The Great Ribulation

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in any judgment (Matthew 16 :18), and (2) unlike the
wicked, the Christian’s ultimate destiny is not wrath
but life and salvation (Remans 2:7-9; 1 Thessalonians
5:9).
The wicked, on the other hand, have only wrath
and anguish, tribulation and distress ahead of them
(Remans 2:8-9). Literally, the vegetation of Judea,
and especially of Jerusalem, was destroyed in the
Roman scorched-earth methods of warfare, as Josephus
reports: “The countryside, like the city, was a
pitiful sight, for where once there had been a multitude
of trees and parks, there was now an utter wilderness
stripped bare of timber; and no stranger
who had seen the old Judea and the glorious suburbs
of her capital, and now beheld utter desolation,
could refrain from tears or suppress a groan at so terrible
a change. The war had blotted out every trace
of beauty, and no one who had known it in the past
and came upon it suddenly would have recognized
the place, for though he was already there, he would
still have been looking for the city” (2%e&oish War,
vi. i. 1). Yet this was only the beginning; many more
sorrows – and much worse – lay ahead (cf. 16:21).
The Second Trumpet
With the Trumpet blast of the second angel
(Revelation 8:8-9), we see a parallel to the first
plague on Egypt, in which the Nile was turned to
blood and the fish died (Exodus 7:17-21). The cause
of this calamity was that a great mountain burning
with fire was cast into the sea. The meaning of this
becomes clear when we remember that the nation of