Church and the tribulation of the last days

Won’t God swoop in to save His beloved bride from the tribulation of the last days? Like Prince Charming coming in to save the damsel in distress from the evil dragon? Christians, in the West, first started to believe and proclaim this novel doctrine of pre-tribulation rapture of the Church. This quite recent doctrine historically is traced back to the early 1800’s and was made popular in the 20th century mainly through the Scofield Reference Bible (an expository study Bible). Jesus though has these things to say about the end-times in Matthew 24 to His disciples: “Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name (v9). “But immediately after the tribulation of those days…And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky,…and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory…And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds,…(Matthew 24:29-31). Men like Paul wanted to partake in the fellowship of sufferings of Christ (Philippians 3:10-11). And even today such men and women who follow Christ whole-heartedly look ahead to the joy, enduring the sufferings in faith and then by grace partake of the eternal glory in Christ (Hebrews 12:2). The true saints of Christ undoubtedly will face the tribulation to come (Revelation 7:14).

The message to the penultimate church, Philadelphia, which is also the only other faithful church as Smyrna, which had no deeds to repent of before Christ. The message begins as such with Christ’s introduction in Revelation 3:7: He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens. The key of David is mentioned in Isaiah 22:22 in reference to Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was the palace administrator during king Hezekiah’s reign (2 Kings 18:18). So, here the key of David is a sign of sovereign spiritual access and God-instituted authority in the eternal kingdom of God belonging to Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:18). And this is interlinked with God’s blessing to Philadelphia in v8: Behold, I have put before you an open door which no one can shut, because you have a little power, and have kept My word, and have not denied My name. The omniscient God begins the message before this blessing by stating: ‘I know your deeds…He is the eternal Judge who judges us in due time (1 Corinthians 4:5). The blessing of v8 of open doors has been wrongly abused by “prosperity preachers” in referring to earthly blessings and riches and other perishable things of this world. But, as we saw before the keys of David are referring to spiritual access in the kingdom of God. So the open door here is referring to opportunities or entrances to be received/stepped into in the kingdom building work of the church ministry (Acts 14:27). The little power the church has is reference to the abundance of temptations they had faced to deny their faith but yet endured in faith. The term for power is dunamis which is referring to the inherent power by virtue of nature. The message continues on with another promise in Revelation 3:9, about spiritual hypocrites. Why are they hypocrites? We saw that the book of Revelation is full of signs, symbols and hyperbole (Revelation 1:1), so the synagogue of Satan is only a reference to the type of people they were and who in reality they were serving. The Jews mentioned here could possibly mean actual ethnic Jews or also ‘Jewish’ as in rigorous practice of outward religion and traditions – who were probably a corrupt church in close vicinity to Philadelphia – being inwardly wicked and outwardly righteous. And like Satan fell and bowed/bows at the feet of Jesus (Mark 5:6), so would those who serve him fall at the feet of the faithful church today (1 Peter 3:13-14). 

In Revelation 3:10, Christ promises a blessing for perseverance in the Word of God to the church. And this blessing is the protection of their faiths from a time of testing or temptation that would come upon the whole world. This time is what Jesus warned the disciples about in Matthew 24, where He says: Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved. Lawlessness comes when we stray from the statutes and the law of liberty of the Word of God and lawlessness always leads to the hardening of one’s heart causing the love for God to grow diminished over time. So, the promise to the persevering church of Philadelphia and to other persevering churches today is this – lawlessness will not prevail over the church. Like the assembly of Israelite’s in the land of Midian, who were protected from all the plagues that ravaged Egypt, the persevering church would be protected today from destruction. I am coming quickly…(v11); these words are a sweet melody to the ears of the persevering believers and as it was to the church of Philadelphia as well. And to all of us who live in such times of increasing lawlessness and a straying away from the Word of God in the world around us and now even inside our churches – this is Christ’s final exhortation…hold fast what you have, so that no one will take your crown (v11).

The final words of Christ to Philadelphia and to us today is this: He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Through the unchanged repetition of this phrase, hearing the Spirit has to unequivocally become second nature to the churches of Christ. If not we stand to lose out on the eternal promises of God. But to the one who hears, obeys and endures till the end, the eternal promise of God is this: