Imminence of Christ's Coming
1 Thessalonians 1:10
Opening Prayer
“Father, we are thankful
that we can come before Your throne of grace today.
That as we prepare to study the Word, know that God the Holy Spirit, who
indwells every believer, also fills us with His knowledge, His active
sanctifying work occurs when we are in right relationship with You. Father, we know that as we walk by the Spirit, You are
working in us: encouraging us, strengthening us, and reminding us of what we
have learned in terms of Your Word, and using that to produce spiritual growth.
Father, we also continue to
pray for our nation. We pray that You would rear up spiritually mature men who
can lead, guide, and direct us, those who understand the establishment
principles derived from the Scriptures, principles of wisdom, who can be
focused on what is best for the nation, and not what is best for their
political career.
Father, we pray now, as we
continue our study in 1 Thessalonians, that You help us understand the things
that we are studying and that we may have a clear understanding of what the
Bible teaches about what we can expect next in terms of Your prophetic time
table. We pray this in Christ’s Name, Amen.”
In our last lesson, as we
are going through 1 Thessalonians 1, we came to 1 Thessalonians 1:10, which
foreshadows the eschatological or prophetic material that Paul will remind the Thessalonian believers about when he comes to 1
Thessalonians 4–5. This is the build-up to one of the most significant passages
in the New Testament. It really does teach about what is called the Rapture of
the church. We will get into that a little bit more as we get into our study.
As we look at 1
Thessalonians I will start with what Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 1:9–10, “For they
themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry we had to you, and how
you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God,” that is our
spiritual life Phase Two, “and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the
dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.”
That phrase “wrath to come”
is not always, but often, especially when “wrath” is used in conjunction with
the verb “to come” indicates something in the future, not the “wrath” in terms
of eternal judgment, but it is a term often used for God’s judgment in time.
This is called “Daniel’s Seventieth Week” or the “Time of the Tribulation,” a
seven-year period when God’s wrath is poured out upon the earth. The
implication here is that we, as the church, are delivered from that. We will
not go through that seven-year period of time.
This is known theologically
as the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. It means that believers in the Lord Jesus
Christ will be taken out of the earth to be with the Lord in an instant, a
blink of the eye, when Jesus returns in the clouds for His church. The central
passage for this is in 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17, “For the Lord Himself will descend from
heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of
God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.”
Technically that is a
resurrection, not the Rapture. “Then we who are alive and remain shall be
caught up together with them ...” That is the
key word. In the Greek it is the word HARPAZO. It was translated into the Vulgate with
the word rapio, which is where we get the English word “rapture.”
Sometimes people will say that “rapture” is not even in the Bible. You cannot
find the word anywhere in the Bible. This is not a biblical doctrine that is
really a false argument. It is based on a misunderstanding of translation and
language.
The Rapture clearly is
taught. The issue is when this occurs, the timing of the Rapture:
That is a somewhat recent
view developed by Marvin Rosenthal, who previously had held to a Pre-Trib Rapture. His view is
that only the last most severe part of the Tribulation is called the “wrath of
God.” The church does not go through the “wrath of God.” The church is removed.
It is sort of a three-quarter Tribulation view.
There are number of problems
that I have with his view, not the least of which is the way he organizes the
timing and the schedule of the seal, trumpet, and bowl judgments, and the way
he artificially uses this term “wrath of God” for the sixth seal judgment,
which I believe takes place near the first half of the first half, which would
mean something like a year to a year and a half in the first part of the
Tribulation. In this sixth seal judgment there is this asteroid shower.
During this time the leaders
of the earth, the kings and the generals of the earth, are hiding in the caves
to hide from the “wrath of the Lamb.” The “wrath of the Lamb” is poured out
from the very beginning of the seven-year Tribulation. That is clearly the same
as the “wrath of God.” Rosenthal plays with a lot of terms. He gets into a lot
of technicalities that are manufactured in order to come to his conclusion.
The Pre-Trib
Rapture always generates a lot of hostility from those who disagree with it. Primarily from those who come from a non-dispensational background.
You get some who come from a dispensational background, like Marvin Rosenthal,
but for the most part these are advocates of what is known as Covenant Theology
or Amillennialism.
In Covenant Theology or
Amillennialism they hold to a system of biblical interpretation that is not
consistently literal. By that I mean that they will look at other areas of Scripture
as being literal, for example, the prophecies regarding the first coming of
Christ are taken literally:
Numerous other prophecies
that were fulfilled in the first advent they will take literally, but
prophecies that have not been fulfilled they often take in a spiritualized or
non-literal or allegorical manner. For example, in Amillennialism, in
Revelation 20 that speaks of the facts:
The term 1,000 years is used
six or seven times in that passage. Their view is that those are not literal
1,000 years, but yet other numbers in Scripture are taken literally. What is
the basis within the text itself to not take 1,000 as a literal one-thousand-year
period? There is no basis for that. They spiritualize that to mean an extremely
long period of time, or an idealized period of time, something of that nature.
That is a non-literal interpretation.
The question is: If you are
going to interpret fulfilled prophecy literally, then what gives you the
justification to interpret unfulfilled prophecy in an allegorical and
non-literal fashion?
They really do not have an
adequate answer for that. In fact, there have been a number of “Amils” who have recognized that if they consistently
interpreted the Bible in a literal fashion, then they would end up
Pre-Millennial.
A very famous critic of
dispensationalism and an advocate of Covenant Theology, as well as one of the
founders of Westminster Theological Seminary, was a theologian by the name of
Oswald T. Allis. He is quoted as making that exact statement that if you were
to take these things literally you would end up being Pre-Millennial.
Understanding or believing
in the Rapture is a subset of those who interpret the Bible literally and
understand a Pre-Millennial Rapture. If you do not
have a belief in Pre-Millennialism, then you are not going to be thinking at
all in terms of what is going to happen to the church, because in
Amillennialism the church is equivalent to the Kingdom.
We are living in the Church
Age, but that is the spiritual form of the Kingdom. When you are living in the
spiritual form of the Kingdom Jesus is already on David’s throne in Heaven.
He’s on a spiritualized form of David’s throne.
For the Amillennialists the
next thing that is going to happen in God’s prophetic timetable is Jesus is
going to come back to the earth. There will be the judgment. Then you will go
into eternity. That is their viewpoint.
From their perspective, therefore,
those who are dispensationalists are making a lot of issues out of things that
are misinterpreted because they are not literal. Then they go back and make all
kinds of egregious claims that have been disproven by recent scholarship.
One of their claims is that the whole doctrine of the Pre-Trib
Rapture was invented by John Nelson Darby. Actually, some of them will
go so far as to say that John Nelson Darby was going to some meetings in
England and heard a young woman by the name of Margaret MacDonald give a
prophetic utterance. This was long before the charismatic movement, but they
were into various forms of mysticism. That is where they say Darby came up with
a Pre-Trib Rapture.
The reality is that if you
analyze Margaret MacDonald’s statement, which has been recorded for posterity,
it does not indicate anything other than a possibility of a
Post-Trib Rapture, because she clearly has the
church going through the Rapture.
Over the last 30 years there
have been numerous articles that have been written analyzing these historical
events. Dr. Tommy Ice has written a number of them. He did a lot of research
and investigation on the Margaret MacDonald statement back in the late 1980s
and early 1990s.
Sadly, what happens is that
the people who make these Pre-Trib Rapture claims
keep making them. It is as if dispensationalists can talk and talk and talk and
promote evidence and evidence after evidence, but those who disagree with them,
those who criticize dispensationalists, and Pre-Trib
Rapture, ignore their scholarship. They never interact with it, which raises
the question as to whether they just have an agenda to promote, or whether they
are really serious about discovering what the Bible says.
There is a new film that is
coming out, in fact, by the time you watch this it may be out. They have been
saying that they were going to release this film ever since last January. They
have had four or five release dates. The most recent e-mail indicates a release
date somewhere by the end of August. It is called Left Behind or Led Astray. I even
hesitate mentioning that because that sort of legitimizes it.
But there have been several
things, if you watch the trailer that come out that are typical of anti-dispensational,
anti Pre-Trib Rapture arguments that indicate that
once again you have people who have enough knowledge to put together a
sophisticated critique, but unfortunately they have not done the research. They
have ignored a lot of basic things that have been said.
One of the things said is
there was no Pre-Trib Rapture in the early church;
therefore, it is not in the Bible. Anyone who spends any time
studying what is referred to as the apostolic fathers, the apostles, or the
apostolic age. That is when Paul, John, Luke, and Matthew are still
alive and writing before the Canon is closed. The apostolic period is the
period from roughly AD 33 to the time of Christ’s death until the
AD mid 90s when the Apostle John, the last apostle, dies
and passes off the scene.
Then it overlaps because for
a while John is the only one left alive. From roughly the 80s, some say 70s up
to the mid 100s you have the period called the Apostolic Fathers. The apostolic
fathers were those early church fathers who knew the apostles. In some cases
they were disciples of the Apostles. Men like Polycarp, who was taught and
trained by the Apostle John. There were numerous others:
In that early stage you have
some people look at these writers because they do not have enough time to
distinguish between that which is canonical and that which is not canonical;
but it has some spiritual value to it. That was their perspective. One of these
arguments comes along and begins to question and throw doubts. Basically, their
assumption is that anything that is not there early is not accurate.
The problem is that you go
into the early apostolic fathers, and if you read what they believe about
salvation they are really confused. They believe you have to be baptized or you
were not saved. Most of them believe in baptismal regeneration.
They did not have a clear
understanding of the Trinity because the Trinity is not really thought through
analytically and defined until you get to the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, you
have a lot of problems because in the early church, from about AD 80 until
about AD 150, they are rearticulating what Scripture says in a
non-analytical fashion.
It is only as you get more
into the 2nd century that you get issues related to persecution and
opposition. You get various philosophers that are anti-Christian who are
writing anti-Christian diatribes. You get the development of a group of men
that are called the “apologists” or the defenders. They
begin to think more analytically about Scripture
and answering these questions.
For example, in the early
church regarding the Trinity:
They believed in monotheism,
but nobody is answering those kinds of questions that call for more detailed
analytical thought.
You do not have this kind of
analytical thought characterizing that particular period in the early church,
but you do have clear indications in some writings in the early church that
believed in a distinction between God’s plan for Israel and God’s plan for the
church. You have people like Dr. Larry Clutchfield,
who has done some great work on that.
You also have another person
by the name of Pettigrew, who has done some work on Israel and the church
showing that you have certain basic themes in the early church that relate to
dispensationalism. One of the most significant of these doctrines is the
doctrine known as the imminence of the Rapture, the imminence of the Second
Coming that Jesus taught that He was coming at any moment.
If Jesus is going to come at
any moment that means that there are no signs. There are no prophecies that
have to be fulfilled prior to His coming. We come to understand that there are
two aspects to Jesus’ future coming:
There is sort of a prelude
to the Second Coming, seven years earlier, that we refer to as the Rapture of
the church. One of the reasons we believe this is because there are so many
passages in the Scripture and in the early church where they believed clearly
that Jesus could come back at any moment.
They did not have to wait
for the Antichrist. They did not have to wait for the abomination of desolation.
They did not have to wait for the 144,000 to come on the scene. They did not
have to wait for any of the seal, trumpet, or bowl judgments. They clearly
understood that what they were looking for was Jesus Christ, not the
Antichrist.
What I want to do at this
early stage, as we are first introducing the concept of the Rapture, is to look
at this doctrine of imminency. In terms of the early
church, what did they believe about the imminence of Christ’s return?
In 1 Clement, this is Clement
of Rome, who is the leader of the Church of Rome. Roman Catholics believe he
was the 2nd or 3rd pope. That is not valid whatsoever,
but he was the leader of the Church of Rome. He wrote an epistle to the
Corinthians. He said: “Of a truth, soon and suddenly shall His will be
accomplished, as the Scripture also bears witness, saying, ‘Speedily will He
come, and will not tarry…’ ”
He was expecting the return
of Christ to be soon and sudden, and he was not looking for the Antichrist or
anything else to come in the intervening period.
This is clearly an
indication that he believed that the Lord would suddenly come to His temple. He
goes on to say: “… and, ‘The Lord shall suddenly come to His temple, even the
Holy One, for whom ye look.’ ”
Then a couple of decades
later you have Ignatius in Ephesians 11. Ignatius was a martyr around AD 120. He
says: “The last times are come upon us. Let us therefore be of a reverent
spirit, and fear the longsuffering of God, that it tend
not to our condemnation. For let us either stand in awe of the wrath to come,
or show regard for the grace which is at present displayed—one of two things.”
Ignatius sees that the last
days are near. They are imminent. We are right at the door.
Irenaeus, who is the Bishop of Leon in France,
wrote against heresies quite a bit. He says [in Against Heresies]: “And therefore, when
in the end the Church shall be suddenly caught up from this, it is said, ‘There
shall be tribulation such as has not been since the beginning, neither shall
be.’ ”
Irenaeus wrote roughly between AD 150 and AD 170. That
is a fascinating statement by him. He clearly indicates that he understands imminency.
There have been other quotes
and statements that have been discovered through the research of the Pre-Trib Rapture Study Group. A lot of times in the early
church, when somebody who was nobody would write, in order for people to read them they would assume a pseudonym for somebody significant.
They would write under that name. This was the case of a Syrian bishop by the
name of Ephrem. He wrote in and around the 3rd
century, but later on there was someone who copied his style and used his name.
This person is referred to as Pseudo-Ephraem.
Pseudo-Ephraem
writes in the 4th century. He did not have a seven-year Tribulation.
He only had a three-year Tribulation, but he has the church being removed prior
to the Tribulation. That is still a Pre-Tribulation
Rapture. This is clearly evidence of a very unsophisticated concept that the
next thing that is going to happen is Jesus is going to return for the church.
The church is not going to go through the Tribulation. We find this in the
first 400 years of the church.
Another thing that is
interesting, to put this historical stuff out there at the beginning, is that a
book just came out by a history professor at the Colorado Christian College in
Colorado. His name is William Watson. The title of this book is Dispensationalism
before Darby. This man is one of those nerdy little historians that has spent years of his life specializing in the period of
British church history in the 1600s and 1700s.
For fun Watson goes over to
England and he prowls around all these old libraries in Oxford and Cambridge
and other of the old schools there. He reads the sermons, and many of the
sermons of the Puritans were printed. He reads through those.
What he has discovered is
that there are a huge number of Puritans in the mid-1600s who understood that
the church would not go through the Tribulation. He has given some of this
evidence in papers he has given at the Pre-Trib
Rapture Study Group.
This book has just been
published. In fact, I got my copy last week. I think it came out about three
months ago. This kind of information is not on anybody’s radar. Once it gets
published like this, it is amazing that the critics of dispensationalism and
the Pre-Trib Rapture ignore it.
There used to be a man who
would go to the Dallas Seminary library. His name was Dave MacPherson.
He has a book that was an attack on Darby. He was one of the ones who promoted
that whole thing about the fact that Darby got the Pre-Trib
Rapture from Margaret MacDonald.
MacPherson went around and he would put these little
fliers for his book inside all these books on the Rapture in the Dallas
Seminary library. As a student you would be thumbing through a book and you
would be studying it and all of a sudden one of his little fliers would come
out.
But even long after this
information on Pseudo-Ephraem and several others came
out, MacPherson continued to promote that same thing,
because they have a theological agenda and it is not to discover biblical
truth.
Here we have three quotes
and there are numerous other quotes that could be found that indicate a sense
of imminency in the early church apostolic fathers.
They believed that Jesus was on the cusp of His return. Nothing needed to take
place prior to that.
This is the idea in chart
form, our Prophetic Panorama:
When we look at what Paul at
this passage, Paul says: 2 Timothy 4:8, “Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day:
and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.”
It is important to study
what is going to happen with regard to Christ’s future coming and how this is
laid out in the Scripture, because this is so significant that if you love
Christ’s appearance, then you are preparing yourself spiritually for that
return. You are preparing yourself for the Judgment Seat of Christ. You are
living your life for the Lord.
Let’s start off with some
definitions:
That does not mean that some
prophecy related to what will happen within the Daniel’s 70th week,
for example, some people may think that the return of the Jews to the land now
is prophetic fulfillment. It depends on how you define that, but that is not a
precursor to the Rapture. That is not a sign of the Rapture. That is something
related to what will take place in the Tribulation. I prefer to think of that
as simply stage setting. The Rapture is not dependent or conditioned upon
anything else happening.
Last week as we were all
looking at the radar every day, to find out what this tropical storm “Bill” was
going to do, its arrival was imminent. It was going to hit Houston and drop
tons of rain on us at any moment, and at the last minute it jogged to the other
side. That is the idea. We did not know quite when we were going to get these
rains. We kept hearing that they were coming, they were coming, they were
coming, but they never came. We missed the storm, but we thought it was
imminent. Everybody was changing their plans, staying home from work, avoiding
the freeways, and any place that could flood.
1. What we learn about the imminency of the Rapture is that it is certain it will
occur, unlike the arrival of tropical storm “Bill.”
It is not dependent,
conditioned, or contingent on any other event. Nothing has to happen.
Therefore, Paul expected it in his lifetime. Clement expected it in his
lifetime. Irenaeus expected it in his lifetime. Many,
many others expected it in their lifetime. However, in the Middle Ages this
whole doctrine got lost. Why did it get lost?
It got lost because, as the
early church, through the influence of Origen and Augustine, shifted from a
literal interpretation to an allegorical interpretation that dominated the
western and eastern church from roughly AD 400 up until the Protestant Reformation in
AD 1500, when you started to get a return to a literal
interpretation. During that period nobody is thinking in terms of a literal
return of Christ to establish His Kingdom.
If you are not thinking in
terms of a literal return of Christ to establish His Premillennial Kingdom,
then you are never going to think about the Rapture either. The Rapture is not
even going to occur. Premillennialism is a theologically contingent doctrine
for understanding the Rapture.
In terms of imminency:
The Church Age is the only
dispensation that has historical trends and no prophetic fulfillment. The
Church Age began with the advent of the Holy Spirit. In Acts 2 it begins with
the baptism by the Holy Spirit, and it ends with the Rapture of the church.
This is often referred to as a mystery because it was not revealed in the Old
Testament.
2. The doctrine of imminency is important to understanding the Pre-Tribulation
return of Jesus Christ at the Rapture.
This is the definition of
the Rapture: The resurrection of all dead Church Age believers and the removal
of all living believers from the earth at the end of the Church Age before the
beginning of the Tribulation.
Technically it is that
removal of the living. That is where the term Rapture, those who are caught up
to be with the Lord in the air, those who alive and remain, are caught up to be
with the Lord in the air.
You have the resurrection of
those who are dead and the Rapture, the removal of all living believers from
the earth before the beginning of the Tribulation.
3. You have different views:
Pre-Tribulation Rapture—the
view that the Rapture will occur before the Tribulation and will include all
believers. This view has: Church Age à Rapture à Tribulation à Millennium.
Partial Rapture—the view
that the spiritual Christians go up at the Rapture before the Tribulation. But
if you have been a naughty Christian and you have not gotten in fellowship, and
then you are going to have to go through the Tribulation.
It is amazing how many
Christians do not understand forgiveness. They do not understand grace. They
think that if you have been a disobedient believer that somehow you are going
to be punished for your sins. This is the Partial Rapture view.
Mid-Trib
Rapture—the view that the Rapture occurs in the middle of the Tribulation. It
occurs about the same time as the abomination of desolation.
The most obvious problem
with that view is that it has certain prophetic signs that occur ahead of time.
It is not going to happen. You are going to be looking for the Antichrist to
show up on the scene before you are going to be looking for the return of
Jesus. All through the New Testament the focus is on the return of Jesus.
Post-Trib
Rapture—the view that emphasizes that Jesus comes at the end of the
Tribulation. There are a number of problems with that exegetically. One of the
simplest arguments is: If all believers are raptured at the end of the
Tribulation, then they will all get resurrection bodies. There will not be
anyone with a mortal body who can propagate and procreate the human race into
the Millennial Kingdom. The Post-Trib Rapture really
falls apart for a lot of reasons.
4. The purpose of the imminency is to keep every believer in a constant state of
expectancy: looking, waiting, hoping for the return of Christ that we might be
ready, prepared, that we might not be ashamed at His coming, as the Apostle
John warns in 1 John 2:28.
If you knew that Jesus was
not going to return in your lifetime, you might not live quite as obediently as
you do thinking that He might come tomorrow. The reality is that even if Jesus
does not return in or near our lifetime, we are going to die. We could die
tomorrow. We could die the next day. We need to always live in this state of
expectancy.
If Christ does not return
until after the Tribulation, after the rise of the Antichrist, after the seal
judgments, trumpet judgments, and bowl judgments, then we are really looking
for those things to occur first. We may relax in our Christian life.
5. Believers are to look for
the blessed hope of the Savior:
We are waiting for Him. We
are focused on that as believers. We are not waiting for something else. We are
waiting for His return.
6. No prophecy occurs
between the baptism of the Spirit and the Rapture means that the Rapture is
imminent. It could occur at any time. No one knows what hour. Nothing is
intervening.
This is such a critical
point to understand. We are not looking for something else. This is a problem
that you have with a certain number of dispensationalists today. The people who
are caught up with what I call the “newspaper exegesis.”
Hal Lindsey was one of the
worst. Hal did a tremendous job and had a superb influence on a whole
generation, probably two generations, of people who have read his prophetic
books and watched his television shows. But Hal borderlines,
if not steps over the line, into historicism. He is trying to identify
current events as that which fulfills prophecy.
In dispensationalism we do
not look at current events and try to figure out whether this is related to the
Antichrist? Could the Antichrist be this President or that President, this
person or that person or another person?
We are focused on the fact
that the next event is going to be Jesus’ return. We are not going know who the Antichrist is until he signs that covenant with
Israel. We will already be in Heaven.
If you go back to the early
1900s there were a lot of these prophetic movements that were popping up all
over the United States and all over England. These were date setters. The ones
involved were saying that Jesus was coming back this year. Some of the worst
would sell everything they had. They would put on white robes and sheets to be
prepared. They were already dressed for Heaven. They would go up on some
mountaintop and wait for Jesus.
There were so many of these
kinds of radical movements that people were tired of hearing about this. We see
some of that today. There was a book by Edgar C. Whisenant
that came out back in 1988 called 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be
in 1988. Oops! It did not happen. So he wrote another book called The Final Shout:
Rapture Report 1989 … 1993 ... 1994. Then we did not hear any more from him.
No prophecy is necessarily
fulfilled, so we are not looking for that. Today we have people getting all
excited and stimulated by Joel Rosenberg. Joel believes in a
Pre-Trib Rapture. His theology is fairly
straight, as far as I know, but he believes that the battles of Ezekiel 38–39
are going to occur before the Tribulation, maybe even before the Rapture, which
is not an uncommon view.
People we know, Tommy Ice,
Arnold Fruchtenbaum, Tim LaHaye,
David Cooper, and a number of others hold to that position. It is one of three
most likely scenarios for understanding the timing of Ezekiel 38–39. But in Joel
Rosenberg’s case, right now he is looking at what is happening on the scene:
These are the places that
are mentioned as the allies who are going to instigate the Ezekiel 38 invasion
of Israel. Rosenberg is looking at what is going on there and trying to see how
this fits this prophetic timetable. This is just a waste of time, in my
opinion, because none of these things have to take place prior to the Rapture.
The Rapture is a signless event. It could happen at
any moment.
7. The resurrection of the
church, like our dying, is completely out of our control. The timing is out of
our control. Nothing we can do can speed it up. Nothing we can
do can slow it down. It is based on God’s schedule, not our schedule.
One of the interesting
things is that in the Jewish community you get a couple of rumors that are
pretty rampant to explain why evangelicals support Israel:
Actually, there was a Jewish
Rabbi by the name of Manasseh ben Israel, who lived
in the mid-1600s and at the time of Oliver Cromwell in the 1640s in England. At
this time the Jews had been kicked out of England for about 400 years. Jews had
not been living in England at all. They had been completely expelled from
England. Manasseh ben Israel got the idea that
because Deuteronomy says that God is going to scatter the Jews to all the
nations of the earth, that if there is a nation without a Jew, then they cannot
be restored to the land yet.
Manasseh ben
Israel went to Cromwell and said if he would let Jews back into England, then
that will speed up the coming of the Messiah and the return of the Jews to
their national homeland. That was a twist on this same argument.
The point is that the Bible
says the timing is set. There is nothing we can do. You can get all the Jews
back into Israel tomorrow, and it will not change the timing of the Rapture one
little bit. Nothing affects that. That is locked away in the secret counsels of
God.
We have no control over the
time or the manner of the Rapture any more than we do the time of the manner or
time of our death.
8. The resurrection of the
church is totally beyond our control because resurrection is the Lord’s
victory.
1 Corinthians 15:57 talks
about the resurrection as the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ, “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ.”
That is not a timing event
that we can impact.
9. While the Rapture is
imminent, the Second Advent is not.
There are signs. When the
apostles came to Jesus, there on the Mount of Olives, and asked what the signs
of His coming would be, then Jesus gave the Olivet Discourse, an explanation of
all the things that are going to happen. There will be wars and rumors of wars,
famines, plagues, all these things. That is not
talking about things that are going on now. We have had famines, plagues, wars
and rumors of wars since Noah got off the boat.
Jesus is saying that this is
something distinctive. These are plagues on steroids. This is wars on steroids. This is wars, diseases, plagues, and
famines that go far beyond anything ever experienced in history, because this
is going to be a sign of His coming. These are wars and plagues that are
related to the seal, trumpet, and bowl judgments of the Tribulation that are 10
or 15 or 20 times more intense and severe than anything ever experienced before
in history.
The Second Coming is going
to be preceded by all of these signs. There has to be the abomination of
desolation. All of these things have to take place before the Second Coming.
The Rapture, the next coming of Christ, is not based upon any fulfilled
prophecy.
10. The Rapture could have
occurred at the time of James or Paul because no prophecy had to be fulfilled
before the resurrection occurs. James expected it in his lifetime. Paul
expected it in his lifetime. Peter expected it in his lifetime, and yet it did
not happen. That is the doctrine of imminency.
11. Distortion of the doctrine of
the imminency of the Rapture results in instability
and foolish explanation or speculation about the timing of the Rapture.
People just go crazy about
this. We need to live each day as if Jesus is coming back tomorrow. We also
need to live as if Jesus is not coming back for another 200 years. We have a
lot of Christians today, in America especially, who think that things look so
bad that the Rapture needs to be very soon.
There is a little problem with
that. If you are a Christian in any Islamic country, or if you are a Christian
in probably 80% if the world, things have always looked bad.
We gave been living in a
little bubble for about 300–400 years, and because that bubble is diminishing,
and is probably going to go away, does not mean the Rapture is any closer. We
have to recognize that. I think that to some degree a lot of our critics are
partially correct when they say that Christians look at the Rapture as an
escape clause, that they are not going to go through tough times. I think we
need to recognize that.
We do believe that Paul
clearly taught that we are going to go through difficult times, tribulation,
even martyrdom. It could be extreme, but the Rapture is not an escape clause
from that. But it is that when life gets tough we often think, “I sure wish the
Rapture would occur tomorrow. There is not a single problem in my life that the
Rapture would not solve in a heartbeat.”
What are some key passages that
demonstrate the imminency of Scripture?
2 Peter 3:3–4, “Know this first
of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following
after their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? For
ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the
beginning of creation.’ ”
This indicates in my mind
that there is going to be a long period of time before Jesus returns. There is
nothing in between. It indicates that there is going to be the coming of Christ
and that during that time there are going to be those who taunt the church and
said that nothing has changed. The last days. We
always have to distinguish between the “last days of the church” and the “last
days of Israel.” The “last days of Israel” is the Tribulation.
This is not talking about
what is going on in the Tribulation, but what is going on during the Church
Age. The principle there on the bottom of 2 Peter 3:4 “all things continue just as it was from the
beginning of creation,” is basically formalized in a principle of geology called
uniformitarianism—that all the processes that we see at work on the earth today
have been the same forever and ever. Nothing has ever changed.
We can look at the decay
rates today and assume that they always decayed at that same rate, and we can
extrapolate back to determine that the earth is three or four million years
old. We can look at erosion. We can come up with the date of the earth because
if the Mississippi River delta is putting out so much silt per hour, then we
can extrapolate back and come up with a different understanding of the age of
the earth.
The trouble is that you can
look at about 20–30 different processes and come up with widely varying ages of
the earth, because they do not stay the same. We saw this recently when I was
on the Grand Canyon trip. But there have been collections of this done. You can
look at places like Answers in Genesis.
I think I went through this in the study of the flood back in Genesis, but
there are numerous charts that give decay rates for the age of the earth based
upon different systems.
For example:
All of these indicate different
ages. But the point that we also see in this passage is this idea that Jesus
has not returned yet, and that the next thing that is going to happen on the agenda
is the return of Christ, not these other events.
Then we have John 14:1–3, which is
really a great Rapture passage. A lot of people do not think of it that way,
but it really is. Here Jesus tells his disciples who have just learned He was
leaving and want to know where He is going and how they can get there. They do
not know. Jesus said: John 14:1–3, “Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God,
believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many
dwelling places.”
A lot of us memorized this from
the King James Version and it said “mansions.” That was a mistranslation
because the Latin word that was used to translate this was mansionis.
Unfortunately, that word simply refers to a place to live, often a temporary
place to live. This is not mansions. We are not going
to get some great palatial place.
I know that burst so many bubbles.
I know people who have been to great places, great
vacations on this earth, and they have pictures. They say that when they get to
Heaven that this is what I want my mansion to look like, Lord. But this is a
temporary dwelling place.
Where are we going to dwell
permanently? We are going to go to Heaven. We are going to go to our heavenly
dwelling place. The light is on and we are going to stay there for a short time.
Then we return to the earth with the Lord. We are going to rule and reign on
the earth with the Lord through the Millennial Kingdom.
Then what happens?
New heavens and new earth and we
are going to live in the New Jerusalem above the new earth. Our dwelling place
really is not in Heaven forever and ever. That is a misunderstanding. It is an
outgrowth of the allegorical view that Jesus comes back, everything is
destroyed, and we go to Heaven.
Jesus says: John 14:2–3, “In My Father’s
house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I
go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will
come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I
am, there you may be also.”
Jesus is not emphasizing anything
that intervenes, or that He is going to come again and it be
a surprise.
Jesus said in Revelation 22:12, “Behold, I am
coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to
every man according to what he has done.” This means soon. Once the time
comes everything will unfold in a rapid fashion. It does not mean that He is
going to come in the next four or five years. It has the idea of when I am
coming all of these things that will happen will domino very quickly. We have
to be prepared for that coming.
James 5:7, “Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the
coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious produce of the
soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains. You too
be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.”
It is near. It is the next thing that is at hand. It is going to happen in the
prophetic timetable.
James 5:9 pictures Jesus as “standing right at
the door.” It could happen at any moment.
1 Thessalonians 1:10, “and to wait for
His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who
delivers us from the wrath to come.”
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:7, “so that you are
not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus
Christ.” That is what the believers are waiting for. They are not waiting
for the revelation of the Antichrist, but the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Philippians 3:20–21, “For our
citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the
Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into
conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has
even to subject all things to Himself.”
That is what we are waiting
for.
1 Thessalonians 4:15, “For this we say
to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, and remain until the
coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep.”
It is just this same thing
over and over and over again. That that
is the next thing that we are looking for.
Titus 2:13, “looking for the blessed hope and appearing
of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus.”
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 16:22, “If anyone does
not love the Lord, let him be accursed. Maranatha.”
The Lord is near. Philippians 4:5,
“Let your
forbearing spirit be known to all men. The Lord is
near.” This is what we are looking for.
The Didache, 16. 1 (ca. AD 70 to 90) we read: “Be vigilant over
your life; ‘let your lamps’ not be extinguished, or your loins ungirded, but be prepared, for you know not the hour in
which our Lord will come.”
In that film, the trailer that I
mentioned earlier, that is one of the first things that they come out with and
say: In The Didache they do not understand anything. But you have a
clear statement here of the imminency of Christ. That
He is going to come back at any moment. That is the next thing to happen.
John Calvin said the same thing: “Be
prepared to expect Him every day, or rather every moment.” Calvin was not
consistent because he was an Amillennialist.
John Calvin also said: “Today we
must be alert to grasp the imminent return of Christ.”
And John Calvin talking about 1
Thessalonians 4: “It means by this to arouse the Thessalonians to wait for it,
nay more, to hold all believers in suspense, that they may not promise
themselves some particular time … that believers might be prepared at all
times.”
The Westminster Confession recognizes the reality of imminence: “… shake off all
carnal security and be always watchful, because they know not at what hour the
Lord will come.”
This is the doctrine of imminency. If Jesus’ return can occur at any moment, then
it has to be before all of the signs, all of the seal, trumpet, and bowl
judgments, all the things that happen during the Tribulation period. Otherwise
it will not happen at any moment, and it will not happen at an hour we know not
of.
Closing Prayer
“Father, thank You for this
opportunity to study these things and be reminded of Your
faithfulness, Your goodness, and the fact that You have told us that Jesus is
returning. We can count on it. We just do not know when. We need to be prepared
for it.
The implication is, from the
doctrine of imminency, that we do not need to be
concerned about going through the Tribulation, though we may indeed go through
serious opposition, persecution, and tribulation in this life. We know that Your grace can sustain us in everything for our hope is in
You. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”