This will be short, as I'm coming down with something and it is deeply affecting my mental clarity. I'll just give an overview and some passages and encourage you to read them further.

The primary thrust of today's reading was about God marking and protecting those who are His. Psalm 91 is a general promise that God is with His people, to ensure that no evil lays hold of them. The motif of staying safe and secure while terror rages around the people of God is also found in Exodus 12, where Moses begins in verse 21 to direct the people concerning the first Passover, in which the people were marked as God's and calamity passed over them to afflict the Egyptians around them. While specific interpretation may vary, Revelation 7 begins with the account of 144,000 individuals marked as belonging to God. In Matthew 18, Jesus condemns anything that causes one of His people, especially a child, to stumble; even if the thing causing one to stumble is their own body. But this is all contrasted with the cry of Job in Job 3, when he curses the day of his birth and asks why he was even allowed to grow old if this was all that was in store for him.

Was God not protecting Job? Well, yes, He was. The most overt thing is that God places limitations on what Satan can do to Job in chapters 1 and 2, protecting Job from the full scope of Satan's trials. More to the point, though, none of these passages suggest that hard times and great trials will not come. Matthew 18 especially focuses on the fact that things will arise to be a stumbling block in the path of His people. But God will rightly judge all those things which cause trouble for His people, and will deliver His people ultimately out of the full scope of evil's reach. We will endure some pain in this life, but the greatest weapons evil has against us will never prosper. If we are His, He will see to our ultimate rescue.

I find myself unable to accept the doctrine of a Pre-Tribulation rapture. I used to hold to it, when I was a kid and attended a church where it was a given, but when I set out to start testing my beliefs this one fell away pretty quickly. My abandonment of that doctrine was heavily influenced by disagreements with my peers about whether or not it appears in scripture, but even beyond that, I find it inconsistent with the character of the God that makes Himself known throughout the Bible.

My wife and I spent much of our morning looking into some missions agencies, and one of them included a certain view of Dispensationalism in their statement of faith. After this, I did my daily reading, and found myself reminded of the character traits that gave me pause about the whole affair to begin with. Apparently this was going to be a theme today.

God is not in the habit of removing His people from trouble anywhere else in scripture. Noah had protection, but went through the same flood everyone else did. The Hebrew people did not leave Egypt until God was done judging it. The prophets received the full weight of the people's rejection, and persecution has never fully been absent from the global church.

Jesus promises His people that they will have trouble. God never promises to remove us from trouble, but rather that He will be with us through it. Too often, we try to find rest in the idea that God will eventually fix things, that He will eventually remove us from our circumstances. And while it is true that God will restore all things in the end, that He is victorious over all our troubles and will someday set all things right, that is not our primary source of hope. Our hope is that God is with us, now, and will be through any trial and tribulation we face. Not only do we have the promise that troubles will come, and that He will be with us through those troubles, but we have clear statements that God is most glorified in these times and will use them to help us grow in our walk with Him. When we seek an escape rather than the growth waiting for us, we miss the point of our trials entirely and mistake the purpose God has for trouble.

Consider the book of Esther. We tend to note that it is unique among Biblical texts in that it never overtly mentions God, but talk less often about how God is pervasive throughout the entire story. He is there the whole time, placing His people at key places, protecting His chosen agents, answering prayer. Esther herself recognizes her dependence on God by asking the people to fast and pray for her before she takes any action. She is constantly in communication with her people and leaning on God to bring her through.

Our hope in tribulations doesn't need to lie in some idea that God will remove us before it gets worse. Because even when we don't see God, even when He is not overt, we know that He has promised to never leave us. Our hope is in the God who is here, now, and will continue to be here even when the worst days come.