3

"Who are these clothed in white robes, and whence have they come?...These are they who have come out of the great tribulation (6); they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.  Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night within his temple."  (Rev 7.13-17)
 
In fact the great tribulation describes that time when the war between Heaven and hell on the earth reaches a crescendo of savagery and bestial havoc...and every person alive on earth is going to be caught up in it.  But far from going under in this tumult, the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ will come out on top in the company of a resurrected and entirely regenerated Israel.
 
"Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.  And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death."  (Rev 12.10-11)
 
(2)  Human disobedience and sinful behaviour always has consequences and repercussions.  (Hos 8.7 Ro 6.23 Gal 6.7-8)  They are like shockwaves after an explosion...which are able in and of themselves to be as destructive as the initial detonation.  The world today is brim-full with a stockpile of these shockwaves from personal, communal and national sin.  They don't just fade away, but in the fullness of time rip and tear back into us, the perpetrators...and our descendants.
 
Under the New Covenant this is the most common way in which God expresses His judgement of humanity...by allowing us to feel the full force of the effects and the results of our sinfulness.  And this dramatically highlights the potent and wondrous essence of the Gospel; that the Lord Jesus is our "propitiation"...that One who in His own body upon the Cross absorbed for us, the wrath of God we so justly and richly deserve.
 
"Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows...But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed."  (Isa 53.4-5)
 
"Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation (propitiation) by his blood."  (Ro 3.25)
 
"He is the expiation (propitiation) for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world."  (1 Jn 2.2)
 
"He loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation (propitiation) for our sins."  (1 Jn 4.10)
 
During the great tribulation, Christians will be privileged to shelter in the Lord and be hidden away beneath the Blood of His Atonement.  Nevertheless, because not one of us is yet perfect (Php 3.12), we may still be caught from time-to-time in the crossfire of the shockwaves of the consequences of the collective sin of the human race.

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