Chance, you had written:

So many prophecy teachers have told us that nothing else needs to happen before the Rapture.  But maybe we've been told wrong or maybe there are some really bad things coming before the Rapture .  If this is indeed what Peter was doing in quoting Joel 2 on Pentecost, and the Church Age does include those things of Joel 2 that happen "before the great and dreadful day of the Lord", the Believers could be facing some violent/shocking times BEFORE the Tribulation.  We just don't know how many of those things or how much of those things in the Olivet Discourse we, the Believers, will experience - we'll certainly experience the birth pains and the beginnings (what will this be?)....as we're told when we see these things..."And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads for your redemption draweth nigh."  Luke 21:28  We are not appointed to God's wrath - that's the Tribulation.

Yes, that was poignant, but quite needful to read. 

I agree with you - believers over the centuries have faced some violent / shocking times.

Why can't there be war, or judgment on our nation, before the blessed hope?

Why can't there be severe persecution in our nation, like there is in the middle east, India, and North Korea, before the blessed hope?

Are we currently not suffering that kind of persecution, because we are not appointed to it? Or is it possibly related to the following?

II Timothy 3:12 Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.

i.e. that most of us Christians in our nation are not really living godly in Christ Jesus?

Isn't the blessed hope to not escape persecution, but rather to escape the wrath of God, the time of testing with the strong delusion, the mark of the beast, and even the locusts with stingers?

Christians have quite often been facing the wrath of man and the wrath of the enemy, over the past couple thousand years.

But the wrath of God is something that is quite different from that.