MY QUESTION: Tell me about any possible connection between: the Canaanites reaching the full measure of their wickedness before God would/could drive them out of the land, and, the possibility of the Great Tribulation coming when the measure of mankinds wickedness is so great, it triggers Gods judgment?
[Inference] There is a real biblical connection, but it is analogical [pattern-based] rather than an explicit one-to-one statement. Scripture does teach that God sometimes lets collective evil ripen to a measured fullness before he judges, and the Great Tribulation fits that wider pattern. But Scripture does not state, in one direct sentence, that “the Great Tribulation begins when all humanity reaches the same full measure as the Amorites.” What it does show is this: God is patient, evil accumulates, rebellion matures, and then judgment falls at God’s appointed time.
Translation note: brief biblical excerpts below are from NET unless otherwise noted.
Summary
The Canaanite case in Genesis 15:16 establishes a principle of judicial ripeness [sin matured for judgment]: God does not judge hastily, but neither does he ignore evil forever. That same principle appears again in later Scripture in phrases such as “fill up the measure,” “sins piled up to heaven,” “grapes are ripe,” and “lawlessness increased.” Therefore, it is biblically warranted to say that the Great Tribulation comes in a context where human rebellion has ripened to an extreme and publicly manifest form. It is not biblically warranted to say that an impersonal moral threshold mechanically “triggers” God, as if God were reacting rather than ruling.
1. Exegesis
1.1 Genesis 15:16
The key clause is Hebrew: ki lo shalem avon ha-emori ad hennah – “for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.” The word shalem [complete, whole, brought to fullness] does not merely mean “present” but “brought to completion.” The noun avon [iniquity, guilt, crookedness with liability] carries not only the idea of bad acts, but of guilt that now stands before God for judgment. So the point is not that the Amorites were innocent until a later date. The point is that their guilt had not yet reached the divinely appointed fullness at which dispossession and destruction would occur. God gives time. He waits. But his waiting is moral, not indifferent.
This means the conquest was not framed in the Torah as random ethnic replacement or mere geopolitical expansion. Deuteronomy 9 explicitly says Israel did not receive the land because of its own righteousness, but because of the wickedness of those nations. Leviticus 18 and 20 deepen this by saying the land had become defiled and “vomited out” its inhabitants. Deuteronomy 18 then identifies representative sins: child sacrifice, divination, sorcery, necromancy, and related abominations. So Genesis 15:16 is not an isolated remark. It is the seed statement for a full moral theology of Canaanite judgment.
1.2 The wider Old Testament pattern
Daniel 8:23 uses closely related fullness language: kehatem ha-poshe'im – “when the transgressors are complete” or “when rebellious acts are complete.” That is highly significant. It shows that Genesis 15 is not a one-off concept. Scripture can speak of transgression reaching a point of completion before a climactic ruler and a new phase of judgment emerge. Joel 3:13 also uses harvest and winepress imagery: the winepress is full, the vats overflow, “their evil is great.” In other words, evil is pictured as something that fills, ripens, and overflows before the day of the Lord falls.
1.3 The New Testament continuation of the same logic
Jesus uses the same conceptual pattern in Matthew 23:32: plerosate to metron ton pateron humon – “fill up the measure of your fathers.” plerosate [fill, complete] and metron [measure, allotted quantity] are judicial images. Christ is saying that the current generation is bringing ancestral rebellion to its full expression, especially in its treatment of God’s messengers and ultimately of the Messiah himself. Paul echoes this in 1 Thessalonians 2:16, where opponents “constantly fill up their measure of sins,” after which wrath comes upon them. So the Bible itself reuses the Amorite logic: sin accumulates historically and corporately until it reaches a fullness that God judges.
2. The Great Tribulation and the “fullness of evil” question
Matthew 24 does not say, in so many words, “tribulation begins when wickedness reaches a measured limit.” What it does say is that the Great Tribulation is bound up with the abomination of desolation, unparalleled distress, false messiahs, deception, and multiplying anomia [lawlessness]. Paul adds that “that day” will not come until the apostasia [rebellion, falling away] comes and the “man of lawlessness” is revealed. Daniel 12 speaks of an unmatched time of distress, and Jeremiah 30:7 speaks of an unparalleled “time of trouble” for Jacob. So the Tribulation is presented not as a random catastrophe, but as the climactic manifestation of mature rebellion against God.
Revelation intensifies this with the language of ripeness and accumulation. In Revelation 14 the grapes of the earth are akmazo – ripe, fully matured – and are thrown into the great winepress of the wrath of God. In Revelation 18:5 Babylon’s sins have “piled up all the way to heaven,” and therefore judgment is remembered and executed. Joel 3 stands behind this imagery: the winepress is full because evil is great. So while Revelation does not say “the Tribulation is caused only by mankind reaching a set moral quota,” it absolutely portrays end-time judgment as falling when evil has become fully ripe, public, consolidated, and defiant.
3. Historical context and ancient Jewish witness
A useful Second Temple Jewish witness is Wisdom of Solomon 12. It reflects on the old inhabitants of the land and says God judged them “little by little” and gave them “an opportunity to repent.” For Protestant doctrine this is not canonical Scripture, but it is relevant historical evidence for how later Jewish tradition understood the Canaanite judgment: not as impulsive divine violence, but as delayed judgment after long patience. That fits Genesis 15 very closely.
So from a Jewish-background perspective, the logic is: God sees evil early, warns and delays, allows history to expose what the heart really is, and then judges in a way that vindicates his holiness. That background supports, though it does not by itself prove, the idea that end-time judgment likewise comes after evil has fully declared itself.
4. Theological analysis
4.1 Arminian / Provisionist and Dispensational synthesis
From a Free Will reading, the strongest conclusion is this: God genuinely gives space for repentance, and corporate societies really do harden themselves through repeated, chosen rebellion. The “full measure” language therefore is not theater. It describes real moral history under divine patience. In that framework, the Great Tribulation is the point at which humanity’s rebellion reaches a climactic, openly anti-God form – apostasy, lawlessness, idolatry, persecution, and blasphemous self-exaltation – and God answers with final historical judgment.
From a Dispensational reading, the connection is especially strong because the Tribulation is not merely general suffering. It is a distinct eschatological [end-time] period tied to Daniel’s desolation pattern, unparalleled distress, a global testing, the revelation of the lawless one, and the final judgment of “Babylon.” In that system, the Tribulation is both punishment on the rebellious world and a crisis through which God also brings Israel toward restoration. So the parallel to Canaan is not identity, but pattern: prolonged forbearance, public ripening of evil, then decisive judgment in history.
4.2 Brief contrast with Calvinist / Reformed readings
A Reformed reader can affirm nearly all of the exegetical observations above: sin ripens, wrath falls, and history unfolds at God’s appointed time. The main difference is where explanatory weight is placed. A Free Will reading emphasizes genuine resistible hardening [people could have repented but did not]. A stronger Reformed reading emphasizes the same events under a more exhaustive decretal [all-encompassing sovereign plan] framework. On the specific question you asked, both sides can agree that the Tribulation comes in the setting of matured evil; the dispute is more about the deeper relation between divine decree and creaturely refusal than about the existence of the ripening pattern itself.
5. The metaphysical level
Metaphysically [about what reality itself is], Scripture presents evil as cumulative, not merely episodic. Sin is not just isolated acts that vanish into the past. It forms a moral state, a settled direction, a ripening condition. Hence the Bible can speak of iniquity becoming full, sins piling up, grapes becoming ripe, and a measure being filled. Reality is moral because creation belongs to a holy God. Therefore rebellion has trajectory [it moves somewhere]. It ripens toward disclosure and judgment. The Tribulation, on this reading, is the historical unveiling of what mankind has become when rebellion reaches mature form.
Leviticus adds something profound here: the land itself is portrayed as reacting to moral pollution. That is covenantal [relating to God’s ordered moral world], not pagan animism. The point is that human evil disorders the creaturely realm under God’s government. So the world is not morally neutral space. It is a theater ordered by God in which evil eventually becomes unsustainable. At the end, therefore, judgment is not alien to creation. It is creation’s Judge cleansing what rebellion has defiled.
6. The psychological-spiritual level
Psychologically and spiritually, the “full measure” idea means that judgment usually follows hardening, not mere stumble. The Amorites were not judged at first impulse. Jesus’ generation did not “fill up the measure” in a single afternoon. Babylon’s sins did not rise to heaven in one act. The soul becomes fixed through repetition, rationalization, imitation, and delight in unrighteousness. Paul says of the end that people did not receive “the love of the truth” but “delighted in unrighteousness.” That is crucial. Final judgment comes not merely because people have sinned, but because evil has become loved, organized, and defended.
That also explains why Matthew 24 links increasing lawlessness with love growing cold. Wickedness is not only legal guilt. It is affective corruption [disordered loves]. The Great Tribulation, then, is not just God’s anger against bad behavior. It is the exposure of a world whose inner loves have aligned with rebellion. End-time judgment reveals what the heart has chosen when left to mature under truth rejected again and again.
7. The divine-perspective level
From the divine perspective, the delay before judgment reveals at least four things. First, God’s patience. Genesis 15 and Wisdom 12 both imply that God does not strike instantly. Second, God’s justice. He judges only when wickedness is manifest and established. Third, God’s sovereignty. The time belongs to him; evil does not force his hand mechanically. Fourth, God’s revelatory purpose [his judgment shows who he is]. End-time judgment is not merely punitive. It publicly manifests the holiness of God, the truth about human rebellion, and the righteousness of Christ’s rule.
So I would state the answer this way: the Great Tribulation does not come because mankind flips an autonomous cosmic switch. It comes because God has appointed a time in which matured rebellion, prophetic fulfillment, and divine judgment converge. Human wickedness is a real condition of that convergence, but God’s decree and timing remain primary.
8. Final conclusion
Yes, there is a substantial biblical connection between the Amorites’ iniquity “not yet complete” and the idea that end-time judgment falls when human wickedness has reached a mature and public fullness. The connection is strongest at the level of pattern, imagery, and theological logic: measure filled, sin piled up, grapes ripe, lawlessness multiplied, rebellion revealed. But the Great Tribulation should not be reduced to a simple formula like “evil reaches 100 percent, then judgment starts.” Biblically, it is better to say: God patiently permits evil to ripen until the appointed eschatological moment, and then he judges in a way that vindicates both his holiness and his covenant purposes.
If you want, I can do a second pass that traces this theme as a full canonical chain from Genesis 15 to Revelation 18 with every relevant “fullness of sin” passage listed in order.