Tribulation, rapture and purgatory

If you’re an “End Times Aware” Christian, regardless of denomination, you’re bound to have heard of The Rapture. It’s a term applied to souls being “caught up” in the air with Jesus, alluded to in St Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians (my emphasis):

Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words. (1 Th 4:13-18)

A second End Times concept is The Tribulation, alluded to in the Gospel of St Matthew and the Book of Revelation:

For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again. (Mt 24:21)

And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. (Rv 7:14)

So, as End Times Christians, we expect there to be a time of Tribulation, and a Rapture. But, in what order?

The earliest Christians understood Holy Scripture to mean that the Rapture would happen after the Tribulation (what we would now term “post-tribulation rapture”, or “post-trib” for short), and this was the unspoken consensus for centuries. But since John Nelson Darby in the early part of the Nineteenth Century, there has increasingly grown a view that the Rapture would precede the Tribulation (“pre-trib”). The practical implication of this view is that all the Christians will be snatched up into heaven before the going gets tough at the End of the Age. (There is also a “mid-trib” view, but it is held by only a small minority of end-times Christians.)

A bestselling set of books and films depicting the “pre-trib” version of the End Times appeared with the title Left Behind, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins in the 1990s. It is clearly a very persuasive line of thinking.

But is it for real?

Listen to the words of Jesus Himself as recounted in St Matthew’s Gospel (my emphasis):

“The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds[1] among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’” (Mt 13:24-30)

This is one of the occasions in Matthew where we get an explanation of the parable:

His disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”

He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.

“As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear. (Mt 13:36-43)

So on this basis, the “weeds and the wheat” (“them and us”) are allowed to continue side by side until The End. Indeed, if anything, there is a hint that “they” might be dealt with before “us” – but most traditional Christian commentators see it as simultaneous.

One of the “pre-trib” arguments goes like this: God loves His faithful followers, so why would He allow them to suffer during the Tribulation?

But consider again, if you will, the Catholic doctrine of purgatory that we looked at last time. At Jesus’s Second Coming, the End of the Age, does it feel plausible that he should turn to some of the righteous and say, “Sorry, guys, you still need to do some time in purgatory!”, while the saved and the resurrected are enjoying the life of paradise? There is something incongruous in this view of our Just God.

One of our modern prophets has given us a message from heaven in which we are told, “Purgatory will no longer exist at Jesus’s Second Coming”.

The implication is that those of us who would in the normal course of events have had to be purified in purgatory will now complete our time of purgation while we are still alive, during the Tribulation on earth.

Now that all makes a lot more sense. It makes sense that many souls should require purification after death before they are fit to enter God’s Holy Presence. It makes sense that all peoples, Christians and others, will have to go through the End Times Tribulation. It makes sense that purgatory should be no more at Jesus’s Second Coming, for none should be excluded from the Wedding Supper of the Lamb – except those in the outer darkness.

Sorry, “pre-tribbers” – you’re guilty of a big bout of “wishful thinking”.

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[1] Other translations use the terms “tares” or “darnel” instead of “weeds”.