Let that sink in awhile. The true church is Up There enjoying all that life can give to a believer, when suddenly a Tribulation Saint dies, is funneled upwards, and, and what? Crashes the party? Is kept in a back room for even more shame? Oh my. I think modern theology is just as shallow as it is widespread.

My Bible shows a different picture altogether. Revelation 7, verses 9-17, paints an unforgettable image of these Tribulation Saints. First, it agrees with the title being attached to them today, they are the saints of the tribulation period. But it does not suggest by any rule of logic or communication that these saints are different in species from the saints who walk the earth in our non-tribulation but very troubled world.

No, they look very familiar. They are from every nation, as the church today is. They are clothed in white, as Jesus had promised to all overcomers a few chapters earlier. They are crying out praises to their Saviour. That's what church folks do, you know. The Lamb receives them, wipes away their tears, welcomes them tenderly into the joys of their Lord. Oh, this is the Body of Christ, the Church. And they did not get there through an escape route. They walked straight into the mouth of the lion and found in his interior eternal life. No rebuke. No hardness. Jesus is so happy that they have arrived. And the party will not start until the last saint is home!

Now I readily confess that this group, upon whom the evils of an antichrist are thrust, are a breed apart. They are akin to saints suffering even now in North Korea and many other places on the planet. This is why we in the West may have trouble recognizing them. This is why we have assigned to them only this horrible tormenting, this lowly backslidden unworthiness, this implication that persecution is really punishment upon those who have earned Christ's frown. Surely, we say, he smiles only at the prosperous on Earth, who have made something of their lives.

Oh how God's people need to be reminded that the cross of Christ is not a spanking at all. That, in every generation and in every life, the cross is a personal daily choice. It's not your sore toe or your rheumatism or the boss's displeasure of your ways. It's not your lowly house or slow car or your location in town or your skin color. It's Christ in you, working visibly through you, and causing rejection of you. It's a pathway to death. But a death that leads to the arms of Jesus.