I want to comment on some encouraging observations regarding prewrath in recent years.
I have seen the prewrath position become the fastest growing eschatological position in evangelical circles. It has been around for three decades, but it took time for it to gain momentum. My involvement began in the early 90s when prewrath was just getting started. In those decades, I have witnessed various ways in which pretribulational teachers have tried to deal with prewrath: ridicule, ignore, misrepresent, slander, and expel prewrath believers from churches, ministries, and denominations.
But biblical truth has a way of passing through these stages to be vindicated. This is what has happened in recent years with prewrath, as more traditional pretrib denominations, churches, pastors, Christian publishers, and ministries have come to recognize the biblical foundations of prewrath eschatology.
This has also in recent times penetrated deep into certain pretribulational ministries—not to their pretrib teachers, but many of their followers. This of course has caused consternation within these ministries, so much so, they are now responding to prewrath specifically in their annual pretrib conferences.
Here is the problem though. They are not responding meaningfully. They are mostly choosing to go back to their playbook to ridicule, ignore, misrepresent, and slander prewrath. However, prewrath has grown into such a large snowball that they cannot control its movement. They are dismayed behind the scenes.
Unfortunately, I am not too confident that they will change their tactics—to their avail. They will continue to ridicule, ignore, misrepresent, slander, and such. I know this because there are many instances that I have witnessed just this year.
All of this bodes well for prewrath. They are trying to stop a large snowball that has already crashed into their circles.
So what should prewrathers continue to do?
First, we can be thankful to God for this, that many years of prayer and hard work is bearing fruit. We should not become prideful, but be humbled by all of this. Watching God work is exciting, sobering, and humbling.
Second, we need to continue to expound on biblical truth, publishing sound literature and praying that God will continue to open hearts and minds so they will come to recognize that the church will one day face the Antichrist’s wicked persecution. We should continue to pray that Christian leaders will prepare God’s flock to become prepared before it is too late. I think that time is coming sooner than later.
A final note. I don’t believe that prewrath will go away. At the same time, it may not be God’s will that it becomes the most popular view. I hope it is God’s will that it would, so that the church as a whole may be prepared to face the Antichrist. That is my prayer. But even though it is the fastest growing view, this does not mean it will become the most popular view before Jesus returns. On the popular level pretribulationism may continue to become the most popular view (or is it “pan-tribulationism”?). Further, we should not fall into the fallacy that either the fastest growing or most popular view equals truth. Those measurements are not the barometer to biblical truth. Our touchstone of truth is God’s Word—not tradition, not how many adherents or how fast a position grows.
This is why I am prewrath, because I believe that prewrath is the most plausible interpretation supported by biblical evidence, the one that makes the most sense from Scripture.
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