How to Survive the Great Tribulation

This book is a fictional account of what it might be like to live through the Great Tribulation. In the first part of the book, eighteen different characters are introduced and then followed through the events of the Tribulation. This book accepts a basically literal interpretation of the various events. So it tries to give realistic scenarios for each situation. When reading the book of Revelation, one will read about seven seal judgments, seven trumpet judgments, and seven vial judgments. One will also read many seemingly unrelated events that are also happening. The way to understand the whole book is to realize that the Apostle John as author had been describing two timelines that had both been happening at the same time. In other words, the whole Tribulation lasts for seven years. The seal, trumpet, and vial judgments run consecutively and also last for seven years. The second timeline which presents more about the activities of the Antichrist also runs for seven years. Therefore, the apostle had overlapped the two timelines into the one book of Revelation. The next thing that one might note in this text is that the eighteen people about which the story will be presented have been given some fairly ridiculous names. However, those names are symbolic because they have been used to describe the types of people.

The hope in writing this book is that the Lord will be glorified by the study and the presentation of His Word. His Word is truth. So every attempt has been made to accurately and intelligently present those truths. An obvious goal is to encourage anyone who does not know the Lord as personal savior to come to Him by faith right away to be saved. He will receive anyone who comes to Him in the right spirit and with the right attitude to be saved. So to further support that goal, Appendix A has been included at the end of the text to explain what it means to be truly saved. True biblical salvation occurs when one seeks the Lord with all of his or her heart, commits his or her life to Him, trusts in Him, and then enters into a personal relationship with Him. So if a person reads this whole text and fails to see the importance of giving oneself wholly unto the Lord, then an important goal will have been missed.

Another goal is to encourage the saints of God to live each day for the Lord. It is their job to try to reach the lost people of this world for Christ so that no one will have to go through the Great Tribulation or an eternal separation from the Lord. That is a very ambitious goal. But it is well worth pursuing. A last goal of this text is to be both instructive and even a little bit entertaining. Because the saints of God will not go through the Great Tribulation, it can be interesting reading. But being able to understand what will happen after the Rapture and also have an order for when some of those things actually happen can be enlightening. It can also help one see just how bad it will all be. This text concludes with two chapters that give an idea of what it will be like to die saved and what it will be like to die lost. It will obviously be much better and much smarter to come to the Lord to be saved so that one can leave this existence in the former situation rather than in the latter. So it is sincerely and prayerfully hoped that each reader will get to that conclusion, too.