Often you will hear the misinformed statement that “pre-wrath is mid-trib” or the like. Without exception it is couched in an assertion and never actually substantiated.
Prewrath does not share anything with mid-tribulationism, except of course that the Church will not face God’s wrath—but that can be said of any rapture view.
Mid-tribulationism is actually a variant of pretribulationism. Norman B. Harrison’s 1941 book The End: Rethinking the Revelation is the classic book on mid-tribulationism (see also Gleason L. Archer Jr.’s works).
Mid-trib and pre-trib share the following basic beliefs with each other:
- They both affirm imminence (despite the fact that mid-trib places the rapture at the midpoint of the seven-year period.)
- They both affirm that the Great Tribulation is God’s wrath.
- They both affirm a two-stage return of Jesus, where the rapture is disconnected from the second coming.
In short, mid-tribulationism is slightly modified pretribulationism.
