Is the Church in the Tribulation?
In all of God's wrath and judgments on the world and in its tribulations, God has never removed his Church (people of God) from the sphere of the danger, but has always protected her in (kept her from) the danger:
1) Noah in the flood (Ge 7:7),
2) Lot in the plain (Ge 19:17-18, 21, 25), not in the mountains,
3) Israel in the plagues (Ex 8:22, 9:4, 26, 10:22-23, 11:7, 12:13),
4) Elijah in the famine (1Kgs 17:1-7),
5) youths in the fiery furnace (Da 3),
6) Daniel in the lions' den (Da 6),
7) woman on the earth (Rev 12:14-16), who is a symbol of God's people, the Church (male child is the seed of the woman--Ge 3:15, which is the body of Christ).
And just as God has protected his Church in past judgments and tribulations, so he will protect his Church in future judgments and tribulations (2Pe 2:5-9; Rev 3:10, 9:4, 12:6, 14; cf Eccl 1:9, 3:15). The removal of the Church from the earth before the great tribulation is a notion of man without any specific Biblical basis.
The Bible teaches that the Church will be kept from undergoing wrath (1Th 1:10, 5:9; Ro 5:9; Rev 9:3-4) and will be kept spiritually through tribulation (Lk 21:12-18; Jn 16:33; 1Pe 1:5; Jas 1:12, 5:10-11), to which the believer is destined (1Th 3:3; Jn 15:20; Mk 10:30; Ac 5:40, 14:22; 2Ti 3:12; 1Pe 4:12; Ph 1:29) for the purifying and strengthening of his faith (Jas 1:2-4; 1Pe 1:6-7). Believers in the past and present have not been exempt from the tribulations of their times, and neither will the believers of the future.
Much misunderstanding of prophecy comes from seeing the visions of Revelation as a successive chronology, which then causes duplication of events and things which are the same (e.g., Rev 11:18-19, 14:17-20, 16:12-21, 19:11-21, 20:7-10).
The structure of the visions in the book of Daniel is the key to the structure of the visions in Revelation.
The visions in Daniel were the sum of prophecy revealed by the Son of Man (Da 10:4-9)
from the book of God's eternal decrees (Da 10:21, 12:1)
regarding the OT church (Da 2:28, 8:26, 10:14) and its end (Da 8:19).
And the visions in Revelation are the sum of prophecy revealed by the Son of Man (Rev 1:12-18)
from the book of God's eternal decrees (Rev 5:1-5, 6:1, 10:1-4, 8-10, 20:12)
regarding the NT church (Rev 1:19, 10:11) and its earthly end (Rev 10:7, 11:18, 16:17, 21:6).
The visions in Daniel, which is the structure for the visions in Revelation, are not a successive chronology, but are four progressive parallelisms (chp 2; 7; 8; 10-12) interpreted by Daniel, which progressively reveal more details of the same events and persons each time (as are the eight visions in Zec 1-6).
Likewise with the visions in Revelation. Rather than a successive chronology, they are seven progressive parallelisms (chp 1-3; 4-7; 8-11; 12-14; 15-16; 17-19; 20-22), each revealing more detail of the same events and things.
And as the numbers and time frame regarding the OT church in Da 9:24-27 are not literal, so the numbers and time frame regarding the NT church in Revelation are not literal.
It is seeing Revelation as a literal successive chronology that is the basis for much private (not Scriptural interpretation as in Daniel) uncertain interpretation of prophetic riddles today that is contradictory to the clear, unequivocal and certain word of God (2Th 12:6-10, 2:1-8).