Transcript: Understanding the Purpose of Tribulation in Christianity

Well, I'm training to be an end-time survivor, but recently I've been asking myself, why should it be necessary for any of us to survive through the tribulation? If the end goal is to be in heaven when it's all finished, why not just die quickly and get it over with? Yeah, it's true that just hanging in there for three and a half years only for the purpose of saying that we didn't die, that sounds pretty pointless. Kind of like what Paul said about how he wasn't sure if he would rather just live here with his Christian friends for as long as he could or just die and be with Jesus. Well, let's start there, shall we? Are there any good reasons for staying alive? It sounds to me like just being here to encourage one another might be a reasonable answer. That's consistent with why people, even Christian people, they don't want to die. You know, technically we should be keen to go to heaven, but most of us, we're not willing to let go of our friends and our other attachments. That's what holds us back even right now. Yeah, it actually sounds a little selfish to want to stay when things are going so well here on Earth. But I think what makes most of us fear death is the pain. But also a lot of us might have some secret doubts about whether or not there actually is going to be a resurrection yeah but if we were suffering like at least I imagine we will be during the great tribulation in that context it actually might be more tempting to just let go and die Okay, so we hang around to encourage one another, but if we all died, we all go straight to heaven, then there's no more need to hang around. Well, I personally don't think we'll just be here to encourage one another. There are really lessons that we need to learn from the tribulation, And for some people it might be dying. For others it may be hanging around and being patient. Okay, so it sounds like we have two possible answers. And as people are fond of saying in these End Time Survivors videos, if we listen, we'll learn. So we stay here for two reasons, it seems. One is to encourage each other. And two is to learn the disciplines that God wants to teach us. Anything else? Well, what about reaching out to others? Surely we're here to bring others into a personal relationship with Jesus. Now that's the part I wanted to raise from the start. The way I figured it. If the whole world is taking the mark by the time the tribulation starts, then it seems like there's no one left to reach. Seems like it would be a waste to just hang around just to suffer. Yeah, it's possible that not everyone would have taken the mark. and we could be around to try to reach out to those people. Yeah maybe like really young people maybe they won have to actually take the mark on the beast until they supposed to get a job Nah no no I don think so Even little kids, like they buy stuff and so on. We basically have to start snatching babies from everyone taking the mark. But yeah, I think it's possible that maybe there's some idealists out there and they refuse the mark. And maybe it's actually our job to reach out to those people and to try to let them know that, that hey, you know, Jesus is coming soon. Well, here's a really radical thing that I've been thinking about. It may be totally off the wall, but I'll say it anyway. You know how in Revelation it talks about believers being beheaded for not taking the mark? Apart from the French Revolution, that wasn't really a common way to execute people in the past. Isn't ISIS, aren't they doing that right now? Yeah, they are. Fair enough. But what if it's possible for someone who has taken the mark in the forehead to be safe by rejecting it strongly enough to be willing to die for it by having their head cut off? Will that set them free from it? I don't know. I mean, that's a pretty radical thought, but I'm not so sure if it's scriptural because it seems to me like taking the mark of the beast is the point of no return. Yeah. Yeah. Okay so we concluded that we don really know how evangelism will work during the tribulation or if there will even be any at all Yeah although my thought is that if there supposed to be a great multitude which comes through the great tribulation, a great multitude that no one can number, then I'm thinking that there must be some way that they can reach out to people who hadn't been reached with the message of Christ before the trouble began. Okay, well to summarize, it sounds like we've got three reasons to live through the tribulation. One is to encourage one another Two is to learn the lessons that God wants to teach us Lessons about faithfulness And three is to pass on those lessons to other people Who may not have been around to hear about Jesus before the trouble started Very good So today we have listened and learned Not so much how to live through the tribulation But why to live through it Maybe some of the people that are watching this video can contribute some theories about what exactly we're going to be doing during that time. Yes, and they can share those thoughts on our forum. Good idea. Well, thanks everybody for participating and thanks everyone for watching. Thank you.