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Dr. Alan Kurschner responded to the pretribulational tenet that the future seven-year period (i.e., the “70th week of Daniel”) is entirely God’s wrath. He used Jim McClarty’s critique of the prewrath position as his entry point of discussion.
Dr. Kurschner demonstrated that the seven-year period is divided up into several periods, because Jesus divides it up into several periods in Matthew 24. There is the beginning of birth pangs, the Antichrist’s great tribulation, and the day of the Lord’s wrath. He also corrected McClarty’s misrepresentation of the prewrath position.
Then he covered the pretrib notion that the seals are God’s wrath because it is Jesus who opens them up. McClarity did not provide any evidence for this except his assumption that if Jesus opens them up then it must be God’s wrath. He refuted that by walking through the seals, particularly the fifth, sixth, and seventh seals. The day of the Lord’s wrath will not begin until the seventh seal is opened up—not before it. He explained the relationship between God’s sovereignty and evil in this world. Satan and God are not independent powers. Satan is under the control of God, even when God gives him permission and latitude to persecute the people of God. God has his good purposes in suffering and it is our hope that God is all-powerful and all-loving and thus we must trust even in the trials of life that God brings into our life.
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