ALL the Hebrew and Roman religious leaders’ traditions of men that have been added to the Word of God are why so many believers in Christ who will be living right before the Tribulation Period begins will be so unprepared and unalert. They will be the carnal believers and the natural men and women (unbelievers – Jews and Gentiles) who will miss the Rapture and end up suffering during the Tribulation Period.
For the purpose of helping His children cope with their relatively brief afflictions, God gives them the Hope of Glory, which is that supernatural HOPE God has placed in them for them to know that they will receive all of their promised eternal rewards in Heaven, including their crown of life. This HOPE, thus, is an incentive for them to remain faithful unto death, even if they do not die from the frequent, abundant, or severe afflictions. Therefore, while they are enduring their earthly persecutions, including those sufferings that result from religious leaders and laypersons’ corruption of the “institutional” church’s established positions of power that these great enemies hold, God wants His true children to let their HOPE of GLORY and their trust in God’s ways of “checking”—the ways He examines them, or causes them to examine themselves, meaning their own motives—be what keeps them from complaining, worrying, or, more important, giving in to the temptation to allow any sinful self-interest to move them to respond to their sufferings in sinful ways (i.e., wrecking or destroying themselves).
