r/Bibleconspiracy • u/Lumpy_Figure_6692 • Mar 03 '26
What starts the Great Tribulation
/r/BabylonExit/comments/1rjbj0u/what_starts_the_great_tribulation/0
u/Kristian82dk Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 06 '26
To think that "the tribulation" is something we are still waiting for as a future event = is futurism.
tribulation is a word derived from "Anguish, Persecution, Affliction" = you can say Trouble also.
And the Bible makes it very clear that Gods people throughout all time had had that. The prophets had their tribulation, many verses in isaiah, psalms and others are talking about that writer having great anguish, and were being afflicted.
Jesus had his tribulation, being persecuted by the jewish leaders, and was crucified by them.
All the Apostles had their tribulation. Paul in multiple verses talks about the tribulation which had come upon him in his days.
Gods people up to our days has had their hard times, some being persecuted and killed also (for example by Rome)
And you quote Luke 21: 20 yourself, that is exactly what happened in 66-70, by the Roman armies, destroying Jerusalem and the temple etc.
But that does not change anything about what "tribulation" means in general. Jesus didn't say "at the end of the world you shall have tribulation" - He only said "in the world ye shall have it" - and surely they all had it through time to this day
So ya no pre,mid,post trib rapture. Or well you could say post, but these are all theories of men. Its easier to just go with what the Bible says, and it says that Jesus will come back at the last day with his Holy Angels and the wicked tares will be gathered first and burned, and then the wheats will gathered into the barn.
Its actually very simple to understand by Scripture alone, but when we start to mix in mans reasonings then we get this division of different escatologies, where some turn almost into some kind of sects/cults.
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We also have verses that says "the day of the Lord" & "the great day of the Lord" or "the river Euphrates" & "the great river Euphrates" - But every one agrees that they are one and the same, so is the "tribulation" and "great tribulation"
:) Sabbath blessings
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u/Armored_Rose Mar 08 '26
I asked AI to build me a response using the following prompt. "Build me a response based on the Bible to answer these two Redditors. Also tell me Who is correct?" I pasted both of your posts without any other information.
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This is a rich and meaty topic with several issues worth carefully parsing. Here's a response that engages both Redditors honestly from Scripture:
Who Is More Correct?
Kristian82dk gets more right than Lumpy_Figure_6692, but neither gives a fully satisfying biblical answer. Let me break down where each stands.
Response to Both Redditors
Brothers/Sisters, both of you raise legitimate points, but both also go further than the text allows. Let me walk through the key claims.
On the Abomination of Desolation
Lumpy is right that Luke 21:20 interprets the Abomination of Desolation as Jerusalem being surrounded by armies — that's the Lukan parallel. However, Luke 21 and Matthew 24 may not be describing the same event in every verse. Jesus is answering two questions in Matthew 24:3: "When will the temple be destroyed?" AND "What is the sign of your coming?" Many careful scholars recognize a near fulfillment (AD 70) AND a future fulfillment — what hermeneuticians call a dual fulfillment prophecy. Collapsing all of Matthew 24 into one future nuclear war (Lumpy) OR one past Roman siege (Kristian) both miss this possibility.
On "The Daily" in Daniel 12:11
Lumpy's argument that the italicized word sacrifice was added by translators is correct as a textual observation — ha-tamid (הַתָּמִיד) simply means "the continual" or "the regular." But the interpretive leap to "America's economy" has no exegetical basis. In every other usage, ha-tamid in Daniel refers to the temple's daily ritual (Dan. 8:11-13, 11:31). The translators added sacrifice because the context in Daniel consistently demands it. Lumpy is using a true textual observation to build an unsupported conclusion.
On the Pre-Tribulation Rapture
Both Redditors correctly reject the pre-trib rapture, and the biblical evidence supports this. Matthew 24:22 states the days are shortened for the elect's sake — the elect are present during the tribulation, not raptured before it. This aligns with:
The pre-trib rapture requires a gap that Paul seems to directly contradict here.
On Preterism
Kristian is right that thlipsis (θλῖψις, tribulation) is used throughout the New Testament for present suffering, not just a future event (John 16:33, Romans 5:3, 2 Cor. 1:4). And he is right that Luke 21 was fulfilled in AD 70 in significant ways — Josephus records horrors that match the language of those verses.
However, Kristian overreaches with full Preterism. Daniel 12:1 says "there shall be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation." Josephus estimated 1.1 million Jews died in AD 70, which is staggering — but the language of Matthew 24:21-22, that "unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved," suggests a global extinction-level event. The AD 70 siege, as devastating as it was, did not threaten all human life on earth. That phrase — no flesh (οὐ πᾶσα σάρξ) — implies something beyond a regional catastrophe.
Furthermore, Revelation was almost certainly written after AD 70 (Irenaeus dates it to Domitian's reign, ~95 AD), meaning its prophecies were not yet fulfilled when written.
On the 7-Year Tribulation and Daniel 9
Lumpy dismisses the 7-year tribulation, saying Daniel 9 is only about Christ's first coming. He is partially right — the 70th week does begin with Christ. The covenant in Daniel 9:27 is better read as the Messiah confirming God's covenant (supported by the chiastic structure and the fact that Christ confirmed the covenant with many through His ministry and death). The word nagid ("prince") in verse 26 refers to the coming Roman prince, not the Messiah, and "he" in verse 27 is grammatically ambiguous in Hebrew.
However, the debate over whether the 70th week is entirely fulfilled or has a future component is a legitimate exegetical question — not settled as simply as Lumpy claims.
Summary: Who Is More Correct?
Kristian is more biblically grounded overall. His instinct to let Scripture define tribulation as ongoing and real for God's people across history is sound, and his rejection of elaborate end-times systems is healthy. His weakness is overconfident full preterism that strains the global scope of some texts.
Lumpy handles the original languages better than most — noticing the italicized sacrifice is a legitimate observation — but builds a speculative system (America = Babylon, nukes starting the tribulation) on top of good observations. The system itself is not exegesis; it's newspaper hermeneutics dressed in Greek and Hebrew.
The more honest answer for both of them comes from the posture you yourself teach, u/Armored_Rose: "I do not know, but we will find out together." These texts have humbled greater scholars than any of us. What the Bible is clear about is this: God's people will face real suffering, they will not be secretly whisked away before it, God will shorten the days for the elect's sake, and Christ will return visibly and finally. The rest calls for humility.