Customer Reviews

Church and the Tribulation: A Biblical Examination of Posttribulationism

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This is still the best apologetic for the posttribulation position I've read. I'm disappointed that there aren't more books on the posttribulational position out there. But Gundry does a good job at critiquing the popular pretribulational view and setting forth a solid exegetical defense of posttribulationism. His interpretation of John 14 is a little wrong. But other than that, it's really good.

Out of all the Post-Trib. books I have read (ranging from George Ladd to Millard Erickson) this is by far the hardest to grasp yet the most powerful. Gundry refutes Pre-Tribulationalism on EVERY aspect. He constantly uses their arguement, see if it COULD work, and refutes it. There is a brilliance within the style of reading that I had found to be hard to understanding (I blame me for that). I could only recommend this book if someone who has spent lots of time already studying Pre or Post Tribulationalism because this is a step (rather a leap) up from George Ladd or Walvoord. I plan on reading it through more than three times to understand every arguement. One the unique things with his view of the Post-Trib. Advent is the Dispensational factor unlike Ladd who was more of a Historical Futurist. Great book and Great Scholarship!

I am very grateful for Gundry's book! He presented a well thought out presentation of the post-tribulation rapture. This is the first book I have read on this view, and I only read it after comeing to this view myself. I had been a pre-tribber for over 15 years. But I always held it as a non-essential, with the knowledge that learned brethren held to other views. After preparing an inductive lesson on Matthew 24-25, I came to the firm conviction that the post-tribulation rapture is clearly taught in the scriptures. Then I went in search of authors that have gone before me. And that's how I discovered this book.

There are a lot of mean spirited words on both sides of the camp. I commend Robert Gundry in his ability to present a cogent argument from scripture without vitriol, but with love. I will be buying his other book on the subject soon, "First the Antichrist".

Robert H. Gundry taught for several decades at Westmont College in California, and was a prominent member of the Evangelical Theological Society, until he was forced to resign in 1983 (in a campaign spearheaded by apologist Norman Geisler) because of the controversy over his book, Matthew, a Commentary on His Literary and Theological Art. He has also written First the Antichrist: A Book for Lay Christians Approaching the Third Millennium and Inquiring Whether Jesus Will Come to Take the Church Out of the World Before the tribul.

In the first chapter of this 1973 book, he states the following:

"The present thesis is threefold: (1) direct, unquestioned statements of Scripture that Jesus Christ will return after the tribulation and that the first resurrection will occur after the tribulation, coupled with the absence of statements placing similar events before the tribulation, make it natural to place the rapture of the church after the tribulation; (2) the theological and exegetical grounds for pretribulationism rest on insufficient evidence, non sequitur reasoning, and faulty exegesis; (3) positive indications of a posttribulational rapture arise out of proper exegesis of relevant Scripture passages and derive support from the history of the doctrine."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"But will not the 144,000 Jews evangelize the world by heralding the Gospel of the kingdom during the tribulation? Not a single statement in Scripture supports this common tenet... The two passages which speak of the 144,000 (Rev. 7:1-8; 14:1-5) say nothing about evangelistic activity during the tribulation." (Pg. 26-27)
"By common consent imminence means that so far as we know no predicted event will NECESSARILY precede the coming of Christ... these elements would require only that Christ MIGHT come before the tribulation, not that He must." (Pg. 29)
"If pretribulationism be true, Paul should have quieted the agitation of the Thessalonians (2 Thess 2:1-5) by telling them that a pretribulational rapture will absent them long before the arrival of the day of the Lord." (Pg. 96)
"But Paul neither makes nor implies any distinction between his description of the second coming in 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10 and that in 1 Thessalonians 4:16ff...The very setting of the section should make us wary of unnecessarily interpolating the idea of a pretributlational rapture." (Pg. 113)
"Paul places the translation of living Christians 'at the last trumpet' (1 Cor 15:51-52)... It is far more natural to regard the 'last' as one sounded before the end of the age..." (Pg. 148)

If you want to know more about the rapture read this one. It is very interesting. I personally am pre-wrath but can see the potential in this well stated scenario. Pre-trib is deceptive error. Preterism like wise. Study them only to see their error is my opinion, and I no longer waste my time on that. The more literal we interpret the word the better off we are.

Robert Gundry gives good information in this book, though he errs in several areas related to modern Israel. Tim Cohen's materials (see below) are much better and more thorough:

Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins, and others in the Pre-Trib circle, such as Ed Hindson, Tommy Ice, Chuck Missler, Zola Levitt, Thomas McCall, John Hagee, Grant Jeffrey, Marlin Maddox, Perry Stone, Texe Marrs, John Walvoord (deceased), etc., continue to put forth the same deceptions that Hal Lindsey popularized decades ago. The notion of a pre-tribulation rapture is foreign to scripture, it is foreign to the teachings of the early Church, and it is grooming the Church for destruction through ignorance and lack of preparation for what is really coming. These men are novices and not prophecy "experts" or "scholars" by any stretch of the imagination; they are those who tickle the ears of gullible Christians. Why continue to be deceived? Tim Cohen, in his excellent book, "The AntiChrist and a Cup of Tea," provides biblically sound and testable evidence to show that the coming AntiChrist is known NOW. Not only that, the same author (Tim Cohen) has now put out the strongest presentation on the whole issue of the rapture EVER offered to the saints of God in Christ: "The REAL Rapture". If you really want to know the truth about the timing of the coming rapture, then you need to hear Tim Cohen's "The REAL Rapture" (based on a volume in his forthcoming "Messiah, History, and the Tribulation Period" series (see Prophecy House's site for details on these items, which are also available via Amazon).