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Postmils, Partial Preterists, and Full Preterists have different arrangements as well. The only way this puzzle will ever be solved is by lifting all the individual sections out of the text and laying them down beside the historical events to which they belong. That is one of the reasons why our historical studies here are so important. We are constructing that chronological list of actual events that we can eventually use to match up perfectly with all the predicted events in the Olivet Discourse. That is what we will attempt to do in the following section. About the Tribulation: Sequencing the Tribulation in Relation to the Parousia, the Rescue, and the Wrath-Outpouring One of the reasons all of us misinterpreted Matthew 24 for so many years is because we failed to understand the concept of Parousia, as well as the sequence of events that were supposed to occur at the Parousia. Growing up in the Baptist church as a futurist, my concept of the Second Coming was a one-day event, when Christ would split the sky and round up all His saints (living and dead) just before the globe was engulfed in a thermo-nuclear holocaust. All of that was supposed to happen not only in one day’s time, but “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.” That was my concept of the Second Coming – a “blink of the eye” event. There was no thought whatsoever of an extended period of time in which Christ would be present in the Unseen realm above to reward His people and judge His enemies. But when I became a Preterist, I began to notice all the things that Jesus and the Apostles promised that He would accomplish at His return, many of which implied much more than a one-day “blink of the eye” event. Then I found out that the word Parousia literally means an extended visit, or a presence with someone for an extended period of time. It is this extended visit idea that will really help us here in our understanding of the Olivet Discourse and its statements about the Great Tribulation. We will be referring to a series of charts called Chronological Arrangement of the Olivet Discourse. Those charts are copied on the following pages. We will look at three different sections of that chart, skipping back and forth between the pages. These charts trace the chronological and sequential fulfillment of the tribulation and the wrath outpouring which followed. We need to put these events in their proper sequence, in the order in which they actually occurred historically. When we do that, it really helps us understand both the Olivet Discourse and the book of Revelation. We will look closely at the words of Jesus in his Olivet Discourse found in all three synoptic gospels. We need to get real familiar with the charts before reading the rest of our comments about it on the following pages after the charts:
