BEFORE THE TRIBULATION EVEN STARTS
The Great Tribulation, Part 1: The Wars, the Turning, and the Temple That Is Not Built Yet
This is a new series, and it works the same way as the Sun and Moon series.
The whole Bible, read in full passages, in context, and fitted together in the order the Bible itself tells it.
No theology. No sentences pulled out of their place. Just what the Bible says.
And we do not start with the tribulation.
We start before it, because the Bible does.
The first mention of it goes all the way back to Moses.
Deuteronomy 4:29-31
29But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.
30When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and obey his voice.
31For the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.
(Note: in verse 30 the KJV makes the turning sound conditional, as if it might not happen. The Hebrew states it as what will happen: you will return. The ESV and NKJV read it that way. The NKJV also reads "in distress" in verse 30, where the ESV and KJV read "in tribulation." The Hebrew word, batzar, means to be in a tight place, pressed hard.)
Tribulation in the latter days. Moses said it before Israel ever entered the land.
So before the tribulation itself, there is a whole stage of things that come first.
Wars. A turning of the nations. And a temple that has to stand before any of the rest can happen.
Jesus named the first part of it himself, and he called it the beginning.
Matthew 24:4-14
4And Jesus answered them, "See that no one leads you astray.
5For many will come in my name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray.
6And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.
7For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.
8All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.
9Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake.
10And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another.
11And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.
12And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.
13But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
14And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come."
(Note: the KJV and NKJV read "the beginning of sorrows" in verse 8. The Greek word, odin, means birth pains, the pains of labor, as the ESV reads. In verse 9 the KJV reads "deliver you up to be afflicted." The Greek says "into tribulation," eis thlipsin, as the ESV and NKJV read. In verse 10 the KJV and NKJV read "many will be offended." The Greek word, skandalizo, means to stumble and fall away, as the ESV reads.)
Wars and rumors of wars. Nation against nation. That is the world right now, and we checked it.
In the last few years Israel has fought on seven fronts at once, and Iran, the Persia of the Bible, has been firing rockets and missiles at Israel for over twenty five years through the armies it funds and arms, out of Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. It is not new.
What is new is only this: in the last fourteen months Iran has dropped the middlemen and fired from its own soil three times, which it had never done before April 2024.
Earthquakes killed around sixty thousand people in Turkey and Syria in February 2023, and famine has been officially declared in Sudan and in Gaza.
All four of the things Jesus named, present at the same time, in the same window.
And Jesus himself put the limit on it. These are the beginning of the birth pains. The end is not yet.
That is the honest way to point at it, and this series will point at it no other way.
And look at the very next thing Jesus named, in verse 9. His own people delivered up to tribulation, put to death, hated by all nations for his name's sake.
That is already happening to Christians in country after country today, and this series will never leave that verse out.
But the wars are only the first thread of the before stage.
The second thread runs the other direction. Before the end comes, the gospel reaches the nations.
Jesus put the order in the same passage, in its last verse. This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
First the proclaiming, to every nation on earth. Then the end.
Mark's account says it even plainer: the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations. First. A before marker in Jesus' own words.
It is already visible at the edges. In Iran, the land of Elam in Jeremiah 49, the regime's own courts arrested at least 139 Christians in 2024 and sentenced 96 of them to a combined 263 years in prison.
A government does not hand out 263 years of prison over a movement that does not exist.
And that is only what it does to the Christians. In 47 years this regime has executed its own people by the tens of thousands, more than 22,000 executions documented by name in the largest archive alone, around 5,000 of them hanged in their own prison cells in a single summer, 1988.
Beyond the killing, it has imprisoned, tortured, and driven into exile its own people by the hundreds of thousands.
And then there is the checkpoint, the one thing in this whole series that anybody on earth can verify with their own eyes.
The temple has not been built.
There is no temple standing in Jerusalem. There has not been one since AD 70.
There is no altar, and no daily sacrifice being offered, and there has not been for almost two thousand years.
That matters because the chain cannot move without it.
Daniel says the sacrifices will be put to an end at the middle of the covenant week, and sacrifices cannot be stopped unless they are first running.
Paul says the man of sin will take his seat in the temple of God, and a man cannot sit in a temple that is not standing there.
So before the tribulation can even start, a temple has to be built, and sacrifices have to be started, so that they can one day be stopped.
First the temple. Then the sacrifices. Then they can be stopped.
Watch for those, and no signing of any peace treaty will ever fool you into thinking these things have begun.
In the parts ahead we will walk all of it in order. The wars that gather against Israel. The nations turning. The covenant. The temple.
And then the tribulation itself, the great tribulation, and the wrath that follows it, every event placed where the Bible places it.
Part 2 will take up the first thread, the wars that gather against Israel.