Christians who disagree about the timing of the rapture can still affirm that Jesus will return bodily and visibly. The disagreement concerns when He gathers His Church in relation to the future Tribulation. The post-Tribulation view joins that gathering to His public return after the Tribulation. I believe Scripture places the Church’s gathering before that period begins and distinguishes it from His subsequent return to establish His kingdom.
By rapture, I mean the catching up of resurrected and living believers to meet the Lord, as Paul describes in 1 Thessalonians 4. To explain its timing, I want to compare the promises made to the Church with Daniel’s prophecy concerning Israel, Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 24, and the sequence described in Revelation. We should allow each passage to make its own contribution. Neither an isolated phrase nor our preference about avoiding suffering can settle the question.
The Real Question and the Coming Wrath
In the post-Tribulation understanding, believers remain on earth during the final distress, rise to meet Christ when He comes, and accompany Him as He descends to reign. Matthew 24:29–31 is central to that argument because Jesus places the gathering of His elect after the Tribulation. John Piper’s explanation of the post-Tribulation position gives a representative statement of this reading. The question is whether that gathering and the catching up described by Paul are the same event.
First, we need to distinguish ordinary tribulation from the particular period under discussion. Tribulation means affliction or distress, and Christians have experienced it throughout the Church’s existence. Paul taught that believers enter God’s kingdom through many tribulations. Faithful people have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed. A pre-Tribulation rapture gives us no basis for claiming that Christians will escape persecution now.
The future Tribulation refers to the final seven-year period I understand as Daniel’s seventieth week. Jesus describes an unprecedented intensity of distress following the abomination of desolation:
For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be.
Matthew 24:21
The issue is whether the Church is appointed to pass through that future period of judgment. Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians speak about the Lord’s coming in connection with deliverance from wrath:
And to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.
1 Thessalonians 1:10
For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Thessalonians 5:9
The Thessalonians were already suffering for their faith. Paul therefore could not mean that belonging to Christ spared them every painful trial. In 1 Thessalonians 1:10, they wait for the Son from heaven, who delivers them from coming wrath. In chapter 5, Paul describes the Day of the Lord bringing sudden destruction on people who are saying “Peace and safety.” He distinguishes the people overtaken by the Day from believers: “They” are overtaken, while “you” are sons of light and sons of the day.
I understand these promises to include deliverance from the coming Day of the Lord, rather than only forgiveness of sins with no bearing on the Lord’s return. Revelation presents the judgments as proceeding under heavenly authority: the Lamb opens the seals, angels sound the trumpets, and the bowls are expressly identified with God’s wrath. Human persecution and Satan’s hostility occur during that period, but neither accounts for the whole of what happens. God is judging a rebellious world.
Post-Tribulation believers generally do not claim that the Church must suffer God’s condemnation. They distinguish the suffering believers endure from the wrath directed against unbelievers and argue that God can preserve His people while judgments fall around them. God is certainly able to preserve believers while judging the world. Our disagreement concerns whether He has promised to keep the Church from the whole period, which is how I understand the next passage.
Jesus made this promise to the church in Philadelphia:
Because you have kept My command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.
Revelation 3:10
The words keep from should still be read in their setting. In John 17:15, Jesus asks the Father to guard His disciples from the evil one without taking them out of the world. The wording by itself therefore cannot prove physical removal in every passage.
In Revelation 3:10, however, Christ names the worldwide hour of testing as what He will keep His people from. I understand Christ’s keeping His people from that hour as deliverance from the period, not merely preservation of their faith while they remain within it. The purpose of the testing concerns those who dwell on the earth, an expression Revelation repeatedly associates with the world in rebellion against God.
Daniel’s Seventieth Week and the Time of Jacob’s Trouble
Daniel 9 identifies the people and city to which the seventy weeks relate:
Seventy weeks are determined For your people and for your holy city, To finish the transgression, To make an end of sins, To make reconciliation for iniquity, To bring in everlasting righteousness, To seal up vision and prophecy, And to anoint the Most Holy.
Daniel 9:24
Daniel’s people are Israel, and his holy city is Jerusalem. These weeks are understood as units of seven years. The prophecy traces the Messiah’s coming and His being cut off, followed by destruction involving the people of a coming prince. It then describes a final week with a covenant and an interruption of sacrifice halfway through:
Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, Even until the consummation, which is determined, Is poured out on the desolate.
Daniel 9:27
I understand the one confirming the covenant here as the future ruler who opposes God, with the final week still awaiting fulfillment. The seven years are tied to Israel and Jerusalem, and the midpoint brings the cessation of sacrifice and the abomination of desolation. The study on Daniel’s seventy weeks develops the chronology and the reasons for treating that final week as future.
The Church is one body in Christ, made up of believing Jews and Gentiles. Its existence does not cancel God’s promises concerning Israel’s national future. Nor do those promises imply that the Church is less loved or receives an inferior salvation. I understand Daniel’s final week as the completion of the program Gabriel identifies for Israel and Jerusalem. We need to preserve that setting when reading the passages that draw on Daniel’s prophecy.
Jeremiah describes Israel’s coming distress and deliverance:
Alas! For that day is great, So that none is like it; And it is the time of Jacob’s trouble, But he shall be saved out of it.
Jeremiah 30:7
Jacob is brought through this trouble to the restoration God promises. The passage joins severe distress to deliverance for Israel. It does not say that the Church must be placed under God’s wrath to become fit for Christ.
The Blessed Hope and Revelation’s Sequence
The Church is taught to look for Christ:
Looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
Titus 2:13
Both pre-Tribulation and post-Tribulation believers can look forward eagerly to His appearing. My question concerns what Scripture requires to happen before He gathers the Church. I understand the New Testament’s expectation as imminent, meaning that no revealed prophetic event must occur before that gathering. Believers are not instructed to await the coming ruler’s covenant, the abomination, the mark of the beast, or the bowls before they can expect to be received by Christ.
Imminence does not entitle anyone to set a date. Jesus expressly rules out claims to know the day or hour:
But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.
Matthew 24:36
Matthew 24 also describes signs preceding the Son of Man’s public appearance. I distinguish that revealed sequence from the Church’s expectation of being gathered to Him. Post-Tribulation believers can affirm watchfulness even while expecting preceding events; the command to watch alone does not disprove their position. My difficulty is with making the whole sequence of Daniel’s final week a necessary prerequisite to the Church’s gathering. I believe the combined promises direct us to expect Christ without first identifying our place within that week.
Jesus’ promise to His disciples directs their attention to the place He prepares and to being with Him:
Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.
John 14:1-3
He names the Father’s house and assures them that He will come again to receive them to Himself. The passage does not give every stage of the prophetic timetable, but the destination and the personal reception belong in our explanation. I find this promise fits naturally with Christ gathering His people to be with Him before He later descends in public judgment.
Revelation supplies further context, although we should not ask one verse to establish the entire doctrine. John is called into heaven:
After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, “Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this.”
Revelation 4:1
“Come up here” addresses John, who is being shown a vision. I do not regard that command as an explicit description of the Church’s rapture. The larger movement of the book is more significant to the argument. The churches are addressed in chapters 2 and 3, the scene shifts to heaven, and worldwide judgments unfold in chapters 6 through 18. Believers appear on earth during those judgments, but the Church is not addressed there as it was in the opening letters. I understand these believers as Tribulation saints, people who come to faith during that period.
The presence of saints therefore does not prove that the Church has remained on earth, but neither does the absence of the word Church prove its removal by itself. I read this structure together with the earlier promises. By Revelation 19, the marriage of the Lamb is announced before His public descent:
Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.
And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
Revelation 19:7-8
And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses.
Revelation 19:14
The bride is made ready, and heaven’s armies follow Christ. I understand the redeemed Church to be with Him before He descends to defeat His enemies. That order fits the promise of a place in the Father’s house, the judgment seat and rewards described in 2 Corinthians 5:10, and the bride’s readiness. Revelation does not give the length of every heavenly event, so my argument does not depend on claiming each must take a prescribed number of days. It concerns how those events fit before the Lord’s descent.
Matthew 24 and Paul’s Gathering of the Church
Jesus’ disciples had asked about the temple, His coming, and the end of the age. In Matthew 24, His answer draws on Daniel’s abomination of desolation and includes instructions for people in Judea to flee, with specific concern about the holy place and the Sabbath. These references locate the instructions in Israel’s prophetic setting. Jesus then places this gathering after the Tribulation:
Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
Matthew 24:29-31
I accept that sequence. The Son of Man appears publicly after the distress, the nations mourn, and angels gather His elect. In the setting Jesus has described, I understand this gathering as connected with His public return, Israel’s deliverance, and the establishment of His kingdom. We still need to compare it with Paul’s description before concluding that both passages refer to the same event.
Paul describes the Church’s gathering this way:
For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.
Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
The Lord Himself descends. The dead in Christ rise first, and the living are caught up with them to meet Him in the air. This includes resurrection, not simply the removal of Christians who happen to be alive. The transformation of living believers is explained further in 1 Corinthians 15:51–52.
The two passages share features, including clouds, a trumpet, and a gathering. Post-Tribulation believers see these as descriptions of the same coming, with believers meeting Christ and accompanying Him to earth. I do not think a difference in the details mentioned, by itself, proves two separate events. My conclusion comes from reading those details with the promises concerning wrath, Israel’s final week, and the Church’s reception by Christ.
Matthew emphasizes the public appearance after cosmic signs and the angelic gathering of the elect. Paul comforts the Church with the resurrection of the dead in Christ and the meeting in the air. He does not mention the Tribulation signs as prerequisites in that explanation. I understand the gatherings as distinct events within God’s unfolding purpose, with the Church received first and the gathering connected with Christ’s public return following the Tribulation. The study on the pre-Tribulation rapture examines the positive case more fully.
Revelation 20 then describes the resurrection of people killed during the Tribulation for their testimony:
And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.
But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.
Revelation 20:4-5
These martyrs refused the beast, his image, and his mark. They live and reign with Christ for a thousand years. The description “the first resurrection” must be understood alongside the resurrection already accomplished in Christ, the firstfruits. I understand it as the resurrection unto life, with more than one stage, in contrast with the later resurrection of the wicked to judgment and the second death.
The timing of the Church’s resurrection follows from the passages considered earlier, while Revelation 20 identifies the martyrs raised to reign. I understand the resurrections to unfold in phases: Christ rose first, the dead in Christ rise at the Church’s gathering, and the Tribulation martyrs rise to reign when He establishes His kingdom. The wicked dead are raised after the thousand years. I find the post-Tribulation reading less satisfactory because it brings the Church’s reception, the heavenly preparation and rewards, and the return to reign into the same closing sequence.
The Millennial Kingdom and the Comfort of Christ’s Coming
The literal thousand-year kingdom raises a further question about the people who inhabit it. Scripture describes glorified saints reigning with Christ, but also people living ordinary mortal lives. Jesus says this about those who have been raised:
For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven.
Matthew 22:30
They do not become angels; Jesus compares their condition in this respect with that of the angels. Resurrected saints do not marry and establish families as people do now. Yet Isaiah describes children, long life, and death under exceptional circumstances:
No more shall an infant from there live but a few days, Nor an old man who has not fulfilled his days; For the child shall die one hundred years old, But the sinner being one hundred years old shall be accursed.
Isaiah 65:20
I understand Isaiah’s description as life under Messiah’s earthly reign, before the eternal state in which death is gone. The kingdom therefore includes mortal subjects alongside glorified saints. If every living believer is caught up and glorified at the end of the Tribulation, and unbelievers are judged and excluded when Christ comes, that leaves the post-Tribulation explanation needing to account for the mortal population.
Within the pre-Tribulation sequence, people can come to faith during the Tribulation, survive until Christ returns, and enter His kingdom without having been glorified at the Church’s earlier gathering. Their children continue mortal human life under His reign. This objection rests on a literal earthly millennium with both populations; it cannot be answered simply by combining glorified saints and mortal subjects into one group. I believe the pre-Tribulation position accounts for the resurrection, the judgment, and those continuing human lives more coherently.
Putting these passages together, I believe Christ will gather His Church before Daniel’s final seven years. He will later return bodily and visibly, defeat His enemies, deliver Israel, judge the nations, and establish His thousand-year kingdom. The Tribulation martyrs will rise to reign with Him. The study on the end-times timeline follows that sequence more fully.
The purpose of Paul’s teaching should also govern how we use it. The Thessalonians were grieving for fellow believers who had died and needed assurance about their future with the Lord. Paul explained that the dead in Christ would rise and the living would join them. He then instructed the Church:
Therefore comfort one another with these words.
1 Thessalonians 4:18
The comfort rests in the Lord’s personal faithfulness. Death will not cause His people to miss their inheritance, and those alive at His coming will not leave the dead behind. All will be with Him. I also understand the wider promises to assure the Church of reception before the coming hour of wrath. That expectation should steady us when the present world becomes frightening, without making us careless about the responsibilities God has given us.
If I use prophecy to justify neglecting my work, ignoring a struggling believer, or spending my days making predictions, I am disregarding the conduct Paul commands in these same letters. We should work faithfully, grow in love, encourage the fainthearted, warn the unruly, and remain sober and watchful. Expecting Christ gives us reason to obey Him today. It should also make us eager to tell people about the Savior they need. The study on the blessed hope develops that expectation.
My Final Thoughts
I remain convinced that the post-Tribulation view brings together events Scripture distinguishes. The promises of deliverance from coming wrath, Daniel’s focus on Israel and Jerusalem, the Church’s expectation of Christ, and the order of the heavenly and earthly events lead me to a pre-Tribulation gathering.
That conviction should make us faithful, not presumptuous. We have no revealed date to announce and no promise of freedom from persecution in the present age. We do have the Lord’s assurance that He will receive His people and keep His promises. I want us to wait for Him with confidence, care for one another, and continue the work He has entrusted to us.
When we speak about going to heaven, we often leave the explanation there. We know we will be with the Lord, but we may picture little beyond clouds, light, and an escape from the troubles of this life. Scripture gives us a much fuller expectation. God will raise His people bodily, make a new heaven and a new earth, and dwell with them. John describes a holy city coming down from God, with gates, foundations, a river, and the tree of life. The heavenly Jerusalem belongs within that promised future.
I want us to follow how that promise develops, because Revelation does not introduce God’s desire to dwell with His people as a new idea. Abraham looked for a city God would build. The tabernacle and temple taught Israel about His presence. In the final chapters of Revelation, the separation caused by sin has ended, and God’s servants live before Him without the curse that has burdened human life since Eden.
The City God Has Prepared
Abraham obeyed God’s call and went to the land He promised, yet he lived there in tents. Receiving the promise did not mean that Abraham possessed its complete fulfillment during his lifetime. Paul explains in Hebrews that Abraham was looking ahead:
For he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
Hebrews 11:10
A tent can be taken down and moved. A city with foundations suggests a settled home, and Abraham trusted God to provide one. Hebrews 11 goes on to speak of a better, heavenly country and of God preparing a city for those who died in faith. Their deaths did not cancel His promise. The God who called them would fulfill what He had said beyond the limits of their earthly lives.
Later, Paul tells believers that their relationship to this heavenly city has already begun through Christ:
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels.
Hebrews 12:22
Believers have access to God and belong to His heavenly assembly now. We do not have to wait until death to become His people. But Hebrews 12 does not say that the city has already descended to the new earth or that our bodily resurrection has already occurred. Our present standing in Christ assures us of an inheritance whose full enjoyment is still ahead.
John describes that future in Revelation:
Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
Revelation 21:2
The bridal description expresses beauty, preparation, and the closeness of the redeemed to their Lord. Revelation 21:9–10 makes the connection especially plain: the angel offers to show John the bride, the Lamb’s wife, and shows him the holy city. I understand the city as a real dwelling whose glory is inseparable from the people who belong to the Lamb. The imagery does not require us to discard its gates, foundations, or streets as though God were promising no actual home.
The city comes from God. Human effort does not gradually construct it, and no political project can turn the present world into the New Jerusalem. God prepares the dwelling and brings it down. John then hears what its arrival means for those who live there:
And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.”
Revelation 21:3
This promised life with God includes the resurrection of our bodies. The city descends in the setting of a new creation, where His redeemed people will live. Being with Christ after death is a blessed expectation, but Scripture carries our hope onward to resurrection and life with Him in the world He makes new. I develop that broader subject in the study on Heaven.
A Measured City With Named Gates and Foundations
John is shown more than a distant brightness. An angel measures the city with a reed and records its dimensions:
The city is laid out as a square; its length is as great as its breadth. And he measured the city with the reed: twelve thousand furlongs. Its length, breadth, and height are equal.
Revelation 21:16
Then he measured its wall: one hundred and forty-four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of an angel.
Revelation 21:17
A furlong is an ancient unit of distance; twelve thousand of them describes an immense city. Its length, breadth, and height are equal. The wall is measured separately in cubits, a unit based on the length of a forearm. John gives enough detail to convey the city’s vastness and order, although he does not supply every detail needed for a construction drawing. For example, the wall’s measurement does not itself explain whether John means its height or thickness. We can receive what he records without pretending that he has answered every architectural question.
Along with the measurements, John records names on the gates and foundations. These connect the city to the people through whom God made His promises known:
Also she had a great and high wall with twelve gates, and twelve angels at the gates, and names written on them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel.
Revelation 21:12
Now the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
Revelation 21:14
The gates recall God’s dealings with Israel, while the foundations bear the names of the apostles who testified concerning Christ. Jesus came through Israel as the promised Messiah, and His apostles proclaimed His death and resurrection. The city displays the unity of God’s work of redemption without erasing the distinct place of Israel or the apostles.
Twelve appears repeatedly in this description: twelve gates, twelve foundations, and a wall measured at one hundred and forty-four cubits, which is twelve times twelve. I see that repeated pattern as expressing the completeness of what God has prepared. But recognizing meaning in the numbers does not oblige us to turn the whole city into an abstraction. A real place can also communicate what God has accomplished. Its measurements, names, and beauty all serve the description John was given.
God’s Dwelling Without a Temple
To understand why the city’s equal dimensions are striking, we need to look back at the sanctuary. When God instructed Moses to build the tabernacle, He stated its purpose:
And let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.
Exodus 25:8
God intended to dwell among Israel, and He prescribed how they were to approach Him. Moses was not free to devise a sanctuary according to his own preferences. Paul explains that the earthly arrangement represented heavenly realities:
Who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said, “See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”
Hebrews 8:5
Within the sanctuary, the Most Holy Place was set apart from the rest. The tabernacle’s arrangement points to a cubical inner chamber, and the dimensions of that chamber in Solomon’s temple are stated explicitly:
The inner sanctuary was twenty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and twenty cubits high. He overlaid it with pure gold, and overlaid the altar of cedar.
1 Kings 6:20
The New Jerusalem’s equal length, breadth, and height recall that inner sanctuary. I understand the correspondence to convey that the whole city is a dwelling in God’s holy presence. What was represented by a restricted chamber in the earthly sanctuary extends throughout the home of His redeemed people. John nevertheless reports no temple building within the city:
But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.
Revelation 21:22
The absence of a temple does not mean that worship has disappeared or that God has withdrawn. He and the Lamb are present with His people. Under the old covenant, veils, priestly duties, and repeated sacrifices taught Israel about God’s holiness and the seriousness of sin. In the New Jerusalem, the people redeemed through the Lamb’s blood enjoy the fellowship toward which those arrangements pointed. There is no remaining sin to bar their approach and no need for another sacrifice.
God’s presence also accounts for the city’s light:
The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light.
Revelation 21:23
John says the city does not need the sun or moon to illuminate it. We should keep his wording in view; he is explaining the source of its light, rather than answering every question about heavenly bodies in the new creation. The glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb is its light. Isaiah had spoken of the Lord providing everlasting light for His people:
The sun shall no longer be your light by day, Nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you; But the LORD will be to you an everlasting light, And your God your glory.
Isaiah 60:19
The Lamb is Jesus Christ, the eternal Son who is fully God. He does not illuminate the city as a created lamp standing beside God. Revelation speaks of the throne of God and of the Lamb, placing the crucified and risen Savior at the center of this dwelling. The One whose blood redeemed His people will be with them in glory, and their worship and service will continue in His presence.
The New Creation and the End of the Curse
Revelation also tells us where this city belongs in the sequence of future events. Chapter 20 describes Christ’s thousand-year reign, Satan’s final rebellion, his judgment, and the judgment before the great white throne. Then John sees the new creation:
Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea.
Revelation 21:1
I distinguish the millennial kingdom, Christ’s future thousand-year reign on earth, from the eternal state described here. They are connected parts of God’s purpose, but they are not interchangeable. The final rebellion and judgment come before the new heaven and new earth. We should not move every detail of the New Jerusalem backward into the millennium or use the eternal state to erase God’s promises concerning Israel and Christ’s earthly reign. The study on the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God considers the kingdom language more fully.
The new creation will be free from the evil that now spoils our life together. Peter describes it as the fulfillment of God’s promise:
Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
2 Peter 3:13
We know what it is like to see people lie, exploit the vulnerable, or ridicule those who obey the Lord. Even when justice is done in one case, another wrong follows. Righteousness dwelling in the new creation means that this corruption will no longer characterize human life. God will not merely grant His people a temporary respite before evil regains its hold.
John’s description of the city then takes us back to what humanity lost in Eden. After Adam and Eve sinned, they were expelled from the garden and denied access to the tree of life. In Revelation 22, the water of life flows openly from God’s throne:
And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb.
Revelation 22:1
In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
Revelation 22:2
The river and the tree display life supplied by God in abundance. John describes fruit yielded every month and leaves for the healing of the nations. He does not explain every feature of how life in the new creation will function. We do know that this description belongs with his assurance that death, sorrow, crying, and pain have passed away in Revelation 21:4. The healing of the nations must be understood within that restored creation, rather than as a prediction that the present cycle of disease and bereavement continues indefinitely. The study on the tree of life follows its place in Scripture from Eden to the New Jerusalem.
Alongside these provisions for life, John announces the removal of the curse that followed human sin:
And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him.
Revelation 22:3
God’s servants will serve Him, see His face, and bear His name, as the following verses explain. Their life will include purposeful service and fellowship with Him. The passage gives no reason to picture endless boredom or an eternity in which redeemed people have nothing to do. They will reign forever, with no curse to frustrate their labor or corrupt their relationships.
Nor are they being placed in a restored garden only to face another fall and expulsion. In the sequence John records, Satan has already received his final judgment, the wicked have been judged, and death itself has been cast into the lake of fire. The city’s inhabitants will not live under the threat that their home may eventually be lost. For more on the resurrection passages that lead into this future, see the last day and the first resurrection.
Who Enters the City, and How Should We Live?
Because the city is free from sin, we cannot treat its description as a promise that everyone will enter regardless of their response to Christ. John identifies those who belong there:
But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
Revelation 21:27
Our hope rests in the Lamb who redeems sinners. Family ancestry, religious reputation, and an interest in heavenly things cannot reconcile us to God. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, became man and lived without sin. Wicked people inflicted His bodily suffering and death, which He willingly endured for our redemption. Through His shed blood and death, He completed His saving work before rising bodily from the dead. We are called to repent and trust Him, rather than attempt to establish a claim to this inheritance through our own merit.
Jesus had already assured His disciples that He would provide a place for them. On the night before His crucifixion, He spoke to them about His Father’s house:
In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
John 14:2
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.
John 14:3
Jesus places the emphasis on being with Him. Although He does not give the city’s dimensions here, He assures His disciples that He will prepare a place and come again to receive them. They can trust Him with their future because He has undertaken to bring them to Himself. I discuss our expectation of His coming further in the study on the blessed hope.
Until then, believers live here while belonging to the Lord who will return. Paul describes that position this way:
For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Philippians 3:20
The next verse speaks of Christ transforming our lowly body to conform it to His glorious body. Our hope includes the restoration of the body in which we now endure weakness and suffering. We await the Savior who will redeem it completely.
Because the Lord has secured our future with Him, we can hold our possessions with the freedom Abraham had when he lived in tents. His trust in God extended beyond the property he possessed during his lifetime. We should care for what the Lord entrusts to us without expecting a house, an income, or a place in society to provide the security only He can give.
Peter also connects the promised new creation with holy conduct in the present. If I expect to live in a world where righteousness dwells, I should not make peace with dishonesty, cruelty, or sexual immorality now. The grace that brings us into God’s family teaches us to leave sin behind. Obedience does not purchase our place in the city; it expresses the new life we have received through Christ.
This hope also helps us endure losses we cannot repair in this life. Some faithful believers suffer severely, and many die without seeing relief from those who persecute them. The promise of the New Jerusalem does not suggest that their faith failed. God has promised them resurrection, life in His presence, and an end to death itself. We can grieve honestly while trusting that the harm sin has done will not govern our future forever.
My Final Thoughts
From Abraham’s expectation of a city to John’s vision of the New Jerusalem, God has promised His people a home He Himself provides. The tabernacle and temple taught them about His holy presence; the Lamb’s redemption brings them into fellowship with Him. In the new creation, that fellowship will be enjoyed without sin, death, or the curse.
I want us to read these passages with enough care to distinguish what God has revealed from the details He has not explained. He has told us who dwells there, whose throne is there, and why nothing unclean can enter. Our confidence belongs in Jesus Christ, who gave Himself to redeem us and promised to receive us to Himself. We can obey Him through the hardships of this present life knowing that He will keep His promise.
The locusts in Revelation 9 are frightening enough without our inventing details about them. They emerge from the abyss, torment people for five months, and serve an angelic king called Apollyon. I understand John to be describing a real future judgment involving a supernatural host. To explain that conclusion, we need to follow the passage from the sounding trumpet through the end of the first woe, paying attention to the creatures’ origin and instructions as well as their appearance.
Read the Fifth Trumpet in Its Order
The first four trumpets bring devastation to the land, the sea, fresh water, and the heavenly lights. Before the fifth sounds, John hears a warning about the three remaining blasts:
And I looked, and I heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, "Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound!"
Revelation 8:13
A woe announces severe distress and judgment. The earlier trumpets affect the world people inhabit; the fifth brings torment directed at people themselves. Heaven announces that intensification before it occurs. We should therefore read the locust judgment within the sequence John records, rather than lift its most startling details out of their setting.
I understand these as future events within a literal Tribulation. The trumpets follow the opening of the seventh seal, and their sequence leads toward the proclamation of Christ’s kingdom at the seventh trumpet. Treating each blast as an unrelated event somewhere in church history breaks up that progression. My study of The Seven Trumpets of Revelation explains the series more fully; here we are following Revelation 9:1-12.
Then the fifth angel sounded: And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace. So the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the pit.
Revelation 9:1-2
John calls this figure a fallen star, then describes him receiving a key and opening the pit. Those personal actions explain why I understand the star as an angelic person. A meteor does not accept an assignment and unlock a prison.
Some readers identify this fallen star as Satan and understand his fall as rebellion. Others understand the description as a descent from heaven to perform an assigned task. John says the star has fallen but does not name him or explain the circumstances of that fall. We can discuss those interpretations without pretending the passage settles his identity.
The key, however, was given to him. He does not break into the abyss or seize it from God. Access is granted when the fifth trumpet sounds. In Revelation 1:18, Jesus holds the keys of Hades and Death; in Revelation 20, an angel carries a key to the abyss when he comes to imprison Satan. These scenes involve different actions and places, but none presents a realm that has slipped beyond God’s authority.
The Greek expression translated bottomless pit refers to the shaft, phrear, of the abyss, abyssos, a deep or unfathomable place. The English word bottomless supplies no map of the earth’s interior. Scripture gives us no coordinates and does not identify the abyss with an ocean trench, a volcano, a black hole, or a tunnel through a flat earth. Its connection with spiritual confinement is much clearer. During Jesus’ ministry, demons possessing a man in the country of the Gadarenes begged Him not to send them there:
Then they sailed to the country of the Gadarenes, which is opposite Galilee. And when He stepped out on the land, there met Him a certain man from the city who had demons for a long time. And he wore no clothes, nor did he live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out, fell down before Him, and with a loud voice said, "What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You, do not torment me!" For He had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For it had often seized him, and he was kept under guard, bound with chains and shackles; and he broke the bonds and was driven by the demon into the wilderness. Jesus asked him, saying, "What is your name?" And he said, "Legion," because many demons had entered him. And they begged Him that He would not command them to go out into the abyss. Now a herd of many swine was feeding there on the mountain. So they begged Him that He would permit them to enter them. And He permitted them. Then the demons went out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the lake and drowned.
Luke 8:26-33
The demons recognized Jesus as the Son of the Most High God. His command compelled them to leave the man, and they had to ask permission even to enter the swine. Their fear of the abyss tells us something about that place and about Christ’s authority over them. It does not tell us that these particular demons are the beings John later sees released. For more on the passages concerning that realm, see The Abyss or Bottomless Pit.
When the shaft opens in Revelation 9, smoke pours out like the smoke of a great furnace and darkens the sun and air. John describes an enormous outflow, but he gives no chemical analysis or explanation involving a modern weapon. Nor can smoke alone account for what follows, because living beings emerge from it.
The Locust Host and Its God-Given Limits
Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. They were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. And they were not given authority to kill them, but to torment them for five months. Their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them.
Revelation 9:3-6
John calls them locusts, and I am content to use his word. Their origin, behavior, and later description distinguish them from the insects that devastate crops. They come from the abyss, leave vegetation unharmed, and torment selected human beings with scorpion-like power. This is an extraordinary host, whatever further questions we have about its nature.
I believe the strongest reading is that these are supernatural beings associated with the abyss and its destructive angelic ruler. Calling them demons is a reasonable inference from those connections. Revelation itself does not call them demons or identify them as a particular class of fallen angels, so I would keep that inference separate from John’s explicit description. We have enough information to recognize their dreadful work without supplying a catalogue of beings Scripture never names.
Their instructions are remarkably precise. They receive power, but they cannot use it wherever or however they please. Grass, green plants, and trees are protected. Among human beings, those bearing God’s forehead seal are protected. The host may torment the unsealed for five months, but it has no authority to kill them. Its fierce appearance does not enlarge its assignment.
That repeated language about permission explains how such a hostile force can act during God’s judgment without becoming His rival. The key was given, power was given, and permission to kill was withheld. God restrains evil beings and determines how far they may act; His control does not turn their destructive character into goodness. Neither does their malice mean the judgment has become an uncontrolled disaster.
The forehead seal mentioned here was introduced before the trumpet judgments, when four angels were instructed to hold back harm until God’s servants had been marked:
After these things I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree. Then I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God. And he cried with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea, saying, "Do not harm the earth, the sea, or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads." And I heard the number of those who were sealed. One hundred and forty-four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel were sealed: of the tribe of Judah twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Gad twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Asher twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Manasseh twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Simeon twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Levi twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Issachar twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Zebulun twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Joseph twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Benjamin twelve thousand were sealed.
Revelation 7:1-8
John heard a definite number, 144,000, and named the tribes of Israel from which they were sealed. I see no reason to make those tribes a disguised name for the church. In Revelation 9, the locusts’ prohibition against harming anyone with God’s forehead seal connects their instructions with that earlier protection. The beings carrying out the judgment can distinguish the sealed from the unsealed, although John does not describe the mark’s physical form.
The Holy Spirit’s sealing of the church is a related truth about God’s ownership, but it should not be confused with this particular forehead mark. The Spirit is a divine Person who indwells and seals every genuine believer, guaranteeing what God has promised. Revelation 7 concerns servants from Israel marked during the Tribulation. In my pre-Tribulation understanding, the church has already been gathered to Christ before this worldwide hour of trial. Our security does not depend on recognizing the locusts or obtaining the mark described in this chapter.
The instructions that identify whom the locusts may attack also limit their activity to five months. Comparisons with the length of an ordinary locust season may be interesting background, but the creatures’ authority lasts five months because that is the period assigned to them. Nothing in the passage authorizes us to stretch those months into centuries of political or religious oppression.
The suffering will be severe. John compares it to a scorpion’s strike, then describes people seeking death and being unable to find it. He does not explain what each person attempts or how death is withheld. We should let the dreadful statement stand without inventing a medical mechanism or claiming to know every circumstance. During this judgment, the sufferers will desire an escape they cannot obtain.
What John’s Comparisons Do and Do Not Mean
The shape of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. They had hair like women's hair, and their teeth were like lions' teeth. And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses running into battle. They had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months.
Revelation 9:7-10
John describes what the beings resemble through a series of comparisons. Their shapes are like horses prepared for battle, their faces resemble men’s faces, and their hair resembles women’s hair. They have lion-like teeth, breastplates like iron, and wings whose noise recalls many chariots and horses charging into battle. Their tails have scorpion-like stings. The combined description conveys a fearsome host equipped to inflict the torment already announced.
Taking the passage literally includes reading those comparisons as comparisons. A real creature can have a face resembling a man’s without being human. Something resembling a golden crown need not be made of gold. An iron-like breastplate suggests formidable protection, but John does not say the beings are indestructible. We should neither explain away the coming event nor treat the description as a set of engineering specifications.
The crown-like forms, for example, do not identify a modern political regime or establish an angelic rank. They contribute to the appearance John records, while the passage has already explained that the host’s authority is received. The NET translation note on Revelation 9:7 helpfully points out that John’s wording compares both the forms to crowns and their appearance to gold. We should be careful about declaring the material or explaining a hidden office from that detail.
The comparison with women’s hair is similarly descriptive. John does not call it seductive, shameful, beautiful, or deceptive. He gives us no basis for identifying a particular ethnicity or condemning a modern hairstyle. We are being told what the hair looked like, not being handed a moral lesson about women’s appearance.
The sound of the wings conveys the tumult of a host rushing into battle. It does not identify an engine. The tails explain where the scorpion-like stings are, and John ends the description by returning to the five-month limit. Even these intimidating features belong to beings whose power has a fixed purpose and duration.
The King of the Host and Other Interpretations
And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has the name Apollyon. One woe is past. Behold, still two more woes are coming after these things.
Revelation 9:11-12
John identifies their king as the angel of the abyss and supplies his name in Hebrew and Greek. Abaddon is associated with destruction or ruin; Apollyon means Destroyer. In the Old Testament wisdom books, Abaddon can refer to destruction or the realm of the dead. Here it names the angelic ruler over this host. The immediate context tells us how the name is being used.
This is a named angelic person, but John gives no account of his creation or rank among other beings. His destructive role does not make him the owner of the abyss or put death at his disposal. He rules a host that may torment but may not kill. Giving the name in two languages helps readers identify him; it does not invite us to search later languages for a similar-sounding politician’s name.
Some readers identify Apollyon with Satan, whom Revelation elsewhere names as the dragon, the serpent of old, and the Devil. John does not use those names for Apollyon. Nor does he say that Apollyon is the fallen star who receives the key in verses 1-2. He introduces the star as the key-holder and Apollyon as the host’s king. Neither proposed identification is explicit, so I would not teach either as certain. At the same time, John’s silence does not prove that these must be different beings.
There is also no explicit identification with the destroyer at Passover, the angel who struck the Assyrians, or the destroying angels mentioned in Psalm 78. Similar work does not establish that every passage concerns the same angel. The distinctive Angel of the LORD in the relevant Old Testament appearances is a Christophany, an appearance of Christ. Apollyon should never be confused with the eternal Son. My study of Apollyon and the Destroyer Angel considers those passages in more detail.
Having a king also sets this host apart from ordinary locusts. Proverbs includes locusts among small creatures whose behavior displays remarkable wisdom:
There are four things which are little on the earth, But they are exceedingly wise: The ants are a people not strong, Yet they prepare their food in the summer; The rock badgers are a feeble folk, Yet they make their homes in the crags; The locusts have no king, Yet they all advance in ranks; The spider skillfully grasps with its hands, And it is in kings' palaces.
Proverbs 30:24-28
Ordinary locusts advance in ranks without a king. Revelation’s host has one. Having a king is another reason to distinguish this host from ordinary insects, alongside its origin in the abyss, its unusual appearance, and its refusal to consume plants. Enlarging an ordinary insect does not explain what John describes.
Exodus 10 and Joel provide other biblical background. A locust invasion could strip a land of its food and leave people facing ruin. Joel uses military language to describe a devastating advance, with darkness and the noise of an approaching host. That background helps us appreciate the dread in Revelation, but similarities do not establish that every passage describes the same event or species. In Revelation 9, the target has changed: the vegetation is spared while people are tormented.
The military comparisons have also led some readers to identify the beings as helicopters. That explanation begins with wings, noise, and a warlike appearance, then tries to make the remaining details fit a machine. Human-like faces, women’s hair, lion-like teeth, and stinging tails require further guesses. The explanation still has to account for the abyss, the angelic king, the distinction between sealed and unsealed people, and the prohibition against killing. Substituting a drone or an engineered bioweapon does not resolve those problems.
If my opening question is What modern object resembles one detail?
I have already given that detail more weight than the rest of the passage. John wrote in the vocabulary of his own day, but that does not mean he was struggling to name a piece of twenty-first-century military equipment. Each generation can find an invention that resembles something in the description. Resemblance alone is poor grounds for identifying the host.
Human-army and political-movement interpretations also draw on the military imagery or on the experience of oppression. Those observations deserve consideration, but neither an ordinary army nor a movement naturally accounts for the host’s origin and exact restrictions. The proposal must explain the whole description, not simply the part that initially suggested it.
Preterist readings place the fulfillment in an ancient invasion or ruler’s actions. Idealist readings understand the scene chiefly as a recurring portrayal of evil and judgment. I understand the passage differently because John locates this host within a progressing series of trumpets, gives it an appointed duration, and moves from the end of its appointed torment to further judgments. A general truth about restrained evil can be drawn from the passage, but that truth does not replace the future event being described.
I therefore understand a real supernatural host to be the best explanation. That conclusion leaves some questions unanswered, including the precise nature of the beings. We do not improve an interpretation by filling every silence. The information John supplies is enough to explain their origin, ruler, targets, torment, and limits.
The Remaining Woes and the Tribulation Timeline
After naming the king, John announces that the first woe is past and two more are coming. The fifth-trumpet host cannot turn its five months into an endless reign. At the sixth trumpet, four angels bound at the Euphrates are released, and another terrifying host brings death to a third of mankind:
Then the sixth angel sounded: And I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates." So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind. Now the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them. And thus I saw the horses in the vision: those who sat on them had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow; and the heads of the horses were like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and brimstone. By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed–by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which came out of their mouths. For their power is in their mouth and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents, having heads; and with them they do harm. But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
Revelation 9:13-21
The difference between the judgments is substantial. The first host was forbidden to kill; this later judgment brings enormous loss of life. John describes the later horses, riders, and means of destruction in their own terms. We should not merge the two hosts simply because both descriptions are terrifying or contain lion-like features.
What follows the deaths is just as sobering as the plagues themselves. The survivors continue worshiping demons and idols that cannot see, hear, or walk. Their murders, sorceries, sexual immorality, and thefts continue. The judgment has exposed the powerlessness of their objects of worship, yet they refuse to turn to God.
I understand the repeated charge that they did not repent as showing a real opportunity they refuse, rather than an opportunity that never existed. Other Tribulation passages describe God’s witnesses and people who come to faith during that time. His offer is genuine, but overwhelming evidence does not compel someone to receive it. A person can hate the consequences of sin while still refusing to surrender the practices and false worship that brought those consequences.
The word translated sorceries, pharmakeia, concerns magic and occult practices, which could include the use of drugs or potions. The NET note on Revelation 9:21 explains that usage. The context joins sorcery with demon worship and idolatry; it does not condemn legitimate medicine because an English word such as pharmacy has a related origin. Seeking power through spells, divination, and occult rituals is the wrongdoing in view.
After the sixth-trumpet account, Revelation includes an interlude concerning the little book, John’s continuing prophetic commission, the measured temple, and the two witnesses. God continues to give testimony while judgment proceeds. The seventh trumpet then announces the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ. The sequence moves toward Jesus’ rightful reign, rather than toward permanent dominion by the beings released from the abyss.
My study of the End Times Timeline places these events within the larger prophetic sequence. To understand the church’s place, we must also consider Paul’s promise about Christ gathering His people:
But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Paul is comforting believers who grieve over Christians who have died. Those who have died will not miss Christ’s coming: the dead in Christ rise first, and the living are caught up with them to meet the Lord in the air. The promise ends with all of them remaining with Him. Our hope rests on belonging to the Lord who died and rose again.
I understand this gathering to take place before the coming worldwide hour of trial. First Thessalonians 4 describes the gathering itself; its placement before the Tribulation comes from reading it alongside the other prophetic passages, rather than from finding a seven-year timetable in these verses alone. The church’s next great expectation is to meet Christ. We are not instructed to identify the fifth-trumpet creatures in order to survive their mission.
Following that gathering, I understand Daniel’s final week to unfold as a literal seven-year Tribulation. Revelation describes the seals, trumpets, and bowls within God’s dealings at the end of the age, leading to Christ’s visible bodily return. The phrase Great Tribulation refers especially to the intensified final half. It follows the midpoint abomination of desolation, the desecration of the holy place Jesus warned about in Matthew 24:15-21. The fifth trumpet belongs within those seven years, but I would not pin it to a date within them more precisely than Scripture’s sequence allows.
Jesus will return bodily, defeat His enemies, and reign for a literal thousand years. At the beginning of that reign, the abyss appears again, this time as Satan’s prison:
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while.
Revelation 20:1-3
An angel binds Satan, shuts him in the abyss, and seals him there so that he cannot deceive the nations during the thousand years. The abyss remains a place of temporary confinement under God’s control. Satan is released briefly afterward and is later cast into the Lake of Fire. The two destinations should not be treated as interchangeable.
Scripture also speaks of Hades, Gehenna, and angels held in chains of darkness. We need to read each passage in its setting rather than collapse every reference into the same place or event. The locusts’ five-month torment occurs on earth during the Tribulation. It is not the final judgment of every unbelieving human being, and it does not justify saying that hell is simply God turning people over to demons.
Unbelieving humans will be raised bodily for judgment at the Great White Throne. I understand the Lake of Fire to bring the final, irreversible destruction of both body and soul, called the second death. Human souls are not inherently immortal. This differs from both universal salvation and eternal conscious torment for human beings. It also differs from soul sleep, since the dead remain conscious in the intermediate state before resurrection. Revelation 20:10 specifically describes endless torment for the devil, the beast, and the false prophet. Those distinctions should govern our teaching about final judgment; the suffering in Revelation 9 should not be made to answer a different question.
Read Revelation 9 With Sobriety and Hope
We can spend so much time naming the locusts that we scarcely hear the warning. Revelation describes people who continue in false worship and wicked conduct even after devastating judgment. I would not assure someone that he can reject Christ now and easily repent once prophecy becomes unmistakable. The survivors in this chapter do not respond that way. No one should presume on a future willingness to repent while deliberately refusing God’s call today.
People suffering from illness or despair today should not be told that their pain proves the Revelation 9 locusts are attacking them. John is describing a particular future judgment, and a loose resemblance to one feature is no basis for frightening someone with that diagnosis.
For believers, the passage should encourage steady obedience rather than panic. The Holy Spirit indwells and seals those who have truly been born again. Christ’s ownership of His people cannot be overturned by a creature from the abyss. His promise to gather the church gives us comfort, and His coming kingdom gives us reason to remain faithful when evil appears powerful.
Such confidence does not excuse carelessness about sin or make occult investigation harmless. Scripture reveals enough about the host to warn us; it never instructs us to contact its ruler, summon spirits, or seek hidden knowledge through forbidden practices. Christians resist evil by submitting to God, believing His Word, praying, and refusing participation in darkness. Faithful church fellowship helps us receive instruction and correction rather than pursue private spiritual experiments.
The same restraint should govern our claims about current events. A disease, eclipse, volcanic eruption, military project, or political movement does not become the fifth trumpet merely because a few details can be made to resemble John’s language. We should be ready for Christ and honest about what Scripture says. Date-setting and confident identifications that change with the headlines distract people from both.
I also want our attention to prophecy to affect the way we live now. Someone who knows elaborate theories about Apollyon but neglects his family, excuses dishonesty, or refuses to speak of Christ has neglected clearer responsibilities. The coming judgment should make us earnest about repentance and faithful in ordinary obedience. The coming King deserves our worship more than His defeated enemies deserve our curiosity.
That King is the Savior who first came in humility. Jesus is the eternal Son, fully God and fully man, born of a virgin and completely sinless. Wicked men tortured and punished Him physically, then killed Him. He willingly endured their cruelty and shed His blood for our sins. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus.
Christ completed His saving work through His voluntarily shed blood and death before His bodily resurrection. He was buried and rose again, and He lives as the Savior of everyone who comes to Him. His death was for the whole world. God’s gracious offer is genuine, although people can resist and reject it, as the refusal to repent in Revelation 9 painfully illustrates.
Everyone who truly repents and believes receives forgiveness and justification, meaning a right standing before God. That person is born again, made a new creation, and indwelt and sealed by the Holy Spirit. Salvation is received by grace through faith; our conduct neither earns it nor keeps us saved. Genuine new birth does produce evidence in a changed life, however. Eternal security gives no permission for lawlessness, and a Christian label does not establish that someone has been regenerated.
Every person begins with a place in the Book of Life. Those who finally reject the Messiah have their names blotted out, while believers remain. Through Christ’s blood, it is their sins that are blotted out. The call to repent is therefore a sincere invitation to receive the Savior, not an announcement that some people were never offered salvation at all.
My Final Thoughts
I understand the locusts as a real supernatural host that will emerge from the abyss during the fifth trumpet. Their appearance is extraordinary, their torment severe, and their ruler destructive, yet their targets, actions, and duration are restricted. We can teach those truths firmly while admitting that John leaves some questions about their precise nature unanswered.
Revelation directs us toward the reign of Jesus, who will judge rebellion and fulfill His promises. If you have been putting off repentance, do not assume another frightening event will make surrender easier. Christ genuinely calls you to come to Him now. If you belong to Him, trust His promise, obey what He has already made clear, and tell others why His blood is sufficient to save them.
Darkness covered the land for three hours while Jesus hung on the cross. The Gospel writers place it alongside His final words, His death, and the tearing of the temple veil. I want to read those events together, because the darkness occurred while the Son of God was willingly giving His life to save sinners.
What the Four Gospels Actually Record
Before the crucifixion, Roman soldiers scourged Jesus, mocked Him as a king, pressed a crown of thorns onto His head, and struck Him. After nailing Him to the cross, they divided His garments. Religious leaders and people passing the execution site taunted Him, and the criminals crucified beside Him joined in the abuse. Then, during the middle of the day, darkness spread across the land.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record that darkness. These three are called the Synoptic Gospels because they frequently describe Jesus’ ministry from a shared or parallel viewpoint. They include different details about His death, but each places the darkness between the sixth and ninth hours. Matthew gives the fullest description of the accompanying signs:
Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole garrison around Him. And they stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. When they had twisted a crown of thorns, they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand. And they bowed the knee before Him and mocked Him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" Then they spat on Him, and took the reed and struck Him on the head. And when they had mocked Him, they took the robe off Him, put His own clothes on Him, and led Him away to be crucified. Now as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. Him they compelled to bear His cross. And when they had come to a place called Golgotha, that is to say, Place of a Skull, they gave Him sour wine mingled with gall to drink. But when He had tasted it, He would not drink. Then they crucified Him, and divided His garments, casting lots, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet: "They divided My garments among them, And for My clothing they cast lots." Sitting down, they kept watch over Him there. And they put up over His head the accusation written against Him: THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS. Then two robbers were crucified with Him, one on the right and another on the left. And those who passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads and saying, "You who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross." Likewise the chief priests also, mocking with the scribes and elders, said, "He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him; for He said, 'I am the Son of God.'" Even the robbers who were crucified with Him reviled Him with the same thing. Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" that is, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Some of those who stood there, when they heard that, said, "This Man is calling for Elijah!" Immediately one of them ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink. The rest said, "Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to save Him." And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. So when the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, "Truly this was the Son of God!" And many women who followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him, were there looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's sons.
Matthew 27:27-56
Matthew describes the darkness first, then Jesus’ cry near the ninth hour, and finally His death. The temple veil tore from top to bottom, the earth shook, and rocks split. His account also includes opened graves and raised saints. Although Matthew brings these extraordinary events together in his account of the crucifixion, he places their appearance in Jerusalem after Jesus’ resurrection.
Mark supplies the hour of the crucifixion as well as the hours of darkness:
Then they compelled a certain man, Simon a Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus, as he was coming out of the country and passing by, to bear His cross. And they brought Him to the place Golgotha, which is translated, Place of a Skull. Then they gave Him wine mingled with myrrh to drink, but He did not take it. And when they crucified Him, they divided His garments, casting lots for them to determine what every man should take. Now it was the third hour, and they crucified Him. And the inscription of His accusation was written above: THE KING OF THE JEWS. With Him they also crucified two robbers, one on His right and the other on His left. So the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "And He was numbered with the transgressors." And those who passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads and saying, "Aha! You who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save Yourself, and come down from the cross!" Likewise the chief priests also, mocking among themselves with the scribes, said, "He saved others; Himself He cannot save. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe." Even those who were crucified with Him reviled Him. Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" which is translated, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Some of those who stood by, when they heard that, said, "Look, He is calling for Elijah!" Then someone ran and filled a sponge full of sour wine, put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink, saying, "Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to take Him down." And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed His last. Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. So when the centurion, who stood opposite Him, saw that He cried out like this and breathed His last, he said, "Truly this Man was the Son of God!" There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joses, and Salome, who also followed Him and ministered to Him when He was in Galilee, and many other women who came up with Him to Jerusalem.
Mark 15:21-41
Mark says Jesus was crucified at the third hour, approximately nine in the morning. The darkness began at the sixth hour, approximately noon, and lasted until the ninth, near three in the afternoon. Daylight hours were reckoned from around sunrise, so ancient timekeeping and seasonal variation do not allow us to assign an exact modern minute. The writers nevertheless describe an extended darkness during the brightest part of the day. Jesus remained alive through those hours and spoke near their end.
Luke also records how one of the criminals came to acknowledge his own guilt and defend Jesus’ innocence, even as the other continued to revile Him. The man who acknowledged his guilt asked Jesus to remember him in His kingdom. Jesus promised him life with Him in Paradise. Luke then records the darkness and Jesus’ final prayer:
Now as they led Him away, they laid hold of a certain man, Simon a Cyrenian, who was coming from the country, and on him they laid the cross that he might bear it after Jesus. And a great multitude of the people followed Him, and women who also mourned and lamented Him. But Jesus, turning to them, said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For indeed the days are coming in which they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which never nursed!' Then they will begin 'to say to the mountains, "Fall on us!" and to the hills, "Cover us!"' For if they do these things in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?" There were also two others, criminals, led with Him to be put to death. And when they had come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the criminals, one on the right hand and the other on the left. Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do." And they divided His garments and cast lots. And the people stood looking on. But even the rulers with them sneered, saying, "He saved others; let Him save Himself if He is the Christ, the chosen of God." The soldiers also mocked Him, coming and offering Him sour wine, and saying, "If You are the King of the Jews, save Yourself." And an inscription also was written over Him in letters of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed Him, saying, "If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us." But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, "Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong." Then he said to Jesus, "Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom." And Jesus said to him, "Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise." Now it was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. Then the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was torn in two. And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, "Father, 'into Your hands I commit My spirit.'" Having said this, He breathed His last. So when the centurion saw what had happened, he glorified God, saying, "Certainly this was a righteous Man!" And the whole crowd who came together to that sight, seeing what had been done, beat their breasts and returned. But all His acquaintances, and the women who followed Him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.
Luke 23:26-49
Notice whom Jesus addressed as He died. He committed His spirit into His Father’s hands. The disappearing sunlight did not prevent Him from entrusting Himself to the Father, and Luke does not describe the darkness as a separation between them. He also records the centurion praising God and acknowledging Jesus as righteous.
John does not mention the darkness. He supplies other details, including Jesus’ care for His mother, His declaration that the work was finished, and the soldier’s action after His death:
Then he delivered Him to them to be crucified. Then they took Jesus and led Him away. And He, bearing His cross, went out to a place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha, where they crucified Him, and two others with Him, one on either side, and Jesus in the center. Now Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross. And the writing was: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Then many of the Jews read this title, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Therefore the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, "Do not write, 'The King of the Jews,' but, 'He said, "I am the King of the Jews."'" Pilate answered, "What I have written, I have written." Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments and made four parts, to each soldier a part, and also the tunic. Now the tunic was without seam, woven from the top in one piece. They said therefore among themselves, "Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be," that the Scripture might be fulfilled which says: "They divided My garments among them, And for My clothing they cast lots." Therefore the soldiers did these things. Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, "Woman, behold your son!" Then He said to the disciple, "Behold your mother!" And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home. After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, "I thirst!" Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, "It is finished!" And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit. Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with Him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe. For these things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled, "Not one of His bones shall be broken." And again another Scripture says, "They shall look on Him whom they pierced."
John 19:16-37
John describes Jesus fulfilling Scripture and declaring, “It is finished.” He then gave up His spirit. When the soldiers came to break the crucified men’s legs, they found Him already dead and did not break His. The piercing of His side followed His death; it did not cause a death John had already reported. John’s attention to these events complements the other accounts without requiring him to repeat every sign they record.
The darkness happened publicly. Soldiers guarded the cross, opponents mocked Jesus, and women who had followed Him watched from a distance. This was an event surrounding His execution, rather than a private vision experienced by one disciple.
Its geographical extent is less certain. The Greek word ge can mean land, earth, ground, or a region, depending on context. Matthew and Mark are often translated “all the land” while Luke may read “all the earth.” The wording describes widespread darkness, but it does not give us a boundary we can mark on a map. It would be too narrow to confine it to the cross itself, and too confident to claim that the writers documented night on every continent.
An ordinary solar eclipse cannot explain it. Passover falls around the full moon, whereas a solar eclipse requires a new moon between the earth and the sun. Those are opposite lunar phases. Furthermore, the complete blocking of the sun at one place lasts minutes, not three hours. A whole eclipse can take considerably longer as the moon moves across the sun, but that is different from three hours of darkness at the same location. NASA’s explanation of eclipse geometry describes the alignment and the brief duration of totality.
There is also a wording difference in Greek copies of Luke 23:45. The Textus Receptus, the received Greek text underlying the New King James wording quoted above, says the sun was darkened. The Byzantine manuscript tradition also preserves that wording. Other copies use a verb meaning to fail or cease, which can describe an eclipse in some settings. It does not require that technical meaning here. Even the NET Bible’s note on Luke 23:45, which favors the other reading, explains that the verb can mean the sun ceased to shine. Neither wording obliges us to force an ordinary eclipse into a Passover setting.
Thallus and Phlegon are sometimes cited as outside witnesses to the darkness, but their surviving references need care. A surviving fragment attributed to Julius Africanus discusses Thallus’s explanation of the darkness as an eclipse, and Origen refers to Phlegon when discussing an eclipse and earthquakes in Tiberius’s reign. Those later discussions should not be presented as though we had complete contemporary reports documenting three hours of darkness everywhere on earth. The Gospel testimony deserves to be heard on its own terms without exaggerating the outside evidence.
The Creator of the lights can darken the land without an eclipse. Scripture records thick darkness in Egypt, an extended day in Joshua, and a shadow moving backward in Isaiah. What it does not provide is the physical mechanism of the darkness at Calvary. A special cloud, a change in the sun, or some other means would be speculation. I understand the timing and the surrounding signs as God’s action marking the death of His Son, while leaving the means where the Gospel writers leave it.
How the Old Testament Helps Us Understand the Darkness
Darkness does not carry one meaning everywhere in Scripture. It appears before God orders the light at creation and later surrounds Sinai. Elsewhere it describes judgment, grief, danger, or moral blindness. At the crucifixion, its connection with judgment is particularly serious: people were mocking and killing the innocent Messiah while God was accomplishing redemption through His willing sacrifice. Earlier passages help us understand that setting, beginning with the darkness that preceded the first Passover.
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, darkness which may even be felt." So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days. They did not see one another; nor did anyone rise from his place for three days. But all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings. Then Pharaoh called to Moses and said, "Go, serve the LORD; only let your flocks and your herds be kept back. Let your little ones also go with you." But Moses said, "You must also give us sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God. Our livestock also shall go with us; not a hoof shall be left behind. For we must take some of them to serve the LORD our God, and even we do not know with what we must serve the LORD until we arrive there." But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let them go. Then Pharaoh said to him, "Get away from me! Take heed to yourself and see my face no more! For in the day you see my face you shall die!" So Moses said, "You have spoken well. I will never see your face again."
Exodus 10:21-29
This was the ninth plague against Egypt. The darkness lasted three days, while the Israelites had light in their dwellings. Pharaoh still tried to dictate the terms of their departure, allowing the people to go while demanding that their livestock remain. Moses refused because they needed their animals to serve the Lord. Pharaoh’s refusal continued, and the final plague followed. At Passover, the blood of the lamb marked the homes where God would spare the firstborn.
Jesus died at Passover as the true Passover Lamb. That connection gives us good reason to see the earlier darkness, judgment, and deliverance as a pattern anticipating His saving work. Still, three days in Egypt do not “mirror” three hours at Calvary as though the durations were identical. Nor does every participant have an exact counterpart. Jesus was the innocent Lamb who willingly shed His blood to save. The earlier judgment on Egypt does not establish that the Father condemned His Son.
Amos brings us closer to the particular image of darkness at noon. He was warning the northern kingdom of Israel, where people trampled the poor, cheated their customers, and resented holy days because worship interrupted business. Their prosperity did not conceal their conduct from the Lord:
Thus the Lord GOD showed me: Behold, a basket of summer fruit. And He said, "Amos, what do you see?" So I said, "A basket of summer fruit." Then the LORD said to me: "The end has come upon My people Israel; I will not pass by them anymore. And the songs of the temple Shall be wailing in that day," Says the Lord GOD– "Many dead bodies everywhere, They shall be thrown out in silence." Hear this, you who swallow up the needy, And make the poor of the land fail, Saying: "When will the New Moon be past, That we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, That we may trade wheat? Making the ephah small and the shekel large, Falsifying the scales by deceit, That we may buy the poor for silver, And the needy for a pair of sandals– Even sell the bad wheat?" The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: "Surely I will never forget any of their works. Shall the land not tremble for this, And everyone mourn who dwells in it? All of it shall swell like the River, Heave and subside Like the River of Egypt. "And it shall come to pass in that day," says the Lord GOD, "That I will make the sun go down at noon, And I will darken the earth in broad daylight; I will turn your feasts into mourning, And all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on every waist, And baldness on every head; I will make it like mourning for an only son, And its end like a bitter day. "Behold, the days are coming," says the Lord GOD, "That I will send a famine on the land, Not a famine of bread, Nor a thirst for water, But of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, And from north to east; They shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD, But shall not find it. "In that day the fair virgins And strong young men Shall faint from thirst. Those who swear by the sin of Samaria, Who say, 'As your god lives, O Dan!' And, 'As the way of Beersheba lives!' They shall fall and never rise again."
Amos 8:1-14
The Lord would bring an end to their corrupt prosperity. Feasting would give way to mourning, and the darkness of the announced judgment would fall in broad daylight. Amos compares their grief to mourning an only son. He goes on to describe a famine of hearing God’s words, as people search for the instruction they had disregarded.
The noonday darkness and bitter mourning are striking when we read them beside the crucifixion. I see a prophetic pattern that helps us recognize the gravity of Jesus’ death. However, Amos was addressing Israel’s actual sins, and the Gospels do not introduce the darkness by saying it fulfilled Amos 8. Reading the passages together does not require us to erase Amos’s first hearers or treat every resemblance as an expressly identified prediction.
Joel also joins darkness with the Day of the Lord, when God intervenes in judgment. His warning leads directly into an appeal to return to the Lord:
Blow the trumpet in Zion, And sound an alarm in My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; For the day of the LORD is coming, For it is at hand: A day of darkness and gloominess, A day of clouds and thick darkness, Like the morning clouds spread over the mountains. A people come, great and strong, The like of whom has never been; Nor will there ever be any such after them, Even for many successive generations. A fire devours before them, And behind them a flame burns; The land is like the Garden of Eden before them, And behind them a desolate wilderness; Surely nothing shall escape them. Their appearance is like the appearance of horses; And like swift steeds, so they run. With a noise like chariots Over mountaintops they leap, Like the noise of a flaming fire that devours the stubble, Like a strong people set in battle array. Before them the people writhe in pain; All faces are drained of color. They run like mighty men, They climb the wall like men of war; Every one marches in formation, And they do not break ranks. They do not push one another; Every one marches in his own column. Though they lunge between the weapons, They are not cut down. They run to and fro in the city, They run on the wall; They climb into the houses, They enter at the windows like a thief. The earth quakes before them, The heavens tremble; The sun and moon grow dark, And the stars diminish their brightness. The LORD gives voice before His army, For His camp is very great; For strong is the One who executes His word. For the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; Who can endure it? "Now, therefore," says the LORD, "Turn to Me with all your heart, With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning." So rend your heart, and not your garments; Return to the LORD your God, For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm. Who knows if He will turn and relent, And leave a blessing behind Him– A grain offering and a drink offering For the LORD your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion, Consecrate a fast, Call a sacred assembly; Gather the people, Sanctify the congregation, Assemble the elders, Gather the children and nursing babes; Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, And the bride from her dressing room. Let the priests, who minister to the LORD, Weep between the porch and the altar; Let them say, "Spare Your people, O LORD, And do not give Your heritage to reproach, That the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'"
Joel 2:1-17
The trembling land, darkened heavens, and approaching army leave the people facing a judgment they cannot fend off. Yet the Lord calls them to return wholeheartedly because He is gracious and merciful. Even the newly married are to interrupt their celebrations and join the gathered people. The priests are to plead for God’s mercy on His people, whose sins have brought them to this crisis.
Joel’s prophecy reaches beyond Calvary to future judgment, cosmic signs, and Israel’s deliverance under Messiah’s kingdom. Jesus’ death did not exhaust that future Day. The darkness at the cross belongs within God’s work of confronting evil and providing salvation, but we should not use it to declare every prophecy of the Day already fulfilled. Zephaniah likewise describes a judgment from which wealth and military defenses cannot rescue the guilty:
The great day of the LORD is near; It is near and hastens quickly. The noise of the day of the LORD is bitter; There the mighty men shall cry out. That day is a day of wrath, A day of trouble and distress, A day of devastation and desolation, A day of darkness and gloominess, A day of clouds and thick darkness, A day of trumpet and alarm Against the fortified cities And against the high towers. "I will bring distress upon men, And they shall walk like blind men, Because they have sinned against the LORD; Their blood shall be poured out like dust, And their flesh like refuse." Neither their silver nor their gold Shall be able to deliver them In the day of the LORD's wrath; But the whole land shall be devoured By the fire of His jealousy, For He will make speedy riddance Of all those who dwell in the land.
Zephaniah 1:14-18
Zephaniah names the reason for the distress: the people have sinned against the Lord. Thick darkness accompanies His judgment, and neither silver nor gold can buy an escape. Along with Exodus, Amos, and Joel, this passage makes it reasonable to understand the darkness at Calvary as a sign connected with God’s judgment of evil. None of those connections says the Father turned against His innocent Son. Nor do the Gospels explain the darkness as divine mourning or as sin physically entering Jesus.
Isaiah 50 brings judgment and the suffering of God’s obedient Servant into the same passage. The Lord rebukes His people’s transgressions and declares His power to darken the heavens. The Servant then speaks of the abuse He willingly endures while relying on God’s help:
Thus says the LORD: "Where is the certificate of your mother's divorce, Whom I have put away? Or which of My creditors is it to whom I have sold you? For your iniquities you have sold yourselves, And for your transgressions your mother has been put away. Why, when I came, was there no man? Why, when I called, was there none to answer? Is My hand shortened at all that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? Indeed with My rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness; Their fish stink because there is no water, And die of thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness, And I make sackcloth their covering." "The Lord GOD has given Me The tongue of the learned, That I should know how to speak A word in season to him who is weary. He awakens Me morning by morning, He awakens My ear To hear as the learned. The Lord GOD has opened My ear; And I was not rebellious, Nor did I turn away. I gave My back to those who struck Me, And My cheeks to those who plucked out the beard; I did not hide My face from shame and spitting. "For the Lord GOD will help Me; Therefore I will not be disgraced; Therefore I have set My face like a flint, And I know that I will not be ashamed. He is near who justifies Me; Who will contend with Me? Let us stand together. Who is My adversary? Let him come near Me. Surely the Lord GOD will help Me; Who is he who will condemn Me? Indeed they will all grow old like a garment; The moth will eat them up. "Who among you fears the LORD? Who obeys the voice of His Servant? Who walks in darkness And has no light? Let him trust in the name of the LORD And rely upon his God. Look, all you who kindle a fire, Who encircle yourselves with sparks: Walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks you have kindled– This you shall have from My hand: You shall lie down in torment.
Isaiah 50:1-11
The Servant gives His back to those who strike Him and does not hide His face from shame and spitting. He is obedient throughout, confident that the Lord God will help and vindicate Him. Jesus fulfilled that obedient suffering when He submitted to the abuse that led to the cross.
Isaiah then addresses someone who fears the Lord and obeys His Servant yet walks in darkness without light. That person is told to trust the Lord and rely on Him. Darkness, therefore, does not automatically mean that God has abandoned the person within it. The Servant’s trust prepares us to hear Jesus’ own words near the end of the three dark hours.
Psalm 22 Does Not Teach That the Father Abandoned Jesus
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, And from the words of My groaning? O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; And in the night season, and am not silent. But You are holy, Enthroned in the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in You; They trusted, and You delivered them. They cried to You, and were delivered; They trusted in You, and were not ashamed. But I am a worm, and no man; A reproach of men, and despised by the people. All those who see Me ridicule Me; They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, "He trusted in the LORD, let Him rescue Him; Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!" But You are He who took Me out of the womb; You made Me trust while on My mother's breasts. I was cast upon You from birth. From My mother's womb You have been My God. Be not far from Me, For trouble is near; For there is none to help. Many bulls have surrounded Me; Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled Me. They gape at Me with their mouths, Like a raging and roaring lion. I am poured out like water, And all My bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; It has melted within Me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, And My tongue clings to My jaws; You have brought Me to the dust of death. For dogs have surrounded Me; The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me. They pierced My hands and My feet; I can count all My bones. They look and stare at Me. They divide My garments among them, And for My clothing they cast lots. But You, O LORD, do not be far from Me; O My Strength, hasten to help Me! Deliver Me from the sword, My precious life from the power of the dog. Save Me from the lion's mouth And from the horns of the wild oxen! You have answered Me. I will declare Your name to My brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will praise You. You who fear the LORD, praise Him! All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him, And fear Him, all you offspring of Israel! For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from Him; But when He cried to Him, He heard. My praise shall be of You in the great assembly; I will pay My vows before those who fear Him. The poor shall eat and be satisfied; Those who seek Him will praise the LORD. Let your heart live forever! All the ends of the world Shall remember and turn to the LORD, And all the families of the nations Shall worship before You. For the kingdom is the LORD's, And He rules over the nations. All the prosperous of the earth Shall eat and worship; All those who go down to the dust Shall bow before Him, Even he who cannot keep himself alive. A posterity shall serve Him. It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation, They will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, That He has done this.
Psalm 22:1-31
Near the ninth hour, Jesus spoke the opening words of this psalm: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” That is a cry of real anguish. Jesus had been scourged, nailed to a cross, mocked, and left hanging in agony. Acknowledging His confidence in the Father does not require us to soften what He suffered.
But the first question is not the end of the psalm. The righteous sufferer describes his enemies surrounding him, shaking their heads, and taunting him about his trust in God. His body is poured out, his hands and feet are pierced, and his garments are divided by lot. Those details correspond to what happened to Jesus, and the Gospels explicitly connect the dividing of His garments with Scripture. When He quoted the opening line, He identified Himself with the sufferer whose humiliation and eventual vindication the whole psalm describes.
Verse 24 says that God did not despise the afflicted One or hide His face from Him. When He cried, God heard. I cannot take the opening question as proof that the Father refused to hear His Son when the same psalm says the afflicted One was heard. The sufferer’s plea for help gives way to praise, proclamation among his brethren, and the prospect of the nations worshiping the Lord. I see Christ’s death and resurrection in that movement from terrible suffering to vindication and worldwide worship. I discuss the psalm’s suffering and vindication further in Psalm 22.
Jesus continued to address “My God” in faith. Before the crucifixion, He had told His disciples that they would leave Him alone, yet the Father would be with Him (John 16:32). At His death, He entrusted His spirit to the Father. The Trinity means that the one God eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three distinct Persons. Jesus’ suffering did not break the eternal relationship between Father and Son. He remained the Light of the world even while daylight disappeared around Him.
John presents the cross as an hour in which Jesus would be glorified (John 12:23–33). His willing death revealed His identity and love while people treated Him with contempt. The physical darkness did not undo that revelation or turn Him into a spiritually defeated Savior.
The Darkness Surrounded a Bloody, Once-for-All Sacrifice
The suffering Jesus endured was bodily and brutal. Roman soldiers scourged and struck Him, drove nails through His body, and exposed Him publicly on the cross. He willingly underwent that punishment as the sinless substitute for the whole world. In His innocent body He bore the punishment for our sins as wicked men tortured Him, shed His blood, and killed Him. Our salvation is in His blood.
The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. The violence came from wicked human beings. God foreknew their choices and accomplished His saving purpose through the Son’s willing sacrifice, without excusing those responsible for the killing (Acts 2:23; 4:27–28). Through the eternal Spirit, Jesus offered Himself to God (Hebrews 9:14). Father, Son, and Spirit were not working against one another. The Atonement of Jesus Christ deserves to be understood from that biblical explanation of His sacrifice.
Jesus had authority to lay down His life, and no one took it against His ultimate will (John 10:17–18). His loud final cry and His commitment of His spirit into the Father’s hands fit that willing obedience. He fulfilled Scripture and cared for His mother even as He approached death. His saving work through His shed blood and death was complete before His bodily resurrection; the resurrection did not supply a further sacrifice. Paul explains the sufficiency of that one offering in Hebrews:
For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, But a body You have prepared for Me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come– In the volume of the book it is written of Me– To do Your will, O God.'" Previously saying, "Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them" (which are offered according to the law), then He said, "Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God." He takes away the first that He may establish the second. By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us; for after He had said before, "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them," then He adds, "Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more." Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin. Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.
Hebrews 10:1-25
The repeated animal sacrifices reminded worshipers of sins they could not remove. Jesus offered His own body once for all, and His blood gives believers access to God’s presence. Paul describes the new and living way through the veil, which he identifies with Christ’s flesh. Jesus is our Mediator, the One through whom sinners are brought into a right relationship with God and can draw near to Him.
That teaching helps us understand the torn temple veil recorded in the Gospels. Matthew and Mark place its tearing immediately after Jesus’ death. Luke mentions it with the darkness before reporting His final prayer. The writers group these closely connected events with their own emphases, rather than supplying an identical moment-by-moment transcript. Matthew and Mark specify that the veil tore from top to bottom, indicating God’s action. In Hebrews, the explanation of our access rests on Jesus’ blood and His completed sacrifice.
At the execution site, the signs also confronted the men guarding Him. Matthew records their fear at the earthquake and the things that happened, along with their confession that Jesus was God’s Son. Mark draws attention to the way He cried out and died; Luke records the centurion praising God and acknowledging Him as righteous. These responses can all belong to the same event. I would not go beyond them and declare the centurion a born-again disciple, because the accounts record his acknowledgment at the cross without telling us whether he came to saving faith.
Luke’s crowd went home beating their breasts, an expression of grief. We are not told that everyone who grieved repented and believed. What they witnessed did confront them with the death of the innocent Jesus. The darkness cannot be reduced to an astronomy puzzle while we pass over the Person dying beneath it.
Jesus was buried before sundown and rose bodily on the third day. The Gospel writers do not assign a separate theological meaning to the return of afternoon light, so I would not teach that the returning daylight announced the completion of redemption. They do proclaim His bodily resurrection. The empty tomb and His appearances to witnesses establish that death could not hold Him. His resurrection confirms His identity and saving work, assures believers of their future resurrection, and gives warning of the judgment to come (Acts 17:31).
Come Through the Opened Way and Walk in the Light
The One who gave His life for us is the eternal Son, fully God and fully man. Born of a virgin and completely sinless, He willingly shed His blood and died for the whole world, was buried, and rose bodily. God’s offer of salvation is genuine, although people can resist His grace and reject Him. Whoever repents and believes is forgiven and justified, declared righteous before God, and born again through His saving work.
The Holy Spirit indwells and seals every true believer, who is eternally secure in Christ. We do not earn that salvation by good conduct or keep it by maintaining a sufficiently impressive record. Yet being born again produces a real change. A shallow profession cannot substitute for new life, and assurance gives us no permission to excuse lawlessness. Paul connects Christ’s sacrifice with the conduct of those who belong to Him:
Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. Therefore He says: "Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light."
Ephesians 5:1-14
Paul tells believers that they were once darkness but are now light in the Lord. He names conduct that does not fit that new life: sexual immorality, greed, corrupt speech, and participation in concealed evil. The warning about having no inheritance in God’s kingdom should stop anyone from using a Christian label to make peace with a life governed by those sins. The Spirit produces goodness, righteousness, and truth in people whom Christ has made new.
I need to let that instruction reach the things I can rationalize. If I hide dishonest dealings, indulge sexual sin, or use filthy speech to win approval, I cannot defend those choices by pointing to my knowledge of the crucifixion. Paul calls us to find out what pleases the Lord and expose the works of darkness. That requires honest confession and a willingness to leave the sin, including conduct that people around us find acceptable. Following Jesus involves obedience in those ordinary decisions, as I explain further in Taking Up Your Cross.
Hebrews calls us to draw near to God with a true heart and hold fast our hope. Access to God comes through faith in Christ, not simply through witnessing the signs at His death or knowing about them. Gathering with believers gives us opportunities to pray, speak truth, and help one another practice love and good works as the Day approaches. When someone is struggling, encouragement should lead them toward Christ and faithful obedience, without pretending that serious sin is harmless. Jesus has opened the way for people who once stood guilty to approach God through Him.
My Final Thoughts
I understand the darkness as God’s sign marking the hour when Jesus willingly gave His life for sinners. Scripture leaves its physical means and geographical limits unexplained, but it tells us whom the darkness surrounded and what He accomplished. Psalm 22 leads us through His anguish to the assurance that God heard Him. His blood has opened the way for us to draw near, and His bodily resurrection assures us that our trust in Him is well placed. I want to respond by trusting the crucified and risen Son and living in keeping with the life He gives.
I do not understand the Holy Spirit’s removal before the Tribulation to mean that God leaves the earth. The Spirit remains present everywhere, and people cannot be saved without His work. I understand the change to concern His present restraint of lawlessness through the church He indwells. When Christ gathers that church to Himself, its earthly ministry ends while the Spirit continues to act. We need to distinguish those claims before considering the passages used to support them.
The Spirit Does Not Leave the Earth
The Holy Spirit is one of the three co-equal, co-eternal Persons of the one God. Father, Son, and Spirit are personally distinct, and each is fully divine. The Spirit cannot cease to exist on earth, lose His power, or become absent from a part of creation. Psalm 139 asks where anyone could flee from God’s Spirit, and the answer is nowhere. Omnipresence means that God is present everywhere.
His presence does not require every ministry to operate in the same way throughout history. The Spirit empowered selected servants in the Old Testament. Jesus then promised His disciples a particular work that would follow His departure to the Father:
"But now I go away to Him who sent Me, and none of you asks Me, 'Where are You going?' But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe in Me; of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you.
John 16:5-15
Jesus described the Helper as a Person who hears, speaks, teaches, and glorifies the Son. He would convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment, and guide the apostles in the truth Christ would make known to them. We are discussing this divine Person, not a force the church generates or an atmosphere produced by religious activity. His being sent by the Father and Son does not make Him inferior in nature.
The Spirit’s conviction of unbelievers is also distinct from His saving indwelling of believers. The world can reject His testimony, yet He continues to expose unbelief, vindicate Christ’s righteousness, and testify to judgment. Earlier in the same farewell teaching, Jesus had promised His followers more than that outward witness:
"If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever– the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. "A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him." Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, "Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?" Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father's who sent Me. "These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
John 14:15-27
The Spirit was with the disciples and would be in them. As “another” Helper, He would continue God’s personal care for them, and He would remain with them forever. Like the Son, He is fully divine. Gathering believers into resurrection glory cannot cancel Christ’s promise or strip them of the Spirit who sealed them. Glorification completes the salvation He guarantees; it does not end His abiding presence.
I therefore distinguish conviction, new birth, indwelling, empowerment, and restraint. A change in how the Spirit restrains lawlessness would not abolish His other work. I believe He presently restrains the lawless one’s unveiling through the church, and that this arrangement ends when Christ gathers the church before the Tribulation. He will still save and empower people on earth, and He will keep those He has already sealed. The study on the Person of the Holy Spirit examines His identity and ministries more fully.
Who Restrains the Man of Sin?
Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-12
False teaching had shaken the Thessalonians by claiming that the Day was already present. The received text quoted here says “Day of Christ”; the wider prophetic period is also called the “Day of the Lord.” Paul was addressing fear about God’s appointed intervention in judgment, not suggesting that his readers had overlooked an ordinary calendar day. He began with Christ’s coming and “our gathering together to Him.” He then explained what must occur in connection with that Day.
The falling away is apostasy, rebellion against God. The man of sin will exalt himself above every object of worship and present himself as God in God’s temple. Satan will empower his signs and lying wonders, but Christ will consume him by the breath of His mouth and the brightness of His coming. Paul described both the ruler’s appalling claims and the certainty of his defeat.
Lawlessness was already active, yet a restrainer prevented this final unveiling. The Thessalonians knew what Paul meant because he had taught them in person. The letter does not repeat the restrainer’s name for us. I believe we can identify him from the passage and the wider teaching of Scripture, while acknowledging that its first readers had oral instruction we do not possess.
Paul uses the neuter Greek expression to katechon in verse 6, what restrains, and the masculine ho katechon in verse 7, the one restraining. The NET note on the grammatical change discusses restraint as a power and as a person. These forms allow us to consider a work of restraint and the person exercising it. They do not, by themselves, name the Spirit or identify the church. Greek grammatical gender cannot carry the whole argument.
The verb katecho can mean to possess or hold fast in other settings. Here the context concerns holding lawlessness back until the man’s appointed unveiling. Satan cannot bring that moment forward simply because he wants to. When Paul calls this the mystery of lawlessness, he describes rebellion already operating in a hidden form before its open manifestation in the lawless one. Mystery does not mean that evil is irrational or beyond God’s knowledge.
Some identify the restrainer as the Holy Spirit, whose divine power can hold back satanic lawlessness. Others emphasize the church, or gospel preaching through it. The church, however, has no independent spiritual power; a congregation can even tolerate the evil it should oppose. Other readings identify lawful government, including the order once maintained by Rome. Governments can restrain wrongdoing, so that proposal deserves consideration. Still others understand God’s decree to be the restraint.
Angelic proposals also have grounds worth considering. Revelation describes angels holding back destructive forces. Daniel 12 identifies Michael as the great prince who stands watch over Daniel’s people and connects his action with an unequaled time of trouble. Second Thessalonians does not name Michael, however. Neither does the change from neuter to masculine settle the choice between him and the other proposed restrainers.
I understand the best explanation to be the Holy Spirit working through the church He indwells. The Spirit supplies the power, and the body of believers is the present earthly community through which He exercises this restraint. This fits the language of a restraining work and a personal agent, alongside Paul’s reference to the church’s gathering. It is a reasoned identification, not a name Paul expressly writes in the disputed sentence.
On that reading, the Spirit restrains through the gospel, prayer, and the truth and love He produces in believers’ conduct. Christ’s gathering removes this body from its present place on earth and ends that particular ministry through it. The phrase “taken out of the way” concerns the restraint’s removal from its position; it does not say that God is annihilated, made powerless, or absent everywhere. The Spirit continues His divine work while the earthly arrangement changes.
Restraint also does not mean the absence of evil. Paul said lawlessness was already at work in his own day. Deception, false worship, and brutal persecution can occur while God still prevents the final ruler’s unveiling. The lawless one’s eventual appearance will intensify a rebellion already active, as Revelation’s account of the beast makes clear:
Then I stood on the sand of the sea. And I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous name. Now the beast which I saw was like a leopard, his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast. So they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, "Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?" And he was given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and he was given authority to continue for forty-two months. Then he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name, His tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven. It was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If anyone has an ear, let him hear. He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity; he who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon. And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence, and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. He performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived. He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666.
Revelation 13:1-18
I understand Paul’s man of sin to be the final Antichrist, corresponding to Daniel’s little horn and Revelation’s beast. This is a real ruler who will receive satanic power and demand worship. The false prophet will use deceptive signs to promote him, while his system persecutes the saints and employs economic pressure against those who refuse its demands. Earlier antichrists anticipate this opposition, but the final ruler has particular claims and acts Scripture identifies.
Disliking a political leader does not give me grounds to declare him the Antichrist. Nor should speculation about identities distract us from opposing false teaching and proclaiming Jesus. The beast’s authority lasts only as long as God permits. Paul does not portray Christ barely winning a close contest; the Lord ends the lawless one’s allotted rule at His appearing.
In 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul also explains why people are deceived: they refuse the love of the truth and take pleasure in unrighteousness. God sends strong delusion as judgment upon that refusal, so they believe the lie they have preferred. We should receive the truth now, rather than imagine that a future crisis will make deliberate unbelief harmless.
Christ Gathers His Church Before Wrath
Paul had already taught the Thessalonians what Christ’s gathering would mean for believers who had died. He wrote to people grieving those deaths and assured them that the dead would not be excluded when the Lord came:
But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Jesus Himself will descend with a commanding shout, the voice of an archangel, and God’s trumpet. The dead in Christ will rise first; living believers will then be caught up with them to meet Him in the air. Both groups will remain with Him forever. This is bodily resurrection and reunion, not the disappearance of the Spirit or a merely inward experience.
Our word rapture comes through Latin. Paul’s Greek verb harpazo means to catch up or snatch away. The promised gathering includes all who belong to Christ, and Paul tells believers to comfort one another with it. A bereaved Christian need not fear that a fellow believer’s death has caused him to miss what Christ will do.
First Thessalonians 4 describes the event without supplying the whole Tribulation chronology. Paul’s next chapter explains why the church’s hope differs from the world’s encounter with the coming Day:
But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, "Peace and safety!" then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him. Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing.
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
The world will be saying, “Peace and safety.” Paul warns that sudden destruction will then overtake them. Believers belong to the light rather than the darkness, and God has appointed them to salvation through Christ instead of wrath. I understand that contrast to support the church’s gathering before the end-time judgments upon the rebellious world.
That promise concerns God’s judicial wrath, not immunity from persecution, disaster, His fatherly discipline, or physical death. Paul himself endured beatings, imprisonment, and hunger, and eventually died for his testimony. Christians can suffer severely under human and satanic hostility without being under God’s condemnation. Unless Christ gathers us first, we too will die.
I read Paul’s contrast alongside Christ’s promise in Revelation 3:10 to keep His church from the worldwide hour of trial. I understand that as exemption from the period, while other interpreters understand protection through it. Revelation’s movement from the churches to the coming judgments, Daniel’s final prophetic week, a seven-year period concerning Israel and Jerusalem, and Paul’s teaching that restraint ends before the lawless one is unveiled together support my pre-Tribulation conclusion. In that sequence, Christ gathers the church before the Tribulation and defeats the lawless one at His public return afterward. The rapture study develops the gathering, and the post-Tribulation view examined considers the alternative timing more fully.
We do not earn a place in that gathering by becoming sufficiently alert. Christ will complete the salvation of those who belong to Him. Watchfulness is the fitting conduct of people already saved by grace. Paul calls them to faith, love, sober judgment, and the hope of salvation while they wait.
Noah, Lot, and Enoch Are Real but Limited Patterns
Then the LORD said to Noah, "Come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation. You shall take with you seven each of every clean animal, a male and his female; two each of animals that are unclean, a male and his female; also seven each of birds of the air, male and female, to keep the species alive on the face of all the earth. For after seven more days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made." And Noah did according to all that the LORD commanded him. Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters were on the earth. So Noah, with his sons, his wife, and his sons' wives, went into the ark because of the waters of the flood. Of clean animals, of animals that are unclean, of birds, and of everything that creeps on the earth, two by two they went into the ark to Noah, male and female, as God had commanded Noah. And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights. On the very same day Noah and Noah's sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them, entered the ark– they and every beast after its kind, all cattle after their kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind, every bird of every sort. And they went into the ark to Noah, two by two, of all flesh in which is the breath of life. So those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him; and the LORD shut him in. Now the flood was on the earth forty days. The waters increased and lifted up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and greatly increased on the earth, and the ark moved about on the surface of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth, and all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward, and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved on the earth: birds and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man. All in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, all that was on the dry land, died. So He destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground: both man and cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive. And the waters prevailed on the earth one hundred and fifty days.
Genesis 7:1-24
Noah entered the ark with his household and the animals as God commanded, and the Lord shut him in. Judgment destroyed the breathing land life outside while those within were preserved. Noah was separated from the wicked before the waters rose, but he remained on earth throughout the Flood.
That is a genuine distinction between the righteous and the wicked. The ark can also picture safety in Christ. It does not follow that Noah’s experience by itself proves a removal to heaven before a seven-year Tribulation. God preserved him through the judgment in a particular way, and the comparison should retain that fact.
God’s angels urged Lot to leave Sodom before judgment fell:
Then the men said to Lot, "Have you anyone else here? Son-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and whomever you have in the city–take them out of this place! For we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before the face of the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it." So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who had married his daughters, and said, "Get up, get out of this place; for the LORD will destroy this city!" But to his sons-in-law he seemed to be joking. When the morning dawned, the angels urged Lot to hurry, saying, "Arise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city." And while he lingered, the men took hold of his hand, his wife's hand, and the hands of his two daughters, the LORD being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city. So it came to pass, when they had brought them outside, that he said, "Escape for your life! Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed." Then Lot said to them, "Please, no, my lords! Indeed now, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have increased your mercy which you have shown me by saving my life; but I cannot escape to the mountains, lest some evil overtake me and I die. See now, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one; please let me escape there (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live." And he said to him, "See, I have favored you concerning this thing also, in that I will not overthrow this city for which you have spoken. Hurry, escape there. For I cannot do anything until you arrive there." Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar. The sun had risen upon the earth when Lot entered Zoar. Then the LORD rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the LORD out of the heavens. So He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the LORD. Then he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain; and he saw, and behold, the smoke of the land which went up like the smoke of a furnace. And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot had dwelt.
Genesis 19:12-29
Lot’s rescue involved relocation before a local judgment. The angels urged him to leave Sodom, but he lingered. In mercy they took him, his wife, and his daughters by the hand and brought them out. The judgment waited until Lot reached Zoar. Then fire fell on the cities, and Abraham later saw the smoke rising.
Lot was not rescued because he displayed flawless spiritual resolve. His hesitation, his wife’s disobedience, and the grave sin that followed within the family prevent that reading. Genesis attributes his deliverance to God’s mercy and His remembrance of Abraham. Peter likewise says that God knows how to deliver the godly and reserve the unjust for punishment.
Enoch was taken without dying long before the Flood. Paul explains in Hebrews that he did not see death and had testimony that he pleased God. Many pre-Tribulation teachers compare Enoch with the gathered church and Noah with Israel preserved through the Tribulation. I see how those comparisons fit the wider position, but neither Genesis nor Hebrews identifies Enoch as a prophecy fixing rapture timing. His direct example is faith that walks with God.
These events show that God can separate and preserve His people in different ways. Noah remained under protection, Lot was moved before the fire, and Enoch had already been taken. Their experiences support the wider pre-Tribulation position without becoming one identical sequence or replacing direct prophetic teaching. Nor do they promise that every godly person will escape every disaster. Josiah died in battle, faithful exiles suffered through Babylon’s conquest, and churches can suffer when their societies collapse.
Jesus Himself used Noah and Lot when warning His disciples about the suddenness of His revelation:
Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, "The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, 'See here!' or 'See there!' For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you." Then He said to the disciples, "The days will come when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. And they will say to you, 'Look here!' or 'Look there!' Do not go after them or follow them. For as the lightning that flashes out of one part under heaven shines to the other part under heaven, so also the Son of Man will be in His day. But first He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. "In that day, he who is on the housetop, and his goods are in the house, let him not come down to take them away. And likewise the one who is in the field, let him not turn back. Remember Lot's wife. Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. I tell you, in that night there will be two men in one bed: the one will be taken and the other will be left. Two women will be grinding together: the one will be taken and the other left. Two men will be in the field: the one will be taken and the other left." And they answered and said to Him, "Where, Lord?" So He said to them, "Wherever the body is, there the eagles will be gathered together."
Luke 17:20-37
People continued eating, drinking, marrying, buying, and building until the judgment arrived. Those ordinary activities were not all sinful; the warning concerns people carrying on without readiness for what God had announced. Jesus also warned against returning for possessions and told His hearers to remember Lot’s wife. Clinging to the life we are trying to preserve can make us disregard the Lord’s command.
Readers differ over whether those “taken” at the end of Luke 17 are gathered to safety or taken in judgment. The Noah comparison and the closing reference to bodies and eagles or vultures favor judgment in this setting, in my view. My case for the pre-Tribulation gathering does not depend on making these particular people the church. The passage still describes sudden judgment and a distinction between those affected.
The Spirit Remains Active During the Tribulation
If the Spirit left the earth entirely, no one could be born again. Jesus taught the necessity of birth by the Spirit, and Paul said that genuine confession of Jesus as Lord depends on Him. Revelation nevertheless describes people redeemed during the Tribulation. They depend on the same Savior and His shed blood, not a new way of earning salvation.
Joel’s promised outpouring before the Day of the Lord, together with the promises of Israel’s future cleansing and renewal, also requires continuing divine work on earth. Revelation shows both sealed Israelites and a redeemed multitude from the nations:
After these things I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree. Then I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God. And he cried with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea, saying, "Do not harm the earth, the sea, or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads." And I heard the number of those who were sealed. One hundred and forty-four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel were sealed: of the tribe of Judah twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Gad twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Asher twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Manasseh twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Simeon twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Levi twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Issachar twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Zebulun twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Joseph twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Benjamin twelve thousand were sealed. After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!" All the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom, Thanksgiving and honor and power and might, Be to our God forever and ever. Amen." Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, "Who are these arrayed in white robes, and where did they come from?" And I said to him, "Sir, you know." So he said to me, "These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will dwell among them. They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat; for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
Revelation 7:1-17
John first describes 144,000 sealed from the tribes of Israel. He then sees an innumerable multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language before the throne and the Lamb. This multitude is identified as coming out of the great Tribulation, with robes washed in the Lamb’s blood. Its presence shows that God continues to save; it does not establish that the church remained on earth to enter that period.
Many believers will be martyred by the beast. Their suffering under human and satanic hostility must be distinguished from God’s judicial wrath against the beast’s kingdom. God receives them before His throne, where the Lamb shepherds them and their hunger, thirst, and tears come to an end. Their endurance depends on His grace.
Revelation 11 also describes two witnesses prophesying while Jerusalem is trampled by the Gentiles:
Then I was given a reed like a measuring rod. And the angel stood, saying, "Rise and measure the temple of God, the altar, and those who worship there. But leave out the court which is outside the temple, and do not measure it, for it has been given to the Gentiles. And they will tread the holy city underfoot for forty-two months. And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy one thousand two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth." These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the God of the earth. And if anyone wants to harm them, fire proceeds from their mouth and devours their enemies. And if anyone wants to harm them, he must be killed in this manner. These have power to shut heaven, so that no rain falls in the days of their prophecy; and they have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to strike the earth with all plagues, as often as they desire. When they finish their testimony, the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit will make war against them, overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. Then those from the peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations will see their dead bodies three-and-a-half days, and not allow their dead bodies to be put into graves. And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them, make merry, and send gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth. Now after the three-and-a-half days the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them. And they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, "Come up here." And they ascended to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies saw them. In the same hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. In the earthquake seven thousand people were killed, and the rest were afraid and gave glory to the God of heaven. The second woe is past. Behold, the third woe is coming quickly.
Revelation 11:1-14
The two witnesses prophesy with power God supplies. The beast cannot kill them until they finish their testimony; afterward their bodies lie exposed while their enemies celebrate. Three and a half days later God gives them life, and they stand, hear His summons, and ascend before their enemies. The passage expressly attributes their life and authority to God. Divine action has plainly not departed from the earth.
Revelation does not name the Holy Spirit in every scene, so we should not pretend it does. The redeemed people and their faithful testimony nevertheless require His saving and empowering work. His ministry continues after the church’s gathering without reestablishing the present church’s earthly place. The book’s closing invitation also joins the Spirit and the bride in saying, “Come.” Their continued relationship is consistent with His promise never to abandon believers.
Continuing to save people on earth does not mean the Spirit abandons believers already gathered to Christ. Paul’s explanation of His seal shows why they remain secure:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth–in Him. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.
Ephesians 1:3-14
Paul traces our blessings to God’s purpose in Christ, our redemption through His blood, and the gospel we heard and believed. Believers are sealed with the Holy Spirit, who identifies them as God’s own and guarantees their inheritance until the redemption of His purchased possession. Christ’s gathering fulfills that hope; it does not undo the new birth or remove the Spirit from the people He sealed.
Regeneration means genuine new birth, through which a person becomes a new creation. Every truly born-again believer is permanently indwelt and eternally secure. A superficial Christian profession does not establish that this has occurred, and security never gives permission for lawlessness. The Spirit produces love and holiness, exposes sin through His Word, gives gifts for service, and enables perseverance. Obedience is evidence of His work, not a way to earn salvation or keep ourselves saved.
We should receive the gospel now. Jesus is the eternal Son, fully God and fully man, born of a virgin and without sin. Wicked men tortured and punished His innocent body and put Him to death, while He willingly bore that real punishment for our sins. He shed His blood and died, completing His saving work before His burial and bodily resurrection. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus.
Christ died for the whole world, so God’s offer is genuine for everyone. People can resist His grace and reject Him, but everyone who repents and believes in Jesus is forgiven and justified, declared righteous before God, and born again. The Holy Spirit indwells and seals that believer. Neither salvation now nor salvation during the Tribulation can be obtained independently of Christ and the Spirit.
Expecting Christ to gather His church should also affect how we resist lawlessness now. A congregation does not restrain evil merely by existing in a town, and it deserves no blanket credit for the good around it. Its witness depends on the Spirit producing truth and obedience. A church that conceals abuse or compromises truth to gain influence contradicts the ministry it claims. We need to protect vulnerable people, refuse hidden sin, and bring truth and love into our prayer, proclamation, and daily conduct.
For grieving believers, the promised gathering directs hope to Christ Himself. He may come during our lifetime or after we have died, but no one who belongs to Him will be excluded. Whether raised from death or changed while alive, we will remain with Him forever. That promise should make our teaching comforting and steady, with no need for fabricated signs or prophetic date-setting.
My Final Thoughts
I understand the restrainer to be the Holy Spirit working through the church, with that present ministry ending when Christ gathers His people before the Tribulation. The Spirit remains God, keeps those He has sealed, and continues to save and empower people on earth. I want that hope to produce faithful dependence on Him now, including honest opposition to lawlessness within the church. His promise also gives us something substantial to offer grieving believers: the dead in Christ will rise, and all His people will be with Him forever.
