Overcoming the Great Tribulation

The Lord is putting before us A GREAT TEST—a test of who we will choose to worship and how we will choose to love and serve in this life. The Great Reset of the Church will result in renewed faith and sacrificial love as it fulfills the Great Commission through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This sets the stage for the Church to not only faithfully endure the Great Tribulation, but to also overcome it.

The Lord’s vision and plan is for His Church to repent in a Great Reset and choose by faith to live the life of sacrificial love that Jesus has called us to in this world. In this way, we fulfill the Great Commission as we go and make disciples by loving them and teaching them to love Jesus and one another. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are to be fruitful and multiply by making disciples by faithfully bearing the spiritual fruit of our testimony of faith and love in Jesus Christ. As we continue to fearlessly sacrifice ourselves as faithful witnesses, we will overcome Satan and the world in the Great Tribulation by the blood of the Lamb and our testimony of the redeeming sacrificial love of Jesus Christ and His incomparable gift of eternal life. Our sacrificial testimony as we bear spiritual fruit through the Holy Spirit will continue to sow the seeds of salvation among the people of this world, so that our Lord Jesus Christ may reap a great harvest of the redeemed to be welcomed into His Kingdom at the end of the age. The Church is not ready for this now, but the Lord is now preparing His Church through a Great Reset fueled by repentance so that we may fearlessly face the tests, trials and tribulations of the Antichrist and his evil kingdom with the spiritual unity and courage to love others and sacrifice ourselves with patient endurance and perseverance.

The Lord’s prophetic vision is not yet a reality, but His plan is already in motion and we are already starting to humbly respond with repentance in His Great Reset. The Lord has lovingly revealed to us the future of His Church to encourage us to trust Him and submit to His plan as our King. In the Book of Revelation Jesus prophesied that this glorious vision of the unified church will soon become a reality. He proclaims how the Church will overcome Satan and this dark world by the blood of the Lamb, the word of our testimony and our sacrificial love. This is how the Lord describes Satan’s defeat in His vision to John in Revelation 12:

“Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters [Satan], who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” — REVELATION 12:10-11

We know that Jesus has already “overcome” sin and death in the world by His righteous testimony of sacrificial love and death on the cross. By faith we will faithfully add our testimonies to the “blood of the Lamb” as we take up our crosses and follow Him as He uses the church to overcome Satan once and for all. The Lord is describing how the great multitude of His Church will triumph with their testimony of praise and worship of our Lord Jesus Christ through their faith and love, in the ultimate sacrifice of laying down their own lives. Think about this epic victory scene the Lord has painted in His vision of the radiant Church at the end of the age! Don’t you want to be a part of the Lord’s host who finally triumphs over Satan, even if it means sacrificing your life? Are you willing to sacrifice yourself for the Lord and His cause of destroying all evil and evil doers to restore the Kingdom of God forever? Consider this question very carefully because this is the ultimate decision required to pass the Lord’s test and trial for the Church during the Great Tribulation.

When we are faced with the loss of our own life and everything we have and everything we see in the world, what will we choose. Who will we choose to serve? Will we choose Satan if we are allowed to keep everything we value and treasure in this world? Or, will we choose Christ, even if we have to give up everything we have and all we have worked for in this life, including our very lives? Our hearts will truly be laid bare that day because we will be tested on what we truly believe and who is truly the object of our faith and love. These are questions we must wrestle with now before we are faced with the horrific reality of the Great Tribulation. This is the reason the Lord provided us with such detail in the Revelation to show us “what must soon take place.” As you consider these questions, consider this in view of the Lord’s great promises and rewards to those that remain faithful in this tribulation test.

The Great Commission Calls Us to Be a Great Light of Truth and Love in the Midst of the Darkness of the World

Along with detailing the trials and tribulations His Church will face, the Lord also reveals the GREAT REWARDS for all those who are faithful and overcome in the same way He has overcome the world. The Lord promises a seven-fold reward to anyone in the 7 Churches who overcomes. These promises equally apply to all of us in the Church today who will listen because the Lord repeats in each of His messages to the 7 Churches: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the Churches.”

To him who overcomes [and does My will to the end]:

  1. “HE WILL NOT BE HURT AT ALL BY THE SECOND DEATH.” — REV 2:11
  2. “I WILL GIVE THE RIGHT TO EAT FROM THE TREE OF LIFE, WHICH IS IN THE PARADISE OF GOD.” — REV 2:7
  3. “I WILL GIVE SOME OF THE HIDDEN MANNA. I WILL ALSO GIVE HIM A WHITE STONE WITH A NEW NAME WRITTEN ON IT, KNOWN ONLY TO HIM WHO RECEIVES IT.” — REV 2:17
  4. “HE WILL, LIKE THEM, BE DRESSED IN WHITE. I WILL NEVER BLOT OUT HIS NAME FROM THE BOOK OF LIFE, BUT WILL ACKNOWLEDGE HIS NAME BEFORE MY FATHER AND HIS ANGELS.” — REV 3:5
  5. “I WILL MAKE A PILLAR IN THE TEMPLE OF MY GOD. NEVER AGAIN WILL HE LEAVE IT. I WILL WRITE ON HIM THE NAME OF MY GOD AND THE NAME OF THE CITY OF MY GOD, THE NEW JERUSALEM, WHICH IS COMING OUT OF HEAVEN FROM MY GOD; AND I WILL ALSO WRITE ON HIM MY NEW NAME.” — REV 3:12
  6. “I WILL GIVE AUTHORITY OVER THE NATIONS, JUST AS I HAVE RECEIVED AUTHORITY FROM MY FATHER. I WILL ALSO GIVE HIM THE MORNING STAR.” — REV 2:26-28
  7. “I WILL GIVE HIM THE RIGHT TO SIT WITH ME ON MY THRONE, JUST AS I OVERCAME AND SAT DOWN WITH MY FATHER ON HIS THRONE.” — REV 3:21

These promises and rewards to His faithful overcomers are so much greater than what we are asked to sacrifice. However, I want you to clearly understand that these precious rewards are only promised to individuals, not churches. His rewards are not given to the Church that overcomes, but rather to each faithful individual “who overcomes and does my will to the end.” The Lord is making it clear that our good intentions or membership in a church are simply not good enough in His eyes. We are individually responsible for our own choices and our own deeds. Each of us must decide whether we love the Lord enough that we are willing to die for our testimony and continue to worship Jesus Christ as the Lord of Lords and King of Kings.

However, once we make that life-changing decision to sacrifice our lives as His faithful overcomers, the Lord welcomes us with open arms into His Kingdom as His adopted children and lavishes us with these precious gifts as His rewards. He is not just offering us adoption either. It is incredible what the Lord is promising us as a reward for our faithfulness. He promises us an eternal life free from pain and suffering in the paradise of God surrounded with plenty of delicious and life-giving food. He adopts us and gives us a new name along with His great name as His son or daughter and gives us clothes worthy of our new identity and position. Also, we are not just allowed to enjoy His kingdom as adopted children, we are given full rights in His kingdom as royal heirs of the King himself. Think about that for a minute. He is basically offering us ownership in His kingdom that He Himself built so that we can live with Him together forever in paradise. Even with all of this, He is offering us even more. In addition to all of this, the Lord will grant us royal positions as Princes and Princesses in the Kingdom of God, and grant us royal authority to rule the nations and help Him reign over His kingdom. This is like the stuff of fairy tales, except that this king is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and His Kingdom is both real and eternal.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is offering all of this treasure of our inheritance as His great reward to those that overcome and does His will to the end, but He also promises to be with us daily through all the tribulation tests. The Lord sustains us with faith, hope and love in this present life with his Holy Spirit, and assures us of the guarantee of our future inheritance and the promise of our great reward. Outwardly, we may be given over to death, but inwardly, He has given us the blessing of His glorious presence with His great authority and power—

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that His life may be revealed in our mortal body…Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” — 2 CORINTHIANS 4:7-11

We must understand this truth to truly understand the Lord’s test—this exchange—from His perspective. We carry around the treasure the Lord has given us in jars of clay—our mortal bodies, which seems like a strange place to keep a treasure. However, we must understand that the Lord has only given Satan authority over our mortal bodies, which are already corrupted by sin and death. When we fix our eyes and our heart on Jesus, the Lord has promised to sustain us inwardly day by day. No matter what Satan chooses to do outwardly to our bodies, he cannot separate us from God’s love against our will. So, as long as we are faithful to the end, no matter what Satan may do to us in this life, he cannot separate us from the Lord or His great reward for us. With this understanding, we can finally begin to understand the great test the Lord has for the Church in the Great Tribulation.

The Great Test

The Lord is using the Great Tribulation as a great test for all mankind, but especially the Church. The Lord is setting before us a choice—an exchange. If we truly believe, this is not a hard test, but it is a test of true faith and belief in the Lord Jesus Christ and His great rewards. We have already chosen to serve and worship the Lord, so we have already accepted the calling to die to ourselves and take up our crosses and follow Him. This test will require us to prove our faith through our righteous deeds. The Lord is asking some of us to faithfully sacrifice our mortal bodies in death as martyrs in a final testimony to His love and power in exchange for all the treasures of our royal inheritance. When you truly understand this offer and believe it in your heart, we would be crazy to refuse. However, we really need to wrestle with this now, so that we truly understand and believe that we really have nothing to lose and everything to gain!

Ask yourself this question: Is sacrificing our mortal body to death really that great a sacrifice when He has promised us all of this treasure, plus a new resurrected body and eternal life in fellowship with Him forever? If that isn’t compelling enough, simply think about what you are losing in exchange. Our bodies have already been corrupted by sin, which limits our intimacy with our Lord Jesus Christ while we live in it. It is also getting older by the day and is ultimately subject to death. So, how many years will you really have left to enjoy it before the Lord returns, IF you don’t die sooner in the death and destruction associated with the Great Tribulation. Also, really think about it—you would just be extending your life in the most Satanic kingdom that has ever ruled this world. If that is not enough to convince you, consider the Biblical consequences of the alternative in the afterlife—damnation and eternal separation from God, and torture in Hell forever! I don’t know about you, but I’ll take death over that any day! Ultimately, our real-world decision really comes down to this one simple question: Who do we truly believe and who do we trust the most to keep His promises? According to the Bible, there are only two choices: Satan, the one who has corrupted this world with lies, sin and death; or Jesus Christ, who loved us so much, He died in our place to redeem us and adopt us into his family in the Kingdom of God.

When we consider these truths and our choices, it is reasonable that we should love the Lord more than our own lives, since He redeemed our lives through His own death. Yes, we will likely face our own death, but our Lord has already given us eternal life because we now know the Lord through the Holy Spirit: “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”—John 17:3. The Lord has restored our relationship with Him so that we may truly know Him and have eternal life. Sure, Satan can kill our sinful body, but through Christ, we will live forever. Think about that truth—really let it sink into the deepest part of your heart and mind. Therefore, our mortal bodies are a fitting sacrifice to the Lord, and a small price to pay to continue to worship the Lord who truly loves us and has given us eternal life! The Apostle Paul came to the same conclusion and believed this with all of His heart, even though He spent much of His Christian life in prison for His testimony and faith, and he urged us to embrace it also: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.”—Romans 12:1. This is a message He believed with all of His heart and willingly and joyfully sacrificed His own life in worship to our Lord Jesus Christ as a martyr at the end of His life. It is same sacrificial offering all of the Apostles and other New Testament saints gave testimony to throughout their lives. They all died worshipping the Lord with all of their heart. This is just a reminder to us that we are surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses” as we choose how we should live and worship our Lord Jesus Christ. We all must choose whom we will worship and serve and face the consequences of that choice.

Choose wisely how you will live and die and who you will serve in this life, for at the appointed time, our Lord Jesus Christ will return to establish His eternal Kingdom on this earth with both blessings and curses. Until then, He has given us the faith, hope and love to partner with the Lord through the Holy Spirit to share the love of our Father, and invite others into His family so that the Lord’s Kingdom will be filled with a great multitude of sons and daughters at the great wedding supper of the Lamb. Those who truly know the Lord—His Church, the Bride of Christ—will prove their faithfulness by their righteous deeds and will enter their glorious inheritance in the Kingdom of God. We’ll be with the Lord Jesus Christ forever when He returns to reign over His eternal kingdom. Blessed are the ones who hear these words of rejoicing when the Lord returns to establish His kingdom forever:

“Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear. (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts [deeds] of God’s holy people.) Then the angel said to me, Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” — REVELATION 19: 6-9

The Lord in His love has prophetically revealed to us, His Church, in the Revelation of Jesus Christ what He plans to do and what must soon take place. Before the Lord Jesus Christ gloriously comes back to restore His eternal kingdom, He is calling His beloved Church to not just patiently endure, but also to overcome Satan’s kingdom. And we’ll overcome the Great Tribulation just as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has already overcome the world to redeem mankind. The blood of the Lamb and the word of our sacrificial testimony will overcome Satan! The Lord knows that the Church is not yet ready for this, so He has lovingly prepared a Great Reset for the Church, calling us to repent of any sin or idolatry in our hearts as we reset our hearts fully on the Lord Jesus Christ and commit to live the life of sacrificial love that Jesus has called us to in this world. The Church will then be unified and filled with the Holy Spirit and the faith, hope and love to overcome and faithfully carry out the Great Commission to go and make disciples by loving them and teaching them to love Jesus and one another until the end of the age. The Lord will not forsake us and will always be with us, so He will comfort us with His loving presence during the suffering and trials we shall face in the Great Tribulation. He has also promised His great reward of the treasures of our royal inheritance. With this glorious hope and great reward set before us, we will be fully prepared for the great test as we willingly offer our mortal bodies as living sacrifices in faithful worship to our Lord and King Jesus Christ as we enter His kingdom to receive our great reward! He has given us everything we need to live and die as overcomers. We are His Church, and our loving testimony and faithful sacrifices, as we bear spiritual fruit through the Holy Spirit, will continue to sow the seeds of salvation among the people of this world and our Lord Jesus Christ will reap a great harvest of the redeemed to be welcomed into His Kingdom at the end of the age because of our testimony. We will faithfully continue to love and serve our Lord Jesus Christ on this earth with the sure hope of His glorious return to resurrect us, restore all things, and establish His reign over our Kingdom forever. We are His Bride, and we long for the great day of the Wedding Feast of the Lord. What a glorious day that will be!

This completes Dan Waters’ four-part Reset & Repent study. Its closing prayer continues on its own as The Overcomer’s Prayer.