Revelation 3:10

10 Because you have guarded and kept My word of patient endurance [have held fast the lesson of My patience with the expectant endurance that I give you], I also will keep you [safe] from the hour of trial (testing) which is coming on the whole world to try those who dwell upon the earth. 

Here is the first time that we see with any of the seven churches where Jesus proclaims that He will keep them. But we know the Truth that Jesus has always kept His Bride. This is another reason I have a problem with these churches being seven different ages. 

There is a time of the Great Tribulation, we will discuss this time in detail later in our study of Revelation, but true believers have always had trials. We have always needed Jesus to keep us and we will always need Him to keep us, and He did and He will! What is eye catching to me is that Jesus only says that He will keep the church of Philadelphia safe from the hour of trial. 

When I read about Philadelphia and Laodicea I can see that they will be side by side during the time of the Great Tribulation. Philadelphia being the true believers empowered by Christ to preach to the world and the church of Laodicea being the one led by the anti-christ and the false prophet. This is nothing new though, true believers have always been challenged by false and so called christian leaders. To me Jesus is always Jesus and He has always had a church of Philadelphia that He has empowered to hold fast to His Word. There has always been these other false churches and there will be, especially during the last days. During the Great Tribulation there will be a church of the anti-christ that has left Jesus, a church that has as its elders, false leaders, teaching false doctrines of men, proclaiming that they are working for God, while all along their works are dead. 

So as I wrote in the beginning of our study on Revelation 2, if these are seven different times, seven different churches, or seven different styles of churches, doesn’t really matter as much as the Truth that Jesus is with His chosen ones and the only way anyone can succeed, is because Jesus is in them causing to succeed! 

Now for those who say that there is a pre-tribulation rapture and that is how we are kept safe, I offer these scriptures to disprove that theory.

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the [sound of the] last trumpet call. For a trumpet will sound, and the dead [in Christ] will be raised imperishable (free and immune from decay), and we shall be changed (transformed). 1 Corinthians 15:52

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a loud cry of summons, with the shout of an archangel, and with the blast of the trumpet of God. And those who have departed this life in Christ will rise first. Then we, the living ones who remain [on the earth], shall simultaneously be caught up along with [the resurrected dead] in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so always (through the eternity of the eternities) we shall be with the Lord! 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 

The seventh angel then blew [his] trumpet, and there were mighty voices in heaven, shouting, The dominion (kingdom, sovereignty, rule) of the world has now come into the possession and become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ (the Messiah), and He shall reign forever and ever (for the eternities of the eternities)! Revelation 11:15

These three scriptures prove there is no pre-tribulation rapture. Because the dead in Christ have to rise first. Those who are living in Him cannot in any way precede the dead in Him. The dead in Christ are not raised until the last Trumpet sounds and when the last Trumpet, or the Seventh Trumpet sounds, Jesus returns. Also John 6 is a great chapter that disproves a pre-tribulation rapture. Several times Jesus tells us that we will be raised from the dead on the last day, not seven years before the last day. 

What is so great is that we will be here during it all, but yet we will be kept safe. We will be used by our Father to give food and provision to those in need, just as Jesus tells us in Matthew 24:25. We may be killed for our Kingdom, but we will not be lost. Just as Jesus was killed. Just as Stephen was killed. We may be imprisoned as Paul and John were. But our focus will be on our Groom and serving our Kingdom.