When is
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, 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 we will have a few moments of silent prayer. Make sure
that you are in fellowship and ready to focus on the teaching of the Word this
evening, then I will open in prayer. A couple of
requests: John Williamson has now started classes at Dallas Theological
Seminary. Also we added Harold Hall to our prayer list. He just started his
first semester at New Tribes Mission Bible Institute. He wants to be a
missionary with New Tribes Missions. After a few moments of silent prayer I
will open the prayer. Let's pray.
Our Father, it is a
great privilege we have to serve You. It is a great
privilege we have to come together to study your Word, and Father, it is
encouraging when we see young men like John and like Harold and Matt Hagemeier and others that are willing to take the time to
focus their lives upon the study of Your Word, and taking the time to get
trained, to go to Bible college, to go to seminary, and to spend a lifetime
serving You, whether that is in a fulltime professional capacity or whether
their training just ends up improving their study of Your Word so they can have
a significant ministry in the local church. Father, we also pray for students
as the semester is begun at Would God Bible College in Kiev, and for Jim Myers,
for all the students there, we pray for them. Father, challenge us with what we
study this evening as we continue to understand Your
plan for us, Your plan through the church age. Help us to put the pieces
together and understand that just as there is a plan on a large macro scale,
that there is a plan on a micro scale for us in terms of our own spiritual
life. We have to understand how that fits in especially in the coming lessons
as we focus on future things; that what we are doing today in our spiritual
life will have a tremendous impact on our participation and our role in future
events. We pray this in Christ's Name, Amen.
Last time we
finished up looking at when the Rapture occurs. So that is the title for
tonight's lesson. "When is the Rapture?" It is next week! Get ready!
No. That is not what I mean. I mean, when it is in relation to other events,
especially in terms of that debate that goes on all the time. Is the Rapture
before the Tribulation, after the Tribulation, in the middle of the
Tribulation, or do we have a partial Tribulation where different members of the
church go up at different times through the Tribulation period? In one sense we
talk about the issues related to the pre-Tribulation Rapture. It boils down to
understanding the distinctiveness of the church. It may surprise you a little
bit, but in a technical sense, dispensationalism, because of its emphasis on
the church, is sort of a subcategory almost of ecclesiology. Ecclesiology is
that category of systematic theology that relates to the study of the doctrines
in the Scripture related to the church. So as we look at the church and the
church age, and we are all members of the church age, the question that people
ask is related to our future destiny, the future destiny of the church, and
people want to know: Are we going to go through the Tribulation?
Often when you read
critics of dispensationalism they act as if they can't read. I am just amazed
at how these people can't read. We aren't asking if we go through tribulation.
We're asking if we go through "the Tribulation." We are not looking
for some sort of panacea, so that we can go through life without having to go
through difficulty, adversity, challenges, or heartaches. That is going to be
true for every believer in every generation. Job wrote that a man is born to
trouble as the sparks fly upward. Trouble and adversity is going to be part of
everyone's life. The doctrine of the pre-Tribulation Rapture is not some sort
of escape clause so that we can avoid tribulation. If you just look at the
history of the church age, you realize that there are so many believers down
through the ages that have gone through untold misery and suffering and
persecution for their faith in Christ that have been martyred in horrible,
horrible ways for their faith in Christ. That is in one sense relating to those
who are being attacked by those who are outside of the church, then when you go
back and you study some of the things that have taken place in terms of
Christian-to-Christian persecution. Things that occurred during the Middle Ages,
things that are occurred during the Reformation period, and the
post-Reformation period, and some of the religious wars that took place during
the 16th century and into the 17th century.
There has been a
tremendous amount of tribulation. The Greek word is THLIPSIS. And a tremendous amount of adversity
that Christians have gone through because of their stand for the truth and the
stand for the Bible. But when we talk about the Rapture and the fact that the
church age believers don't go through "the" Tribulation has to do
with an understanding of God's plan and purposes for the church. So when we ask
this question: "When is the Rapture?" We are asking this in relation
to future events, things that have not happened yet, and whether or not we as
church age believers might go through "the" Tribulation. We may go
through a lot of persecution. We may go through a lot of hostility. We have no
idea what the pre-Rapture circumstances are going to be on the earth leading up
to, as the stage is set for the Tribulation itself.
Here is our chart.
We are down here at the end. We've gone through the Old Testament age of the
Gentiles and the age of Israel, the transitional dispensation, the hinge
dispensation of the Messianic age. Now we are in the church age somewhere near
the end of the church age, and the church age ends, as we've seen, with the
Rapture, when our Lord Jesus Christ returns in the air with a command, with a
shout of the archangel and the trumpet of God. The dead in Christ rise first.
That is technically a resurrection; "then we who are alive and remain will
be caught up together with Him in the clouds." The Greek word is HARPAZO. The Latin word that was used to
translate that is rapio where we get our word rapture, and that
shows that it is indeed a biblical term. Sometime, and we will study this,
sometime after the Rapture itself occurs, the Tribulation will begin. The
Rapture doesn't have anything to do with when the Tribulation begins. The
Tribulation begins when the Antichrist signs a peace treaty with Israel. That
kicks off what is called Daniel's 70th week. We may get there
tonight. I am not sure.
We are looking at
the broad category I have been talking about for the last two or three lessons:
"Why I Believe in the Pre-Trib Rapture." We
have looked at what the Rapture is in terms of defining it; and now we are
looking at the second question, which is, "When is the Rapture?" Now
last time, you may remember, that I did sort of a little demonstration up here
in front and some of you may not have been here, but that was really important;
a good graphic demonstration why the church age believers will be raptured
before the Tribulation. They won't go through the Tribulation. Now that works
just for people who are Premillennial. We'll get into the issues about
Premillennialism, Amillennialism, and Postmillennialism when we get there after
we've studied the Tribulation. There is another view called the
pan-millennialism. That is for people who just don't want to study anything and
they just through up their hands and say, "It will all pan out in the
end." (Laughter.) So within a premillennial view, which is the view that
is most consistent with a literal interpretation of Scripture, when you go to
Revelation 20 talking about a thousand-year period. Jesus returns at the end of
Revelation 19. There are judgments that occur at the end of Revelation 19, then
Jesus establishes His kingdom in Revelation 20 that will lasts for a thousand
years upon the earth and then at the conclusion of that chapter we have the great
white throne judgment.
If you believe that
that is literal, that there is a future kingdom, then the issue becomes what's
the role of the church prior to that? It is immediately preceded by the Tribulation.
All premillennialists believe in a literal future
seven-year Tribulation. But if you are an amillennialist, you don't believe
that. If you are a postmillennialist, you don't believe that. Therefore they
are not concerned at all with these issues related to the Rapture. If you
believe in premillennialism, then the issue becomes
"When is the Rapture?" What I pointed out last time through that
little skit, that little exercise, is to show that the
Millennium is populated by the offspring of the survivors of the Tribulation.
They will inherit from their parents a sin nature. Many of them will believe
and many will also reject the gospel. And when Satan is released at the end of
the thousand-year period there will be just a horde, a host of people who will
follow him in a rebellion against the rule of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is
called the Gog and Magog revolution and God will
destroy them.
Now in order for
there to be mortals living at the beginning of the Millennium who can have
children that means they had to have survived. There are Tribulation saints who
survive the Tribulation with their mortal bodies intact. Under a
post-Tribulation scenario all living believers are immediately translated at
the Rapture as Jesus comes to the earth, so they all have resurrection bodies.
Under a post-Tribulation scenario there's no one, no believers with mortal
bodies to go into the Millennial Kingdom. That is just a simple logical
observation that I think is devastating to the whole position of the
post-Tribulation Rapture. Let's look at the different views:
1. The pre-Trib Rapture. The Rapture occurs before the Tribulation. We
always shorten that. Tribulation is such a long word that fall trippingly off
of people's tongues, so it helps to just call it the "pre-Trib Rapture." The Rapture occurs before the Tribulation.
It ends the church age, so no church age believer will go through the
Tribulation. We can graph it out like this: the church age ends with the
Rapture. Sometime after the Rapture the Tribulation begins.
2. A second view
that developed in the mid-19th century. Now remember, it was in the
middle of the 19th century that you have the systematic development
of dispensational thought. Now we know from numerous studies and more and more
evidence is surfacing now, especially due to the research of several people. In
the last 20 years or so we have discovered evidence in ancient documents and
especially more recently documents from England and the Colonies that show that
John Nelson Darby, the systematizer of
dispensationalism, did not originate the idea of a pre-Tribulation Rapture.
That has been used by post-Tribs and amils (amillennialists) for decades to try to impugn the
integrity of dispensationalism. Well, it is just the new kid on the block. It
is so new. John Nelson Darby, in fact, was listening to the charismatic
utterances of a woman named Margaret McDonald; and that is where you got this
false teaching of dispensationalism. Well, it has been proven to be false:
(1) If you read and
study Margaret McDonald's utterance, it took place in a somewhat semi-charismatic
revival type meeting in England in the 1830s. It was actually a post-Trib statement, not pre-Trib.
(2) The idea of a
pre-Trib Rapture was around long before Darby was
ever born. In fact, the earliest we've found is a statement by a writer who is
referred to as Pseudo-Ephraem. He wrote after the
death of an early church father by the name of Ephraem
the Syrian, and he wrote under his name as a pseudonym. This was not uncommon
in the early church. It was common both inside the church and outside the
church, for somebody to write under someone else's name, and so he is referred
to as Pseudo-Ephraem the Syrian.
So it takes us all
the way back to about the 4th or 5th century that we know
someone clearly articulated a pre-Trib Rapture. But
as they were working through this (especially among a certain Plymouth Brethren
group in the mid-19th century) they came up to this view of Partial
Rapture. Another problem that a lot of Christians have had is, "What do
you do with Christians who are sinners?" What do you do about Christians
that are antinomian? What do you do about Christians that they trusted in
Christ but they live like the devil? So one of the solutions that came out of
the Plymouth Brethren movement and there were some in the Plymouth Brethren
that to be nice (let's say they had a trend toward legalism) said, well, if you
are not a Christian who is walking with Christ then you won't get raptured.
You'll get raptured along the way sometime during the Tribulation. See, there
is always this tendency among some because they do not fully fathom grace.
They've just got to punish sinful believers and that is one of them. So the partial
Rapture view is that at the Rapture only those faithful totally dedicated
Christians will be caught up leaving carnal Christians behind to be chastened
by the Tribulation. So spiritual Christians would go up before the Tribulation,
carnal Christians would go up later on. I have even seen some who say that
there will be multiple raptures through the Tribulation period. One rapture after the seal judgments, another rapture after
the trumpet judgments, and another rapture later on. So that is the partial
Rapture and that is not a very popular view.
3. Then there was
the mid-Trib Rapture view that the Rapture occurs in
the middle of the Tribulation; that the Rapture would occur in the middle of
the Tribulation, thus believers would endure the first half. So this view
actually in its purest form has the Rapture at the halfway point. The
Tribulation period is divided according to Scripture into two periods of three
and a half years each. So at the end of the first half, at the time the
Antichrist desecrates the temple in what is called the abomination of
desolation that is when you would have the mid-Trib
Rapture. Now there is a new view that is sort of a spinoff on this. In fact,
most of the arguments, not all, but most of the arguments that work against the
mid-Trib view would also work against what is called
the pre-wrath Rapture view.
Now I understand
that there are a lot of differences and I am really summarizing this in a basic
way, but the pre-wrath Rapture view would put the Rapture about three-quarters
of the way through the Tribulation. In the pre-wrath Rapture view, which was
developed and started to be taught about twenty years
ago by a man who was a well-known dispensationalist. In fact, he was the head
of a Jewish evangelistic ministry and he was well known and well trained in
dispensationalism, but he saw the term "wrath of God" as a technical
term for those final bowl judgments. He would put those just in the last year or
so of the Tribulation period, so he invented this view called the pre-wrath
Rapture. And every now and then I run into somebody who gets caught up with
this. It was kind of a trendy thing for a lot of people as a new view back in
the 90s. But a number of really excellent studies have been done showing the
exegetical errors of this view.
4. Then we have the post-Trib
Rapture view. A post-Trib view says that the Rapture
occurs at the end of the Tribulation, and thus all church age believers are
forced to endure the entire seven-year period. So that just gives us our basic
definitions of pre-Trib Rapture, partial Rapture,
mid-Trib Rapture, and pre-wrath Rapture, as we go
forward talking about the Rapture.
Now when we look at this there are basically seven reasons
that I am going to give you for why the Rapture should be before the
Tribulation. I am going to say my favorite reason has to do with understanding
Daniel's 70th week, but that is the first point in what comes next,
so I am going to wait until we get there. But actually, that is one of my
favorite views because as we'll look at Daniel's 70th week, God told
Daniel that a certain amount of time was charted for His people: "For your
people and your city." Obviously talking about the Jewish people. And that 483 years would go by before the Messiah would be
cutoff. And then there was a pause, and then there would be the last seven
years. It is that last seven years period that applies to Israel, not to the
church
1. So really, the basic reason that we have for
understanding a pre-Trib Rapture is a distinction
between Israel and the church.
If we have a consistent hermeneutic we are going to
understand that God has a plan for Israel and a separate plan for the church
that they are not equal. We have seen this in some way already that God has a
distinct plan for Israel and a distinct plan for the church. Israel is Israel.
Israel is composed of believers, Old Testament saints, as well as future
Tribulation saints who are believers in God's promise of the Messiah. In the
future Tribulation there will be believers in Jesus Christ. In the body of
Christ in the church age their ethnic Jewishness and
their traditions in history are still theirs, but they are part of the church.
Now there's a lot of confusion on that and some people within the Messianic
Jewish movement, but that is a totally different issue. We understand that God
has a plan for the church and God has a plan for Israel, and in the church age
all Jews who become believers become a part of the church. They become part of
the church because of the baptism by God the Holy Spirit. And so that sets them
apart from Jewish believers of the Old Testament or Jewish believers in the
future Tribulation period.
Now we see that Paul makes this distinction in Romans
11:25-27. In this passage he is talking about the distinction between Gentiles
and Jews but he is applying it to the present age, which of course is the
church age. So it applies to our topic here. Paul says to the Roman church,
"For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery;"
once again, mystery being a previously unrevealed doctrine. This was never
taught before and so he tells the believers in Rome. Remember there were both
Jews and Christians there. This is a section, Romans 9-11, where Paul is still
talking about God's faithfulness to the Jewish people. He says, "I don't
want you to be uniformed of this mystery, lest you be wise in your own your own
understanding (wise in your own estimation) that a partial hardening has
happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in." And
once that comes in then there is going to be a shift when that fullness of the
Gentiles comes in.
Then he says in Romans 11:26-27, "and thus." That
word "thus" is an important technical word in the Greek and here it
means "in this manner I am about to tell you; in this way." Then he
tells them "in this way all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, "The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob." 27 "This is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins." So it is that future time when God applies that redemptive
promise to Israel. But the point I am making is that there is a clear distinction
in this passage between God's plan for Gentiles and God's plan for Israel, and
that also relates to God's plan for the church, which is what is happening in
the context of Romans 11 because Paul is addressing the church in Rome.
2. The second reason that we believe in a pre-Trib Rapture is because of the purposes
for the Tribulation; they don't relate to the church. God has certain purposes
He is going to accomplish in the Tribulation that are related to Israel and
related to the world, but they are not related to the church. So because of
these four purposes we know that the church is not going to be present or
involved. The first purpose is that God intends to execute judgment on the wicked nations who
have rejected Christ, on the wicked Gentiles that have rejected Christ during
this dispensation.
The church age ends with the Rapture and then there is going to be this horrendous period of divine judgment
on "the kings of the earth." That is that phrase. For those of you
who made it through the Revelation series with me that was the key term that
was used throughout Revelation, "the kings of the earth." And so they
are the ones who are depicted, like David did in Psalm 2, as being united
together antagonistic to and making war against God and His Anointed. So the church is going to be
removed so that God can then pour out
judgment upon the nations; otherwise, you have God being guilty of basically
wife abuse because He is going to let His bride go through seven years of abuse
before the marriage to the bride. That just doesn't fit the pattern. So the
bride is going to be removed from the earth for purification, which is what
takes place at the judgment seat of Christ, and then returns as the bride of
Christ at the end of the Tribulation.
The second purpose is to demonstrate the inability of Satan to rule the planet. When we get into that period in Revelation, you can go back and I did a lengthy series at the beginning
of Revelation 5 to set the stage, we have all these things happening in both
the angelic realm and the physical visible realm upon the earth. In fact, I
believe at the midpoint of the Tribulation, at the time of the abomination of
desolation, that is when Satan and his angels, the demons, the fallen angels,
are cast out of heaven and cast to the earth. At this point the angelic hosts,
both the elect angels and demons, become visible. You have these scenarios
later on where angels flying through the heavens are making announcements of
the gospel to mankind upon the earth. That implies that they must be seen and
heard by the people on the earth that they could respond to these gospel
announcements; they are literal angels. You have this depiction of demons on
the earth. The reason for this is that in bringing everything to a close at the
end of the Tribulation period, what God is doing is that He is finally bringing
judgment upon all of His intelligent creatures, all of His Scythian beings. He
judges the angels; the angels are judged; the fallen angels are judged at the
end of the Tribulation. He judges the kings of the earth who have been in
rebellion against Him. He judges all the unbelievers. Everything gets brought
to a head.
So angels who have fallen and rebelled against God, as well as humans who have rebelled against God are
all brought to this horrific judgment by the end of the Tribulation period. So
during this period God sort of pulls back the restraint. 2 Thessalonians 2:6
says the Restrainer is removed, God the Holy Spirit, and He is going to, as it
were, to take the governor off the engine so that Satan's engine of evil can
just run full speed to see what he can do to bring in his own kingdom. And it
all just falls apart. One of the great quotes from Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer, in
his Systematic Theology, was that one of the evidences that Satan can't do what
he wants to do (he can't be God; he can't control history) is all of the
horrors in the world, all of the wars, all of the horrible things that take
place, the famines, everything else. Satan can't control the world that he is
in charge of; he is the god of this age. He's the prince of the power of the
air, but he can't control it. So what God is going to do is that He is going to
give him even more freedom during this period and all the wheels come off and
everything goes into a chaotic mess, which is the final judgment upon the
rebellious beings.
Third it is going to provide time for millions to be saved. Every now and then I get this question raised as to well, are many people saved during the Tribulation? And it
is interesting if you think about the numbers that are used in Revelation.
There are a lot of big numbers that are used. The angels are said to be myriads
upon myriads, which is a huge number. You have a 144,000 who are saved out of
Israel, who go forth as evangelists. Now that does not mean there are only
144,000 Jews that are saved, but there are 144,000 that are saved immediately
near the beginning of the Tribulation and go out as evangelists. But if you
look at all of these large numbers that we have in Revelation 7, all these
numbers that are present there, it also talks about this huge multitude that
appears before the throne of God. And in Revelation 7:9 John says, "After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude
which no one could number." Now he has been numbering a lot of big crowds
all through Revelation, but here he says there is a number that cannot be
numbered "of all nations,
tribes, peoples and tongues." That pretty much covers the gamut. "Standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed
with white robes, and palm branches in their hands." These are the martyrs
that have come out of the first part of the Tribulation. There have been that many who have been martyred, who have died
under all these initial judgments, and they are before the throne of God. So,
yes there will be millions who will be saved.
Then fourth, to prepare the nation Israel
for the Messiah and His kingdom.
So these are the four purposes
for the Tribulation. He is preparing the nation Israel. This brings to bear all
of these Old Testament prophecies; passages like Joel 2:28 to the first part of
Joel 3, numerous passages in Isaiah, as well as in Jeremiah, numerous passages
in Daniel that talk about what happens to Israel bringing them back to a point
of repentance toward God, when God will recover them from the four corners of
the earth fulfilling the promise of the first part of Deuteronomy 30:1-3, and
will restore them to the land and establish His kingdom. And so that final
seven years in God's plan for Israel is designed to bring them to this point, a
preparation for the Messiah and His kingdom.
So what do we see here in
terms of these four purposes of the Tribulation?
(1) We see that it is a time
of preparation for Israel's restoration and conversion, Deuteronomy 4:29-30;
Jeremiah 30:3-11; Zechariah 12:10.
(2) It is called the "time of Jacob's trouble" in Jeremiah 30:7.
Some translations use "tribulation;" some translations use a time of Jacob's
"distress" because it is Jacob's distress. Jacob is a term that
describes the grandson of Abraham. You have Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob is
resistant. He is the conniver, the manipulator. He is the heel grabber. He is
the deceiver. He is always trying to manipulate things to his advantage. Jacob
became a term Yaakov meaning
heel grabber or the grasping one. That was his name and it tends to be used
when he is not walking with the Lord. Later on, after he has spent his years
working for his uncle Laban and getting his wives
Leah and Rachel and when he finally comes back to the land he wrestles with God
at a place called Peniel, which is over on the
Transjordan side of the Jordan. He loses his wrestling match with God and God
gives him a new name, Israel. This is a name that is often used to speak of
Israel, his descendants, in a positive sense. But when they are referred to as
Jacob that sort of emphasizes that sin nature control side. So this is a time
of Jacob's trouble, not the time of Israel's trouble. Jacob's trouble is
emphasizing that Israel as a Jewish people go into the Tribulation period and
they are still primarily in a state of rebellion against God and rejection of
the Messiah.
(3) The church currently experiences tribulations as per John 16:33, but the church will not experience
"the" Tribulation.
(4) We see that the church, the
term church EKKLESIA, is mentioned 19 times
in Revelation 1-3, but the term is not used at all between Revelation
4:1-Revelation 19. There is no mention of the church. The only time we see the
church in Revelation 19 is when you see this cloud of people who are coming
with the Lord when He returns. So there is no mention of the church. There is a
gap there. That shows that the church is not present during that particular
time.
Now just to show what some of these passages emphasize in terms of Israel's distress during this period, that
this is for Israel, I want to briefly look at some of these passages I just
quoted. In Deuteronomy 4:30 there is a promise, a prophecy type promise from
Moses of what will come in the future. It says, "When you were in
distress, and all these things come upon you in the latter days," that is
all the judgments that are spelled out in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28.
"When you turn to the LORD your God and obey His voice." That is in the future, after all
these things have happened to them. So at the end, in the latter days of
Israel, they will be in distress.
In Jeremiah 30:7, talking about the same period it says, "Alas! For that day is great, so that none is
like it; and it is the time of Jacob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of
it." And in Ezekiel 20:37 there is the prediction. God says, "I will make you pass under the rod…"
This is an imagery of judgment. "…and I will
bring you into the bond of covenant." And then in Daniel 12:1 we
know that this is for Daniel and his
people. Daniel says, "At that time Michael shall stand up, the great
prince who stands watch over the sons of your people; and there shall be a time
of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation, even to that time. And
at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in
the book." So this emphasizes this future time is for Israel. It is
specifically focused upon Israel. The Tribulation period is for Israel.
3. The church is never the object of the wrath of God.
This is an answer to this pre-wrath Rapture view. The Scripture never says that the church, the bride of
Christ, is the object of God's wrath. That would be an image of God abusing the
bride of Christ. The first thing we need to look at is an understanding of this
term "wrath." Wrath is a technical term for the execution of the
judgment of God. It is always used for the execution of God's judgment in time.
Romans 1 talks about the wrath of God being revealed today
against those who are in rebellion against Him, those who reject Him. So
it is always used as a term for wrath in time. In contrast, it is not talking
about the lake of fire. It is not talking about eternal punishment. It is
talking about some kind of judgment either now or during the Tribulation when
God is pouring out His judgment upon the earth.
In Revelation the word is first used in Revelation 6 in talking about the 6th seal judgment. In Revelation 6:16 there is this great earthquake upon
the earth and then in Revelation 6:14 it says that the sky receded as a
"scroll when it is rolled up and every mountain and island was moved out
of its place." This is a massive worldwide earthquake that is going to
create geological trauma on the earth. There are going to be rockslides and
mountain slides, all these cosmic disturbances that take place. The sun will
turn black like sackcloth and the moon like blood. That is the real blood moon,
not what we're seeing right now. I believe there are two more blood moons. We
talked about that; it is on the website. Some people are making an issue out of
this blood moon thing. It has nothing to do with prophecy. This has to do with
a specific event, specific times in the end times in the Tribulation period.
But in Revelation 6:15-16 the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men,
the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every freeman will hide
themselves in the caves and the rocks and the mountains; and say to the
mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits
on the throne." That is God the Father. "And from the wrath of the
Lamb." This is the first time this is used. It is talking about the wrath
of the Lamb. So the wrath of God doesn't come at the end of the Tribulation
period. It begins with the first set of seal judgments that occurs during the
first part, probably the first two years in the Tribulation period.
That "wrath" is worldwide in scope. "Wrath" involves supernatural judgments and signs and wonders, various
cosmological and astrological judgments and events that take place on the
earth, and it results in the deaths of billions. Billions of people are going to die during these first six judgments.
1 Thessalonians 5:9 and 1 Thessalonians 1:10 are great promises. 1 Thessalonians 5:9, "For God
has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation."
In this sense I don't think this is talking about phase one. This is talking about ultimate deliverance from
eschatological wrath during the Tribulation. God is going to obtain deliverance
through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 1:10 introduced that concept where Paul said we are "to wait for His Son from
heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who delivers us from the
wrath to come." So the "wrath to come" is talking about this future Tribulation period. And we are
delivered from that completely and totally. We're not going to go into some
pre-wrath period that is preceded by five or six years of the Tribulation and
then we are raptured just before the final stage. We are delivered totally from
the "wrath to come."
Another great verse for this is in Revelation 3:9-10. Now if you look in your Bible in Revelation 3:9-10,
you will see that I have re-punctuated this verse. We went through this, if you
want to hear the details go back to listen to the lessons on Revelation 3, but
this is very important. One of the things you should understand about this is
that every English translation has certain idiosyncrasies, certain
characteristics. And when the translators of the King James Bible were doing it
they tried to break down every Greek sentence so that every sentence in English
would be a sentence. If they couldn't do that, then they would make two verses,
break them down so that two verses would be a sentence.
John Niemela did a
tremendous study some years ago tracing all of
these, what is called in the Greek a HOTI clause, because the Greek word translated "because" is the
word HOTI. And he demonstrated that about
80% or 90% of the time that a HOTI clause comes at the end of a statement, not at the beginning. It doesn't
introduce a concept. If you look at Revelation 3:9-10, Revelation 3:10 begins
where I put that asterisk by "Because". The King James translators
broke it at the end of Revelation 3:9 were it would read, "behold, I will
cause those of the synagogue of Satan, who say that they are Jews, and are not,
but lie – behold, I will make them to come and bow down at your feet, and
to know that I have loved you." They stopped it there.
The next verse said (Revelation 3:10) "Because you have kept the word of My
perseverance, I also will keep you from the hour of testing." If that is the way it should be read, then the promise of being kept
"from the hour of testing" would be predicated upon keeping the word
of God's perseverance in obedience. Well there is something wrong with it. That
is basing it on works for one thing. But grammatically John did a great job
really drilling down, looking at every single use, hundreds of uses of HOTI in the Greek New Testament. It
demonstrates that the way it should be punctuated is that this causal statement
at the end belongs to Revelation 3:9, "I will make them to come and bow
down at your feet and to know that I have loved you because you have kept the
word of My perseverance."
Revelation 3:9 is
talking about a reward. It is not talking about salvation.
And then Revelation 3:10, the latter part of verse 10, remember the Greek text
did not have verses. The latter part is an independent statement where God
promises in addition, "I will also keep you from the hour of testing, that
hour which is about to come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell upon
the earth." That shows the purpose. What is the purpose of the
Tribulation? To test, to judge the earth dwellers, the kings
of the earth. That is stated in Revelation 3:10. So the point I am
making here is that this emphasizes God will remove the church before this hour
of Tribulation.
Matthew 24:21, "then there will be a great tribulation,
such as has not occurred since the beginning of" time. Now
this set of verses that I am talking about here takes us to the next point I am
making, and that is that the judgments of the Tribulation are unique in all of
human history. We can't mistake it. Somebody recently asked me a question and I
am going to go back. I covered it in detail when we covered Revelation, but it
needs to be reiterated again and again because it is a common misunderstanding.
It is so common that people like Lewis Sperry Chafer and John Walvoord and several others made this mistake.
In Matthew 24, you can turn with me in your Bible and we will look at this a little bit. Matthew 24, Jesus is
answering a question from His disciples related to the timing of His return.
Jesus has just made a statement about Jerusalem. At the end of Matthew 23
(verses 37-39) He said, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones
those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under
her wings, but you were not willing. See, your house is being left to you
desolate! For
I say to you, from now on you will see Me no more
until you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the
name of the Lord!' " So Jesus is saying He is pronouncing a judgment on Jerusalem and saying
because you have rejected Me I am not going to come
back to you until you invite Me, until you say, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!" That won't occur until the end of the Tribulation period.
Then Jesus leaves that location, Matthew 24:1ff at the temple. If you have been to Israel the temple is on
the west side of the Kidron Valley. And then He walks
with His disciples down away from the temple. And He is walking down across the
Kidron Valley to the Mount of Olives. Let's
look at Matthew 24:1, "Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple
and his disciples came up showing Him the buildings of the temple." He is
just looking at the buildings and the temple, the temple itself, the HIEROS.
He says, "Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not
one stone here will be left upon another, that shall not be torn down."
Somebody asked me a long time ago, well what about the Wailing Wall, more
accurately called the Western Wall? The western wall wasn't part of the temple.
It wasn't a part of the temple buildings. The western wall was simply a
restraining wall that when Herod the Great was rebuilding the temple, was
basically remodeling the temple, he had to level the top of that mountain.
Apparently, before that it was still somewhat rugged, and he needed to level
this and bring in all of this dirt to establish a foundation for this enormous
structure that he was going to build; something that would hold the weight. And
so he built all the way around the Temple Mount a restraining wall to hold all of
this dirt and all these rocks and everything that they brought in to level that
mount. That is what is left; what is referred to as
the "Western Wall." It is that western retaining wall. It is not a
part of the temple buildings at all.
So Jesus said, "not
one stone" talking about the buildings. Not one stone will be left upon
another; they shall be thrown down. Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, so He
has walked across the Kidron Valley, He is up on the
Mount of Olives, and He is looking back at the temple. And "the disciples
came to Him privately saying, 'Tell us, when will these things be?' " When is Israel going to
say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!'? When is the temple going to be
torn down? When is this going to happen? And second, "what will be the sign of Your
coming?" This is not talking about the Rapture. That hasn't been revealed
yet. It is talking about His coming. "What will be the signs of Your coming and of the end of the
age?" What is the question? The question is not what are the signs before
the Rapture? The question is what are the signs of Your
coming at the end of the seven-year Tribulation? Jesus' answers are going to be
related to the things that are signs of His coming at the end of the
Tribulation. He is not talking about things that are going on in the church
age. He goes on to say a warning of false teachers, "See to it that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive
many."
How many times have we
heard false messiahs since AD 70? How many false prophets were
there in the Old Testament? There were a lot. There is a huge number. But what
Jesus is talking about is something different from what happened in the Old Testament
or what happened in the church age. These are significantly different because
these will be signs of His coming. It will indicate that He is coming, the
Second Coming. The false prophets that we see in the Tribulation period operate
on an order of power because of their demonic and satanic empowerment in the last
half of the Tribulation. It far exceeds anybody on the present stage, whoever
you might think of, whether it is a Benny Hinn or it
is Mohammed or whoever you think of; there are false prophets that occur all
through Old Testament-New Testament period. Jesus is talking about something
that is particularly significant. It is a sign of His coming. That means it is
not like every other false prophet. These are going to be false prophets of a
totally different order.
Jesus says, "many will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many. You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars." There have been wars and rumors of wars since
before the Flood. The wars and rumors of wars we hear now aren't any different
from the wars and rumors of wars of two hundred years ago or five hundred years
ago or a thousand or two thousand or three thousand years ago. They may be a
little more horrendous because of technology, but they are basically the same
order. Jesus is talking about wars and rumors of wars that are going to be
significantly and categorically different than what we have today, because they
are going to so different that they are going to be signs of His coming. And
when you look at the seal judgments, those six seal judgments that are
described in Revelation 6, they line up perfectly with what Jesus says in this
part of this section. What He is talking about here is not wars and rumors of
wars that are trends of the church age; He is talking about these world wars
that take place during the first part of the Tribulation that make World War I
and World War II pale in comparison. They are of a much more intense order.
It goes on to say, "when you hear of wars and
rumors of wars see that you are not troubled, for these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet." See they are taking place in the
first half of the Tribulation, but it is going to get worse. "For
nation will rise against nation …" Yhat is the second seal judgment.
"… and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be
famines, pestilences, and
earthquakes in various places." Famines that is the third seal judgment.
Pestilences that is the fifth seal judgment. Earthquakes in
various places that is the sixth seal judgment. In Matthew 24:8 it says,
"All these are the beginning of sorrows."
They are birth pains. That occurs within Daniels 70th week, not before it. It
says, "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you
will be hated by all nations for My name's sake." That is the fifth seal judgment of martyrs.
"And then many will be offended, will betray one
another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will
rise up and deceive many." See, that follows those famines and pestilences
and earthquakes. There have always been earthquakes. We report them more now.
There was a study that was
presented by Dr. Steve Austin. He is a geologist. He did a
study on the distribution spread and the frequency of earthquakes. His
conclusion was that they are not any more frequent today than they were many
hundreds of years ago. They're reported more. We have instruments that identify
these things now that we couldn't before, but the frequency isn't any greater.
Now the final thing that I
want to say about this is that, go to Matthew 24:15, "Therefore when you see the 'abomination of
desolation…' " When does the abomination of desolation take place? Midpoint of the Tribulation. So Jesus is totally logical and
consistent that from Matthew 24:4-14 Jesus is talking about what happens before
the midpoint. What happens in the first age? That means I hate to tell you this
that means that Walvoord was dead wrong; Chafer was
dead wrong; most of the pastors you ever heard were dead wrong. Sure there are
famines and earthquakes and pestilences and wars. They were there in the Old Testament;
they are there in the New Testament; they are there all throughout the church
age. But what Jesus is talking about is that these are going to be of such a
higher order in intensity that they will rise to the
level of signifying the proximity of the Second Coming. That is different. All
of this is within Daniel's 70th week. All of this he is describing
here is within that period of time. Those signs are very important.
The second half, when He gets
to describing the second half, it gets even more
intense. In Matthew 24:21 Jesus says, "For then there will be great
tribulation." Now this term "great tribulation" isn't a
technical term for the second half. He is just saying then it is really going
to get bad. I've just described that it is bad to an order that you can't
imagine in the first half, but then after the abomination of desolation it is
going to get even worse. And that is exactly what we see in the book of
Revelation: that in the first half of the Tribulation, when you have the seal
judgments and then the trumpet judgments, that they are incredible! They are
horrible! We've never seen anything like this on planet earth! But after the
midpoint, after Revelation 11, it really gets bad! The "great tribulation" is not a
technical term for the second half; it is just a term for the intensity of the
infliction that will occur that has not occurred. When? Since the beginning of
the world until now! There has never been anything that even remotely resembles
what is going to happen. And that is directly out of the Old Testament,
Jeremiah 30:7, and "Alas! For that day is great, There
is none like it." It is not like anything we have ever seen before or ever
even imagined.
Daniel 12:1 says, "…
And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a
nation." When were there nations? After the tower of
Babel. What happened two hundred years before the tower of Babel? The flood.
There was a massive judgment, so He is not saying that it has never occurred
ever before, but this is the worse judgment that has ever occurred since the
tower of Babel, since there were nations, until that time. Joel 2:2 ends by
saying, "There has never been anything like it, nor will there be again
after it to the years of many generations." So talking about the
Tribulation and the Tribulation judgments, these are more incredible than
anything that has ever been seen before!
Now I am going to stop
here because the next point is imminency
and this is a very important understanding for the doctrine of the pre-Trib Rapture. The coming of Christ for the church could be
at any moment. There is no prophecy that must be fulfilled before Jesus returns
for the church. It could happen at any moment. Paul expected it during his
lifetime. Now there are prophecies related to setting the stage and preparing
things but what will happen after the Rapture that may be fulfilled before the
Rapture but they have nothing to do with the timing of the Rapture. They just
have to do with stage setting for what comes after the Rapture. So that doesn't
affect imminency. So we can say see, this is part of
the final return of Israel to the land. That is fulfillment of prophecy. But
that doesn't have anything to do with the Rapture because hundreds of years
could go by still before the Rapture occurs. It just has to do with stage
setting. Prophecy is fulfilled in relation to what comes after the Rapture. It
has nothing whatsoever to do with the timing of the Rapture. The Rapture can
occur at any moment. So we will look at imminency
next time. We will stop here and come back and finish this up with imminency next time.
Let's close in prayer. Father, thank You for this opportunity to
study these things this evening and to work our way through these great
passages that comfort us. As Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 4,
"comfort one another with these things." They comfort us not because
we are going to avoid the difficulties and adversities in life, but because we
know that You have a plan that eventually things will come to a horrendous end
and if we are alive at that time we won't be there. We will be taken to be with
the Lord in the air, the purpose that You have for the
church. We need to be prepared for that time because once that occurs then the
judgment for church age believers at the judgment seat of Christ. And what we
are doing today prepares us for that time and for what comes after. And Father,
we need to focus on living today in light of eternity. We pray that You will keep us mindful of that. In Christ's Name, amen.