Today is the day when our world  is confronted with fear.  Unfortunately these times are also replete with deception.  Deception is the one tool used by the Deceiver for the purpose of bringing believers into a fearful faithless state.  It’s one thing that Jesus warned His disciples to be cognizant of when answering questions concerning His coming, as recorded in Matthew 24 and Mark 13. 

So why would we want to fear our enemies, whom we are to love? — actually we’re not.

Our fear of the Lord that is the only legitimate fear allowed in the life of the believer.   Any other fear of others that is being entertained beyond its initial warning or wake up, is illegitimate.  Jesus, who John tells us is the very word of God, often repeats within His own Scriptures: “fear not”.  

Satan wants nothing more than to cause a believer to take up and entertain fear over, whatever is seen as a known or unknown threat, which may or may not be coming our way. 

Many believers today actually promote the fear of a Tribulation that is coming.   The Church can legitimately use the Fear of the Lord to win converts.    When we promote any another fear, by so doing we can by so doing cause fear to disqualify faith. 

The Tribulation is a given prophesied period of time, something which certainly is to come for many believers, who will rely upon their testimony given them by God.  They will rely upon the blood of Christ Jesus to be overcomers.  These believers will hold staunchly to their blessed hope, which some are today attempting to have removed from them.  This is a promise to believers, which is impossible to steal from them.  It is our blessed hope.  And it will always be ours even during the time of Great Tribulation.  

To those believers for whom the blessed hope is an event separate from Jesus coming in judgment this hope is the Rapture, which they say precedes this prophesied time, which is yet to come in Human History.  

Certainly the Blessed Hope connects to the glorious coming of The Savior and it is the time for the resurrection of His Bride, with that there is no argument?  

This time of Tribulation which is coming however is a time to be filled with an overpowering love for Jesus, who is to preserve (some through death) those of His body, who still remain from their very (but still present) Enemies.  They will be confronted by those who greatly outnumber and persecute the body wherever they can find its members.  

If the Tribulation saints living at this time only by faith, have no promise of this Blessed Hope of His coming for them in First Resurrection power, then what else exactly could motivate them for the overcoming of this great enemy.   But they are motivated as they proclaim boldly the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.  So yes these will possess this Blessed Hope.  They will possess the power of that promise contained within the blessed hope. 

Doesn’t  the admonition by Jesus to fear God only, and to not fear him who can but destroy the body, also prove to make us more bold.  For it most certainly will diminish any fear pertaining to the coming Great Tribulation?  

The pre-Trib Rapture believer must make the Tribulation about the fear of God in order to be legitimate and adhere to this admonition of our Lord. So they determine the entirety of the Tribulation to be about God’s wrath, rather than about the release of Satan’s control over this final world under an Antichrist power.  

He who is to persecute Christ’s bride will come.  We already are seeing it.  For this one will come as leader of the final worldly beast system.  

God, because He is God, is the only restrainer of this prophesied Antichrist system of governance to come.  And though it is certainly His wrath that will put an end to the existing evil in this world, it is also just as certain that it will still be God’s desire to see the salvation of souls, which desire mwill determine His  judgment.  

1 Timothy 2:4  who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (NASB1995)

The Tribulation Judgements  from God will come because of His grace; and it will not be with the wrath of Hell that will be His final motivation; but rather it will be Satan’s wrath; which will dominate this period in mankind’s history.  

Yes, God allows the rise of this beastly persecution, and He no longer restrains Satan’s wrath against this world and against His own people; those He sealed with a powerful order.  He orders the sealing of those, who will love Him, and He does it for their protection against His own Judgments.  And Satan in that day will say to believers just as he said to Jesus.  You believe in God, Let Him deliver you.  For manny will die in these days. 

So, this is not the wrath that His body is promised to be delivered from, although the seal of the Holy Spirit does protect His own from all of His judgment against the world.  And it will also protect from His future Wrath which is to be seen in the casting of souls into Hell.  This is His promise to us.  We as the bride have been promised protection from that wrath coming for the entire world (His enemies). A wrath for which we had no protection, when we were in the world and without Christ. 

Ephesians 2:1  And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins:  2  Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:  3  Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. (KJV)

So, we know logically that the Tribulation cannot fulfill that which is God’s Wrath against an entire world that is without Christ.  Jesus has delivered His own bride from experiencing this wrath which will surely come at some future time.  And unless the whole of the first and Second resurrections are to take place before the Tribulation; then the Tribulation is not God’s Wrath from which we His bride are protected. 

So though God is to be feared because He has the power to kill both body and soul in hell, yet the Tribulation itself is not to be feared.  Jesus said: in this world you will have Tribulation, but be of good cheer for I have  overcome the world.  

We therefore who remain alive following this time of great persecution of His bride, will do so by overcoming this world’s ruler and his wrath coming from him, who is the god of this world. We overcome him with the word of our testimony and with the blood of the Lamb. And we will love not our lives unto death for our Blessed Hope is our beloved Deliverer.  He has overcome the world, be of good cheer.