The first camp claims that the period of time called in the Scripture "the great tribulation," is the time when God pours out His wrath on the earth and therefore the Church will be taken away before it begins, and everyone agrees that it will begin with the appearance of a man called "The Antichrist" on the world's stage.
The second camp believes that God's wrath will begin to be poured out in the second half of the great tribulation period and that the church will witness appearance of the Antichrist, but will be snatched away before he shows his true face as all agree that he will be a very charismatic man, highly respected by the world community who will succeed in bringing peace to the world, especially Israel for a short time and will be even accepted as the Messiah by Israel, but they will reject him when he desecrates the newly rebuilt third temple by proclaiming himself God, after which he will seek to destroy Israel and will be ultimately destroyed by the return of the true Messiah, Jesus Christ of Nazareth to earth.
And then there is a third camp that believes that Jesus will take up His Church to heaven very shortly before His physical return to earth at the end of the great tribulation period, and then He will judge the wicked of the earth for their wickedness, but all three positions depend on the timing of God's wrath and whether or not the great tribulation is indeed the judgement of God or not.
Personally, I take neither of those positions, but I choose to remain open to each one of these three possibilities. I would love it if the rapture happened before the great tribulation, but just in case it does not, I am preparing myself mentally, emotionally, and spiritually to endure it by the grace of God by walking close with Him and listening to His Spirit.
In the parable of the foolish and wise virgins( Matthew 25), Jesus warned us against not being ready for His coming. All of them were virgins, which symbolizes the believers and all of them woke up when the call went out that the bridegroom ( Jesus) is coming, but it took longer than they all thought it would and half of them did not have enough oil in their lamps to last until the end. I am putting extra oil in my lamp by being open to the idea that the end time prophetic events written in the Bible might not come to pass in the order or the timing that I expect. I think it would be wise of all of us to be more flexible in this regard, and to focus more on filling ourselves with the Word of God and His Holy Spirit, growing spiritually stronger, and into greater maturity, and on preaching of the gospel to this dark world instead of fighting amongst ourselves over eschatology.
The Bible admonishes us that we must endure until the end. Jesus told us that we will have tribulation in the world, especially the closer we will get to His return. That means that we are not immune from persecution, as a matter of fact there are more Christians being persecuted and killed for their faith right now than at any other time in the history. What makes the Western Christians who at the moment enjoy relative freedom to practice our faith think that somehow we are better than our brothers and sisters who live elsewhere? Jesus said that the time will come when the whole world will hate us because it hated Him first, so let us toughen up and not get offended at God when things are not easy for us and remember in our prayers those who have it even worse.
He is with us no matter what and He gives us the power to overcome Satan himself and his hordes of hell by the blood of the Lamb and the Word of our testimony if we stay faithful to Him and do not love our lives even unto death. ( Revelation 12:11)
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