What does the teaching regarding overcomers, a partial rapture, and that some believers will be cast into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, say to new believers, just recently come to faith in Christ who have not matured?

Are they doomed to a thousand years of outer darkness? How does any believer know if they have attained “sufficient maturity” to be counted among “mature believers” at this partial rapture? According to this teaching, what level of immaturity will cause some believers to miss the rapture, experience the great tribulation, but escape being cast into outer darkness for a thousand years? According to this teaching, what level of immaturity will require believers to experience both the great tribulation and a thousand years in outer darkness?

In Mark 12:41-44 and Luke 21:1-4, the gospels tell the story of the Lord watching as people gave to the temple treasury. Many rich people cast in much. Then an impoverished widow cast in 2 lepta, the smallest coin in Palestine at that time. The Lord’s observation was much more penetrating than ours could possibly be. He appreciated her gift much more highly than all the others.

Luke 12:48, speaking concerning the master’s dealing with His slaves at His return, says, “But to every one to whom much has been given, much will be required from him; and to whom much has been committed, they will ask of him all the more.” Only the Lord can answer the questions above, but He will not answer according to an outward standard which would be the equivalent of the amount of money His people offered to Him. His answer, that is His appraisal of each of His slaves, will be according to that one’s faithfulness with what has been given to him.

In the book of Philippians, written during his imprisonment in Rome, Paul was confident that if he died, he would go to be with Christ (1:20-23). He had no doubt at all concerning this, but in chapter 3, he says that he is still pursuing to gain the prize to which God called him (v. 14). No unbeliever will go to be with Christ when he dies. But, I would ask you, what prize was Paul pursuing if he already knew that he would be with Christ when he died? He was not at all certain that he had already obtained the prize by this point in his life (vv. 12-13). However, at the end of his life, in the last letter he wrote when he knew he was about to be martyred (2 Tim. 4:6), Paul was confident that he had finished the course the Lord had assigned to him (v. 7) and that the Lord would reward him with the crown of righteousness (v. 8).