Appendix E
The placement of the Pre-Abomination model
Preface — The model given a name of its own, and why
Customary eschatology knows four rapture-moments, each named for its place within the seventieth week: pre-trib (before the week), mid-trib (at the midpoint), pre-wrath (before the wrath, after the great tribulation), and post-trib (at the return). This model fits none of the four, and it therefore deserves a name of its own, equally precise, drawn from its own marker.
Pre-Abomination (Dutch pre-gruwel): the Bride is taken away before the abomination of desolation — in this model at the sixth seal (~2028-2029), before Purim 2031.
This is no cosmetic labeling. The abomination is the one hinge that distinguishes the model from all four families: it is later than pre-trib (the Bride passes through the first-half seals), earlier than mid-trib (she is gone before the midpoint), considerably earlier than pre-wrath (she is gone before the great tribulation begins, not after it), and far earlier than post-trib. One word — Pre-Abomination — fixes that whole placement. It is, in short: pre-wrath in mechanism, pre-abomination in timing.
This appendix does three things. It places the model among the four families (section I). It frankly acknowledges how much it shares with the pre-wrath school, and names sharply the decisive difference (section II). And it defends — head-on and in full — the one exegetical hinge on which everything hangs: Matthew 24:29 and the two cosmic-sign moments (section III), borne up by the affirmative evidence from the condition of mankind (section IV) and by the Old Testament doctrine of the Day of the Lord as a period (section V). It closes with the ordered dependency of the whole/peak distinction with its two cohorts (section VI) and with what further follows from it (section VII).
I. The four families, and where Pre-Abomination falls
| Position | Rapture-moment | What does the Bride pass through? |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-trib (LaHaye, Walvoord) | before the whole week | nothing of the week |
| Pre-Abomination (this model) | sixth seal, first half, before the abomination | the first-half seals (the woe), not the abomination, not the wrath |
| Mid-trib | at the midpoint (the abomination) | the whole first half |
| Pre-wrath (Rosenthal, Van Kampen) | sixth seal, after the great tribulation | the whole first half and the beast-tribulation of the second half |
| Post-trib | at the return | everything, including the wrath |
In terms of timing, then, Pre-Abomination stands between pre-trib and mid-trib — but it arrives there along a wholly different road than those two: not by way of the pre-trib mechanism (exemption from all trouble), but by way of the pre-wrath mechanism (the sixth seal as rapture-marker, kept out of the wrath). The placement must therefore be understood along two axes: the axis of timing, where it lies beside pre-trib and mid-trib, and the axis of mechanism, where it lies beside pre-wrath. None of the four families occupies both positions at once; only Pre-Abomination does. That is precisely why a name of its own is a necessity and not a luxury.
II. Shared with pre-wrath — and the decisive difference
Honesty requires acknowledging how much this model shares with the pre-wrath school, for the kinship is real and may not be glossed over.
The sixth seal as rapture-marker. Both read the cosmic upheaval of the sixth seal as the moment around the taking-away. The sun darkened, the moon as blood, the stars falling — both schools recognize in this the threshold across which the Bride enters into the throne.
Kept out of the wrath. Both hold that the Bride is taken away before the Day of the Lord — the trumpets and the bowls. To the question, "but does pre-wrath not see the rapture before the seven bowls?", the answer is: yes, and that this model shares with them. The orgē — the wrath — is never the Bride's portion; it was emptied by the Bridegroom in Gethsemane. On this point Pre-Abomination and pre-wrath speak with one voice.
Telescopic-sequential, not cyclical. Here a misunderstanding must be cleared away: pre-wrath is not cyclical. Rosenthal and Van Kampen read the series telescopically — the seventh seal unfolds the seven trumpets, the seventh trumpet the seven bowls — exactly as this model does. The cyclical (recapitulating) reading, in which seals, trumpets, and bowls repeat the same period, is the idealist one of Hendriksen and partly Beale. On the structure of the series, then, this model stands with pre-wrath, not against it; whoever lets the misunderstanding stand paints a contrast where there is kinship.
The decisive difference is the timing within the week, and it is fundamental:
In Rosenthal the sixth seal falls late — after the great tribulation (the beast-persecution of the second half, "cut short" by the cosmic signs), just before the Day of the Lord. The church thus goes through the beast-tribulation and is taken out of it at the end.
In this model the sixth seal falls early — in the first half (~2028-2029), before the abomination (Purim 2031). The Bride is gone before the great tribulation of Matthew 24:21 has so much as begun. Not after the beast-tribulation, but before it.
That one difference — the place of the sixth seal — draws everything along with it. And it hangs upon a single exegetical hinge, which pre-wrath wields as its strongest weapon. That hinge must therefore be answered head-on and in full.
III. The crux: Matthew 24:29 and the two cosmic-sign moments
III.1 The pre-wrath argument, at its strongest
The opposing party receives no justice if her argument is weakened before it is answered. Pre-wrath reasons thus, and it is a serious argument:
Jesus says: "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven" (Matt 24:29 — eutheōs de meta tēn thlipsin tōn hēmerōn ekeinōn). These signs — sun, moon, stars — are exactly those of the sixth seal (Rev 6:12-13). And immediately thereafter appears "the sign of the Son of man" and the elect are gathered (Matt 24:30-31) — the rapture. Conclusion: the sixth seal = the signs of Matthew 24:29 = after the tribulation. Therefore the rapture falls after the great tribulation. Pre-Abomination, which places the sixth seal in the first half, is thereby refuted.
This is the heart of the matter. If the sixth-seal signs are identical with those of Matthew 24:29, then they come after the great tribulation, and then the Bride cannot have been taken away before the abomination. The whole Pre-Abomination model stands or falls with the answer to this.
III.2 The Pre-Abomination answer: two cosmic-sign moments
The answer is not that the signs do not matter, but that pre-wrath fuses two events into one. There are two cosmic-sign moments — an early and a late — and the use of Scripture does not compel that identification. Four layers carry this answer.
Layer 1 — The cosmic-sign idiom is repeatable. The imagery of darkened sun, bloodied moon, and falling stars is no unique designation of one event, but a fixed prophetic idiom for divine visitation, used by the prophets repeatedly and for various events: Joel 2:10; 2:31; 3:15; Isaiah 13:10; 34:4; Ezekiel 32:7; Amos 8:9; Haggai 2:6, 21. The same idiom marks there more than one day of the Lord. That it surfaces both at the sixth seal and in Matthew 24:29 therefore proves no identity; it proves only that both moments are divine visitations. The equation of pre-wrath is an assumption, not a necessity — and the idiom is demonstrably reusable.
Layer 2 — "After the tribulation of those days" is after the second-half tribulation. Which tribulation does Matthew 24:29 mean? The phrase reaches back to its immediate context: the abomination (24:15), the flight (24:16), and the great tribulation (24:21) — that is, in this model, the Matthew-24:21 tribulation: the post-abomination, second-half, Judean tribulation, Jacob's trouble, the wilderness-1,260-days. The cosmic signs of 24:29 therefore come after that tribulation — at the end, ~2034 — and they are immediately followed by "the sign of the Son of man [...] and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (24:30): the visible return. This is the late sign-moment, bound to the visible return, not to the taking-away.
Layer 3 — The gathering of 24:31 is the end-time regathering of Israel, not the rapture. Pre-wrath identifies the gathering of 24:31 with the rapture of the Bride. But read what stands written: "and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other" (24:31 — episynaxousin tous eklektous autou ek tōn tessarōn anemōn). This is the language of the regathering of Israel: Deuteronomy 30:4, Isaiah 11:12, 27:13, Zechariah 2:6 — the gathering of the scattered from the four winds at the return. In the Olivet context, which has the Judean remnant in view (Judea, sabbath, abomination), "the elect" are the elect remnant of Israel, brought together at the visible appearing — not the Bride, who has already been caught up earlier. The equation of 24:31 with the rapture is therefore the weaker identification; the more natural reading in the Olivet context is the end-gathering of Israel. Here the argument turns about: it is not Pre-Abomination but pre-wrath that must overstretch a text.
Layer 4 — The sixth-seal signs function differently. The signs of the sixth seal (Rev 6:12-17) have their own function and accompaniment: they awaken terror among the ungodly (kings and the great hide themselves in the caves: "hide us [...] for the great day of his wrath is come," 6:16-17). They are the onset of the wrath — the woe/wrath seam, marked by the aorist ēlthen: "the great day of his wrath is come" — and the moment at which the Bride is gathered (Revelation 7 follows immediately). The signs of Matthew 24:29, by contrast, are followed by the visible, glorious appearing of the Son of man (24:30) — the end. The early moment opens the wrath and fetches the Bride; the late moment closes it and unlocks the return. The same idiom, two opposed functions: onset over against consummation.
Conclusion. There are two cosmic-sign moments: an early one (sixth seal, ~2028-2029, at the taking-away; the day of the wrath of the Lamb come) and a late one (Matt 24:29, ~2034, before the visible return, after the second-half tribulation). Pre-wrath fuses them into one and therefore places the rapture late. Pre-Abomination distinguishes them and therefore places the rapture early.
III.3 An honest test
Objection: is it not ad hoc to posit two sign-moments where pre-wrath manages with one? Answer: no, for three reasons. First: the idiom is demonstrably repeatable — the prophets use it for several visitations (Layer 1); two moments is therefore no invention but the rule. Second: the two moments differ in function (wrath-onset plus taking-away over against consummation plus visible return) and in accompaniment (terror-and-hiding over against the sign of the Son of man); the distinction is principled, not fabricated to rescue the model. Third: pre-wrath itself bears an unpaid bill — it must read the elect-gathering of Matthew 24:31 as the church-rapture, while that language in the Olivet context more naturally means the regathering of Israel. The burden is therefore not one-sided; both models must defend a choice, and the Pre-Abomination choice rests on a repeatable idiom plus a functional distinction, the pre-wrath choice on an overstretched identification.
An honest acknowledgment of one's own burden. The real burden of defense for Pre-Abomination lies not with Matthew 24:29 itself but with the early placement of the sixth seal: why does the cosmic upheaval and wrath-onset fall in the first half, before the abomination? That is the load-bearing, distinguishing point of the model, and it must be acknowledged as such — not tucked away. Its justification is no loose claim but a consequence: it follows from the whole/peak distinction (see section IV), which detaches the sixth-seal signs from the after-tribulation signs of Matthew 24:29. And it is borne up affirmatively by the evidence from the condition of mankind, which now follows.
IV. The evidence from the condition of mankind: Revelation 6 over against Revelation 16
The previous section named the model's own burden of defense: why does the sixth seal fall before the beast? The strongest affirmative evidence stands in mankind itself — in their condition at the sixth seal over against their condition at the bowls. Read the two scenes side by side, and the contrast speaks for itself.
At the sixth seal (Rev 6:15-17) — no awareness of the beast. Men hide themselves: "the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man" (6:15). They cry to the mountains: "hide us [...] for the great day of his wrath is come" (6:16-17). Note what is missing: there is no mark, no beast, no image, no worship — none of it. Men respond to a cosmic theophany with primal terror, and they still acknowledge "the wrath of the Lamb" and "him that sitteth on the throne." These are men not yet marked, not yet hardened under the beast-system. At this point in the scroll the beast has not even appeared.
At the bowls (Rev 16) — full awareness of the beast, and hardening. Now everything is different. The first bowl falls "upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image" (16:2). And their reaction is the opposite of that at the sixth seal: "they blasphemed the name of God [...] and they repented not to give him glory" (16:9), "and blasphemed the God of heaven [...] and repented not of their deeds" (16:11), down to the last bowl (16:21). Here the mark is present, the beast-worship accomplished, and men are wholly hardened: no more terror-and-hiding, but blasphemy-without-repentance.
The echo is a motif, not a dating. The list of ranks at the sixth seal — "the rich men [...] the mighty men [...] bondmen [...] free men" (6:15) — returns at the mark: "the small and great, rich and poor, free and bond" (13:16), and again at the feast of the birds: "the flesh of kings [...] the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great" (19:18). It is John's motif for everyone; it dates nothing.
The inference. That the sixth seal precedes the beast and the mark follows from the sequence: the scroll of 5:1 is opened seal by seal, only after the seventh seal do the trumpets sound (8:1-6), and the beast rises from the abyss (11:7; 17:8) that opens only at the fifth trumpet (9:1). The sixth seal therefore falls before the abomination (where the beast sets himself up), not after — precisely the Pre-Abomination placement. And at the same time this confirms the two sign-moments of section III.2: the sixth-seal scene (unmarked humanity, primal terror, no visible Son of man) is a different moment than the Matthew-24:29 scene (after the second-half tribulation, followed by the visible appearing of the Son of man). Two scenes, two times, two conditions of mankind.
Hardening does not date. At the sixth seal the ungodly tremble under God's wrath; at the bowls they blaspheme and do not repent. But fear also occurs late in the week: after the ascension of the witnesses the rest become "affrighted" and give glory to the God of heaven (11:13). A remnant of fear therefore does not date the sixth seal; the sequence does.
An honest test. Objection: does the absence of the mark at the sixth seal really prove that the beast is not yet there — or is John merely silent about it? Answer: it is an argument from careful design, not merely from silence. First: John names the beast and the mark emphatically elsewhere (Rev 13, 16, 19); it is no subject he casually omits. Second: the sequence itself — the beast rises from the abyss (11:7; 17:8), and that opens only at the fifth trumpet (9:1). Third: it follows from the order of the scroll — the beast is not introduced until Rev 13, after the sixth seal. The silence is therefore a structured silence: the beast is not yet there, because it has not yet risen.
V. The wrath is a period: the Day of the Lord and the remnant-motif
A possible internal-chronology objection still deserves answer. If at the sixth seal (~2028-2029, first half) it is reported that "the great day of his wrath is come" (Rev 6:17), then God's wrath begins before the abomination (2031) and before the beast-tribulation of the second half. Is that order — wrath before the beast's high point — not strange? Usually one thinks: the beast rises, then the wrath answers.
The answer is the Old Testament Day of the Lord (yom YHWH). It is not one day, but a period of judgment: judgment upon the evil portion of mankind and of Israel, and at the same time a deliverance of the remnant straight through that judgment — the remnant-motif. Joel, Amos, Zephaniah, and Isaiah use "the Day of the Lord" each time for an extended visitation, not for a point on the timeline.
So the tension resolves. The day of wrath that has broken at the sixth seal (Rev 6:17: the great day of his wrath is come) is the onset of the Day-of-the-Lord period; the execution follows in trumpets and bowls, which from there runs on to the end of the week: first the first six trumpets, then the beast-time, finally the seventh trumpet with the bowls. Within that period God's judgments fall upon the ungodly world (trumpets, bowls), the beast persecutes the remnant (the wilderness-1,260-days), and the remnant is kept through it all (the remnant-motif). The beast is itself an instrument and an object within the Day of the Lord, no rival of it.
With that, the "wrath-before-the-beast" tension disappears: the wrath is a period that breaks at the sixth seal and runs through and beyond the rise of the beast; the execution follows in trumpets and bowls. The wrath need not wait upon the beast; the Day of the Lord is precisely the extended judgment within which the beast rises, rages against the remnant, and is at last destroyed (Rev 19). And the remnant is "saved out of it" (Jer 30:7) — the remnant-motif, which section IV already anchored as Jacob's trouble.
The Day breaks at 6:17. The first six trumpets, before the midpoint, are the first judgments of that Day. In the second half heaven judges through the witnesses (11:6), without trumpet or bowl. The real wrath over the realm of the beast comes with the seventh trumpet, in the bowls (11:18; 15:1; 16:1).
The second half therefore carries two simultaneous wraths: God's judgment upon the world (the Day of the Lord — in the 1,260 days through the witnesses, 11:6, without trumpet or bowl; the real wrath over the realm of the beast only with the seventh trumpet, in the bowls, 11:18; 15:1; 16:1) and the wrath of the beast upon the remnant (the 1,260 days) — with the remnant kept through both. That simultaneity is no defect but the Old Testament pattern: the Day of the Lord is judgment-with-remnant-preservation.
An honest test. This framework-reading makes the order coherent; the chronology fills it in (Appendix A). The first six trumpets sound before the abomination: the third probably towards the end of 2029, the fifth from May 20, 2030 (17 Iyar) for five months, the sixth on the Feast of Tabernacles of 2030 (October 17). "One woe is past" (9:12) stands between them as a time-marker: the five months are full before the sixth sounds. Then the abomination (Purim 2031) and, thirty days later, the beast and the two witnesses with their 1,260 days — the second part of the second woe, which is past only after the rapture of the witnesses (11:14). The seventh trumpet sounds at the end, in Elul 2034, after the ascension of the witnesses, and unfolds the bowls within the closing window of 45 days. The dates are the working-out of the chronology and bear its mark (computed on an interpreted calendar), not that of the structure.
VI. The placement rests entirely on the whole/peak distinction
This is the most important structural insight of this appendix, and it deserves to be said outright: the whole difference between Pre-Abomination and pre-wrath reduces to one question — where does the sixth seal fall? — and that question is answered by the whole/peak distinction of section IV.
If there is one great tribulation without a distinction of whole and peak — the beast-persecution as an indivisible whole, through which the church passes and out of which it is taken at the end — then the sixth seal must fall late, and pre-wrath is right. If, by contrast, there is one great tribulation with a peak — the week-wide thlipsis of Revelation 7:14 (the woe, the whole) out of which the Bride is taken away, and the post-abomination peak of Matthew 24:21 (the second half, Jacob's trouble) through which the remnant is kept — then the Bride comes out of the whole at the woe/wrath seam (the sixth seal, early), before the peak begins. Then Pre-Abomination is right. Over against that one tribulation stand two cohorts in opposed relation: the Bride out of it, the remnant through it.
Pre-Abomination is therefore no new, free-standing claim; it is the consequence of the whole/peak distinction. That distinction — already founded in section IV upon chronology, scope, direction, and the Purim typology — bears also the two sign-moments of section III.2: the same distinction that separates the whole of Revelation 7:14 from the peak of Matthew 24:21 separates the early sixth-seal signs from the late Matthew-24:29 signs. The work is therefore already done; Pre-Abomination merely reaps what section IV sowed.
This gives the model an honest and clean vulnerability: if the whole/peak distinction with its two cohorts falls, Pre-Abomination falls back upon pre-wrath — not upon nothing. That is no house of cards but an ordered dependency: the weakest outcome of a failing distinction is not collapse, but a falling-back upon the adjacent, equally defensible position. A reader who does not accept the whole/peak distinction does not become a post-trib or a preterist; he becomes a pre-wrath man. That is a safe fallback position, and whoever reads the dependency map sees the order of it.
VII. What further follows from it
Two consequences, to round off the placement.
One tribulation without a peak over against one tribulation with a peak. Where pre-wrath knows one undivided great tribulation (the beast-persecution), this model knows one great tribulation with a peak: the whole is the week-wide thlipsis of Rev 7:14, the peak is the post-abomination tribulation of Matt 24:21. Whole and peak rightly bear the same name — as a war and its hardest battle bear the same name — and over against that one tribulation stand two cohorts in opposed relation: the Bride taken out of the whole before the peak, the remnant kept through the peak. This is the substantive core of the distinction, and it is fully worked out in section IV.
One cohort over against three. Where pre-wrath knows one church-through-the-tribulation, this model distinguishes three relations to the end-time: the Bride (taken away at the sixth seal, the multitude before the throne of Rev 7:9-17, the male Child of Rev 12:5), the woman / the remnant (kept through the 1,260 days in the wilderness, Rev 12:6,14, the Judean remnant of Matt 24:16), and the wedding guests (gathered after the taking-away, until the return). The Revelation-12 tableau is the text-internal ground for this threefold distinction: the Child caught up to the throne, the woman fed in the wilderness — two modes of protection, from which the third category (the guests gathered after the taking-away) follows.
VIII. Summary in one paragraph
This model deserves a name of its own, for it fits none of the four customary rapture-families: Pre-Abomination (pre-gruwel) — the Bride taken away at the sixth seal (~2028-2029), before the abomination (Purim 2031). It shares with pre-wrath the mechanism (sixth seal, kept out of the wrath, telescopic structure), but differs decisively in timing: the Bride is gone before the peak of the great tribulation — the post-abomination tribulation of Matthew 24:21 — not after. The crux is Matthew 24:29: pre-wrath fuses the sixth-seal signs with the after-tribulation signs of 24:29 and therefore places the rapture late; Pre-Abomination distinguishes two cosmic-sign moments — an early one (sixth seal, wrath-onset, taking-away) and a late one (Matt 24:29, consummation, visible return, the end-gathering of Israel of Matt 24:31) — on the ground of the repeatable prophetic idiom (Joel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Haggai) and the functional difference between the two. That distinction is no loose claim but the consequence of the whole/peak distinction of section IV; if that distinction falls, Pre-Abomination does not topple but falls back upon pre-wrath — an ordered dependency, no house of cards. The early sixth-seal placement is moreover borne up by the sequence: only after the seventh seal do the trumpets sound (Rev 8:1-6), and the beast rises from the abyss that opens at the fifth trumpet (Rev 9:1; 11:7; 17:8). And the day of wrath that has broken at the sixth seal is no point but a period: the Old Testament Day of the Lord, judgment-with-remnant-preservation, which begins at the sixth seal and runs through and beyond the rise of the beast. The whole difference with the adjacent position therefore reduces to one question — where does the sixth seal fall? — and the answer is already given in section IV.