DENOMINATIONAL DOCTRINES: The Great Tribulation
LIBERTY AND LOVE #126
“For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matt. 24:21). Ah, the great tribulation. When it comes to doctrines such as this, we either let the Bible tell us what it means or we speculate. We must follow the Bible even if it does not fit what we’ve always been told or want to believe. Speculation always causes problems.
This verse must be kept in its context—that of the preceding verses—in order to be understood. This has reference to the tribulation brought upon the city of Jerusalem by the Romans. The instructions to flee to the mountains, to pray that it doesn’t happen on the Sabbath day, the “woe to those who are pregnant or nursing babies” because they won’t be able to move as fast—all of this is talking about the fall of Jerusalem.
During the final stages of the first Jewish-Roman war, Roman armies destroyed Jerusalem and its temple. According to Jesus, this was divine judgment upon the religious leaders and the entire system for their rejection of him as the Messiah. We should study closely the Lord’s words in Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21, and not build speculative theories from the Book of Revelation, which is a book of signs and symbols.
One premillennial view of Matthew 24:21 asserts that Christ’s statement about the great tribulation cannot refer to the Roman siege against Jerusalem because there have been greater “tribulations” in history than this one. The example that is usually given is the German Holocaust. Since more people perished then than in A.D. 70, it is asserted, the “tribulation” to which our Lord referred must point to calamity in association with “the end times” and the Second Coming of Christ.
In reply to this objection several points should be made. Whatever Jesus was talking about, he said the time was near. When his disciples saw Jerusalem surrounded by the Roman armies, they knew that the tribulation was “near” (Matt. 24:15, 33). The “generation” living at that time would not “pass away” until “all these things” were accomplished (v. 34). The fact that Christ said that there would never again be a tribulation such as this one indicates that he is not discussing the Second Coming. Obviously, there could be no “tribulation” after the last day.
Consistent with prophetic literature, it is possible that the Lord was using some hyperbole to impress upon his hearers the devastation that was coming. Christ, in other words, was referring to the horrible nature of the destruction and not the number of dead. Certainly, in some sense, the flood of Noah’s day and the earlier destruction by the Babylonians could be viewed as being equal to the A.D. 70 calamity (as could the World War II Holocaust).
But the question is, In what sense did Jesus mean for his words to be taken? In view of the overall context of Matthew 21-24, what the Lord meant to express was that, from the standpoint of earthly divine judgment, there has never been anything like this. The people of Noah’s day had not been trained and prepared to accept God and his prophets the way that the Jewish leaders had. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was punishment upon a pagan nation. Even the first destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians was before the rejection of God’s Son. Remember that in the parable of the wicked vinedressers (Matt. 21:33-40), the landowner sent his son “last of all” (v. 37). The rejection and murder of their Messiah was the final nail in the Jewish religious leaders’ coffin.
“Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar” (Matt. 23:34-35).
Here is the key to understanding the “greatness” of the “great” tribulation. Jesus' warning in Matthew 24:34 that “this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled” is tied back to his similar warning to the religious leaders that “on them” would come ALL the righteous blood shed on the earth from Abel until then. That’s a lot of vengeance! That is why there had never been, nor ever would be, a tribulation like this. God had never brought a judgment like this upon any people. Because no people had ever committed a crime this bad—murdering The Son of God. And the judgment happened during the first century, not in the future when the Scribes and Pharisees all would be dead.
Why can’t people think and understand that telling these people about some “great tribulation” more than 2,000 years in the future would be pointless? Jerusalem’s fall in AD 70 happened within a 40-year generation from the time he made the statement. According to Jesus, “the abomination of desolation” spoken of by Daniel the prophet was the fall of Jerusalem.
At the beginning of Matthew 24, Jesus was at the Temple in Jerusalem. He stated that “there shall not be left here one stone upon another, but all shall be thrown down” (vs. 3), The Jewish temple was destroyed and anything that is built in the future will have nothing to do with Bible prophecy. The great tribulation was the Roman attack on Jerusalem and all the prophecies associated with the temple were fulfilled then—in that generation—just as Jesus said they would be.
Dewayne Dunaway
