Tribulations

Some evangelicals preach that the Rapture will save believers from undergoing the suffering of the last days prophesied in the Book of Revelation. The Catholic Church holds that Jesus' many teachings about the need to prepare for the Final Exam would not make sense if all faithful members of His Body were to be given an exemption. The scriptural references to the Rapture are few and need extra-Biblical assumptions to turn them into a promise that the Body will not suffer as the Head has suffered; the scriptural passages that we are to be take on Jesus' own character by following Him on the way of the Cross are many and require no special pleading to interpret.

Scripture

Lk 18:8	I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
Mt 24:12
Lk 21:12
Jn 15:19-20
2 Thess 2:4-12
1 Thess 5:2-3
2 Jn 7
1 Jn 2:18,22
Rev 19:1-9
Rev 13:8
Rev 20:7-10
Rev 21:2-4
Rev 20:12
2 Pet 3:12-13

Cathechism: The Church's ultimate trial

#675

Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.

#676

The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism.

#677

The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection. The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God's victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God's triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.

#680

Christ the Lord already reigns through the Church, but all the things of this world are not yet subjected to him. The triumph of Christ's kingdom will not come about without one last assault by the powers of evil.