Let me ask you in return a more difficult question from the pre-tribulation perspective: If people can indeed be saved during the Tribulation, as most who teach this theory believe, since they see saints all over the Book of Revelation, why are the saints not raptured out of the world immediately upon their salvation, since the same wrath will be falling all around? Are these new believers a separate category of saints?

To put a possible end to the dilemma of both questions, let us call upon brothers Bethel and Schwertley once more:

From Bethel, quoted above, “ What is the wrath to which we are not appointed? And, can saints go through the Great Tribulation without suffering the wrath of God, as did the Old Testament saints in Egypt when God sent His plagues because of Pharaoh? …”

The first question, regarding the nature of the wrath, needs a careful answer. For the wrath of God is indeed poured out during the three and one half years called the “Tribulation.” During these times, believers will be separated from unbelievers, as they were in Egypt. Nevertheless there will be other forms of death for believers, and as Bethel says,

“Tribulation and persecution is not the wrath of God...persecution and martyrdom is the New Testament norm.” He adds that, ultimately, “ The wrath of God that Christians will be kept from is the wrath of the last day and, of course, the wrath of the Lake of Fire.” It is clear at the end of the Book that believers are indeed caught up before Jesus pours out His vengeance on all His enemies (19:11-21). There is definitely no one called saint on the planet at that moment.

Bethel continues, “Even a casual reading of the Scriptures will reveal that God takes His people through tribulation rather than delivering them from it.[ He cites Noah, the three Hebrew boys, and Daniel as examples of this.] [In addition] Like the Old Testament saints listed among the heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11 and all the Apostles who were martyred except John… God sometimes lets His saints suffer and die for His glory.

“Beloved, let no man deceive you. The saints will go through the tribulation depicted in the Revelation. The antichrist will be given power ‘to make war with the saints, and to overcome them’ (Rev. 13:7). The prophet Daniel wrote concerning the antichrist, ‘He will speak against the Most High and oppress His saints...The saints will be handed over to him for [three and a half years]...He will destroy the mighty men and the holy people’ (Dan. 7:25, 8:24). Christians who are compromisers before the Great Tribulation are not going to be overcomers through it.”

Schwertley, analyzes the Revelation passages that show how God’s people are kept from the wrath before the ultimate wrath during this Tribulation time:

“God’s people are protected from His wrath during the tribulation. In Revelation 6:16 it is the heathen that ask the mountains and rocks to protect them from the wrath of the Lamb, a wrath that falls as a response to the prayers of persecuted and martyred saints (Rev. 6:9-11). After the fifth trumpet is sounded, the locusts of destruction are ordered by God only to harm ‘those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads’ (Rev. 9:4). God’s saints are specifically protected from harm. In Revelation 9:20-21 we are told that these plagues were directed to wicked men. Revelation 14:9-10 says that those who are to experience God’s wrath and undiluted indignation are those who receive the mark of the beast and his image. This obviously excluded Christians. Revelation 16:1-2 says that God’s wrath (the first bowl) is only to be poured out on the worshipers of the beast, who have his mark. Once again believers are excluded. In 16:9 and 11 those who receive God’s plagues are identified as blasphemers who refuse to repent. A careful reading of Revelation demonstrates that although God’s people experience persecution, death, and harm at the hands of wicked men they are carefully and lovingly excluded from every act of God’s wrath…”

5. Luke 21:36, “Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.” Question: Does not Jesus here imply that there is an escape from the Tribulation, and that we ought in fact to seek it?

In the light of all that we have learned so far, the explanation of this verse becomes relatively easy. Let’s try to determine first what “these things” are that Jesus is talking about. In the chapter, a parallel to Matthew 24, he has spoken of days of vengeance, distress, wrath, falling by the edge of the sword, signs in the heavens, men’s hearts failing them, the coming of Jesus Himself, carousing, drunkenness, cares of this life, the snare of His return.