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The Great Tribulation

If you try to research the book of revelation online you will find with few exceptions much talk of a seven year period which may be called "The great tribulation" or simply "the seven year tribulation". With even fewer exceptions you will see that the power-house behind such talk is dispensationalism, the doctrine that the grace of God is transferred from body to body, from Abraham to Israel to the church, and then back to Israel again at the moment of "rapture".

There is no rapture folks, and there are no such dispensations, only God's chosen people that have been reformed into a new body, and the kingdom of Israel has been translated from under the law to under grace in Jesus Christ. All of us gentiles are "graffed in" - since now there is no difference in the gospel between race, colour creed, ethnicity etc.

It may then appear that since the "Great Tribulation" has nothing to stand on - it must therefore not be what it is thought to be. There is a disparity in the gospels between the timing of the start of the "great tribulation" - one gospel states that it starts immediately after the destruction of the temple by Titus, the "prince of the people that shall come" and another states that it arrives after a "great falling away" when Jesus states that many will come in His name claiming that Jesus is the Christ, and will deceive many.

Commentators and those who have made efforts to align the text have either taken the preterist position that the tribulation has been and gone at the start with the destruction of Jerusalem, and others push the "falling away" into the modern day. It is the latter of these two that interests me.

I posit, from my study on revelation that the great tribulation started at Christ's exhortation for His followers to flee Israel to the mountains, and is still happening to this very day. There then must be some solution as to the condition that first there must be a vast falling away as Christ stated. In fact, the gospel states that the falling away preceeds the sign of Christ's coming which will be seen "as lightning in the east is visible from the west".

Revelation has no dates in it, no periods of time mentioned are chronological - all refer to symmetries of the trinity and the effects of satan's devices against them. There is no "seven year" period, no "42 months" and no "3 1/2 years". The mistakes made in surmising that Christ is replaced with antichrist in the prophecy of Daniel's 70th week are dreadful - as is the requirement that the last half of the seventieth week is yet to be fulfilled. Christ came already - Israel failed to fully accept Him in the period of the 70th week. That ends that myth.

So what may we deduce from the "great" tribulation if it has been running all this time? We know that the restrainer has now been removed. Yet (See the metaphysics area) the authority of God is exerted only upon the elect under grace, and it is not wasted on those given over to a reprobate mind, or those tares that populate the churches. Divine authority is exercised over the house of God - the temple, (Christs body only).

We can equivocate the term "great tribulation" with "far more selective election." There are many times more believers today than there were in 70 AD, we would expect also that there are many more tares today as a percentage than there were amongst the saints back then, (Although they themselves had tares, stating "they went out from us because they were not of us.").

Christ's own restraint upon His elect is shown in the opening of the seals. As the seals open, we may deduce that restraint equal to divine authority is then loosened from what was initially full rest in Christ for everyone in the body of spiritual Israel (unity corresponding to presence in the static subgroup only). With the first seal at the arrival of the white horse (England) There was an alternative presented the body of Christ - whether to be in Christ, or to replace Christ with antichrist by exercising the "bow" as a faulty "rest".

With the second seal opened there was presented (with the USSR) the opportunity to unite militarily in defence of one's freedom to worship, or to equivalently defend the freedom found in choosing to refuse God (but only in defence of the right to make such choices.) - believers became tested further, they are not to exercise divine authority to help the morale of the ungodly, or to have concord with such heresies in their ministry.

With the third seal (Nazi Germany) believers were presented with the dialectic method and modern philosophy - the believers were tested with the devices of the serpent used to tempt Eve, such testing enabled the population of tares to explode - near all christians are practicing the same methods, with only a few resisting today.

With the fourth seal, all restraint is loosed and the full system of dialectic logic is unrestrained. The believer has the option to hold to their love of the truth or to decide what they want it to mean based on their pursuit of pleasure.

The result of the opening of the seals has permitted the way we think to undergo a series of paradigm shifts. The restraint of God is only over the body of Christ - and as our love of the truth is tested under greater (dialectic) trials the true body of Christ has a light that shines out as much as it did to begin with (through holding to the gospel), yet the world which was never under restraint has not been the one fallen away - rather the "church" has fallen to the level of the world where they cease to "salt" the world (as they had done so when the body of Christ was under greater restraint and exercising divine authority over the rest of the body - our "light" was brighter through greater fellowship.)

The restraint, (the seals) limit the effect that the world has upon the body of Christ - as there are now more christians in the church, there are more tares and the true salt of the earth does not have enough light to go around - the five foolish virgins have no oil for their lamps and only the wise will have oil to shine out the path of the bridegroom. The removal of restraint assures that only those with a greater love for the truth will be elected - this will keep the way "narrow" and the gate "strait". Those tares that practice the dialectic devices in the church without any divine restraint, with no divine authorty exercised upon them have been "dropped out" of the race for approval before God, One could state that "dropped out" = "fallen away" (apostasia). They have the effect that the true believer amongst them is then under trial by satans devices. Once such an elect Christian leaves, when the least in the fellowship will leave, all are then under authority to likewise leave, or to be regarded as a "foolish virgin".

So, "Great Tribulation" = "More selective election." The explosion of the dialectic is a removal of restraint on the true body of Christ so that they may be "refined as gold and silver is refined", It is evidence today that the restraint is fully removed and we are heading for the last page of the book of life filled at a dead run. The true believers are "the salt of the earth", whereas the practicers of the dialectic will be rejected of Christ ("Depart from me, Ye that work iniquity".)

Then it becomes apparent that the restraint upon the bride is inversely proportional to the proportion of tares in the harvest. That there are too many tares is obvious - that the churches are impossible for a believer to exercise their faith in them without compromise is worse - but that we are istructed to remove ourselves from them and brush the dust from our feet is reassuring - we have our fellowship with God instead.

God, is "slow to anger and exceedingly patient". Jesus has been opening the seals one by one - He has not lost one of His followers yet, having known them all from the beginning. Jesus is truly patient - and He will return, He keeps His word intact - as He does also His authority. The appearance of the chrch falling away is cause for distress, but only "He who endures to the end shall be saved."


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