We can see that this indeed will take place:
Back to The Purpose of The Great Tribulation
And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of [the] great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. (Revelation 7:14)
The various translations make it clear that the "great multitude, that no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues" (Revelation 7:9) standing before the throne, and before the Lamb, are those who have come out of, or have come through, the great tribulation. No translation that we have seen implies that this multitude did not experience the great tribulation. These worshipers of God and the Lamb have come through the great pressure and persecution and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
It will require very great pressure and persecution, accompanied by the issuing of the fullness of the Glory of God, to bring the Christian Church to the unity and maturity decreed by the Word of God (compare John 17:21-23).
And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end: because it is yet for a time appointed. (Daniel 11:35)
One may protest, "God has not appointed us to wrath" (I Thessalonians 5:9). This is true. Buttribulation andwrath are two different aspects of God’s anger. Tribulation is corrective, leading to patience and holiness. Wrath is not corrective but destroys the sinner with his works.
We do not enter the Kingdom of God through much wrath but through much tribulation. There is a difference.
. . . we must through much tribulation enter the kingdom of God. (Acts 14:22)
God’s wrath does not fall on the faithful, but in the world the faithful experience much tribulation, much chastening. The saints experience much tribulation because it is pressure and trouble of various kinds that bring us from our bodily, self-centered, soulish existence into the liberty of the life-giving spirit (II Corinthians 4:8-17; I Corinthians 15:45-49).
The saint who is chastened soundly by the Lord begins to partake of God’s holy Nature. He comes up out of the wilderness leaning on his beloved. Tribulation works patience in him, and patience is one of the chief attributes of the Kingdom of God.
There are people who are expecting the Church to be "raptured" suddenly into Heaven, there to be married to Christ.
The slightest knowledge of the present-day condition of the Christian people ought to convince any sincere observer that the "rapture into Heaven" of the Church in its present state would be an unparalleled disaster. The Christian churches do not resemble the Wife of the Lamb who is described in the Scriptures. We are living in a dream world, a realm of fantasy based on nothing more than our traditions and fleshly hopes.
The Christian salvation does not lead us to a dream world, a utopia in which the spiritually indifferent and sluggish believers suddenly become ardent worshipers of God. The Christian salvation is leading to a kingdom in which the will of God is done; not a kingdom of fantasy but a real flesh-and-bone kingdom destined to rule over the works of God’s hands forever.
Christ is not coming for the spiritually naked, pitiful wretch of today who is eating her own bread, wearing her own clothing, and asking to be called by Christ’s name in order to acquire spiritual respectability. Rather, the Wife of the Lamb will be faultless in righteousness, utterly pure, breathtakingly beautiful in holiness, and sternly obedient to God.
The Bride is capable of eternal fruitfulness, of total dominion, and possesses nation-shattering authority and power. She is the Wife of the Lamb. She is as terrible as an army with banners. She is the Church and has been given the keys of the Kingdom of God.
God has decreed that the Wife of the Lamb will be perfect and complete, an entirely worthy complement of Christ. Christ covers her with the robe of imputed (ascribed) righteousness and then begins the work that will result in her perfection and beauty. Tribulation is one of the devices Christ employs as He prepares His Bride for the eternal romance.
The doctrine we have described in this brief paper is set forth in the fourth chapter of the Book of Isaiah, as indicated previously.