The short answer
The most common popular ordering of the end-times events runs like this: first the signs of the last days, then a period of great tribulation, then the rapture of believers, then the visible second coming of Christ, then the day of the Lord and final judgment, and finally the millennium and a new heaven and new earth. That sequence is neat, memorable, and printed on countless prophecy charts — but it is not spelled out anywhere in Scripture as a single list. It is assembled by stitching together passages from Matthew 24, 1 Thessalonians 4, 2 Peter 3 and Revelation, and the moment you look closely, the joins show.
The honest answer is that the Bible gives us the pieces — tribulation, resurrection, return, judgment, kingdom — but not an agreed, datable order, and Christians who love Scripture equally have long disagreed about how they fit. This post lays out the popular sequence, marks exactly where believers divide, explains why every attempt to fix the timetable has failed, and shows how the Divine Principle reads these events less as a countdown of disasters and more as a process of restoration. For the wider question of what "the end" even refers to, start with what the last days are.
The popular sequence, step by step
Laid out plainly, the widely taught order has six stages. First come the signs of the last days — wars, famines, false messiahs, the gospel preached to all nations (Matthew 24:6-14). Second comes the great tribulation, described by Jesus as "great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now" (Matthew 24:21). Third, in the most popular scheme, comes the rapture, when believers are "caught up together... to meet the Lord in the air" (1 Thessalonians 4:17). A useful summary of how these blocks are usually chained together appears in overviews such as this end-times outline.
Fourth is the second coming itself — Christ appearing in glory (Matthew 24:30). Fifth is the day of the Lord and final judgment, when "the heavens will pass away with a roar" (2 Peter 3:10) and the dead are judged. Sixth and last is the millennium and the arrival of "a new heaven and a new earth" (Revelation 21:1). Each of these has been covered on this site in its own right — the great tribulation, the rapture, the day of the Lord, and the millennium — but the interesting problem is how, or whether, they line up in that fixed order.
Where Christians disagree on the order
Two fault lines run right through the sequence. The first is the placement of the rapture relative to the tribulation. Pre-tribulationists put the rapture before the tribulation, so believers are removed before the worst suffering. Mid- and post-tribulationists put it during or at the very end, so the church passes through the tribulation and is gathered at Christ's visible return. This is not a minor detail; it changes whether the rapture and the second coming are two separate events years apart or two descriptions of one event. Notably, the pre-tribulation "secret rapture" is a comparatively recent reading that rose to prominence only in the nineteenth century.
The second fault line is the millennium. Premillennialists read Revelation 20 literally: Christ returns, then reigns for a literal thousand years. Postmillennialists expect a long age of gospel success and only then Christ's return. Amillennialists read the "thousand years" symbolically as the present era between Christ's first and second comings. Because the number 1,000 appears only in Revelation 20 — the most symbol-laden book in the Bible — the entire order of the final stages hinges on a single interpretive choice. That is a strong signal that we are dealing with theological symbolism, not a published schedule.
Why the timetable keeps failing
Every generation that has tried to lock the sequence to real-world dates has been wrong, without exception. The failures are not the fault of Scripture but of a method that treats prophecy as an encrypted calendar to be decoded. Jesus flatly forbade that project: "concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only" (Matthew 24:36). If the Son in his earthly ministry did not hold the date, private schemes built from newspaper headlines are on very thin ice. We trace this recurring pattern in why people keep setting dates for the second coming.
The point of biblical prophecy, in its own words, is readiness rather than reckoning. "Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming" (Matthew 24:42). The parables that follow Jesus' end-times discourse are all about faithfulness while the master is away — the wise and foolish servants, the ten virgins, the talents — not about calculating his arrival. When the order of events becomes a puzzle to solve, the actual command of the text — watchfulness, integrity, love — quietly gets lost. A fixed timetable can even become a distraction from the life prophecy was meant to produce.
Reading the "events" as symbols, not a schedule
Much of the difficulty dissolves once we notice how the New Testament itself uses this language. The imagery of clouds, trumpets, a darkened sun and stars falling is drawn straight from Old Testament prophecy, where it repeatedly describes God acting decisively within history rather than the literal collapse of the sky. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, quotes Joel's cosmic upheaval — blood, fire, the sun turned to darkness — and applies it to that very day (Acts 2:16-21). The apostles were comfortable reading vivid catastrophe language as the symbolic register of God's intervention.
If that is how the imagery works, then asking for the exact chronological order of the rapture, the tribulation and the millennium may be asking the wrong question of the wrong kind of text. The events are real, but the language is theological and poetic, describing the meaning of God's final work — judgment, deliverance, the making-new of all things — more than its calendar. This is why sober scholarship consistently warns against turning symbol into sequence, and why the deepest disagreements among Christians are not about whether Christ will make all things new but about how literally to date the stages.
The Divine Principle: a process, not a countdown
The Divine Principle reframes the whole question. It reads the "last days" not as a countdown of escalating disasters but as the transition from a fallen world to a restored one — the closing of the age of evil and the dawning of the age when God's original purpose can finally be fulfilled. On this reading, the dramatic end-times imagery signals a decisive turning point in God's providence rather than the physical destruction of the planet, which fits the biblical promise that the earth itself is to be renewed and inherited, not annihilated (Matthew 5:5; Revelation 21:1-3).
Because restoration is a work God accomplishes together with responding human beings, the decisive variable is not the order of catastrophes but human response and responsibility. The coming of the Lord, in this framework, is chiefly the work of establishing God's truth and lineage on earth so that the kingdom of heaven can actually be built — which is why the returning Lord calls for participation, not merely spectators waiting for a rescue. Seen this way, the anxious search for the exact sequence gives way to the more urgent question every end-times passage actually presses: are we ready, and are we living the life God asks of us now? For where the whole sequence is finally heading, see what the second coming will accomplish, and for the disclosure this all belongs to, what the Divine Principle is.
Frequently asked questions
In what order do the end-times events happen?
The most common popular sequence is: (1) signs of the last days, (2) a period of great tribulation, (3) the rapture of believers, (4) the second coming of Christ, (5) the day of the Lord and final judgment, and (6) the millennium and a new heaven and new earth. However, Christians disagree sharply over where the rapture falls relative to the tribulation, and whether the millennium is literal or symbolic. Scripture gives themes and warnings rather than a fixed, datable timetable.
Does the rapture come before or after the tribulation?
This is the main point of disagreement. Pre-tribulation views place the rapture before the tribulation; mid- and post-tribulation views place it during or at the end. The pre-tribulation "secret rapture" is actually a relatively modern reading popularised in the 1800s, and many scholars argue the New Testament describes one visible return, not a separate secret removal followed later by a public arrival.
Is the millennium a literal thousand years?
Christians divide into premillennial (a literal future thousand-year reign after Christ returns), postmillennial (Christ returns after a golden age), and amillennial (the "thousand years" is symbolic of the present church age). The number 1,000 appears only in Revelation 20, a highly symbolic book, so the order of events depends heavily on whether you read it literally or figuratively.
Why do end-times timetables keep failing?
Because they treat symbolic, poetic prophecy as a literal calendar. Jesus said plainly, "concerning that day and hour no one knows... but the Father only" (Matthew 24:36). Every confident date-setting scheme in history has failed. The biblical purpose of prophecy is to make us ready and faithful, not to let us map an exact schedule.
How does the Divine Principle order the end-times events?
The Divine Principle treats the last days as a process of restoration rather than a countdown of catastrophes. It understands much end-times language symbolically — the "last days" as the transition from a fallen to a restored world, and the coming of the Lord as the work of establishing God's truth and lineage on earth so that the kingdom of heaven can be built. The decisive question is not the order of disasters but human response and responsibility.