For the Tribulation period to become a reality, Israel has to be present in the Holy Land. From A.D. 135 until 1948, this was not the case. For 18 centuries, Israel was dispersed throughout the world and the church taught that it would bring in the Kingdom. The bible declares that in the end times, Israel will come to realize a horrifying truth: their staunchest supporters are somehow missing. Born again Christians who support Israel have disappeared. The bible has many strong suggestions that disruptions of various kinds will occur with rising intensity, as Jesus said when he used the phrase ... "And there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places (Matthew 24:7).
There is a prophecy in the book of Micah that depicts this experience with emotional pathos and a sense of desperation. Written from Israel's perspective, it was written in the era of Israel's Assyrian captivity in the eighth century B.C. But as a metaphor, it reaches into the far future, and the days of Israel's plight following the removal of the church from the earth in the rapture event, but before the beginning of the Tribulation period. Speaking for Israel, Micah notes with dismay that the "good man has perished out of the earth." Here, the Hebrew word translated "perish" is "avad", meaning to "disappear," or more specifically, to "vanish."
In a perfect description of a post rapture world in which "the good man" or "pious and righteous man" is nowhere to be found and has suddenly vanished, Micah shows a schedule of events that begin prior to the rise of the Antichrist, but then shifts to the Tribulation. Micah shows that the world before the Tribulation will be characterized by unbridled wickedness, the world after the signing of the seven year covenant will be wracked by geophysical, political and military upheavals.
