul declared that the ministries of the Church would function until:

 . . . we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of [maturity as measured by] the fulness of Christ: (Ephesians 4:13).

Here is a doctrine that needs to be emphasized today. The Christian Church, the Body of Christ, finally will be perfect in every detail. Indeed, there shall be a holy city, a new Jerusalem.

R. Thompson