Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 151:601 (Jan 1994)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

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BSac 151:601 (Jan 94) p. 113

Book Reviews

The Sign. By Robert Van Kampen. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1992. 528 pp. Paper, $15.95.

The title is brief, but this volume is a huge work, not only in total pages (528) and pages of endnotes (60) but also in the author’s time spent in research and preparation. In the preface he states that the book is “the culmination of some nine thousand hours of Bible study and research over the past eight years” (p. xvii; cf. p. xv), a statement designed to impress and to condition the reader to accept the author’s conclusions.

The book is significant because it definitively presents the pre-wrath rapture of the church, a position also set forth by Marvin J. Rosenthal in The PreWrath Rapture of the Church (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1990) and in Zion’s Fire, the magazine of Rosenthal’s organization. Van Kampen defines the pre-wrath view as the belief “that the church will go through the great tribulation by Antichrist during the end times, but will be raptured before the wrath of God, when Christ cuts short the persecution of Antichrist” (p. 34, italics his). The pre-wrath position, consequently, is a form of posttribulationism.

Crucial to Van Kampen’s pre-wrath view is the identification of the great tribulation as the work of Antichrist (see chap. 13 and pp. 236, 285, 286, etc.) and the distinguishing of that from the outpouring of God’s wrath on the day of the Lord (p. 178; cf. pp. 311-12). The latter is presented as a comparatively brief period of time and characterized totally by the outpouring of God’s wrath, whereas Scripture presents the day of the Lord—also frequently called simply “that day” (Isa 3:7, 18; 24:21–23)—as a more extended period that includes not only the outpouring of His wrath on a Christ-rejecting humanity, including unbelieving Israel, but also the restoration of Israel to God and her millennial, messianic kingdom on earth (Isa 4; 11:10–12:6).

Such a separation of the great tribulation from the outpouring of God’s wrath is not warranted from Scripture. The Lord Jesus Christ takes the book from the hand of God the Father (Rev 5:1–7) and is responsible therefore for all the judgments that follow (cf. John 5:22). These judgments are increasingly severe, and some of the early ones may be carried out through human agency, while the later ones are executed by angels; but Christ is the One in charge. As a result the entire process ...

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