The Great Tribulation

[CharlieJ]

I'm wondering which Reformed eschatological views hold to a future time of Great Tribulation just before the return of Christ.

 

[PuritanZealot]

All of them I would imagine? Our great apostasy hasn't quite happened yet and I would question any theology that eschatalogically denied the Tribulation!!??

 

[Notthemama1984]

Historic Premil?

 

[nnatew24]

What do you mean by great tribulation? Do you mean 7 years? That's specifically dispensationalism. But if you just mean in general, that's all of them, considering that nobody believes we are already past the 1000year reign of Christ in Rev 20, which is followed by the release of satan and the final, great battle.

 

[Peairtach]

Even postmil, to which I tend to subscribe, posits a final falling away/apostasy before Christ returns after the Millennial "Golden"/Silver Age. How long that apostasy will be, no-one I suppose knows, but it will be short in relation to the overall length of the interadventual period.

Many (most?) postmils ascribe the "Great" Tribulation to the Destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. But there has clearly been a lot of tribulation since then also.

No doubt the final apostasy will involve tribulation of some degree for the people of God. I think many postmils believe that the Antichrist appears before the Silver Age of the Millennium. Many believe he was Nero, some believe he is someone else. I tend to believe the Antichrist is the Papacy, which will be overthrown long before or just before the Milennial Silver Age.

Re the final release of Satan for a "little season":-

and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while. (Revelation 20:3, ESV)

And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them,(Rev 20:7-9, ESV)

Bahnsen speculated that the purpose of the release of Satan at the end of the Millennial Silver Age, was to demonstrate the incorrigibility of Man without God's grace.

Many/most(?) postmils believe that the spiritual "Battle of Armageddon" in Revelation 19, takes place before the Millennial Siver Age. It is not the Second Advent itself, although it points to it. Christ will defeat all His enemies in history, by His Spirit, Word, Church and Providence.

The Battle of Gog and Magog, portrayed as a literal and physical battle in Ezekiel, is about the final apostasy. Then Christ will return in flaming fire as is confirmed in II Thessalonians which ties in with Revelation 20:7-9.

in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. (II Thess 1:8, ESV). The Apostle Peter also associates the Last Day with fire.

 

[nicnap]

 

[CharlieJ]

So, to get this straight, most (all?) versions of Reformed eschatology posit a final apostasy of some indeterminate length, which will probably include persecution of the church, immediately before the Second Advent?

 

[Mephibosheth]

Yes, whether or not we equate it with the period in Matthew 24, we know from Revelation 20:7-10 that Satan will attack the Church immediately prior to his doom.

 

[Manuel]

I also see it at the end of this age. I think the two witnesses in Rev 11 are a type of the New Testament Church, they receive God's protection and preach the Gospel under many attacks, but always triumphant; this represents the 1000 years in Rev 20. The end of the 1000 years is parallel with 11:7 "And when they complete their testimony, the beast coming up out of the abyss will make war against them and will overcome them and kill them." We read in other place that the appearance of the man of sin is according to the working of Satan; this is the great tribulation: the church's evangelistic mission ends, Satan is released, and the church is brutally attacked by the beast.

Rev 11:7 And when they complete their testimony, the beast coming up out of the abyss will make war against them and will overcome them and kill them.

Rev 13:7 And it was given to it to war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given to it over every tribe and tongue and nation.

Many will die because of their faith, a few will flee and go underground and hide in the woods and caves, but "for the elect's sake, those days shall be shortened." This period of tribulation is described as "three and a half days" in contrast with 1260 days of evangelistic work. In Rev 20 we are told that Satan must be released "a little time." After this period of tribulation we see the coming of the Lord just as it is described by Jesus and the apostles in the gospels and the epistles.

-Fire comes down from heaven (Rev 20:9)
-Heaven and Earth fee away (Rev 20:11)
-The dead are judged (Rev 20:12)
-The ungodly are cast into the lake of fire (Rev 20:15)
-A new heaven and New Earth are established

 

[PuritanZealot]

Amen.

 

[BobVigneault]

There are many of us who believe that you can read about the 'Great Tribulation' in Josephus' History of the Jewish Wars and set the 'Great Tribulation' in 70 AD. This of course requires a commitment to the argument for an early date for the book of The Revelation.

 

[Mephibosheth]

Amen to that. That's why I'm a partial preterist. Charlie, check out Ken Gentry's Before Jerusalem Fell.

 

[CharlieJ]

OK, so preterists (at least some) interpret the Great Tribulation as being in the first century. Are there any idealists or historicists out there? How do you guys approach the issue?

 

[Mephibosheth]

OK, so preterists (at least some) interpret the Great Tribulation as being in the first century.

Actually, all preterists do.

 

[Jerusalem Blade]

Charlie,

I would say all the amil / idealists posit a great tribulation before the 2nd advent of our King – just as Manuel said in post #9. Though, as Art Azurdia (and many others) point out, amil is a misnomer, seeing as we do hold to a millennium, albeit the reign of the saints are on heavenly thrones, John seeing the souls of those decapitated (the standard style of execution, all other deaths of the faithful included) on them; and the thousand years is, along with all the other numbers in Revelation, symbolic, this of the full church age till right before the end. It is the exact equivalent of the 42 months (11:2; 13:5), the 1,260 days (11:3; 12:6), and 3½ times (12:14; Dan 7:25), the period of the church’s witness and tribulation.

The Lord's "cattle upon a thousand hills" (Ps 50:10) doesn't mean literally a thousand hills, but the fulness of the world — all the hills — and all its cattle are His, even as the fulness of the entire lifespan of the NT church is signified by "a thousand years".

As Satan is bound during that period from being able to deceive the nations and marshal all of them to attack the church world-wide and destroy it – though he is not bound from limited deception and persecution – he cannot realize his plan (2 Thess 2:3-12). But when he is released (20:7; 11:7) then shall he go forth to deceive (16:13; Matt 24:10-13), and gather the nations (16:14; 20:8) against God’s people in a final, fatal assault (20:9; 11:7-10; 13:7). The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 was typical of the terrible tribulation to come. The Lord in Matthew 24 weaves the terrors of AD 70 in Jerusalem with the terrors of the end time tribulation against “the beloved city” (Rev 20:9), and says, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days . . . he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Matt 24:29, 31).


-------



For those who want to pursue this a little farther, I quote Kim Riddlebarger, as he gives a good explanation of the structure of the Olivet Discourse in his book, The Man of Sin: Uncovering the Truth About the Antichrist, pp. 68-72)

Prophetic Perspective and the Abomination of Desolation

Understanding the way in which several key prophecies regarding the Antichrist are framed in the New Testament is important to interpreting them correctly. It is my contention that several of the prophecies (especially in Daniel) regarding Antichrist and his predecessors involve double fulfillment, which simply refers to the fact that certain prophecies are fulfilled more than once. Such prophecies are usually connected to an immediate or imminent fulfillment in the lifetime of the prophet and again to a more distant fulfillment in the messianic age (at our Lord’s first or second advent). This phenomenon is also known as “prophetic perspective.” The prophet foretells what appears to be a single event in his immediate future, but as redemptive history unfolds, it becomes clear that there are multiple fulfillments of the original prophecy. This is true with the biblical data predicting the coming of an end-times foe of God’s people—the Antichrist.

Before we discuss what Jesus meant when he predicted an act of sacrilege that would bring about the desolation of the Jerusalem temple—the so-called “abomination of desolation”—we need to understand that a number of Old Testament prophecies, along with certain aspects of the prophecy Jesus uttered in the Olivet Discourse, have more than one fulfillment.

According to Herman Ridderbos, many biblical prophecies refer to “things that appear to be centuries apart in the fulfillment [and] are sometimes comprehended by Jesus’ prophecy in the same temporal frame and within the same local framework.” According to Ridderbos, such prophecy is “something different than a diary of future events. . . . The function of prophecy is consequently not that of a detailed projection of the future, but is the urgent insistence on the certainty of the things to come. This explains why, at the end of the vista, the perspective is lacking. The prophet sees all kinds of events that will come and he sees in all of them the coming of God. But he cannot fix a date for the events, he cannot distinguish all phases in God’s coming. To him it is one great reality.” (Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom, 523-25)

This is an important point. The prophet is not concerned with when certain things will come to pass but with the fact that they will come to pass. Keeping this in mind as we look at the biblical data regarding Antichrist will explain how Daniel can predict more than one event in a single prophecy—for example, the prophecy of a great blasphemer in Daniel 11, which refers to to both Antiochus IV (Dan. 11:21-35) and the Antichrist at the time of the end (Dan. 11:36-45).

A number of commentators believe that this telescoping of imminent and future fulfillment (prophetic perspective or double fulfillment) is found in several of the prophetic books of the Old Testament. It is also found in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21), in which our Lord sets forth his most comprehensive teaching regarding future events. Some of these are fulfilled by the events of AD 70, while others remain to be fulfilled at the end of the age. The events associated with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple may also serve as a type (a foreshadowing) of a universal and final cataclysm (antitype) at the end of the age. The imminent desolation of the holy place (the Jerusalem temple) by the armies of Titus in AD 70, predicted by our Lord in Matthew 24:15, fulfills Daniel’s prophecy of such an event (Dan. 9:27; 11:31; 12:11). But the actions of Titus’s armies actually fulfill Daniel’s prophecy a second time—Antiochus IV was the first to make the holy place desolate in 167 BC. Antiochus erected an altar to Zeus on the altar of Yahweh, and then some two hundred years later the armies of Titus started a fire in the temple before looting its sacred objects, profaning the temple and leaving it desolate a second time. This is what Daniel predicted and what Jesus restates. As Vos says, it is plain “that Jesus shaped the matter in his mind after the same fashion” as the desecration of the Jerusalem temple by Antiochus, “only he projects the horrible event from the past in which it had once taken place into a future beyond his own point of speaking.” (Vos, Pauline Eschatology, 95) But Jesus’ mention of the “abomination of desolation” may also function as a prophetic picture of what will happen at the end of the age on a universal scale in Christ’s church. If this is the case, Daniel’s prophecy is not only fulfilled by Antiochus IV’s desecration of the temple in 167 BC but again by Titus and his Roman legions in AD 70, and them possibly again on a universal scale by an end-times Antichrist.

Prophetic perspective is clearly found throughout the Olivet Discourse. Take, for example, our Lord’s warning to his disciples in Matthew 24:4-13, where Jesus speaks of false christs, wars and rumors of wars, famines, and earthquakes before stating in verse 14 that the gospel must be preached to the whole world as a testimony. In verses 4-13, Jesus is speaking of events that will happen in the lifetime of the disciples; then he immediately jumps ahead to the time of the end in verse 14, seen in the reference to the universal preaching of the gospel to the ends of the earth, affirming the missionary calling of Christ’s church (Matt. 28:16-20).

The same thing can be seen when Jesus speaks of the imminent destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman army. When Jesus enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he warns the disciples, “The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone standing on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you” (Luke 19:43-44). In Luke 21:20, Jesus is even more specific about what will happen to Jerusalem: “When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near.” This is clearly a prophetic prediction of an imminent event within the lifetime of the disciples, namely, the Jewish War so graphically detailed by Josephus. Says Jesus, “They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (Luke 21:24). That Jesus is predicting the imminent events of AD 70 and the Jewish diaspora is indisputable.

In Matthew’s account Jesus is also speaking of an imminent fulfillment when he warns his disciples about a particular aspect of the desolation coming upon Israel’s temple:

So when you see standing in the holy place “the abomination that causes desolation,” spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. (Matthew 24:15-22)​

Once again, the reference to the desolation of the temple (“the abomination that causes desolation”) and a time of unequalled distress for the city of Jerusalem is a prediction of the events of AD 70. The desolation and profanation of the temple, coupled with the siege of Jerusalem by skilled and combat-hardened Roman legions, is the worst cataclysm ever to come upon Jerusalem, and, according to Jesus, it will never be equaled again. The desolation of Israel and the dispersion of the Jews to the ends of the earth is a great tragedy.

Notice that later in that same discourse Jesus telescopes his attention to the time of the end of the age (Matt. 24:29). Only then does Jesus go on to tell his disciples, “At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other” (Matt. 24:30-31). Jesus speaks of an imminent event (the destruction of Jerusalem) and future events (the end of the age and his second advent) in what is a virtually seamless manner.

In light of the tension between things imminent and things future, Charles Cranfield has pointed out that “neither an exclusively historical nor an exclusively eschatological interpretation is satisfactory. . . . We must allow for a double reference, for a mingling of historical and eschatological.” (C.E.B. Cranfield, The Gospel According to Saint Mark, 401-2) Thus when Jesus speaks of an abominating sacrilege, he is likely not only predicting the events of AD 70, he may also be speaking of events that occur at the time of the end—especially if the apostle Paul is speaking of the same thing when the apostle refers to “the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshipped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God” (2 Thess. 2:3-4). This connection, Vos believes, enables us to draw a line from Daniel to both Jesus and Paul and provides the continuity necessary to make sense of what would otherwise be three unrelated streams of data in the New Testament regarding the Antichrist (Vos, op. cit., p. 96). This is also the view of Anthony Hoekema in his influential statement and defense of Reformed amillennialism, The Bible and the Future (pp. 137-63). This seems to make the best sense of the passage and allows us to take seriously Jesus’ utilization of prophetic perspective.

 

[Peairtach]

Preterists tend to put all of Revelation 6-19 in the past. Although they might see secondary fulfillment or various themes being fulfilled in the present and future.

Tending towards a postmil historical preterist approach, I would, more likely, see part of Revelation 6-19 being fulfilled in the past in the destruction of Jerusalem, and Nero, etc, but also part being presently fulfilled and also in the future. But the Battle of Armageddon in Revelation 19 which is primarily something spiritual, in which Christ defeats His enemies from his place in Heaven by the Gospel, His Spirit, His Providence and through the Church, inaugurates the Millennial Silver Age, when the world will be more completely leavened with the Gospel.

The reason I don't see everything and God's last judgements being fulfilled in the first century or even when the Roman Empire fell, is because we still have the Beast of paganised, secular, worldly, persecuting civil government with us (represented particularly and firstly by Nero and 666 or 616 in Revelation); we still have the Beast (or False Prophet) of Antichrist and antichrists leading the Church astray to become the Whore Babylon, and we still have the Whore Babylon (the Apostate Church) with us.

But these are said to be utterly defeated in Revelation 19, long before the Second Advent. So we still haven't reached that point in history, although more radical preterists like Gentry (who places all of 6-19 in the First Century), or Bahnsen (who places all of 6-19 before the Fall of Rome and the Western Roman Empire), would disagree.

Of course there may be others that see Revelation 6-19 as covering the whole interadventual period, like Steve (?).

I would see Revelation 20 as covering the whole interadventual period, but Revelation 6-19 as covering the earlier part of that period as the Church fights and defeats, by God's grace, the Beast, the False Prophet and the Whore, and as Christ progressively lays hold of, binds, casts into the bottomless pit, shuts up, and seals in Satan so that he can deceive the nations no longer.

Revelation 6-19 is being treated something like a historical concertina (squeeze-box) depending on how you view it.

Amils and postmils agree more with each other than they do with premils.

You have to take all these eschatalogical studies with a pinch of salt. We hope we've got something like the right idea from our studies of these Scriptures, some kind of basic outline. But in many ways we shouldn't be too dogmatic in this difficult area.

---------- Post added at 10:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:51 PM ----------

I think the point that Keith Mathison makes in "When Shall These Things Be?" is a good and important one. Christ comes in or with the clouds in two senses.

(a) He comes in the clouds of His shekinah glory to His Father in order to receive His Kingdom. Daniel 7:13-14. He left this Earth in a cloud and ascended to the Father. His reception of that Kingdom and the Sign on Earth that the Son of Man was in Heaven and that this World was His by right, was the destruction and desolation of the Temple and Jerusalem.

In the Olivet Discourse the destruction of Jerusalem may be/almost certainly is, as Steve says, also secondarily anticipating the Eschaton when Christ will return to Earth in the clouds, but firstly speaks of His reception of the Kingdom in approaching the Father in the clouds.

(b) At the Eschaton (Last Day) Christ comes from Heaven to the Earth in/with the clouds of His shekinah glory to consummate His Kingdom. E.g. I Thess 4:14-16.

A number of the passages that deal with Christ's Advent in the clouds may be referring to both events (?)

 

[Jerusalem Blade]

Hello Richard,

Glad to converse with you here on neutral ground!

You said,

“But the Battle of Armageddon in Revelation 19 which is primarily something spiritual, in which Christ defeats His enemies from his place in Heaven by the Gospel, His Spirit, His Providence and through the Church, inaugurates the Millennial Silver Age, when the world will be more completely leavened with the Gospel.” [emphasis mine –SMR]

Am I to think that the birds invited to “the supper of the great God” (Rev 19:17 ff.) are to feast on “spiritual flesh” of some sort? And that the blood pouring out of the “great winepress of the wrath of God” is some sort of “spiritual blood”? And that the dragon, beast and false prophet, through the spirits of devils, gather the kings of the whole world “to the battle of that great day of God Almighty” (Rev 16:13, 14) which is at “Armageddon” (16:16) to a “spiritual battle” not involving the physical deaths of those who attack the church and its Lord?

We can see that Rev 16:13, 14, 16 shows the final battle:

And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.

For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty . . .

And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.​

And this is exactly the same as the battle of Rev 19:19, only from a different “camera angle”:

And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.​

The outcome of this battle?

And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.​

Were there any survivors at all from this battle? We see from verse 18 that those the birds would feast on were the kings, captains, the mighty men, and “all men, both free and bond, both small and great”. Did any survive after the taking of the two beasts? We are told (v. 21): “and the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse”. There were no survivors at all.

There is a third “camera angle” of this very battle, in Rev 20:7-10. That this is a recapitulation of the final battle is clear from the great multitude of the nations gathered by Satan from the four quarters of the earth – for this “shot” focuses on his demise (whereas earlier we have seen the demise of Babylon, then the two beasts), the very same gathering we saw in 16:13, 14, 16. There was also a cameo of this war in 17:14:

These [the beast and the kings] shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings . . .​

We have yet another view earlier in Revelation, after the sixth seal is opened, and the Lord’s anger in battle is seen:

And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;

And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? (6:15-17)​

Why is He angry with the nations, with the beasts and the dragon? Because they have assaulted His bride, whom He had purified in the furnace of affliction, but the wicked hands that did the afflicting He did not exculpate, but wreaked vengeance upon them. There is only one battle of that great day of God Almighty, it is Armageddon, the great day of His wrath, the great winepress of the wrath of God.

If one does not perceive the literary structure of Revelation one shall keep seeing the same things thinking they are different happenings, and fall into error.

On another matter: if one tries to maintain that the whore Babylon is the apostate church, one veers off from historical – and Biblical – reality. To wit: Chaldean Babylon was the prototype derived from a literal pagan empire; its religious aspect was pagan and occultic. Tyre, another manifestation of the Babylonian mix of pagan religion and economic domination, and Rome, both were typified as Babylonian quite apart from any “apostate church”. They were all noted for persecuting the people of God, whether godly Jews or, later, the followers of Christ. Three primary characteristics of all of them were their alliance with military / political prowess, their great economic activity and abundance, and their false religions / philosophy.

Apostate Jewry was part of the Babylon system in the Roman period, as it was complicit with Rome in persecuting the people of God and held to a false religion – which Judaism rejecting Messiah is. After the fall of the Roman Empire, and the emergence of the “Holy Roman Empire” of the RC “Church”, then there was a true mixture of the governmental persecuting beast, and the false religion & persecuting Babylonian whore. But as with apostate Jerusalem, the Roman Catholic organization was but a part of Babylon, and even today the apostate church (including Rome, liberal Protestantism, cults, false religions) is part of Babylon but is not the Babylon itself. The apostate church in no way “reigneth over the kings of the earth” (Rev 17:18) as Babylon is said to do, neither does the apostate church sit upon (Rev 17:15) – that is, exert great influence over – the “peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues”, that is, all the unbelievers of the earth. Some of the characteristics of Babylon were discussed and presented in the Babylon thread, for those interested in more depth.

Besides being inaccurate, one of the great troubles with the postmil view is that it posits an idea of Babylon that tends to lull the believer in it to a lack of vigilance, seeing it as out there instead of here I am in the midst of it and I better be wary lest I become intoxicated on the wine of her idolatrous prosperity and compromise with the ungodly culture, a very real danger to us, especially in the area of entertainment! It also lulls the believer into thinking that things will get better in the culture, rather than the culture turning against the church. If one is not prepared to suffer great tribulation for the cause of Christ, one may fall in the evil day.

The postmil view, among other things, tends to a view of “common grace” which says “the ungodly world is capable of producing good . . . because of the general operation of the Spirit in the hearts of the ungodly by which sin is restrained and the world enabled to do good”. This view, for those who hold it, is extremely dangerous, for it says that the culture of Babylon has the operation of the Spirit of grace in it, and thus I may join it, profitably learn from it, and even enjoy it. Thus we become immersed in the Babylonian spirit. Saints cannot impact Babylon – it is a one-way street the wrong way.

I think of Tim Keller here who is big on impacting the cities in which we live. From what I have heard Tim say, there is nothing wrong with influencing the city if we are not compromised in doing so. Of course we can seek to bring justice, mercy, the knowledge of God, excellence in the arts, ethics in finance etc into our culture. The danger is the assumption that the Spirit of God is in Babylon.

 

[Peairtach]

Glad to converse with you here on neutral ground!

Indeed!

I suppose this should be a separate thread on what the Battle of Armageddon is?

I don't want to answer you in detail now, but the forces ranged against Christ and His people are defeated by "the Word of God" (Revelation 19:3) and are slain with the sword which proceeds out of Christ's mouth (Revelation 19:21).

Fowls eating the flesh of the slain is an image of total defeat, and is not to be pressed in a literal fashion. To be slain with the Sword of the Spirit which proceeds out of Christ's mouth, the Word of God, is to be judged by that Word or converted. In this particular period of history symbolised by the Battle of Armageddon, those who resist God's Word will be removed from this Earth in the usual ways, while those that remain will be converted to Christ by the Word of God.

The beginning of chapter 19 and chapter 18 recounts the end of Babylon in history, and the rest of chapter 19 recounts the defeat of the Beast and the False Prophet in history. Babylon, the Beast and the False Prophet will not remain with us throughout the interadventual period. Christ is perfectly able to overcome them without returning physically and literally to Earth by His Holy Spirit, His Church, His Word and His Providence. He will demonstrate the power of the Gospel to do this, when He wishes to, at the end of the symbolic Three-and-a-half Years of Struggle.

Those who continue to resist the Word of God will suffer the penalty for their sins in soul and body. Christ brings providential judgements and chastisements (e.g. physical war, famine, economic woes, disease), which afflict the body as well as the soul, in history in association with the spiritual transformation of the world. Those who die in their sins go to Hell.

There are different emphases among postmils as among amils. From what I remember, Kuyper was a noted amil who emphasised common grace greatly.

No-one, whether amil or postmil, or premil, should be under any illusion about the power of the world, the flesh and the Devil to tempt him from the proper path. There are plenty scriptures on this whatever our eschatalogical view.

I don't believe that the forces of wickedness in this world will be defeated by a massive outpouring of Common Grace, but by a massive and sustained outpouring of Saving Grace.

You are right to point out that Babylon is not just the apostate church. To the extent that even as true believers we are still idolatrous, Babylon is in us.