by Woodrow Kroll - Back to the Bible

Pre-millennialism: Are There Things to Come? Part 2
by Woodrow Kroll

Today’s Radio Study:

Woodrow Kroll: The whole concept of understanding the future is not new to us. We’re not
the first generation to be interested in this. In fact, Julius Caesar had a board of augurs or
soothsayers, fortunetellers. They were kind of like the president’s cabinet in his day. He went
to them before he would do anything in battle, before he would do anything that related to the
Empire. His government was made up of people who were clairvoyants, people who could tell
the future because the future was very important to him.
There are people in the world today that live in the future, that is to say they’re so interested in
what’s going to happen in the future they don’t have any impact on what’s happening right now.
So, the whole concept of being able to understand the future is not something that just is of
interest to the church; it’s of interest to the world around us.
Some years ago—and I admit that those of us who are pretribulational, premillennial have
made a lot of mistakes over the years. We’ve had people in our camp who have predicted the
return of the Lord; they’ve been dead wrong in their predictions. They’ve embarrassed the rest
of us. You won’t hear me doing that here at Back to the Bible.
We’re not going to make a lot of crazy predictions here. In fact, I’m not going to make any
predictions here. I want you to focus on the Lord Jesus in the Book of Revelation because this
is not the revelation of St. John; this is the revelation of Jesus Christ that was given to John.
Today I want us to think about why one would be a futurist. I want to give you several reasons
and see if these reasons ring true to you.
First of all, I think Jesus Christ must come back and take the church out of this world before
the Millennium, in fact before the Tribulation because God promised to keep us from the
Tribulation. And if He doesn’t come back and take us out, God’s promise will be destroyed.
Let me take you right to the Word. First Thessalonians 1:9 says this: Paul writing to the people
of Thessalonica, he says, “For they themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry
we had to you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and
to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivered us
from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10).
Now, there are two points that Paul makes there that are important to us today. One of them is,
the past, present and future? Revelation is always about past, present and future.

1 Pre-millennialism: Are There Things to Come? Part 2

This is why I think the preterist view falls short because they say everything now is past. But
did you notice that they past “turned to God,” that was in the past when they came to Christ
as Savior; present they turned from idols to serve the living God, that’s present—and future, to
wait for His Son from heaven who has already delivered us from the wrath to come.
Now, if we are not taken out of this world before the Tribulation period, that promise loses
all that’s important. If we’re not taken out of the world before the Tribulation period, than the
“wrath to come” is something that we have to go through.
Let me go to the end of this book. We’ve read 1Thessalonians 1. Let me go to 1Thessalonians 5
and read a few verses there. Paul continues to the same church; and he says,
“But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write
to you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the
night. For when they say, ‘Peace and safety’, then sudden destruction comes upon them, as
labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape. But you, brethren, you are not
in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of
the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let
us watch and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk
at night. But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and
as a helmet the hope of salvation. For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation
through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:1-9).
In chapter 1 he says, “Your salvation, past, present and future, you turned from idols to
serve God and to wait for Jesus who delivered us from the wrath.” In the last chapter of 1
Thessalonians he says, The wrath to come, God has not reserved us to that wrath. That wrath is
history.
Here is what I want you to do. I want you to notice the context. Chapter 5 talks about wrath,
and we won’t be here to go through that wrath. So, what would you anticipate chapter 4 would
be all about? It would be about the return of the Lord taking us out before that wrath. You are
not disappointed.
Chapter 4 of 1Thessalonians, the end of the chapter, verse 16 says, “The Lord Himself will
descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of
God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.
“Then [Remember, pay attention to little things, I said the other day], we who are alive and
remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And
thus we shall always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). At that point we will never
leave His side.
Now, if I’m with the Lord now I’m sorely disappointed in what it means to be with the Lord.
That’s why I don’t think the preterist view does justice to Scripture because this is a promise
that the church will be taken out of this world before the wrath comes because God has not
appointed us to wrath.
So, if you take 1 Thessalonians in context, you have to believe, I think, that the church will be
taken out of this world before the Tribulation and before the Millennium. That’s why I believe
in the pretribulational, premillennial return of the Lord.
That’s one reason. I’ve got a lot of others.
Another one would be this: I believe that Jesus Christ must return for His Church before the
Tribulation or else we could call into question the sufficiency of the Atonement of Jesus.
Did His blood save me from judgment or did it not?

2 Pre-millennialism: Are There Things to Come? Part 2

John 3 talks about Jesus not coming to condemn the world but that the world through Him
might be saved. John 5:24 says that we will not come into condemnation, not come into
judgment, but we pass from death unto life if we trust Jesus Christ as savior.
Now, the application of Christ’s life makes us clean; it makes us righteous in the sight of God. It
makes us individually and corporately as His Body, the Church—it makes us a part of a group
of people known as the Church.
Do you want to read about that? You can read about it in Ephesians 1. You can also read about
it in Colossians 1. But here’s my point. I’m part of the Body, but Christ is the head. In fact that
is what Ephesians 1 and Colossians 1 say, “Christ is the head.”
Now, here is the question: I’m here on this earth. If I have to stay on this earth and go through
the Tribulation, there are two options because Christ, my head, is in heaven.
Number 1, the Body goes through the Tribulation headless; the headless Church going
through the Tribulation. That’s one option.
The other option is Jesus has to come back and go through the Tribulation with us so that the
head is with the Body. If I have to go through the Tribulation, then, I have a problem in the
sufficiency of Jesus’ blood to deliver me from judgment, from condemnation, from the kind of
wrath that God reserves for those who have rejected Him.
There is another alternative, of course. And that is that the head comes, takes the Body out of
this world before the Tribulation comes; and we are in heaven together while the wrath of God
is being poured out on the earth. I think that makes a lot more sense.
Tami Weissert: Wood, you just mentioned being taken up to heaven before God pours out His
wrath on the earth. It is not popular to talk about God’s wrath these days. We tend to focus on
God’s love. So can you explain this wrathful side of God? What’s the wrath all about?
WK: God’s wrath should never be confused with our human, petty kind of wrath or anger. Our
neighbor does something that destroys our yard so we get angry at him. And if it goes on to
long, our anger turns to wrath. It’s a purposeful, premeditated, negative response to everything
our neighbor does.
God’s wrath on the other hand is His holy aversion to sin. It’s what you would expect from a
holy God who cannot tolerate sin in any form. And if He did, He couldn’t be God. So when the
Bible speaks about God pouring out His wrath on a sinful world, it’s not because He’s a petty
God; it’s because He’s a holy God—a God who promises judgment for sinful behavior and He
makes good on His promise.
I’m talking with you today about why I choose to be a futurist in understanding Revelation
as opposed to someone who sees it all as past. I’ve given you my reasons for being a
pretribulationist, someone who believes that Jesus will come back, take the Church out before
the Tribulation.
I think Jesus Christ must come back for His Church before the Tribulation or else we lose one
of the greatest symbolisms of the Book of Revelation possible.
Let me say this right up front. You never build a doctrine on symbolism. So, if this were the
only reason I had, it would be a pretty shaky reason. But there is this accumulation of evidence
that you come to after a while. And this is a part of that evidence. There is a great symbolism
in the Book of Revelation that if Jesus doesn’t come back and take us out before the Tribulation
we lose it entirely. I mean it’s just gone; it’s out of here. Let me show you what it is.

3 Pre-millennialism: Are There Things to Come? Part 2

Revelation 1—let me just read the first three verses: “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which
God gave Him to show His servants—things which must shortly take place. And He sent and
signified it by His angel to His servant John, who bore witness to the word of God, and to the
testimony of Jesus Christ, and to all things that He saw. Blessed is he who reads and those who
hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is
near” (Revelation 1:1-3).
A preterist would say, “Aha, look, it says the time is near there, says these things must shortly
take place. They took place in A.D. 70. I’ll give you that—if you’ll give me that “the time is
near” doesn’t have a time definition to it. It depends what near is. And when you’re talking
about a book that’s written over many, many generations, when you talk about a revelation that
could entirely be future yet, “time is near” may not mean near to him; it may mean near to us.
So, what is the symbolism here? I want you to see the symbolism of chapter 1. Let me just read
verse 4. I stopped at verse 3. Let me just read verse 4. “John, to the seven churches, which are
in Asia.” Now, if you underline your Bible, I would underline the word churches there because
this is important. If you don’t underline your Bible, just put that word on the sticky side of your
mind because this is the first time the church is mentioned in the Book of Revelation.
Skip down to verse 8. He says in verse 8, “‘I am Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last.’”
“‘What you see, write in the book and send it to the seven churches’” (v. 11). There it is again,
the word churches. Chapter 1:20, “The mystery of the seven stars which you saw in My right
hand, and the seven golden lampstands: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches,
and the seven lampstands which you saw are the seven churches.”
So, here four times in chapter 1 the word church or churches is mentioned. And it continues
in chapter 2:1, “To the angel of the church at Ephesus write.” Skip down to verse 7, “He who
has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” Verse 8, “And to the angel of the
church in Smyrna write,” there we have it three times already. And we’re only up to verse 8.
Look at verse 11, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” Verse
12, “To the angel of the church in Pergamos write.” Are you getting the point here? The church
is very important in the Book of Revelation.
We saw it several times in chapter 1. We’ve seen it all these times now in chapter 2. And we
aren’t done. Chapter 2, verse 17, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the
churches.” Verse 18, “To the angel of the church in Thyatira write.” Verse 23, “I will kill her
children with death. And all the churches shall know that I am He who searches the minds and
hearts. “ And then the final verse, verse 29, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit
says to the churches.”

This is a common theme in chapter 2. You know what? It doesn’t let up in
chapter 3. Verse 1, “And to the angel of the church in Sardis write.” Verse 6, “He
who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” Verse 7, “To
the angel of the church in Philadelphia write.” Verse 13, “He who has an ear,
let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. “ Verse 14, “And to the angel
of the church of the Laodiceans write.” And then the last verse of the chapter,
verse 22, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
I don’t know if you took a quick count of how often the word church is used in
these verses, but let me do it for you. It’s 19 times. In chapter 1, chapter 2 and
chapter 3, the church is mentioned 19 times.
Let’s read on, chapter 4, “After these things I looked, and behold, a door

4 Pre-millennialism: Are There Things to Come? Part 2

standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet
speaking with me, saying, ‘Come up here, and I will show you things which
must take place after this.’” Remember little things.
Skip down to verse 7, “The first living creature was like a lion,” ah, no church
there. Go on to chapter 5, “And I saw in the right hand of Him who,” no
church. There’s no church in chapter 4; look at that. There’s no church in
chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8, chapter 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16,
17, 18, 19, 20, 21.
In fact, you don’t see the word church mentioned ever again in the Book of
Revelation until you get to chapter 22, the last chapter, verse 16, Jesus says, “’I,
Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things in the churches.’”
Now, let’s be honest. Don’t build a doctrine on symbolism. But why do you
expect the church to be mentioned 19 times in the first three chapters and then
not at all mentioned from chapter 4 until the end. I think I have an answer for
that because chapter 4 of Revelation through chapter 19 of Revelation, all of
those chapters are describing the period of Tribulation on this earth.
You know, why you don’t see the Church mentioned? The Church isn’t here!
Look, there are all kinds of theological reasons to hold beliefs about the Bible.
But if I had no theological training at all—all I was left with was my Bible—I
think I’d come to the same conclusion I’ve come to with theological training.
The return of the Lord could come at any time. It is future or there is no
comfort to the words of 1 Thessalonians 4. I’m a premillennialist because I
think this best fits the facts of Scripture.

Unless otherwise indicated, scripture references are from the New King James Version of the Bible.
Copyright © 2012 The Good News Broadcasting Association, Inc. All rights reserved.
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5 Pre-millennialism: Are There Things to Come? Part 2