Why I Believe in the Rapture
“How can a young man
cleanse his way by taking heed thereto according to Thy Word," Psalm
119:9. "Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against
Thee," Psalm 119:11. "Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light
unto my path," Psalm 119:105. "Jesus prayed to the Father, to
sanctify them in truth, Thy Word is truth," John 17:17. "For the
grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God shall stand
forever," Isaiah 40:8.
Before we get
started this evening, let’s go to the Lord in prayer. We will have a few
moments of silent prayer so you can make sure that you are in fellowship, which
simply means that when we sin we are out of fellowship. That ongoing enjoyment
of our abiding in Christ, our fellowship with God is broken. We are no longer
walking by the Spirit, but we are walking according to the sin nature. And so
by confessing our sins to God the Father we are immediately forgiven and
cleansed of all unrighteousness. We are restored to walking by the Spirit so we
can enjoy our fellowship with God. And so we will have a few moments of silent
prayers so that you can make sure you are spiritually prepared and then I will
open in prayer. Let’s pray.
Father, as we come
before You this evening we are mindful of situations in this world that seem
quite chaotic and out of control, situations especially in the Middle East,
which is often been the graveyard of empires as we see the rise of this
horrible group, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), as
well as the parallel development we see in Israel with the ongoing fighting
with Hamas. And Father, we pray that You would give wisdom to the leaders of
Israel and wisdom to the leaders in the United States as to how to handle these
situations. Father, we pray especially for those who are missionaries, who are
working in these areas; that they might be protected; that You might give them
courage and strength to be a ministry to those who are in need. And Father, we
pray too for those Christians who are near ISIS, those who have been driven from their
homes, lost everything that they have; those who are working with various
humanitarian groups. We pray that they might be faithful in presenting the only
real hope, which is Jesus Christ. Father, we pray for us, this congregation,
that we might have a view that goes beyond the walls of this congregation to
the impact of Your Word throughout the world; and that it is only through the
impact of individual believers who are studying the Word and applying it as
they move out from within their narrow areas of our live into the broader
applications in terms of our local culture, the culture of our nation’s and
beyond; that we are used by You as the light of the world. Now Father, we pray
that You will challenge us with Your Word this evening as we study it that we
might have hope and strength from the Scriptures. We pray this in Christ's
Name. Amen.
Open your Bibles to
1 Thessalonians 4, which will be our key passage that we will begin with this
evening. We are looking at the question, Why I Believe in the Rapture. This
question of the Rapture is really a question of timing, but we first of all
have to understand what it is, and then we have to understand when it will take
place. That has been a matter of debate over the last almost 200 years. Many
people today still erroneously think that John Nelson Darby came up with the
idea of a pre-Tribulation (pre-Trib) Rapture. That is a Rapture of the church
that comes prior to the seven-year Tribulation, also known as the time of
Jacob’s wrath, also known as Daniel’s 70th week. It is a seven-year
period that begins not with the Rapture, as we will see time and again, but it
begins with the signing of a covenant between the Antichrist and Israel. That
kicks off the clock and as the clock goes forward it will only go seven years
and then the Lord Jesus Christ will return to the earth. But before that
happens, this event known as the Rapture, sometimes it is called the “secret
Rapture.”
I did not grow up
learning that term “secret Rapture” and usually you only hear opponents use
that term secret Rapture; but actually that term was used by dispensationalists
back in the 19th century. It came out of part of the culture in
which John Nelson Darby operated. He was originally ordained as an Anglican
clergy. He became quite disenchanted with the Anglican Church and left it and
was one of the original founders of a group known as the Plymouth Brethren.
They believe that as the church age continued and came closer and closer to end
times that there would be an increase of apostasy so that there will be fewer
and fewer believers on the earth, fewer and fewer church age believers. So when
the Rapture occurred there wouldn’t be many left. When they disappeared it
wouldn’t be that noticed. So it was a “secret Rapture.” That is what they meant
by that, but often our opponents use that. I don’t know if it will be secret or
not. I think that it will be very obvious that there are believers who are
gone. If the Rapture were to occur today I think it would cause great chaos in
the world.
When I was a kid I
heard that there was at least one airline that had a president who was a
believer who wouldn’t allow two Christians to fly in the cockpit together. I
don’t know if that was true or not, but I heard that a number of times and that
was back in the 50s. Nowadays nobody would know. Most airline executives
probably don’t have a clue, but that was true. You are going to have a lot of
accidents that take place, a lot of chaos that takes place. In the United
States we still have a huge number of significant captains of industry,
officers in the military, politicians in government who are believers who would
no longer be here. This would cause tremendous calamity! I believe that in
other governments there are those who are believers, and in many businesses
around the world there are those who are believers. We don’t know the extent of
that, but it is very possible that if the Rapture were to occur today that it
would cause worldwide chaos.
I think that that is
very likely and that it is into the vacuum of leadership that it occurs during
that chaos that the Antichrist, at that time a previously unknown person. He
certainly isn’t identified as the Antichrist until after he signs that treaty
with Israel. When the Antichrist signs that treaty with Israel that is the
first sign, the first clear indication that he is the Antichrist before that we
do not know. There is always a lot of speculation as to who the Antichrist
might be and it is always helpful to remember that Satan is no more informed
about the timing of the Rapture then any of us. Only God the Father has access
to that information. Only God the Father knows that information. Jesus said
that it was only for the Father to know. Obviously, He is omniscient and He
would know, but it is not part of His role to disclose that or be involved in
that decision as the Second Person of the Trinity. That was the domain of God
the Father.
And so if Satan is absolutely
ignorant of the timing of the Rapture that means that Satan has to be ready at
any moment to have an Antichrist candidate in place. And that means that back
in the early 1800s, late 1700s, when Christians thought it might be Napoleon.
It might have been. If later on in the 19th century if it was
Bismarck; it might have been. Satan had somebody in place. It could possibly
have been Hitler; it could have been any number of candidates that have been
suggested because Satan always had to have somebody who would fit that profile,
who he could use to move into that position. So at any time in history people
could certainly look around and go “awe” maybe it could be so and so; and maybe
it was, maybe it wasn’t, who knows, because God has not authorized the Rapture
yet.
We are looking at
this doctrine of the Rapture, which is important for a number of reasons, and I
just want to go through parts of the overview. Now here is the chart. I have
animated the last couple of weeks. This is just the overview of the
dispensations and ages. We have the two broad ages in the Old Testament, the age of the
Gentiles up to the tower of Babel; actually, to the call of Abraham; and then
the age of Israel.
Those ages are subdivided into administrative periods, administrations of
God. The dispensation of perfect environment during the Garden of Eden, the
dispensation of conscience from the Garden of Eden to the Noahic Flood, the
dispensation of human government from the Flood to the
call of Abraham. The dispensation of patriarchs, that is the first dispensation in the
age of Israel, from Abraham to the giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai; and then the
dispensation of the Mosaic Law, which extends all the way to the cross because
it is the cross that is the end of the Law.
All we have at the
end of that dispensation is sort of a hinge dispensation. It has got
significant distinctives and that is the period of Christ’s public ministry on
the earth (Messianic age). So I identify that as a distinct dispensation; it is
a hinge dispensation that fulfills the Law looking to the past, but Jesus also
sets the precedent for the spiritual life of the church age. The church age
begins 50 days after the cross at the Day of Pentecost in AD 33 and will end with the Rapture of the
church that is what ends. What is distinctive in the church age is the baptism
by the Holy Spirit and the role of God the Holy Spirit in empowering the
spiritual life of church age believers. Following the Rapture, not the next
day, but certainly maybe the next week, the next month, maybe even the next
year or decade the Tribulation will begin. We don’t know how much time will
take place in that intervening period. There was certainly a 50- day period.
Christ is the end of the Law at the cross, but the church age doesn’t begin for
50 days at the day of Pentecost. There is a 50-day gap there when there is a
transition from one dispensation to another. So there is certainly going to be
some kind of transition between the end of the church age and the beginning of
the Tribulation.
These are the two
key questions that we need to address. We looked last time at what is the
Rapture and defined it as the translation of all living believers from the earth at the end of
the church age immediately following the resurrection of all dead church age believers.
There is a distinction in the text. Those who are in dead in Christ will arise
from the dead and then we who are alive and remain will be “caught up.” That is
the word for Rapture, HARPAZO. So the “caught up,” the Rapture word, technically only
applies to those “who are alive and remain.” The dead in Christ will rise first.
That is the term for resurrection. So if you want to be technical, the dead in
Christ are resurrected when the Lord returns in the air and those who are alive
are raptured. Now most people don’t think precisely enough for that to make a
whole lot of difference and it will fly right past them. But technically, in
the Scripture the
Rapture, that word, was applied only to that which happens to those “who
are alive and remain.”
This is the word I
just mentioned here in terms of Rapture vocabulary, HARPAZO, and it means to be caught up; it means
to seize upon something with force or to snatch up. It is a word that is often
used of a thief coming and stealing something. It is something unexpected,
something sudden, it is something that happens quickly. This is used in 1
Thessalonians 4:17. The Greek word HARPAZO was translated by Jerome. Jerome was one of the early
church fathers in the 3rd century who translated both the Old
Testament and New Testament into Latin. And the Latin word that he used to
translate HARPAZO was the Latin word rapto, which is the basic
for our word Rapture. Every now and then you will hear somebody say, I don’t
believe in the Rapture. Prove it. That word is not used in the Bible. It is! It
is used in the Latin Bible. It is not used in your English Bible, but it is
that word meaning to be “caught up” to be with the Lord in the air.
There are a number
of passages that allude to the Rapture, three key passages that really focus us
on the Rapture. The foundation passage is the one in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.
Paul begins by saying, “We do not want you to be uninformed, brethren.” We
don’t want you to be ignorant. We don’t want you to not understand the issues.
Paul was only in Thessalonica for a short time, two to three months. Some
scholars believe it was maybe only as little as six weeks. I think it was a
little longer than that, but certainly not much longer than three or four
months. And clearly during that three or four month period he taught these new
believers in Thessalonica about future things.
We live in an era
today, partly influenced by the whole agnosticism of post-modern influence in
the church, that there are things that we just can’t be certain about in the
Bible. You might even hear that, well we can’t really know for sure about
prophecy or we can’t know for sure about the sign gifts. That is a favorite one
today. Or we really can’t know we just need to be involved in doing what Jesus
said to do. But doing what Jesus said to do is predicated upon understanding
correctly what Jesus said to do, and that means that the Bible had to have been
written with the understanding from God that we would be able to correctly
understand what He is communicating to us. God did not cloud His Word or
obfuscate His Word for church age believers. It may take us a little time,
study, and effort to come to an understanding of the truth, but post-modernism
has so influenced the thinking of people—especially younger people, but
it affects older people as well—in our culture that they say we can’t
really know these things, and often that is an excuse for intellectually and
theologically lazy people who just don’t want to do the homework. Sometimes it
is theologically and spiritually fearful people who are afraid that their safe
secure theological system might be challenged by the understanding of the Word.
So they would rather live in sort of a fog of nebulosity rather than getting
into the details of the text.
But Paul makes a
statement between 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 that is very specific and its purpose
is seen in the last verse in 1 Thessalonians 4:18. He says, “Therefore comfort
one another with these words.” So he understood that what he was saying in this
section was something that would bring great comfort to people whose loved ones
who were believers in Jesus Christ had died physically. They were concerned
about what happened to them and what would happen to their bodies and their
souls in the future. So this was designed to give comfort to people at the time
of loss.
This is a great
passage to use therefore at a time of loss, at a funeral, at a memorial
service, in talking to someone who has experienced a death in the family
because this helps us to understand something about grief. Paul says, “We don’t
want you to be uninformed, brethren,” talking to believers about those who are
asleep. As I pointed out last time, the word “asleep” is a euphemism for
Christians who have died. It is not talking about the Jehovah Witness' doctrine
of soul sleep where the soul just sort of goes into a coma-like state until
Jesus returns. We know from Scripture that when we are absent from the body we
are face to face with the Lord, and when Jesus returns those who have gone died
physically will return with Him, which is what this passage teaches.
So the focus of this
passage is on comfort to those who would be going through grief at the time of
physical loss and the foundation for it is in the gospel. 1 Thessalonians 4:13,
“if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him
those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.” The point that he is making here, and I
stress this, is if we believe Jesus died and rose again—the emphasis is on
the resurrection—the resurrection of Christ, then we should believe in the physical
bodily resurrection of believers. He is not giving us the content of the gospel
at this point. There is nothing here talking about the content of the gospel. He
is saying, if we as Christians believe that Christ died for sins and He rose
again, if we have a believe in the physical body resurrection of Christ, then
the application of that to us is that we should also believe in the physical
bodily resurrection of believers. So “if we believe that Jesus died and rose
again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.
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."
Explanation, “For
the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel
and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we
who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to
meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore
comfort one another with these words.”
This is the
foundation, so we want to take a little time in understanding this. As I stated
already, the purpose of this section is to encourage believers in relation to
the death of Christian loved ones. This is not a passage where Paul is giving
us primarily a focus on or a focus on the chronology of events at end times. He
is very pastoral in his concern here. He is concerned that people are comforted
at the time of grief. What comforts people at the time of grief is
understanding reality, understanding truth. When we understand that death is
simply a temporary phase that believers go through, and it is their entry point
into eternity, and that there is a certain procedure that will take place
eventually where their immaterial soul and spirit will be reunited with a
resurrection body, then we can have hope and confidence and not have a grief
that leads to darkness and despair. We can in turn have loss because we are
missing somebody. It is as if a dear friend has left us and they have moved to
the other side of the planet and we know we will probably never see them again
in this life, but they are still alive and we will see them again eventually.
So the purpose is to encourage believers.
So it reminds him of
what he had already taught them. That is important. He has already taught this.
They didn’t quite get it the first time, maybe not even the second time. I am
not going to ask for a show of hands of how many of you have not gotten some of
the things I’ve taught ten, fifteen, thirty times? One honest soul in the back!
Yes, it takes time to think through these things. So he has got to remind them
again and it is from a position of comfort. Another thing that we note here as
we look at the passage is that in 1 Thessalonians 5:1 he says, “But concerning
the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write you”.
That is an important verse because that indicates that he has already taught
them and he is talking about something called the “times and the seasons.” This
use of this phrase shows a change from the answer Jesus gave His disciples in
Acts 1:6, twenty years earlier and just before the ascension. Jesus’ disciples
asked Him, “Lord is it at this time that you are going to restore the kingdom?”
And Jesus said, “It is not for you to know the times and the seasons.” He used
the same words in the Greek. “It is not for you to know the times and the
seasons.” So He is talking to His eleven disciples at that point and He says,
“it is not for you to know” these things.
Twenty years later
Paul is talking to Thessalonian believers and he says I don’t need to tell you anything
more about the times and the seasons because you already know this. So within
that twenty-year gap something changed. The change was the beginning of the
church. What Jesus was essentially saying to His disciples is, now is not the
time for ya’ll to know and understand this. This would be naturally unveiled
and disclosed to you over the progress of revelation during the next twenty
years, especially by Saul of Tarsus who is going to come along and he will be
given most of the revelation related to this mystery doctrine. But right now in
AD 33 you boys don’t need to know this.
Twenty years from now you are going to have all of your questions answered via
this coming revelation. So that sets the timeframe here. We already know about
eschatology. We are to know about the Scripture. In fact, one out of every six
or seven verses, 18% of the Bible, relates to unfulfilled prophecy.
Interesting, and people say we don’t need to know the Bible: Okay, let’s just
take our little scalpels out and cut out 18% of the Bible, we don’t really need
to know it. If God thought we needed to know it and He gave it to us, then this
is an important aspect of our understanding of our study.
Paul gives a purpose
for his explanation in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 that we should be comforted. That
we may not grieve, that we may not sorrow, but he is not saying, “don’t
sorrow.” One thing I always bring out in memorial services and funerals is that
grief is natural in a fallen world. It is the result of living in a fallen
world and experiencing death because God did not design mankind to experience
death. It is not normal. Normal is what was part of the experience of Adam and
Eve before the fall. That was normal. From the moment that Adam ate that fruit
we’ve been living in an abnormal creation. We have been living in a creation
that is subnormal, a creation that is subject to God’s judgment and the
corruption of sin. We don’t know what normal is because all we’ve ever experienced
is that which is subnormal: death, disease, and suffering, and war, and famine,
and drought, and hurricanes, and economic recessions, and depressions—all
subnormal. They are all the result of living in a post-fall world, in a world
governed by corruption, and we have to learn how to live in such a world by
depending upon God.
So we recognize
grief. Every time someone dies we’ll recognize that this is a call to remind us
about the fall. This is something God has put in our soul. We experience that
loss. We say deep in our soul, maybe consciously, maybe not. This should not be
happening. This is not right. My loved one shouldn’t be taken from me like
this. My friend should not be gone. This just isn’t right. Of course, it is not
right! That is the whole point; that God has put this little reminder in the
souls of all of us that when things like this happen, when we see something
like that horrible beheading of the journalist this last week by ISIS! This is horrible! This isn’t right!
We’re exactly right. It is a reminder that we live in a fallen world and it has
been corrupted by sin, and as Christians when we talk to people this is
something that we ought to use as a hook in order to get their attention to
talk about the gospel. When somebody looses someone in death and they are going
through grief, we can find out ways to gently take them through the gospel.
That the reason we are experiencing this kind of loss is because this is not
what God intended, this is the result of living in Satan’s world. And so, what
Paul is saying here is not that we don’t grieve, but we don’t grieve like those
who live in a hopeless world of darkness and despair with no comprehension of
the future in eternity and a personal God Who has redeemed them from their
sins.
We live in a world
where there is hope, but we will grieve. That is a normal response to loss.
This introduction I find is very helpful. As I have been thinking through my
mind the last few weeks as we have been talking about the Rapture. I have been
reflecting upon what Scripture teaches about the Rapture. I always try, each
time I go back through something again, to think it through in some different
ways and try to probe the Scriptures for some different perspectives. One of
the things that we often do not do is to look at the Scriptures holistically.
Don’t just drill down microscopically on 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, but look at
how this fits within the context of not only the Pauline epistles in the New Testament,
but all of Scripture. How does the doctrine of the pre-Tribulation Rapture fit
within the panorama of God’s plan, which is essentially what we are talking
about in our whole study? We are looking at God’s plan for the ages. Well, how
does the Rapture fit in to this? As I was reflecting upon this I went back to
this particular verse (1 Thessalonians 4:13) and focused on the fact that this
is a verse in the New Testament that is driving our attention down to the
doctrine of suffering. That is what is really referenced here in terms of
grief. It is the doctrine of suffering.
Now let me ask you a
question, what is the book in the Bible that God revealed that deals with the
doctrine of suffering? That suffering is its primary focus? That is right; Job.
Job, I believe, was the very first book written in
the Old Testament. When Job is written there is no mention of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob; there is no mention of the Jews; there is no mention of
Jerusalem, the Promised Land, Canaan, or any of those things. I believe that
Job is written roughly about the same time as in the life span of either
Abraham or Isaac. Job is not Jewish. Job is a Gentile and the Book of Job
itself answers this question of why there is undeserved suffering. Where does
it drive us in the very, very first chapter? It drives us to the throne of God
and the involvement of Satan and the angels in human history. When Satan shows
up during a regular meeting with God and the other angels, both fallen and
elect, and God says, well, have you looked at my servant Job?
Now a lot of us
would say Lord, please, don’t mention my name in that context. I’d be a lot
happier if I’m “okay,” then just say good and faithful servant and pull a
curtain around me. But don’t point me out like you did with Job. God points out
Job, and Satan’s answer is basically, well, you are so good to him no wonder he
likes you. Just take away all the bennies, take away all the goodies and the
blessings and everything, and then we will just see if Job is going to still
worship you and if he will curse you. And so through various stages that we’ve
studied, Job loses his children. He loses a lot of his possessions. He loses
his flocks and his sheep. He loses almost everything except his lovely wife who
tells him basically to curse God and die, and three friends who are operating
on very common assumptions about why we suffer. You suffer because you’ve
sinned. You are not really that righteous. But see from the very beginning God
emphasized His servant, “Have you considered My righteous servant, Job?” He is
righteous. There is nothing in Job’s life that is a cause of all of this
suffering. There are other reasons.
So we should ask the
question why would it be that at the very beginning of revelation, the
beginning of the Bible, the first thing that God talks about is how to handle
suffering? Because suffering is so universal, it is so endemic to the human
experience that this is the very first thing that is answered. What Job wants
to know is can I really trust God to do the right thing and to bring about
justice, if not in my life, over the course of time? What God provides us in
the Scripture is a perspective where we think things that are unjust in our
lives need to be rectified today; if not today, well, God, you certainly need
to straighten this out by tomorrow! If we have lived a little bit we know that
it doesn’t quite work that way. What the Scripture gives us is a perspective
that these things may not be reconciled by God until we get into the judgment
stages at the end of history, and only then will God execute justice for us.
This is a picture that we see that history is driving toward a final solution
to the whole problem of evil and sin. But God is working this out over a period
of thousands of years and when it all comes to a conclusion He will bring about
the establishment of righteousness upon the earth.
At the end of
history, at the end of the church age, we have the Rapture. The Rapture removes
the body of Christ from the earth and then what happens to them? The first
judgment takes place. We are evaluated at the judgment seat of Christ and the
bride of Christ, which is a term for the church, is going to be purified and
prepared for our position to rule and reign with Christ during the kingdom.
Following the judgment seat of Christ, we study this in Revelation 4-5, where
the 24 elders who are representatives of the church pass their crowns, their STEPHANOS crowns, not their DIADAMOS crowns. A DIADAMOS crown is a crown of royalty. A STEPHANOS crown is a reward crown. They cast their
reward crowns before the Lord Jesus Christ. This is before Revelation 6 when
Jesus takes the first seal off of the scroll and begins the judgments in the
first half of the Tribulation. That tells us that these 24 elders who show up
before the throne of God in Revelation 4-5 are already raptured and rewarded. The
judgment seat of Christ is taking place at this time and they are there in the
throne room of God when the quest goes out, the search goes out to find someone
worthy to take the scroll.
So there is this
judgment that takes place and in terms of human time it takes place in a flash
of an instant. After the Rapture we are evaluated and rewarded and this
prepares us for the future. Then we have this judgment that takes place on the
earth of the Tribulation that is going to culminate in a second half of the
Tribulation when the demons are cast out of heaven. Satan is cast out of heaven
to the earth. The fallen angels will become visible, and elect angels are as
well. The angels become visible and God is going to bring human history to a
close at the Second Coming of Christ and human beings as well as angels are all
judged. So it is at the end of the Tribulation that Old Testament saints are
judged. We’ll see in this passage that the Rapture is for those who are dead in
Christ. It doesn’t include Old Testament saints that are not in Christ. Old Testament
saints are raptured at the end of the Tribulation. Tribulation martyrs who die
during the Tribulation will be resurrected at the end of the Tribulation
period. Those groups will be judged. The surviving Gentiles and surviving Jews
will be judged at the sheep and the goat judgment. Those who are believers will
go into the millennial kingdom under the reign of iron, the reign of the Lord
Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.
So this is when you
see the beginning of God working out His justice in terms of all of the evil
that is taking place in human history and that will eventually culminate in the
final judgment, which is the great white judgment that comes at the end of the
millennial kingdom. So when we sit back and we see the panorama here. We see
that what God is doing through out history is working out the solution of this
problem of injustice as a result of Adam’s sin and ultimately the result of
Satan’s sin, and that He is doing certain things within the human race with
believers and with the angels that must be done in order to prepare us for this
final reconciliation of justice that occurs before His throne. So this sort of
drives us back to an understanding of this panorama of the doctrine of
suffering. That we may not have all things made right in this life but they
will be made right eventually and God will bring that justice to bear.
1 Thessalonians 4:13
drives us to the doctrine of suffering and tells us that there is a distinction
between believers and unbelievers, between Christians and non-Christians, and
that we have a hope. And hope in the Scripture is not just sort of a wishful
optimism but a confident expectation. There are many unbelievers who have a
false hope. They have diluted themselves in one way or another. They have
imbibed of a fantasy that somehow there is some afterlife and every thing will
be good and everything will be wonderful and I’ll be reunited. But they have no
basis for this, no foundation. It is just a wish and a hope that is not based
on anything other than the alternative, which is what they are trying to
suppress. The alternative that there is a just God who will demand that His
justice be satisfied. He may be a loving God, but His love works with His
justice and His justice does not operate at the expense of His love, but He
can’t compromise either and so in His love He’s provided the perfect solution
for eternity, and in His justice, if that solution is rejected, then there will
be eternal condemnation.
Now the basis for
our future hope, the basis for our confident hope is described in 1
Thessalonians 4:14, “For if we believe” and it is a first class condition
indicating that he is assuming that this is true for all of his readers. “If”
and we can almost translate it “since”, although that is not the best use or
the best way to translate most first class conditions. Here I think it would
fit. “Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again” and those two things
must be taken together. He
is not talking about just the gospel here. He is really emphasizing we believe
there is a physical body resurrection; if you believe in a physical bodily
resurrection that is our basis of believing that we too will be physically,
bodily, raised from the dead. So that is what he is stating here. “If we
believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those
who have fallen asleep in Jesus.” So what he is stating here is that Jesus
Christ’s resurrection, which is called the “firstfruits of those who have
fallen asleep” in 1 Corinthians 15:20. He is the “firstfruits” and then we come
later and we will be resurrected.
Those who have already died are with Jesus. Notice God the Father is the One
who is in charge. This is important. God the Father is mentioned here and Jesus
is mentioned here. God the Father’s role is He is in charge. He will bring with
Him, Jesus, so God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.
They died physically and they are with Jesus. They are with Him when He begins
to descend. They are already with Him. Their soul and spirit are with Him, but
their physical body hasn’t been taken from the grave yet. So it shows us that
they are already with the Lord. I believe they have an interim body.
An interim body goes
back to Luke 16 when you have the episode with Lazarus and the rich man. When
Lazarus the beggar dies he goes to Abraham’s bosom, or Paradise. When the rich
man dies he is not a believer. He goes to a place called Torments and he is
moaning and groaning and complaining to Abraham that he is going through so
much pain and he wants, he says, please let Lazarus take his finger and stick
it in the water and put some water on my tongue. He is clearly talking about
some sort of physical sensory. It is not a corporal body like we have, but it
is some sort of intermediate body that definitely can feel pain and pleasure
because the cool water on the tip of his tongue would be pleasure in spite of
the pain he is going through. So there is some sort of interim body, but it is
not a resurrection body. So those who are dead in Christ will come with Jesus
in their interim body. They haven’t received their resurrection body yet.
In 1 Thessalonians
4:15-17 we have an explanation of the dynamics of what takes place at the
Rapture when that occurs. What this tells us is that there are a series of
events that take place in a specific order when Jesus returns at the Rapture.
Notice He returns in the clouds. He doesn’t return to the earth. That is
important. Paul says, “For this we say to you by the word of the Lord.” When he
says “by the word of the Lord” that means that he is referring some sort of
revelation from Jesus. I believe that this goes back to John 14:1-3 when Jesus
said that He is going to go to His Father’s house and that He is going to
prepare a place for us that where He is we may be also, and that He is
comforting them in John 14:1-3 just as Paul is providing comfort here in 1
Thessalonians 4. So Paul says, “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.” What he is saying here is that we don’t
go up first. Those who have fallen asleep, that is those who have died in
Christ, they will go up first and we will go up just a split second, a
nanosecond later.
Then he describes
this in 1 Thessalonians 4:16. He says, “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven
with a shout.” Three things happen simultaneously: 1. The Lord descends. 2. There is a shout or a command; there
is the voice of the archangel. 3.
There is the blast of the trumpet of God.
At that sound, those
three signals that happen simultaneously, the dead in Christ—not all the
dead, not all dead believers, but only “the dead in Christ—will rise
first.” “Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them
in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and thus we shall always be with the
Lord.” First we see that the Lord “will descend from heaven” in 1 Thessalonians
4:16. He descends from heaven. Now that is important because when He descends
from heaven we know that He has been “in heaven.” There is a point that I am
making there. He has been “in heaven.” That is going to be important when we compare
this with John 14. So He has been in heaven and then He is going to descend
first and this noise—back to 1 Thessalonians 4:16, we will just continue
here—the Lord descends from heaven with a shout, with this shout, so He
is coming from heaven and then after that there is a shout.
In 1 Thessalonians
1:10, we read that we are “to wait for His Son from heaven.” Jesus is currently
in heaven. He ascended to heaven as we see. In Acts 1:9-10 He ascends to
heaven. We are “to wait for His Son from heaven, whom will be raised from the
dead, even Jesus, that delivers us from the wrath to come.” That term “wrath to
come” is a term here in 1 Thessalonians 1:10 for the Tribulation that we will
be “rescued.” It is not SOZO. It is RHUOMIA, indicating a physical rescue from a disastrous situation.
John 13:3 we read, “Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His
hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going to God.” I am really
stressing that the Bible makes a really big point about Jesus going to heaven
and coming from heaven. And where are we going to go? We are going to go to
heaven. Now that is not our forever domain, but we are going to go to heaven,
not back to the earth. John 14:3, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I
will come again and receive you to Myself.”
Where is He coming
from? Heaven. Where is He taking us? Heaven. In a post-Tribulation Rapture view
Jesus comes down and we meet Him halfway in the clouds and continue to the
earth. Jesus is saying that I’m coming from heaven and taking you where I have
been back in heaven. So this shows that it can’t be a post-Trib Rapture view
because Jesus doesn’t go back to heaven at the post-Trib Rapture. He comes to
the earth. You will know He is in heaven.
Psalm 110:1, He is
sitting at the right hand of God the Father until God makes His enemies His
footstool and He is given the kingdom, which is referenced in Daniel 7, when
the Son of Man comes. Acts 2:33, He is “exalted to the right hand of God,” the
Father. And then there are other references in
Acts 5:31; Colossians 3:1; Hebrews 8:1; Hebrews 10:12; Hebrews 12:2; as well as
Revelation 3:21 where He is sitting on the throne of God. Jesus is in heaven.
He descends from
heaven with a shout. That is the word KELEUSMA, which means a command. He is giving a command at that
time, something like “rise” or “raise up,” something like that. He is calling
the dead in Christ, those bodies who are lying in the grave, to come forth from
the grave, and instantly, a nanosecond, they will be transformed from
corruption to incorruption, from mortal to immortality, and then they are
united instantly with the soul and spirit of the person who has trusted in
Christ. That is when the dead in Christ rise first. They are reunited with
their new resurrection body and they will be with the Lord. So there is a
shout, there is a voice of the archangel, and the trumpet of God.
John 5:28, Jesus
said, “Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in
the tombs shall hear His voice.” That is the shout. [29] “and shall come forth;
those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the
evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.”
“After these
things,” John says in Revelation 2-3, it describes the churches. But in
Revelation 4 there is a shift and I believe this is an allusion to the Rapture.
John says, “After these things," that is Revelation 2-3, he says, “and
behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard,
like the sound of a trumpet.” This is the only reference to the Rapture in
Revelation. “The sound of the trumpet speaking with me said, “Come up here, and
I will show you what must take place after these things.” So this depicts, I am
not saying that this is the Rapture, but this depicts what will happen at the
Rapture.
1 Corinthians
15:51-53 gives us the how. “Behold, I tell you a mystery;” a previously
unrevealed truth, “we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a
moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” one 64th of a second, “in the twinkling of
an eye, at the last trumpet.” Not the last trumpet in Revelation in the
Tribulation, but the last trumpet of the church age. A trumpet was used to
signal a significant event and this is the signal of the end of the church age.
It is not one of the seven trumpets that we see in Revelation because the
seventh trumpet contains seven bowl judgments. “The trumpet will sound, and the
dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.” That is not what
happens with the seventh trumpet in Revelation. When the seventh trumpet blasts
it reveals seven bowl judgments, not the resurrection of the dead. So this is a
picture of the Rapture, when the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the
mortal puts on immortality.
So here is the order
of events. They happen very quickly, as in quick succession:
1. The Lord descends
from heaven and is in the clouds.
2. Three
simultaneous audible events take place:
The shout
The voice of the archangel
Trumpet
3. And then the dead
in Christ will rise first (only church age believers).
4. And then a
nanosecond later, living church age believers are raptured to meet the Lord in
the air.
And then he concludes, “thus we shall
always be with the Lord.”
So where does the
Lord go? In a pre-Trib Rapture scenario He goes back to heaven. This is where
He is building or preparing our temporary dwelling places now. If the Lord were
to bring the church with Him back to the earth, then why is He wasting His time
building these abodes for us in heaven according to John 14:1-3? In John 14:1-3 Jesus is talking to His
disciples. Again, notice, He is comforting them. He says, “Let not your heart
be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many
dwelling places.” Now some of you may not like that because it doesn’t have
quite the ring of the King James’ “mansions”, but actually the Greek word
doesn’t mean “mansion.” We think of mansions when we are driving down River
Oaks Boulevard looking at all those stately homes and all of the lawns. That is
a misunderstanding because the English word “mansion” has gone through an
evolution of meaning. In its original meaning, coming out of the Latin, it was
a dwelling place. It has come to mean a certain kind of sumptuous dwelling
place, but that is not what it meant in the Latin or what the original Greek
means. “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.”
Where did Jesus go?
I’ve been pounding this all night! Where did Jesus go? He went to heaven! What
is He doing in heaven? He’s preparing a place for us! So it doesn’t fit for us
to meet Him halfway up and come back to the earth because then we miss out on whatever
He has prepared for us. This is why John 14:1-3 is clearly a pre-Trib Rapture
passage.
“So 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.”
One of the interesting
things about this particular passage is that there was a study done by a
Mennonite commentator on Revelation by the name of J. B. Smith. He noted that
there are eight striking parallels in vocabulary between John 14:1-3 and 1
Thessalonians 4:13-18. When he compared the vocabulary of the two passages
related to the Second Coming in Revelation 19:11-12 and other passages, he
found no comparison. If you will look at two passages, 1 Thessalonians 4 and
John 14 and compare them there are eight commonalities in terms of vocabulary.
If you compare either one of those two with Revelation 19, the Second Coming
passage in Revelation 19:11-12, neither John 14 or 1 Thessalonians 4 have any
similarities of vocabulary with Revelation 19. That is really interesting. What
we see is that these eight similarities also occur in the same order in John
14:1-3 as they do in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. You think that just happened that
way? Just coincidence? Maybe Paul got out his Apple iPad and started doing
vocabulary searches on the Greek text and said, okay, we have these words, I am
going to match that. I not sure it worked that way.
So what do we have?
1. Both passages
focus on providing comfort. They are both designed to comfort those who are in
a state of anxiety or grief.
2. Both passages
emphasize belief in Christ as the key issue. That you have believed in Me. So Jesus is
emphasizing that belief in John 14.
3. Both passages
focus on God the Father and Jesus the Son of God. In both passages both the Father and the
Son are involved. I point that out in 1
Thessalonians 4:14; that God will bring
them, that is the dead in Christ with Him. So both the Father and the Son are
involved in both passages.
4. Both passages
instruct their audience. In John 14:2 Jesus says, “I would have told you.” In 1
Thessalonians 4:15 Paul says, “I say to you.” So
you have
belief. John 14:1 says you “believe in
God, believe also in Me.” Both passages talk about the Father and the Son. Both
passages instruct their audience that this is divine revelation.
5. The return of
Jesus is mentioned in both; both passages mention the return of Jesus that He
is coming back.
6. In John, Jesus says
He will receive them.
7. Jesus says, “I
will go and prepare a place for you. I will come again and receive you to
Myself.” 1 Thessalonians 4:17, “we are caught up to be together
with Him in the clouds.”
8. In both passages,
believers will continue to be with the Lord after that event. That is striking! This is remarkable!
John 14 and 1 Thessalonians 4 are parallel passages. John 14 is clearly talking
about the Rapture, as is 1 Thessalonians 4.
In Acts 1:11, as
Jesus ascends, the angels that are there say to the disciples, “Men of Galilee,
why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from
you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into
heaven.”
So that is our destiny.
This is why early dispensationalists like Darby emphasized that the church was
a heavenly people with a heavenly destiny, while Israel is an earthly people
with an earthly destiny. They have an earthly inheritance in the land that God
promised them, but our destiny is heavenly. We are a part of the bride of
Christ and we will rule and reign with Christ, but our citizenship, as Paul
says in Philippians 3, “our citizenship is in heaven.” We are a heavenly
people. Now this is being challenged a lot today from different groups, but
especially by the progressive dispensationalists. This is another area where
they get a little fuzzy and a little bit off-base. Now one of the things that I
will talk about next time, I’ll come back and we will go back to John 14 just a
little bit, so we get it again in our minds before we go forward looking at the
next passages. But that this is focusing on our position in Christ. We go to a
dwelling place; we go to an abode that Jesus has prepared for us in heaven.
Let’s close in prayer.
Father, we thank You
for this opportunity to study these things this evening, to be reminded that
Scripture interconnects with other Scripture. We compare Scripture with
Scripture to find illumination and elucidation, and it gives us great comfort
to know that when we die that is not the end; when our loved ones die it is not
the end. The body may go into the grave, but the immaterial part, the soul and
the spirit, is immediately face-to-face with You; and that that immaterial part
will be reunited with a physical resurrected body that has some sort of
continuity with our present physical body. We don’t understand that; we don’t
know how that works, but there is a definite connection between what we have
today and what we will have in the future just as Christ’s physical body was
connected to His present resurrection body. Now Father, we pray that You would
help us to understand these things that we may be able to comfort those around
us who go through loss; who go through times of death of loved ones and friends
that we may comfort them with the truth of Scripture, and we pray for this in
Christ's Name. Amen.