by J A Bouma
She cleared her throat. “What is this Day of the Lord you speak of?”
“An important theme from the Prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures that portends a coming day when the Lord Yahweh would come to act in judgment against the wickedness and sin and unrighteousness of the world whilst also extending mercy and salvation.” Father Jim tilted his head back and closed his eyes, reciting from memory:
Let all who live in the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming.
It is close at hand—
a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and blackness.
Like dawn spreading across the mountains
a large and mighty army comes,
such as never was in ancient times
nor ever will be in ages to come.
The day of the Lord is great;
it is dreadful.
Who can endure it?
Ford swallowed. “How ominous…”
Alexander leaned over and whispered, “I think you mean, how apocalyptic.”
Rebekah sat up straight in her seat. “That is from the prophetic Book of Joel, chapter 2, isn’t that right?”
The cardinal nodded. “Indeed. And in light of Christ’s first coming, we understand the Day of the Lord to include his death on the cross, the event fulfilling the Messianic promises of judgment and mercy in the present through his crucifixion, where judgment was passed on the sins of the world through him and mercy extended to those who trust in his work by faith. But then it also anticipates a future event, where God’s ultimate judgment will be passed on the last day when Christ returns a second time in glory with his holy ones.”
“And you are believing that day has come?” Nia asked from the other end of the table.
He took a breath, glancing at Alexander, then nodded. “I do. At least it is the beginning of the end. The birthing pains of the coming full judgment through the Great Tribulation.”
Alexander took a breath, a flutter of anxiety and dread and anticipation beginning to well within his stomach and blooming through his body and head. The apocalypse, the Day of the Lord, the end times, coming to bear upon the Republic, across Solterra.
For real?
He had a hard time believing it to be true. Probably because he didn’t want it to be true. Especially because the cardinal had signaled that believers themselves would experience at least part of this judgment unleashed from the outstretched arm of the Lord alongside the rest of Solterra. Something that needed clarity, which Father Jim could provide.
He cleared his throat and scooted to the edge of his seat. “But again, you were about to explain why we’re all still here before we were so rudely interrupted by those Enforcer Stingrays—”
Ford snorted a chuckle. “Yeah, don’t you love it when the Republic drops in and messes up your Bible study?”
The room joined in with a knowing laugh. For the Republic had wrought far worse across Solterra.
Alexander appreciated the lighter moment, laughing as well. Then continued, “What I’m asking, Padre, is if the apocalypse is nigh, if Christ’s return will then follow this...this Great Tribulation, as you put it—then why hasn’t he raptured all of us sitting here beforehand?”
Father Jim shifted in his seat, leaning back and furrowing his brow, like the good old days back at university when he prepared to launch into an hour-long lecture. Alexander couldn’t help but smile at the memory, knowing what they were all in for once Padre got started.
The man said, “That is precisely what I wanted to talk to you all about, Alex. So thanks for reorienting the discussion straight away.”
He smiled and nodded, his head feeling a bit dizzy now with an anxious anticipation at what he was about to reveal.
“Over a century ago,” Father Jim began, “there was a popular novel series that promised a glimpse of the apocalypse in a fictitious, yet biblical way what would happen if all true Christians were suddenly raptured to heaven, the transporting of believers from this world into the next, leaving the world behind to face God’s judgments during the so-called Great Tribulation.”
“Sort of a beam-me-up end-times belief?” Ford asked.
“That’s right.”
“How rather escapist theologically.”
“And Western,” Alexander added.
Father Jim nodded. “Exactly, my boy! It was a precisely Western, even Americanan response to the existential anxieties of the world and the possibilities of the genuine Day of the Lord prophetically revealed in the Bible and all the end-times details surrounding that day.”
“What was being the problem, exactly?” asked Nia.
“The problem, Junia, is that there is absolutely no biblical evidence that this so-called pre-Tribulation framework for understanding the end of the world as we know it is the truth of the matter! No Bible text explicitly teaches that Ichthus will be removed from the world before the Great Tribulation of God’s judgment.”
“Really?” Ford said. “My meemaw seemed to be dialed in pretty tightly into that pre-Tribulation framework, as you put it. Was pretty well raised on that flavor of Ichthus myself.” He laughed, running a hand across his close-cropped hair. “And when the Second Civil War reared its head back in the former U.S. of A., we pretty well thought Jesus’ return was right around the corner!”
“And where were you being raised?” Nia asked.
“Noramericana.”
“Which I believe was being the point the cardinal was making before, about it being a thoroughly Western, Americana belief.”
He went to respond, but shut his mouth. Alexander chuckled to himself at the woman, leaving the man speechless. No small feat.
“To be fair,” Lucy added, “Ford here isn’t the only one who was reared in this understanding of the end of the world. My own meemaw and grandpappy and parents themselves taught that Christians would escape the worst of the world’s suffering and persecution when the Antichrist makes his appearance. And especially would be snatched up before the Lord Almighty doled out his just desserts on the world.”
“Thank you, Luciana Jane,” Ford said with an air of vindication, nodding and folding his arms. He turned back to Padre and said, “Are you sure that this pre-Trib framework for the end times isn’t in the Bible, chief?”
Father Jim leaned back and crossed his arms. “You think otherwise, John Mark? Try to find one single verse to support it in its entirety, go on!”
He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, tilting his head and looking off as if in thought, eventually saying: “Yeah, I got bupkis.”
Father Jim nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
“So what’s the alternative, Padre?” Alexander asked with intrigue, yet regretting the possible answer. “If Christians aren’t—well, beamed up, so to speak, before the return of Christ, then what’s the alternative?”
The man leaned in closer, as if letting him in on a secret. “The alternative, my boy, is this: What if everybody is left behind?”
“Everybody?”
“Including Ichthus, the remnant of the Church?” Ford asked.
“That’s right.” Padre went on, “Or to put it more baldly, what if no one can or should expect to escape before the Great Tribulation, the era of God’s judgment? That would mean Christians would only escape, if you can call it that, in the way Christians have always escaped from persecution.”
“And what way is that?” Lucy asked.
“Why, by dying, Ms. Jane.”
“Dying?” Alexander exclaimed, not at all liking where Father Jim was taking the conversation.
“That’s one helluva way to escape…” Ford muttered before his eyes went wide and he bowed his head at the slip of the tongue.
Alexander had to agree with the man, though. He hadn’t been catechized in a deep framework of the end times like Ford had, with Christians exiting the world before it was judged. But it all seemed much, the idea that the Church would experience the unleashing of the Four Ho
rses, and the trumpets announcing doom, and the bowels of wrath!
“The notion of escaping the Great Tribulation is certainly appealing,” Father Jim went on. “Especially for those in the last few centuries in the former European and American nations who had enjoyed relative peace and safety from any sort of persecuting fires. Oh, they might have had their freedoms of speech curtailed or lost employment opportunities for their belief. Perhaps were shunned by family or friends, dropped off the holiday card list once it was known they were a Christian. But persecution in those nations, during those times, wasn’t persecution; it was an inconvenience.”
The cardinal shifted in his seat again, leaning toward the table and pressing his palms on its surface. He continued quieter now, more solemn, even: “And yet, untold numbers of our brothers and sisters of Ichthus from around the world have long been experiencing what we would consider tribulation, especially outside the traditional West, in former Europa and the Americas. Martyrdom, suffering from wars, facing plagues and drought, their children kidnapped for their parents’ faith. The issue shouldn’t be whether we would like to escape tribulation—whether from Republic Quellers destroying our Ministerium headquarters with rockets or meteors crashing into our beach at the breaking of the sixth seal. The issue is whether the Bible teaches that the Church will experience the effects of the unfolding of God’s judgment.”
“And does it?” Ford said on a nervous breath.
“Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians makes this clear.” The man spoke from memory: “‘The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie.’” He added: “Two things are clear here about two things that must happen before Christ finally returns in all his glory: apostasy and the revelation of the lawless one.”
Ford asked, “The lawless one? Who’s that?”
Alexander wondered the same thing. Until it dawned on him. “You’re speaking of the Antichrist, aren’t you?”
The cardinal nodded. “And the Book of Revelation seems to suggest this person storms upon the stage of history to make his stand against King Jesus upon the commencement of the Great Tribulation. At some point anyway.”
“So apostasy, apocalypse, and Antichrist…” Alexander said in contemplation. “That’s the order before the return of Christ?”
“Something to that effect, my boy. After the man of lawlessness, the Antichrist is revealed, with signs and deceptive wonders to entice the world into its idolatrous abominations, including trying to drag away members of Ichthus into its den of copulation with the whore of Babylon—it is then that Jesus will come to gather his people, his saints and give them rest from affliction, all the while destroying the Antichrist and his followers.”
Nia suddenly pulled her legs off from the table and slid to the edge of her seat. “But how are you saying that Ichthus themselves will be experiencing the kinds of apocalyptic mayhem that the Book of Revelation says the world will be experiencing, with all the seals and trumpets and bowls?”
“Didn’t think I’d say this,” Ford muttered, “but I’m with her.”
“Take Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 4,” Father Jim said, sliding to the table as well. Again, he quoted from memory:
According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
“Paul does not teach some sort of secret call to believers here,” the man went on, “one that the world itself cannot hear. No, instead he speaks of a shout and God’s trumpet, the antithesis of some sort of secret signal reserved for a few. And such calls were typically battle cries in the ancient world when combined with trumpets. No, my brothers and sisters, what the Apostle is speaking of here is certainly not any secret coming or secret rapture. The rest of Scripture doesn’t depict Jesus’ coming as secretive, either. Instead, it will be a very public viewing. And according to the rest of the Bible, following a time of great calamity.”
“The Great Tribulation,” Alexander added, a growing sense of dread churning in his belly that the past twenty-four hours portended much more than a meteor shower to come.
Father Jim nodded. “That’s right. The New Testament seems to suggest a period of final, particularly intense affliction—birth pangs, if you will, at the very end of the age. Nevertheless, it also speaks of prior events as merely the beginning of birth pangs, which have been occurring since Christ’s resurrection and ascension, even in the first century. However, Jesus said that those initial birth pangs are not the end themselves. This is what is meant by the seals of Revelation, actually. They depict the generalized judgment of God through wars and human violence, economic downfalls and depressions, plagues and famine, and the persecution and martyrdom of the saints. It is not until the blowing of the final trumpets that the true judgment of God is unleashed upon the world, the content of the final, seventh seal.”
“And all of this we will experience, without escape?” Alexander asked.
“That’s correct. At least, that is one interpretation of the apocalyptic prophesies of Scripture. Which seems to be proving true, given what unfolded half a day ago above the water’s surface.”
Ford scoffed. “Where’s the hope in that?”
Father Jim turned to him. “Hope? The hope given us in the Bible isn’t that we will escape, but instead that we will be resurrected when Jesus returns when he brings to end the cosmic age, finally establishing his ultimate rule and reign and recreating our world anew. Although the hope of escapist theology is that the last generation of believers before Christ’s return are resurrected before the Great Tribulation, appealing to those who believe they belong to that last generation, such belief has not proven itself relevant in the two millennia since Jesus’ first coming. Remarkably, it never showed up in the history of the Church until nearly three centuries ago!”
“Where’d it come from then?”
“It was based on a system of beliefs first developed around 1830, by one John Nelson Darby, where he devised a theory of a secret pre-Tribulational rapture. However, no such talk is anywhere in Paul’s letters, or the Gospels and the Book of Revelation for that matter. One has to wonder that if the theory of a secret rapture is so secret that it is not even explicit in the Bible, why then should anyone believe such a thing? And no one did until around 1830.”
“Then why did they?” Alexander asked.
“Many Christians latched onto Darby’s view for the wrong reason, believing they were the last generation and that they would escape severe persecution. Which made sense in the 19th and 20th centuries, given the chaos that unfolded through the Great Wars and plagues and economic meltdowns. Such beliefs were held firmly clear through the 20th and 21st centuries as more chaos unfolded on the world, with wars and rumors of wars, recessions and depressions ravaging the world’s economies, plagues of unknown origin skipping around the world unabated. The only problem is that the earliest Church fathers in the second century were premillennial and post-Tribulational.”
“Meaning?” Nia asked.
Alexander answered, “That they believed Jesus would return before reigning on Earth and establishing his kingdom, but only after the Great Tribulation. Isn’t that right, Padre?”
Father Jim nodded. “Precisely. These earliest believers thought they themselves were in the midst of the Great Tribulation or about to go through it. Whi
ch was understandable, given the waves of Roman persecution throughout the Empire. Saint Irenaeus taught this view, writing of ‘the resurrection of the just, which takes place after the coming of Antichrist, and the destruction of all nations under his rule.’ Revelation 12 supports this, suggesting that tribulation is a normal experience for believers in this age. And then in chapter 7, John the Seer offers revelation insight that the great multitude of believers before the throne of God ‘are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’”
“Meaning these are Christian martyrs who have persevered,” Alexander said, “who remained faithful to Christ through the Great Tribulation we’ve been speaking of?”
The man nodded but said nothing, letting the insights from the Word of God settle in the room. A minute later, he added, “Yes indeed, the spirit of lawlessness has been among us for a long time, and so has tribulation. And the Church of Jesus Christ should not expect to escape either before Christ’s final, glorious return.”
Alexander bowed his head to consider this. It didn’t sit right, as truthful as it might be. The idea that they—he!—would suffer through the furnace fires of Solterra’s persecution and the Lord’s destructive judgment started ratcheting his anxiety anew. Was he ready for such tribulation? Would he last, persevere, remain faithful? He wasn’t sure.
Which scared the hell out of him…
The door to the command center opened suddenly, and a man rushed to Nia’s side, whispering something in her ear. Her eyes went big, and she stood.
Ford joined her. “What is it?”
“We are having a visitor.”
“Who? What visitor?”
“One of the Remnant.”
Now Alexander startled. The last time that word was used was to describe someone from the Order of Thaddeus.
“What Remnant?” he asked.
“From some lost Ichthus order,” Nia said, walking toward the door.
Alexander glanced at Father Jim, whose eyes went large.
