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Chapter VI: The Great Tribulation

Let us now examine this term, ―The Great Tribulation‖ so glibly spoken of by the

any-moment rapturists and their camp followers. In the first place let us note that the
phrase ‗great tribulation‘ only appears three times in the New Testament, and it is very
dangerous to build much upon so few occurrences of a word or phrase. We shall show

later that some of the mightiest dogmas of the Darby theorists are built upon just such
pin-points.
The two occurrences of the phrase are in Matt. 24:21, Rev. 2:22 and Rev. 7:14. In
the first and second cases there is no article in the original Greek, and in the third case
there is an article with the adjective in the secondary attributive position. In neither

case did the translators of the A.V. use an article in the translation. * We hold with
commentators throughout the ages that the ―great multitude which no man could
number‖ which John was given to see, who ―came out of great tribulation‖ are the

throng of sufferers and martyrs for Christ‘s sake from Stephen, down to and including
those martyred under Antichrist. That they are the converts from within a hypothetical
period called ―The Great Tribulation,‖ by a hypothetical crowd of one hundred and
forty-four thousand Jewish evangelists, who hypothetically evangelize the world in
that period, is a part of the gossamer web of fancy woven by the

secret-and-preliminary rapturists to accommodate their fantastic theory. That there
will be 144,000 sealed from the tribes of Israel, which we believe, constitute the godly
Israelitish remnant of the end-time, is plain from the text. But there is not the slightest

hint in the scared text that they are going to evangelize anyone during the days of
Antichrist.
*The Greek article is a very difficult and elusive subject, and the best scholars are
not always able to account for its presence or absence. Therefore to lay too much
weight on its use at any point is precarious.

Tribulation, yea, great tribulation has been pointed out as a perpetual phase of the
believer‘s sojourn in a hostile world, and will culminate in that great world-wide
tribulation of the end-time, but it is never delimited as a specified period of time. That

this suffering will be great at the last, is plain from the words of the Savior (Matt.
24:21, Mark 13:19), but we are persuaded that its final, unprecedented magnitude will
consist rather in its volume and extent, by comparison with what has preceded, than in
its intensity. It would be hard to conceive that even in the reign of the Beast more
diabolical forms of cruelty can be devised than those inflicted on the saints of the

early church, or in the ―fiery trials‖ of the Reformation. The number of saints in the
whole earth, within the world –wide sphere-of-rule of the Beast who will be

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