How Does He Figure?

So everyonce in a while when I have to run a quick errand I will turn the radio to the Calvary Chapel station coming out of LA. They usually have some speaker on, which is what I want to hear (I know I am a sucker for punishment). So this evening while I was traveling to Albertson's I was listening to some gentlemen talking about the end times (I don't think that was the focus of his message per se, but that is what he was talking about). So he was talking about the rapture when Christ, according to Dispensationalists, will come halfway down to earth and all the dead will be raised. Yada, yada, yada... heard it all before. But then to prove his point about what that tribulation period would look like he turned to 1 Thess 1:9-10 which says,

For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come (1 Thess 1:9-10 ESV).

Now his point was in that very last phrase "wrath to come." I am not going to exegete this passage and look at the point Paul is making right now, but I am going to look at what this speaker said this phrase meant. He said, "In the Greek this phrase means in the Bible 'the tribulation.'"

So why am I writing about this right now? Because I cannot for the life of me figure out where the heck this guy got that "Greek" translation from!! The Greek phrase is actually, literally, "the wrath/anger to come." There are four other times these words appear together in the NT, and none of those equate this phrase with something even close to a 7-year tribulation period on the earth. Of course the wrath of God is coming (and has come when it was poured out on Christ on the cross for the sake of the elect), but for unbelievers that is at the final judgment, which for Dispensationalists is 1,007 years after the rapture.

So why do I make this point? I make it because the thousands of people hearing this speaker live and on the radio took this speaker at his word. He had no proof to back up his claim that this phrase in Greek meant the "tribulation period." They, in a word, were being deceived since they didn't have the ability to check up on this guy. This gentlemen twisted the words and somehow even twisted the Greek. It is scary when this sort of stuff happens, and Lord willing I won't make the same mistake myself in pursuit of some powerful point.

Now, I may be wrong, so if somebody can prove something other than I presented, please do!