The reason pre-tribulation is top of the heap is that it reinforces the believers' sense of their own specialness and worthiness to be among the elect. They'll get to sit on clouds sipping cool drinks while watching the wrongbelievers suffer. Which is why the map of heaven includes a window into Hell. I mean, it's no fun having a good time unless someone else is suffering horribly and you get to watch, right?

Can I get an A-men?

One of the advantages to growing up Catholic is that we weren't actually taught that we were special. We were as dammned as anyone else and we'd best remember it. "Rapture?" Nice thought. The good, the bad, and the ugly were all going to go through Tribulation together. Sort of "(God will) kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out." If you were really lucky, God might see fit to tip the scales in your favour, but you didn't get a pass just for going to church, nor even for confession.

As I recall, Jehovah's Witnesses get around this problem by saying that only 144,000 people get to go to heaven, while everyone else gets eternal life on Earth, which is treated as sort of an overflow box.

There's a Wikipedia article about the number 144,000 that discusses various beliefs, like the Jehovah's-Witness belief that only 144,000 people of either sex will make it into Heaven, and differences of opinion among other Xians as to whether that number is literal or symbolic.

Also, I can clearly understand why so many prominent religious figures bring up the "end times" so frequently. I mean, if you think about it, the Tribulation basically acts as a sort of "Silent Time Bomb of Doom." Without End Times fear, most of the liberal believers would only fear about their eternal fate until they were close to death. I can testify to this: when I was still a Christian (albeit a Christian who was questioning his beliefs) I thought that I wouldn't have to worry too much about going to Hell for the time being, since I'm still young, and probably have a full life ahead of me, assuming I don't die in anything tragic or sudden, which I assume isn't particularly likely, all things considered, and I was very reluctant to become the Christian literalist my mother was, since I despised a lot of the concepts of fundamentalist Christianity, and hated watching shows such as the 700 Club and Pastor Hagee. But the concept of "End of Days" and "Tribulation" creates urgency, and many of the Christians who preach these ideas always say its "IT'S THIS GENERATION" or "WE'RE IN THE END DAYS!" Despite the fact that I was becoming more of an atheist as time went on, hearing people like John Hagee and Jack Van Impe bringing it up so frequently was frightening, even though I knew these guys were nut jobs, especially after I watched a YouTube video that showed Van Impe incorporating UFO's into his End Times ranting, saying that they were demonic beings sent by Satan (topped with imagery of stereotypical grays so prominent in alien culture – it’s ironic how he stoops so low that he starts digging out of the pseudoscience barrel.)

...I think my day just jumped the shark.