God does nothing without a purpose. If He has determined that His elect will be on the earth throughout the great tribulation, He has a glorious result in mind. We know that all things (including the great tribulation) "work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose."

We understand further that the promises of the thirty-fourth, the thirty-seventh, and the ninety-first Psalms, and of all the other passages of the Scriptures, will stand more firmly than a mountain of rock throughout the great tribulation. In fact, the day will come when the heaven and the earth pass away and human life as we know it is no more. But the Word of our God shall still be standing.

Not only will the biblical promises of protection stand true, but a positive good will result from the troubles of the great tribulation. The Church will be purged of its blemishes and brought to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13).

When we consider the "dry bones" of today, the deplorable condition of her who is to be "the choice one of her that bare her" (Song of Solomon 6:9), we can appreciate the need for an extraordinary intervention by the Lord on behalf of His Bride. She is unkempt, being clothed in filthy garments. The great tribulation will bring believers to the point of being willing to wash their garments and make them white in the blood of the Lamb.

We can see that this indeed will take place:

And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of [the] great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. (Revelation 7:14)

The various translations make it clear that the "great multitude, that no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues" (Revelation 7:9) standing before the throne, and before the Lamb, are those who have come out of, or have come through, the great tribulation. No translation that we have seen implies that this multitude did not experience the great tribulation. These worshipers of God and the Lamb have come through the great pressure and persecution and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

It will require very great pressure and persecution, accompanied by the issuing of the fullness of the Glory of God, to bring the Christian Church to the unity and maturity decreed by the Word of God (compare John 17:21-23).

And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end: because it is yet for a time appointed. (Daniel 11:35)

One may protest, "God has not appointed us to wrath" (I Thessalonians 5:9). This is true. But tribulation and wrath are two different aspects of God's anger. Tribulation is corrective, leading to patience and holiness. Wrath is not corrective but destroys the sinner with his works.

To be continued.