Sometimes I can be a real glutton for punishment. Like right now. I’m going to take two important articles of the Christian faith and mash them together, possibly in a way that they were not intended to be melded, but in a way that I believe is grammatically defensible and that also meets the letter of the Law and the spirit of grace. I could be mistaken–you be the judge. I don’t think what I’ll write meets the bar of heresy. Fortunately for me, we are not burning heretics in this country (not yet, that is.)
The two articles of faith deal with the doctrine of election and the subject of tribulation (specifically, but not exclusively the eighty-four months of the Great Tribulation.) Both doctrines are widely misunderstood and each side believes that they have the correct interpretation and everyone else is wrong. I’m just admitting I could be wrong. But I plan to come at this from the Gospel instead of the Epistles. This is not to say that there is a discrepancy in Scripture between them. I understand Paul to be primarily an apostle and theologian from a wealthy and influential family, a citizen of Rome, and Jesus to be the Son of God and a man of the people. It’s strange, however, that the more conservative a person is in the faith, the more they appeal to Paul’s writings while the more liberal a person is, the more they appeal to what Jesus said.
The verse I want to anchor this post to is Mathew 24:22:
“If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.”
“Those days” refers to the days of Great tribulation. But what exactly does Jesus mean here?
ELECTION
Unless you are a dispensationalist or a Calvinist (neither of which is necessary to explain here), election can be confusing and it can cause hurt feelings when misunderstood or if one uses poor word choices. Lutherans, Presbyterians and Baptists believe in election as well as other reformed denominations (more or less, and with Methodists being much less.) It suggests in some sense that our lives are essentially foreordained or predestined. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll stop here and just leave you with the thought that those who believe that God is God, that Jesus is His Son Who redeems all who repent and believe in his resurrection, are the elect of God.
TRIBULATION
The word tribulation in the New Testament of the Bible is θλίβω (or thlíbō in our alphabet.) What’s interesting about this verse is that the word θλίβω (thlíbō) was used to describe how juice was squeezed from cultivated grapes at harvest time. You would dump the grapes in some sort of barrel and then the grapes would be crushed between the lid of the barrel and the bottom of the cask. Usually, a corkscrew of sorts is involved (see photo below), but for a large wine making business, they might have a much larger machine in order to process more grapes at a time. The juice from the grapes drains into vat where I suppose it is sifted to remove stray leaves and stems and so on.
But picture in your mind the individual grapes being squeezed. Think for a second what it would feel like if you were a grape! Talk about a rock and a hard place! People under great pressure may describe a sense of squeezing around their heart when they arrive at the ER (ED.) By the time they’ve finished describing the pressure, we have them flat on their back with cardiac monitoring leads stuck to their chest and an IV needle about to pierce their arm. Sometimes, people feel tension in their head from stress instead of their chest. Their blood pressure soars and their cerebral arteries come close to rupturing in some cases.
Jesus appears to be talking about the Great Tribulation in Matthew 24, because in verse 14 he says
“And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”
Verses 40-41 of the same chapter may refer to the Rapture, as Jesus says:
Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.”
There are all sorts of movies you can rent about the Rapture (none of which I’ve ever watched, by the way.). I know from hearing from people who have watched them that some are scary. Whether or not they are Scripturally accurate is a different story.
But there is no conclusive, clear and convincing evidence in the Bible that the Church will not go through the Tribulation. To believe the Church might be spared from the wars, the asteroid(s), the nukes, the famine, the Anti-Christ (who might be alive at this very moment), and all of the rest might be mere wishful thinking. Because, consider this: If the elect were no longer on earth because they were removed before the Great Tribulation began, then why would God shorten the Tribulation for their sake?
And this leads to the next question.
IN WHAT WAY WILL THE DAYS BE SHORTENED
There are two possible ways to shorten a day. One is to speed up the rotation of the earth. The earth currently rotates at a speed of 1,037 miles per hours. Rotation, not to be confused with the planet’s revolution around the Sun, is the turning of our planet on its axis. Doubling the rotational speed of our planet to 2,074 miles per hour would reduce the length of a day by twelve hours. At that speed, there would be all sorts of calamities affecting sleep patterns, winds, tides, seismic activity the structural integrity of structures on earth, climate and so on. As the speed increases further, all of the above would get worse and objects or people near the equator would no longer be anchored by gravity. They would be pulled upwards into the sky by the centrifugal forces.
I’m not sure how this would be of any benefit to Christians on the Earth.
The other possible explanation is that the period of the Great Tribulation, itself, would be truncated or shortened. Because it is set at eighty-four months, it seems to reason that it will be eighty-four months long. That’s what God’s Word says. But perhaps the suffering would end and civilization catastrophically collapse before that eighty-fourth month arrives, and therefore the misery of those who trust in God for their ultimate deliverance and redemption. But there is no evidence of that in the books of Daniel, Matthew or Revelation either. So I have no answer or opinion on that matter.
Why then you might ask would God allow His people who love Him and who He loves suffer through the tribulation? I don’t know. Why did God allow Christians in Rome to be thrown to the lions? Why did Christians drown when the Titanic sunk? Presumably there were Christians among the 1,500 dead or missing. They were not miraculously snatched from the cabins and decks and the engine rooms and spared the horror of being trapped in a sinking ship with collapsing bulkheads and unbearable pressure. Nor were the Jews spared from the concentration camps and so on. This is what people do to each other. God does not have the responsibility to rescue us from circumstances we ourselves create, from our poor judgment and so on. This is life.
Personally, Deena and I are feeling pretty stressed right now. We have good coping mechanism. We each have a sense of humor and we make each other laugh every day. We have loving friends and families. We limit the time we spend watching the news each day. We go out to dinner on a moment’s notice and about all, we have a heavenly Father who we believe watches over us and preserves our safety and health in spite of my addiction to potato chips and cookies. We absolutely know He loves us, warts and all. And He forgives us.
Politically, our country is being shaken as violently as an earthquake of historic proportions shakes a civilization. I’m not certain I’m on the side of the angels, but I am certain that I’m on the side of the Framers. I cannot think of a single person who signed the Constitution as well as Jay, Jefferson and Henry who did not who would see our current POTUS as anything but a threat to our Republic. Plato, as we all know was a philosopher, but he was also an occasional prophet and Donald J. Trump fits his description of the person who brings democracy to her knees. He predicts it his book Republic. And, incidentally, Joseph Biden’s term in office might be an example of everything wrong that Plato saw in a democracy.
Everything in Scripture needed for the Great Tribulation to begin has happened or can happen in the next few years. We need to adjust our reality to the possibility that it will begin imminently. We do this by an honest self-evaluation of ourselves, our beliefs, our character. Are we prepared? Are we awake and watching for His coming? Will we be caught off guard or ashamed of our circumstances?
Perhaps I’ll work up a post on how to do this. I’ve done a post or two on physically prepping for a disaster. Maybe it’s worth doing something for spiritual preparation as well?
THE FEATURE PHOTO
I searched a few hundred photos for a feature or “cover” photo. I found several dozen outstanding photos of children with an authentic looking Jesus (or at least as far as our best guess takes us.) They all looked convincing. Jesus looked compassionate, the kids were all happy as they crowded around him and so on. But they were all white kids. Where were the children of color? Now, I don’t think the people who created these photos were racist or wanted to suggest that Jesus does not love children from different ethnicities and cultures. I think the photographers were just blinded by their own frame of reference as a white person themself. So, in the interest of being diversified, equitable and inclusive (DEI) now that I am retired and cannot be punished by the State for doing so, I chose a child of color even though I could not find one that someone else has done professionally that included Jesus. I chose a child that looked like it was swaddled in burlap instead of some contemporary, fashionable outfit from Abercrombie & Fitch.
When you start seeing people from south of our border, from India, from Asian and Africa in shackles being led by police officers or ICE employees to a van or bus, I want you to ask yourself if these people might not be part of God’s elect. They could even be angels as I’ve discussed in a recent post. Do we really want to treat them this way? They could be members of God’s elect. They are the least of us in the eyes of many Americans (or not even part of us), but God loves them, and if we disrespect them, are we not disrespecting God, Himself, who made them and decided where and under what circumstances they would be born?
Something to think about.
