F.F. Bruce tells the story of a keen Christian at a British university who was passing out free copies of a modern English New Testament to undergraduates as part of his evangelistic endeavors on the condition that these students would read them. He gave one particular one away and, lo and behold, he bumped into the student two or three months later and said, “Did you read that book I gave you?”

The student said, “Yes, I did, as a matter of fact.” “Well, what did you make of it?” This undergraduate was completely unfamiliar with anything biblical, had never been to church, just one of the great unwashed people in most Western nations nowadays without any sort of biblical or theological training whatsoever. “What did you make of it?” “Well,” he said, “It was all right. A bit repetitious at the front end where they sort of tell the same story four times, but I sure liked that bit of science fiction at the end.”

word, thlipsis. That does not necessarily mean they’ll go through the tribulation, but it doesn’t mean they don’t either. It just is a way of proving that the term thlipsis, tribulation, does not always have the same narrow technical term for this particular period. You have to check the context in every instance in order to establish what is being meant.

Second, I will argue later when we get to chapters 12–13 that the three and a half years and the seven years and the forty-two months come out of standard Jewish apocalyptic. The numbers are symbolic, and they’re well-known symbols. You’ll have to take that one on faith until we get there. I think I will be able to convince most of you, but let’s wait until we get there.

In the third place, and most important of all, I would want to argue in a number of important passages, including the eschatological discourse (that is, the discourse of Matthew 24–25, Luke 21, and Mark 13, the so-called Olivet Discourse), that there the tribulation refers to the entire period between the first coming of Jesus and the second.

Now to prove that would take me a little more time than I have in Matthew 24–25. I have argued the case at length in my commentary on Matthew if you want to read it, if you’re into that sort of debate. I would argue that that’s not always the case in the New Testament but that there are a number of passages, besides the eschatological discourse, where that makes the most sense of great tribulation.

It is bound up, again, with a variety of related notions. It’s bound up with the notion of the birth pangs of the Messiah. Before the Messiah comes back, there are birth pangs you go through, tribulation, but during what period do you wait for Messiah to come back? Well, from the time he went away. That’s the whole period of tribulation. In my view, it’s tied also to a lot of the teaching of Jesus. “In this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”

It is a category of expectation. Yes, all of those who live godly lives in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution, tribulation. That’s a common theme in the New Testament. It is expected that there will be opposition, and it is tied up even with the notion of Antichrist (Antichrist figures later; we’ll see who he is in due course), where you do have more and more explicit reference toward the end.

But there too you remember what John said about Antichrist in 1 John, chapter 2. He says, “My little children, it is the last hour …” Did you hear that? It is the last hour. “… and as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so also now there are many antichrists.” That is, whatever particular tribulation comes along with the Antichrist at the end (about whom I’ll say more later), there are antichrists wherever there’s Christ in this fallen world.

During this whole period between the first coming and the second coming, while you have Christ reigning but now still contested, you have antichrists. Where Christ puts down his flag, there Antichrist puts down a counter-claim. That is the way it has been from the beginning. It is the way it will be until the end. That’s the truth of the matter.

Now that doesn’t mean there is no final outbreak of antichrists. In fact, the whole logic of 1 John 2:18, which I just cited, is predicated on the assumption that there is an Antichrist at the end who is the model of all of the antichrists when we get there. It is not saying, “You may have heard that Antichrist is coming, but I say to you that antichrists run throughout the whole period.” It doesn’t say that.

It says, “As you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so even now already there are many antichrists.” Thus, all of the antichrists, as it were, lead up to the Antichrist, which is part of the language also of 2 Thessalonians 2 in slightly different terms, and later we’ll see the two peculiar beasts, the False Prophet and the Antichrist, coming out of Revelation 13. We’ll get there in a couple of weeks.

So I think this notion of the great tribulation in many, many passages, and I would argue here as well.… Granted that this description of the great multitude is exactly the description of the people of God later on in the book, the most obvious way to take the great tribulation here is of the entire period between the two advents of Christ.

Now I’ll tell you my conclusion without justifying it. I’ll try to justify some of it later. I would want to argue in the strongest possible terms that tribulation and even great tribulation is not a technical term with a narrow univocal meaning. You have to check the context. It means different things in different places. It can be sort of generic, not referring to a particular period at all.

For example, Paul elsewhere can say, “All those who want to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will suffer tribulation.” Same word, thlipsis. That does not necessarily mean they’ll go through the tribulation, but it doesn’t mean they don’t either. It just is a way of proving that the term thlipsis, tribulation, does not always have the same narrow technical term for this particular period. You have to check the context in every instance in order to establish what is being meant.

Second, I will argue later when we get to chapters 12–13 that the three and a half years and the seven years and the forty-two months come out of standard Jewish apocalyptic. The numbers are symbolic, and they’re well-known symbols. You’ll have to take that one on faith until we get there. I think I will be able to convince most of you, but let’s wait until we get there.

In the third place, and most important of all, I would want to argue in a number of important passages, including the eschatological discourse (that is, the discourse of Matthew 24–25, Luke 21, and Mark 13, the so-called Olivet Discourse), that there the tribulation refers to the entire period between the first coming of Jesus and the second.

Now to prove that would take me a little more time than I have in Matthew 24–25. I have argued the case at length in my commentary on Matthew if you want to read it, if you’re into that sort of debate. I would argue that that’s not always the case in the New Testament but that there are a number of passages, besides the eschatological discourse, where that makes the most sense of great tribulation.