One of the stock objections to prewrath from pretribbers is that placing intervening events before the rapture “diminishes” eagerness and hope for Jesus’ return.
This objection is easily refuted.
I have responded to this objection in my book Antichrist Before the Day of the Lord: What Every Christian Needs to Know about the Return of Jesus. I have also responded to it in my forthcoming book that will be a comprehensive critique of imminence, the novel notion that Jesus can “return at any second.”
Other than the biblical evidence that I have cited before that contradicts this pretrib objection, let me use an analogy from human experience to illustrate the problem with this objection.
When two people get engaged and set a future date for the wedding, does the fact that they will not get married the day of their engagement “diminish” hope and eagerness for the wedding?
Of course not!
But the pretribber would have you think that it does because the wedding is not “imminent”; therefore in their mind it “diminishes” their eagerness and hope. This pretrib logic is patently absurd.
In fact, I would argue that the engaged couple’s eagerness and hope is heightened
as they anticipate their big day.
So many other human examples could be cited. Here is one more. How many children do you know are having their hope and eagerness “diminished” because they have to wait until Christmas to open up their presents? None! Their eagerness is being heightened more and more every day.
The last generation of the Church that will be persecuted under the Antichrist’s great tribulation will all-the-more anticipate the big eschatological day. Delay and trials engender hope in all of us.
Ironically, pretrib teachers are inadvertently setting up their flock to have their hope sapped by teaching them that if they see the Antichrist in the future then that will mean they missed Jesus’ return. That is hope-denying theology!
