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reign with Christ a thousand years. These are declared to have participated in ―the first

resurrection.‖ We are plainly told, moreover, that the participants in this first
resurrection include those who has been beheaded under the beast, for having refused
to receive his mark or to worship him. Consider, gentle reader, the impossibility of the
resurrection of the just (accompanied by the rapture of the living) having taken place

before the manifestation of the Beast, if there are those killed during the reign of the
Beast included in it! The slowest wit can discern that if there are those killed by the
Beast who participate in this first resurrection, then the first resurrection cannot occur
before the Beast has run his dread course, but must be after. But the advocates of the

false theory of pre-tribulation resurrection and rapture, still will not surrender their
error in the face of the overwhelming evidence against them, but resort to the
expedient of splitting the first resurrection into sections, to try to accommodate their
theory, but without a scintilla of scripture to justify that notion either.

Beloved Christian, it is a blessed thought that ―God hath not appointed us unto
wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ‖ (I Thess. 5:9) but in the same
epistle we read: ―That no man should be moved by these afflictions: for yourselves
know that we are appointed thereunto.‖ The word here translated ―afflictions‖ is the

same as that elsewhere translated ―tribulation‖. Tribulation and wrath are not the same.
Tribulation is consistently represented throughout the New Testament, both in precept
and experience as being the distinct portion of believers, but not the wrath of God, as
poured out on this world or visited hereafter. You may therefore prepare your heart for

suffering here with the hope and assurance of sharing His eternal glory hereafter.

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