Unlike Rick Joyner and Andrew Wommack, servants of God that I greatly honor, I am a pre-tribulation Christian. Post-tribulation proponents believe that Christians will go through the great tribulation, but I am convinced that the church will be raptured and taken for safe abode in heaven before the wrath of the tribulation is poured out on the earth.
When Jesus was narrating the ordeals of that tribulation, He was greatly sorrowed by those who would be nursing babies (Matthew 24:19). Though He meant that to be literal, it also applies spiritually to church leaders who will have failed to “raise” their members.
Though I believe that Christians will escape the tribulation, I also believe in “tasting the powers of the age to come.” By that, I mean that a few years before the tribulation is fully birthed, the world will experience its birth pangs; what Jesus called the beginning of sorrows (Matthew 24:8). All people living at the time, including Christians will have a foretaste of the horrendous suffering that will be fully unleashed in the great tribulation. That, therefore, means that churches which are nursing spiritual babies will be overly burdened during the time preceding the tribulation, though not as severely as those who will go through it.
The implication of all this is that irrespective of whether you are a pre-trib, or post-trib, Matthew 24:19 is very relevant – you will suffer! The good news, however, is that you can prepare to minimize the damages. If you are a spiritual shepherd, you should grow up Jesus’ flock by feeding them with the true and fresh manna from heaven and helping them to have the perspective of eternity (and the judgment seat of Christ) in all that they do. If you are a sheep, it is your responsibility to do what you know is essential for your spiritual development.
Sadly, because it is easier to control and manipulate babies, many leaders in the body of Christ prefer to keep their congregations immature. That is why many Christian ministries are hype-centered, always coming up with ingenious ways of keeping their followers emotionally excited, without having them make significant spiritual growth. Sadly still, the sheep that do not want to grow up really enjoy that carnality.
When Prophet Bob Jones, who has since gone to be with the Lord, had a near-death experience in 1975 and went to heaven, he saw a black lady who had died and was being accompanied into heaven by about a hundred angels. Bob Jones asked, “Why so many angels?” The Holy Spirit answered him saying, “She was an awesome minister in her day!” I believe that one of the key things that made her exceptional from heaven’s perspective was because she fed her sheep with real substance, enabling them to “grow up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ” (Ephesians 4:15). My ambition in life is to have the Lord say of me, “My servant Moses was an awesome minister in his day.” I will achieve this by feeding and tending God’s sheep (John 21:15-17).
During the same trip to heaven, Bob Jones also saw a girl of about eleven years old who had died, but had spent a lot of her time whilst alive praying on her sickbed. Jesus said of her, “There are few that have been as great as her!” If you are not a minister of the gospel, live to also have the same testimony that “there were few as great as you”. That, you can achieve by doing all you know in order to grow spiritually, including taking praying seriously just like that girl did.
But woe . . . to those who are nursing babies in those days (Matthew 24:19), and woe to their babies who preferred to stay that way!
God bless you.