The distinct companies

Most of the confusion about the end times springs from a single error: people treat the Day as though only one company stood upon the stage — "the believers" — and then ask whether that group is now taken away or carried through, and become tangled in texts that seem to contradict one another. The one text says "kept-through the distress" (Jacob, chapter 8); the other says "not appointed to wrath" (the church, chapter 16). Whoever applies both to the same group is left with a contradiction. But the contradiction dissolves the moment you do what the text itself does: distinguish. For the Day is no monochrome catastrophe befalling one undivided mass. It is a stage peopled by several companies, and each company has its own relation to the wrath. Revelation sets them down one by one, and whoever holds them apart sees the apparent contradictions vanish like mist before the sun. Four companies stand out, and they are kept in three different ways.

The first company is the Bride — the church of Christ, of whom the previous chapter spoke. Her relation to the wrath is drawn with a single word, and it is a word of keeping-away. The exalted Christ promises the church at Philadelphia: "because you have kept the word of My perseverance, I also will keep you from the hour of trial, which shall come upon the whole inhabited world, to try those who dwell on the earth" (Rev 3:10).1 Note the three elements. There comes an "hour of trial" — a measured-out period (the Day; cf. the zaʿam-boundary, chapter 21). It comes "upon the whole inhabited world," to try "those who dwell on the earth" — the earth-dwellers, the party of the wrath (chapter 24). And the church is "kept" from it — tērēsō ek. Precisely what that "keeping from" entails — removal before, or protection straight through — is a question this book weighs honestly and does not rest upon a single text (chapter 27). But what counts here is the direction: the Bride stands on the side of the promise, not on the side of the tried earth-dwellers. Her mode of keeping is the first of the three: kept-away. And John shows her a little later. After the sealed there appears "a great multitude which no one could number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with long white robes" (Rev 7:9), and to the question who they are the answer sounds: "these are they who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (7:14).2 Ek tēs thlipseōs tēs megalēs — "out of the great tribulation": the same ek that was promised to Philadelphia (3:10). Out of all peoples, before the throne, when on earth the seals have only just given way to the trumpets — it is the completed Bride, appeared in heaven, not because she endured the tribulation unto death but because she was drawn out of it by that same ek (see Excurs 25·2 and Appendix E).

The second company stands sharply beside her, and it is not the Bride, however much the two have been confused: it is Israel, the woman in the wilderness. Revelation 12 draws her unforgettably: a woman, clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, a crown of twelve stars, and she bears a male child who "shall shepherd all the nations with an iron rod" (12:1-5) — the Messiah, born out of Israel (the twelve stars are the twelve tribes). And then two things happen side by side that capture the whole distinction of this chapter in a single image. The child is taken up, away: "her child was caught up to God and to His throne" — hērpasthē, the same verb as the harpazō of the rapture (1 Thess 4:17, chapter 16). And the woman is kept below: "the woman fled into the wilderness, where she had a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and sixty days" (12:6),3 and again: "that she might fly into the wilderness, to her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, away from the face of the serpent" (12:14). See the contrast: the child goes up (caught up to the throne), the woman remains below (kept in the wilderness, on the earth, in a place prepared by God, for three and a half years). That is the second mode of keeping: kept-through, on the earth, in the hiding place. And it is exactly what the Old Testament said of Israel: "a time of distress for Jacob, but out of it he shall be delivered" (Jer 30:7, chapter 8), and "at that time your people shall escape" (Dan 12:1, chapter 10) — not taken away before the trouble, but borne through it. The woman of the wilderness is the apocalyptic figure of Jacob's trouble: Israel, kept in the very midst of the storm, nourished in the place that God prepared, exactly as the people were once fed in the wilderness with manna. And note Isaiah's summons that echoes here: "enter your inner chambers [...] hide yourself for a little moment, until the indignation is past" (26:20) — the same bounded wrath, the same hiding place, the same passage through.

The third company comes forth in the very midst of the Day, and it displays a third mode of keeping that complements the first two: the tribulation saints. They are "the rest of the offspring" of the woman. When she has fled into the wilderness and the dragon cannot reach her there, he turns against her remaining children: "the dragon was enraged at the woman, and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus" (Rev 12:17).4 These are those who during the Day itself come to belong to the Lamb, when the door of grace is not yet shut (chapter 15) — and against whom, for that very reason, the dragon makes war. They are not taken away before the trouble, nor hidden in an earthly hiding place; for the most part they go through it unto death — martyrs, "the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the Word of God [...] and they came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years" (Rev 20:4).5 Their keeping, then, is that of the resurrection: they lose their life and find it again in the first resurrection, before the throne. For their sake the time is even cut short — "unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened" (Matt 24:22)6 — and at the appearing of the Son of Man He sends out His angels to gather them together "from the four winds" (Matt 24:31, chapter 27). That the Day knows such converts is itself a testimony to God's grace: even when the wrath breaks loose, there is still a harvest. Judgment and salvation run side by side to the very last.

And the fourth company stands at the beginning of that same chapter, and it forms the bridge between the second and the third: the hundred and forty-four thousand. Before the destroying angels may strike the earth, the command sounds: "do not harm the earth [...] until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads" — and there are sealed "out of all the tribes of the children of Israel," twelve thousand out of every tribe (Rev 7:3-8). Here the mark of Ezekiel 9 returns (chapter 9): the sign on the forehead that keeps, set before the judgment breaks loose. The hundred and forty-four thousand are a sealed Israel, protected not by removal but by the mark — "the firstfruits for God and the Lamb," who follow the Lamb wherever He goes (14:1-5). Their mode is again the keeping-through, but now sealed and named: the refined kernel of Israel (the remnant, chapter 22), carried through the Day as the firstfruits-sheaf of the great harvest that follows.

Now lay the four side by side, and the mist lifts. The Bride: kept-away (Rev 3:10, the harpazō upward; the innumerable multitude before the throne, Rev 7:9-14). Israel, the woman of the wilderness: kept-through, below, in the hiding place (Rev 12:6,14, Jacob's trouble). The hundred and forty-four thousand: kept-through, sealed (Rev 7:3-8, the mark of Ezekiel). The tribulation saints, the rest of her offspring: saved-through-death, risen in the first resurrection (Rev 12:17; 20:4). Four companies, three modes of keeping — and as soon as you distinguish them, the supposed contradiction between "not appointed to wrath" and "kept-through the distress" vanishes. Those two do not contradict each other; they speak of different companies. The "not to wrath" (1 Thess 5:9) belongs to the Bride; the "keeping-through" (Jer 30:7) belongs to Israel. The Old Testament, which speaks from within Israel, knows chiefly the keeping-through — the woman of the wilderness, the sealed remnant — because it is about Israel. The New Testament adds to this the mystery of the Bride, with her own promise of keeping-away (chapter 24). Neither need crowd out the other; they stand side by side upon one stage, each in its own place.

That is the gain of distinguishing, and it is more than the solution to a puzzle. It shows that the Day is no blunt scythe that mows down all without distinction, but a carefully directed drama in which God keeps each company in its own way — the one by taking it away, the other by hiding it, the third by sealing it, the fourth by raising it from the dead. Four ways, one Keeper. And the question the Day puts to the reader thereby becomes very concrete: to which company do you belong? Whoever belongs to the Lamb now belongs to the Bride — and upon her rests the promise of "keeping from the hour." How that "from" is precisely to be understood, and how it relates to the gathering of the remnant at the appearing of the King, is the question with which the last two chapters of this part occupy themselves. But that there are distinct companies, each with its own keeping, stands fixed here — and it is the key that unlocks the whole discussion.