Could you take us a little bit in the beginning and take us through maybe the timeline of what
was the Early Church's view if we can before we talk about the Antichrist to kind of set up the
framework of what was their view of tribulation if the Christians will go through tribulation, how
did that develop throughout the last two centuries and where did we get this idea that so many
Christians even in the chat and I could see that already that we will not go through tribulation,
Where did that kind of morphed from? Yeah where did it come from? Yeah so okay so first of all
the earliest of the early church writers after the apostles so we're talking Papias,
Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Lactantius, they were pre-millennialists. So they believed that
Jesus was going is going to return before the millennium. He's going to come back and
literally establish the throne of His rule from Jerusalem from Zion. So that's called
pre-millennialism. Jesus will return previous to the millennium, the millennium's literal. So that
was the earliest view of the church. Now with regard to the rapture, they simply believe that
there is one second coming of Jesus that when He returns He will bring the dead in Christ
with Him as Paul the Apostle says and then we who are alive and remain we will be caught up to meet
them in the clouds and then we will accompany Him as He continues His one singular Second
Coming is returned to the earth in one glorious procession. So this was universally the view of
the early church. They were post-tribulational. They believed that we would be raptured after the
tribulation. You will not find a single comment anywhere in any of the early church writers that
affirms a pre-tribulational rapture, the idea that we are raptured before the tribulation
or seven years before the return of Jesus, you'll never see it. Now what happened early
on is that after the Jerusalem dispersion, after the church really became dominated by Gentiles,
a lot of Hellenistic Greek philosophy sort of crept into the church and after Augustine, the
church largely left pre-millennialism behind and they embraced amillennialism, the idea that we're
in the millennium now, it's really an allegorical millennium and this type of thing so you lose a
lot of the solid more proper eschatology of the early church but they maintained
a post-tribulational view. They still believed that at the End of the Age, there would be the
Antichrist, the Great Tribulation, the mark of the beast and this type of thing and when you read the
writings of the early church writers, they all universally understood this to be the final test
you know the church will go through tribulation, we'll go through trials, we'll all go through
difficulties, we all have to embrace our cross, suffering and being persecuted for the name of
Jesus. This is universal. This is to be expected by every Christian. This is Christianity 101 but
then there was the idea that at the End of the Age just before the transition from this age into the
age to come, there would be this final test as I said this final trial that the corporate church
would all go through together and this would be an unprecedented time of trial and testing
and this was something that it sort of hovered over the heads of Christians throughout history,
there was always the idea that this time of testing could come upon us rapidly and we need to
be prepared specifically because and this is the reason Vlad is because during that time many would
lose their faith. Many would abandon the faith and walk away and so when we talk about preparation,
it was not primarily, you don't see Christians primarily throughout history talking about
storing up food and weapons. You see Christians preparing their hearts so that they can stand the
trial. So they can escape the tribulation not with their lives, not that they would escape
the tribulation and just survive. I mean that's always sort of in the back of people's heads,
we're human. But the idea was that we would escape the tribulation with our souls, with
our faith intact and you see these exhortations, you see this call throughout the history of the
early church. Now then of course you know you move all the way up to the Reformation,
the 1500s and the church starts studying the Bible, you have the actual Reformation,
the break from the Protestant church, from the Roman Catholic church and then over the next few
hundred years as people are returning to study the scriptures themselves, you had a lot of confusion
with regard to eschatology. You had a lot of Protestants, a lot of their formers embracing
post-millennialism, that's the idea that we as the church would actually usher in this millennial
golden age and then after the millennium, Jesus would return. That's post-millennialism. It's a
very unusual view but we start seeing that quite a bit during the reformers but then it was not until
literally the 1800s. Now you'll see a smattering of some weird ideas, weird end time ideas
occasionally, you see a few people who talk about something that looks like a pre-tribulational
rapture. You'll see a few of these statements in the 1600s and 1700s but really these are just
individuals that were confused you know they had confused eschatology which is to be expected but
it was not until the 1800s that you had a movement called the Plymouth Brethren movement in the UK
and they started recovering a more proper pre-millennial eschatology.
They started recovering the eschatology of the earliest early church of the apostles
but you had sort of a debate that broke out among some of the leaders so you had on one hand you
had John Nelson Darby and then his disciple Scofield and as well as Clarence Larkin so
those guys started teaching the pre-tribulational rapture. On the other side you had B W Newton,
S P Tregelles, these guys are amazing, they taught a post-tribulational rapture, they all came out
of this Plymouth Brethren movement but really it was through the efforts of Clarence Larkin,
some of his books, through the touring around the United States of Scofield and
his Scofield reference Bible that I'll say the the pre-tribbers, those that taught the
pre-tribulation rapture, they sort of won the pr campaign. They sort of won the hearts and minds of
the American church and so coming into the 1900s last century, pre-tribulationalism dominated the
landscape of American evangelicalism. So whether it was the seminaries or the publishing houses,
it was dominated by pre-tribulationalism and you would have a very difficult time
getting a job as a professor or publishing a book quite frankly if you were not pre-trib and so the
post-tribbers were really silenced throughout much of the last century. It was not until
the past 25 years or so with the dawn of the internet, the information revolution that we
are seeing swarms of believers leaving the pre-tribulational rapture behind leaving
that idea behind and embracing either something called pre-wrath or post-trib, these are both very
similar ideas but the idea is that we will as the church face the antichrist, we will endure most
of if not all of the Great Tribulation and this isn't indeed what the New Testament teaches. This
is what the apostles taught if we survey all of church history. This idea of a pre-tribulational
rapture and our pre-tribulational brothers and sisters get very upset when I say this but it's
a simple fact and I'll debate anyone in the world publicly on this issue,
it's a novel, it is a relatively newer modern novel doctrine, not seen taught in the history
of the church until just a little over 200 years ago when it was really codified again
by dispensationalists like John Nelson Darby and hits dominated and because it's dominated
the United States, it's then spread out to the world unfortunately. I know Pastor Vlad
you said coming from the UK, formerly growing up under the the Soviet Union,
persecution was sort of part and parcel of what you expected as a Christian and so this whole
idea of a pre-tribulational rapture that was unheard of until you come to the United States,
the land of comfort and a lot of this sort of pre-tribulational teaching dominates.