The Perilous Times of Timothy

            The perilous times of Timothy present another scriptural inconsistency with a pretribulation rapture scenario. 

            Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:1:

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.” 

            At the time of this epistle, Timothy is not a tribulation saint as understood in our modern times.  Timothy is not a member of a distinctive group of people who will be left behind after the rapture occurs.  Timothy is a member of the one and only main body of the Christian church in existence, when Paul wrote Timothy this letter. 

            In the first-century, there is no division between Christians in-good-standing and some future, soon-to-be converted group of post-rapture tribulation saints. 

            Within the contemplation of Paul and the early church, there is no conception of something called a post-rapture tribulation saint. 

            Timothy is half Gentile and half Hebrew.  Timothy’s father is a Greek, and his mother is a Jew (Acts 16:1). 

            Yet in this address to Timothy by Paul, who understood better than anyone the subtle nuances between New Testament Gentile and Jew (Gal. 2:11-19), we see not the slightest hint of any dispensational differentiation by Paul in the practical application of this 2 Timothy 3:1 end-times prophesy, regarding this dual nature of Timothy. 

            If the question of a divided application of end-times prophetic scriptures to church-age Gentiles and Messianic Christian Jews, before and after a rapture, was ever to be addressed the Bible, assuming such a question existed, we would think this was an excellent opportunity for Paul to clear up any confusion and establish sound doctrine in applying end-times prophecies to his close friend and protégé Timothy, having inherited the combined dual ancestry of Gentile and Jew.    

            If the rapture occurs in the first-century, then Timothy will be raptured.  If the rapture occurs in Timothy’s lifetime, he will be one of those taken as described in Matthew 24:40-41. 

            Yet Paul addresses this particular end-times prophecy to Timothy, as if Timothy is or is soon to become a tribulation saint. 

            Whatever Paul is referring to as “perilous times,” they directly apply to Timothy.  These perilous times do not leap-frog over Timothy one generation to a future group of first-century people unsaved at that time, who would become converted to Christianity as a result of discovering they were left behind after the rapture. 

            Paul’s prophecy is aimed directly and squarely at Timothy, a born-again, Spirit-filled, first-century Christian. 

            If Timothy is a scripturally viable rapture candidate, then according to Paul’s prophecy here, Timothy is apparently also a scripturally viable candidate to experience perilous end-times.  

            Because these uniquely perilous times did not actually occur during Timothy’s lifetime, this prophecy in its composite form has continued by extension to each and every succeeding generation of Christians down to our present time. 

            Nowhere in scripture that I can find, does it allow us to insert a discontinuous break in the application of this prophecy, merely because it was written so long ago. 

            This warning of Paul to Timothy still applies to us today as if Paul were here now speaking to us in person.      

            If this prophecy referred to a future period of time immediately after Timothy was raptured, yet with a post-rapture first-century world still in-place, then Paul’s sentence does not make much sense. 

            This prophecy is directed toward the one and only full-sized Christian church that was on the earth at the time of Paul, because Paul was writing this warning to Timothy, a younger contemporary of Paul as a future reference and guide toward an upcoming actual time in Timothy’s life. 

            By continuous extension, this as-yet-unfulfilled prophetic warning similarly applies with all of its force to the contemporary Christian church on the earth today.

            For the unbeliever, there is no such thing as a non-perilous time.  Living on the edge of dying in sin, and passing on into an eternity in hell, is always perilous. 

            How can the last days become any more perilous for the unbeliever than normal times? 

            Again, in this 2 Timothy 3:1 verse, Paul says that “perilous times shall come.” 

            If some people say that these perilous times for unbelievers refer to receiving the mark of the beast, then this situates these perilous times described by Paul for Timothy right in the middle of the period of the Antichrist. 

            We cannot have it both ways. 

            Timothy, the first-century church, and Paul’s perilous times all go together. 

            If Timothy is on the scene for the perilous times foretold by Paul, then the times must be perilous for somebody, otherwise they would not in fact be perilous. 

            If Timothy is to be raptured as one of the faithful in his lifetime as anticipated by the early church, yet also experience perilous times, then the rapture slices up these perilous times into two parts. 

            Some portion of Paul’s perilous times, unspecified in length, must occur before Timothy is raptured.  Otherwise, Timothy is not physically present for these perilous times, and Paul is directing his warning to the wrong person. 

            Conversely, if the times are unusually perilous for unbelievers because of the presence on earth of the Antichrist, then Timothy is alive on earth for some portion of this same period of time, because Paul addresses this prophecy to Timothy. 

            If the times are also unusually and noticeably perilous for Christians sharing the gospel message, then what possible change in the outward world environment would create this to the extreme point that Paul would address this issue in a letter to Timothy, other than some singularly calamitous cascade of events leading up to the tribulation, or the actual momentous Great Tribulation period itself?  

            Another reason why I do not believe that the rapture will occur at the beginning of the tribulation period, is that Daniel’s seven-year tribulation is the final period of time for everythingin terms of the old- world system. 

            When the time finally comes that there are only seven years of human earthly history remaining, it would certainly be imperative and incumbent upon God to shake-up the world as described in the book of Revelation.

            The reasons behind this shake-up are two-fold, and they are enormous. 

            The first reason is that God would not want the last generation of unbelievers, with only seven years remaining on the clock, to be mistakenly focused on the non-essentials like what color to paint the kitchen, or whether to buy or lease our next automobile, or which college law school our granddaughter should apply to. 

            These otherwise legitimate life-issues today would be rendered entirely superfluous by virtue of the short end-times period remaining on the earth. 

            The second reason for a major shake-up by God as described in end-times biblical prophecy, is to demonstrate that the Antichrist, posing as the Messiah and savior of the world using fair speech, lofty promises, and intimidating threats, is in fact a worthless counterfeit god-man, an imposter who cannot control the catastrophic natural events or the health-related judgment plagues that will be occurring in the world. 

            Only the real God can supernaturally intervene in our natural world.  The catastrophic magnitude of the events occurring on the planet during the Great Tribulation would be God’s unselfish and loving way of exposing the lie and the emptiness of the high-sounding speech of the Antichrist. 

            This would be God’s final, emphatic, and unambiguous attempt to capture the attention of the last inhabitants on this planet as to the truly fragile nature of our existence and the genuine reality of our dependence on our Creator God. 

            At issue is the fundamental difference between “self-made men and women” and “God-made men and women,” which has been at the center of the debate in God’s outreach throughout human redemptive history. 

            The tribulation period is an environment of imposed dependence upon God for temporary physical and eternal spiritual survival, and forces a decision for or against God upon every inhabitant on the earth. 

            When the time comes that there are only seven years of time remaining, there is no point to God holding back or moderating His final appeal to mankind.