How can the church age end before the tribulation? if during the tribulation the only way to be saved is no different then before the tribulation through Jesus.
isn't the very definition of the church age = salvation through Jesus
The concept of "the church age" is itself complicated. Because on its own it's not at all very clear what is being spoken about.
I sense that you are using it in the way that Dispensationalists do, as referring to a parenthetical dispensation in which grace is how we are saved. But according to classic and neo-Dispensationalist teachings, the end of the so-called "church age" at "the rapture" also means the end of the "dispensation of grace" and that God will once again return to dealing with national Israel and salvation will once again be by obedience to the Law (not all Dispensationalists believe this, but that is the "traditional" perspective of Dispensationalist theology).
On the other hand, the use of "church age" as a more generic term to refer to the time since Christ founded and established His Church, then it's pretty innocuous.
However, Dispensationalism is false teaching. It is a thoroughly false hermeneutic and a thoroughly false and (quite frankly) heterodox theological system.
Salvation has always been through Jesus Christ. It's not that God saves people through different and arbitrary ways. Our Lord Jesus, and all that He did, is the salvation of the whole world.
Abraham, Moses, David--saved by grace through faith on Christ's account.
Our Lord Himself says, "Abraham longed to see My day" (John 8:56).
All of the covenants made prior to the coming of the Messiah point to the Messiah and are fulfilled in Him. That is why Paul says Jesus is Abraham's Seed, that it was Jesus that was with the Israelites in the desert, etc.
What God did in sending His only-begotten Son is for the whole world, not just for only one group of people, not just for one slice of time--but for all people, for all time. Indeed, what God has done is for the saving, healing, and redemption of the whole of creation.
It is the very salvation of the entire big wide universe, the entire cosmos. That is why we read this in Colossians:
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He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross."
The whole universe exists because of and for Jesus Christ, and through Him God reconciles all things to Himself--the whole of creation.
That is why the Prophet Isaiah looks forward to behold the new heavens and the new earth, where the lamb and the wolf, the goat and the leopard can lay together in peace, where the child has no reason to fear the viper's den. It's what St. John sees in his final vision in the Apocalypse, the new heavens and the new earth, with the heavenly Jerusalem descending like a bride, the marriage of heaven and earth, of God and His people in the newness of the world made whole.
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For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." - Habbakuk 2:14
Salvation is from our God, and it isn't just for us as individuals in our being forgiven of our sins and being restored to communion with God--but it is the total renewal and healing of the entire created order. Which is why as Christians we do not teach and confess that we go drift up into an ethereal heaven for all eternity as disembodied ghosts--but rather we teach and confess the future resurrection of the body, the healing of all creation, and the life everlasting in the Age to Come.
-CryptoLutheran
Be blessed.
