Reasons for the Pre-Tribulation Rapture, Part 1

Transcript

GRM 1253
12/20/20
Reasons for the Pre-Tribulation Rapture, Part 1
Selected Verses
Gil Rugh

This week we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and it’s an exciting event. One that we as believers are glad to have the opportunity, to have the attention of the world focused in such a special way, on the birth of the one who is our Savior. Now we realize that the world generally doesn’t understand and know what it really means that Christ was born at Bethlehem. But it provides a great opportunity for us to talk to people about why the birth of Christ is so special, why He was so special, why He would accomplish what no one else could and why that necessitated His birth. I thought it was fitting that we would take our time and attention to focus on the fact that Jesus Christ is coming again. In fact, He is coming again in two parts, He is coming again to get the church and call the church to meet Him in the air to return with Him to His Father’s house, imagine the glory of that. We are talking about the return of Christ to get the church, to meet Him in the air, fulfill what He promised. Then seven years later we the church will return with Him to the earth.
Just want to give you an overview reminder. There are different views. Many of you have come out of various backgrounds, some Roman Catholics, some Lutheran, some different kinds of Protestant. Some of this would be material that you weren't taught in those kinds of settings but we come to our view on the basis, we have talked about this, of interpreting the Bible in a normal, literal, historical, grammatical way, in other words, we take it at face value. We take it like you read the newspaper. You read an article and there are metaphors, there are figures of speech, there are different kinds of comparisons, and analogies but basically we interpret literally. If you say I will meet you tomorrow afternoon for coffee at 3:00 o'clock at such and such a place we interpret that literally, that means we will meet at that time, at that place, and have coffee together. That is normal, literal communication, our whole life depends on that for the ability to communicate to one another. Sometimes people come to the Bible and they think we ought to change the way we interpret it and keep in mind that God had it written for normal, ordinary people. The Jews of the Old Testament, as we often remind you, were shepherd people, they weren't linguists who spent their lives studying language, they spent their lives taking care of sheep. Yet God spoke to them through their prophets and they were expected to understand it and respond accordingly. The same with the New Testament, Christ picked whom for His apostles? He picked various, fisherman for example, a tax collector, people who were normal people and then God's word was given to normal people. So we come and interpret the Bible in it's future matters the same way, normally.
I have a chart that we've done before, if you want to put it up, that comparison of the millennial teachings, these are just views on the millennium. The millennium, the word means ‘1,000 years,’ the Millennium is a 1,000 years. So we anticipate in different views what does the Bible mean in Revelation 20 when it says Christ will come back to earth and rule and reign for a 1,000 years, these are the different views. The first view, the grey in the color chart, the pre-tribulational (dispensational) premillennialism. I just love these words, just memorize them, you sound scholarly. Oh, I am a pre-tribulational, dispensational, premillennialist, of course. People will say oh my! Pretribulation means Christ will return before the tribulation (on that chart) to call the church to meet him in the air, that is what we are talking about, we'll say more about that. Another name for it is dispensational premillennialism because it recognizes a distinction between Israel and the church and so on. Then he will come to earth premillennial, before the 1,000 years, to establish the kingdom.
There is what is called post-millennialism and that’s the view that Christ will come after the millennium. So the world will get better and better through us sharing the gospel and ultimately will bring in the millennium and then after that Christ can return. There was a period of church history where that was very popular, the 1800’s, much of the theology was written. Some of our songs, and the darkness shall turn to dawning and the dawning to noonday bright, and Christ’s great kingdom will come to earth, the kingdom of love and light. We see the idea of that song is the world is going to get better and better and progressively pretty soon we will have brought the kingdom in. And then post-millennium, after the millennium, Christ returns to earth for eternity.
A-millennialism is what probably most of you coming out of general protestant denominations, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, they are what we call a-millennium. They don’t interpret prophecy literally and the ‘a’ in front of millennium means ‘no millennium.’ That the whole church age is just the millennium, is symbolic, this is the time of the kingdom, so we are in the kingdom now. That is why Roman Catholic churches, use them as an example since they are so large and well-known, they are very much into social action, political things, social justice because we are in the kingdom. We should be doing kingdom things, we should be developing the kingdom, so that is their foundation for doing that. Been very popular for centuries, the reformers like Martin Luther, John Calvin, came out of Roman Catholicism and never changed the eschatological view of prophecy so by-and-large they are in the third group, a-millennial and why they are so involved in “kingdom things”.
We are pre-tribulational, pre-millennial. If you put that 70 weeks chart up, this is the one you go to bed thinking about and wake up thinking about. This is the 70 weeks of Daniel, this is backbone, we are going to talk about this. This is the church age, the colored section, then at the end of this period Christ will descend in the air, He will not come to earth, but He will call for believers those who are truly part of the church, His body, the body of Christ, believers in Christ, and they will be transformed in an instant of time, in a moment, an atom of time 1 Corinthians 15 talks about. And we will meet Christ in the air in glorified bodies; this will include the resurrection of any who have died during this period of time and those who are alive at this point. So if you and I… I don’t know where the Church Age is right now, we could be right here, the trumpet could sound and we could be called to meet Him in the air before this service is over. There is nothing necessary to take place in biblical prophecy but this is the next event. We sometimes talk about what will go on in the seven years afterwards, that is called the 70th week of Daniel, the tribulation, a time of God’s wrath. Then after seven years we will return with Christ to the earth and that is when He will establish His kingdom, the first phase of it is the millennium.
So that is why we are pre-tribulational, we believe there will be a rapture, the church being caught up, Remember the Greek word is harpazo. Don't be confused when someone says, well, the word ‘rapture’ is not used in the New Testament; say of course not, the Bible wasn’t written in English, and it wasn’t written in Latin originally, it was written in Greek. The Greek word is harpazo and it means to be caught up, snatched away, and we looked at that in our previous study. So that is what we are looking for. We need to be careful with all the things going on in the world and they seem so important. Now are we going to move from capitalism to socialism, are we becoming a Marxist society, what will the change of the presidency be? The whole future of our country hangs on an election that is going to take place in Georgia, two people. We are citizens of this country and we want the best for it, we have a certain concern, but that is not what really involves me because God’s got it all under control. That doesn’t mean I can’t vote according to my conviction, you can’t vote in Georgia I don’t think legally although some may be working on that I understand. But for us we don’t want to get caught up in all the turmoil and confusion. You know, we’ve got the virus. Well, that doesn’t surprise us. I don’t want to get the virus, some of you have had it, we have some of our loved ones that can’t be here, they are dealing with it, it is going on. Naturally any kind of illness I’m not glad for.
But I understand the world is not going to get better and better, it is going to get worser and worser (and I have had parents ask me not to use that kind of English, they are trying to teach their kids better). But you know, that is part of why people say we are negative people. Oh, of course, you people who take the Bible literally, yeah, you don't have any hope for the world, so you just let it keep continuing to deteriorate. Well, we want to be a force for good but I can't rescue this world, this world is literally hopeless. We are celebrating the birth of Christ. If you really believe that He was the Son of God who was born into the human race, you know why He was born? Jesus Christ said Himself He came to give His life a ransom for many, it tells you the world is hopeless apart from the intervention of God with His Son Jesus Christ. So we are talking about reasons why, what are the evidences from the Bible that Christ is going to come before that 7 year period.
Now this may seem, well, this is a lot of detail, I will just take it as it comes, but it has broad ramifications on how we function as a church and what your focus is as we as a local church and you as a individual believer. There is real practical application of this and that the evangelical church broadly speaking is moving away very rapidly from this position. Why? Because they are moving away from the simple, literal interpretation of the Bible and it is a concern if God’s people abandon the truth that He teaches the church is to be the pillar and support of the truth. I haven’t given up. God is doing His work in the world and calling out believers, the elect, from every nation, but none the less the deterioration that’s going on in the world may indicate we are getting very close to that 7 year tribulation that will follow the rapture.
So we are walking through 7 reasons why we understand the Bible teaches that Christ will return in the air to rapture the church, catch it up to meet him in the air. These aren't the only reasons. I have mentioned John Walvoord books on a number of occasions, he wrote a book called The Rapture of the Church a number of years ago and at the end of that book he gives 50 reason for the rapture of the church. I have just selected 7, if you want more that is one of the resources you can go and check, every one won’t be of the same weight but they all pile on together. So the first fact that we are looking at for the rapture, why we will have a pre-tribulation rapture, it is the focus of the 70 weeks of Daniel. So you might turn back to Daniel 9. We are going to go very rapidly through all of these which means we won’t get through them all and I may have to finish them this evening but that will be fine because I will be gone for a couple weeks. The first reason is the focus of the 70 weeks of Daniel. We start in the Old Testament and this is where the differences occur between our view of the prophecy and others. Some people believe with the coming of Christ… And this is a popular view in the scholarly world among evangelicals (use the term for all those who claim to be Bible-believers, believe in faith in Christ and so on). Do we interpret the Bible Old Testament literally in this prophecy? Some believe with the coming of Christ we now go back and reinterpret the Old Testament and give new meanings to those prophecies that they didn’t have when they were originally given.
We believe additional revelation can help clarify, can give additional information, but cannot it change prior prophecy. You ought to be in Daniel 9, look at verse 24, “Seventy sevens.” That word ‘weeks,’ don’t get confused, we identify it as a week because it is seven days but it’s really, “Seventy sevens have been decreed.” And for comparison with other passages there is no real debate that we are talking about seventy seven year periods, so seventy times seven is 490 years. “Have been decreed,” note this, “have been decreed,” this is God’s sovereign decree, it cannot be altered, it cannot be changed. “For your people and your holy city,” now the angel is addressing Daniel, when he says “for your people,” obviously he's talking about the Jews and “your holy city,” we know what the holy city is, Jerusalem, we sing about it, the holy city. And six things will be accomplished, “to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make an atonement for iniquity, bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy place,” we will be in the kingdom. So it will take 490 years in God's working with the nation Israel for us to come to the point where the Messiah will establish the kingdom and it will begin. These things will be done, that’s what will be necessary for the kingdom.
Then he broke it down, “From the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be 7 weeks and 62 weeks.” He breaks it down into two parts, 7 weeks -- and we weren’t going into the details of this effect now, has to deal with the beginning and completion of rebuilding and restoring Jerusalem -- and then 62 weeks. So a total of 69 weeks, you note what it says, from the issuing of that decree, 444 BC, we had that on the chart we just looked at. We can identify that decree because we have it in history. 490 years and you will get to the coming of the Messiah and events regarding Him that will carry us basically to Palm Sunday, 483 years. You can get material on the 70 weeks of Daniel and we’ve talked about it on other occasion, it's in Sound Words, (church’s bookstore). Now you will note when you come to the next verse, verse 26, “After the 62 weeks,” which was after the seven weeks remember, so after a total of 69 weeks, “the Messiah will be cut off.” So we get to that point and you have to take in leap years and all of that in figuring it out, others have done it so you don’t have to work it out yourself unless you like that kind of stuff. We can basically to Palm Sunday, remember Christ rode into Jerusalem at the acclaim of the crowds and it says after those 69 weeks “Messiah will be cut off.” Now it doesn't say in the 70th week which you would think that would be the normal way to speak, it says after 69 weeks. In a week Messiah will be executed and you note, “have nothing” that is what happened after those 483 years, several days later the Messiah is crucified. He has nothing, I mean, He is going to be buried in a borrowed tomb. There is no kingdom. For most of the world it is an insignificant event, this is happening in Jerusalem and other parts of the world don't know and don't care; even for the Jews, they have joined with the Romans in wanting this execution of their Messiah to occur. We will not have this man to rule over us they said. So the Jews and the Gentiles alike joined together in having Messiah crucified.
So He has nothing and the prince who was to come will destroy the city and its end will come with the flood “and he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week.” Now wait a minute, see what happened, after 69 weeks the Messiah is cut off, it didn't say in the 70th so there is an indication of a pause here because he tells us in verse 27 that the prince who is to come will establish a covenant for one 7 year period. So now we pick up, so the 70th week won't necessarily follow right on the 69th week, there is a gap. But we will know when God’s clock with Israel begins to run again, it is when the covenant is signed between the prince who is to come, we know him more commonly as the antichrist, Willfull King, another title used of him, the beast in Revelation 13. He signs a covenant with the many, referring to Israel, and that will encompass one 7 year period broken into two 3½ years sections. In the middle of that 7 year period “he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering,” and so on. So you know the certain things that we talked about during the first 3 ½ years, the temple is going to be rebuilt and the sacrifices are going to be reinstituted because he is a false Messiah, but in the middle of that seven year period he breaks his agreement. So the literal interpretation of these Old Testament passages and there's more in Daniel on that but we will leave it for that.
This fits within the New Testament, come to Romans 11 , we recently studied this together and many of you have been part of that. Romans 11 and we are going to look at particularly verse 25, “For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery.” Now here we have a mystery, remember that word, it is something that has not before been revealed. We will see that evidenced in a number of passages, it is true in Romans 16 as well but we won’t go their right now. “Brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery” -- so that you don’t come up with your own ideas – “that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in: and so all Israel will be saved.” Verse 28, “From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers.” Because when it is time for Israel to be saved, verse 26, “the Deliverer will come from Zion,” and so on. So we have here something revealed, that there is a break in God’s program with the nation Israel, that shaded period we had on that chart for the Church Age, where God’s work of salvation no longer focuses in the nation Israel. They are hardened, not totally, some Jews are saved, Romans 11 started out with Paul saying I’m a Jew, I am saved, some Jews believed. But as you look at the overall work of God and the world today Jesus is building His church and the church is primarily Gentile. There is some Jews saved but they form a small portion when you look at the church in the world. So it is a mystery this time, where God would harden Israel and work with the Gentiles, this is the time of the fullness of the Gentiles. God’s work of salvation is primarily in Gentile people. God saved Jews, my wife has Jewish blood, when persecution breaks out against the Jews I just say I am a Gentile. Our son they told us in Israel, he could become a citizen because his mother has a grandmother who was Jewish. And those Jews get saved, we are glad for that, but God’s work is in the Gentile world today.
Come over to Ephesians, you are in Romans… Galatians, Ephesians, you’ve got to go through Corinthians to get to Ephesians. Chapter 3 we are going to look at, Paul’s telling them… he wants to explain to them so you understand how I know about God’s plan. Verse 2, “if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace which was given to me.” Remember he’s an apostle, he receives direct revelation from God. Verse 3, “that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery.” How does Paul know about these things? They were not revealed in the Old Testament; God revealed them to him. So it’s a mystery in the sense it was unknown before, it cannot be known by human reasoning. It takes direct revelation cause this is God’s plan and only God knows His plan, His purposes. So since He had chosen not to reveal it before it could not be known until He decided now is the time to reveal it. He is revealing it through Paul, “that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief,” so “you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ.” Now note how he refers to this mystery, “which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets.” We are talking about New Testament prophets. that’s why the order is ‘apostles and prophets’ to help us understand, it wasn’t revealed in the Old Testament.
So the point, this is a revelation for this time period. What is it? Verse 6, “That the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body.” The body, this is a unique entity called the church which is the body of Christ, they are “fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus.” Paul is not trying to elevate himself saying I got this special revelation, you didn't. It is a humbling thing. He says in verse 8, “To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles,” because that is unique. We will look into that in just a moment. It was unique that he would be appointed to carry the gospel to the Gentiles because he is a Jew, he was a Pharisee, he was a fully committed Jew to the Mosaic Law. To be sent to the Gentiles, that was God’s grace. Verse 9 “to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery.” We talk about dispensationalism, that comes from the word translated ‘administration,’ this is one of the places it’s used. ‘Oikonomos,’ ‘oikos’ is house, ‘nomos’ is law, and it is managing a household, so a picture here of God managing His household. Remember the church is the family of God and in 1 Timothy 3, this is His household its called. So here you have the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things. So again…
I’m mentioning this cause this past week I was reading a book that has been in print for some time and it had been awhile since I had read it so I pulled it off to read and he has pages and pages and pages of explaining what the word ‘mystery’ really means. I keep reading and reading and then I got up to take a break and go get a snack cause I don’t think I’m intelligent enough to understand what he is saying. I go back and I’m reading again and, boy, this is awfully complicated. He is the father of progressive dispensationalism, not usually known. Is mystery so hard to understand that he keeps explaining it? Verse 9, “Which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things,” important things. People make fun of us and say you believe the church wasn’t revealed in the Old Testament. God had to come up with a plan, the Jews crucified Christ, now what’s God going to do? Plan B, create the church. No. Nobody is that foolish who really believes in the living God. But it is true He has kept some things hidden to Himself. Deuteronomy 29 says the revealed things belong to us and the hidden things belong to God. Of course, He hasn’t revealed everything He knows, it would not be possible for us as created beings to absorb everything the omniscient God knows, thankfully He hasn't made everything known, you have to be God to know everything God knows.
So very simply, God chose to keep hidden some things that now He was revealing through the apostle Paul. And the focal point what he is talking about is the church, that is a unique entity that did not exist before, it is a unique entity, has its own identity as ‘the body.’ I mention this because what is become very prominent in evangelicalism today is: Jews and Gentiles throughout Old Testament and New Testament are all part of the body of Christ and you have to read to find mystery, then you read to find what the body of Christ is, and this is why in the scholarly world… This is where it is in scholarly schools, evangelical schools I'm talking about. In the scholarly world we are disdained, in fact, one of the men writing on this, (in the New Year I may be talking about some of this) but they put in their book their seminary published of their lectures, they said we don’t communicate our theology, thinking of the ignorant, illiterate people, this is scholarly work for people who are scholarly. They sound like the Pharisees with the blind man, who are you to teach us, we are the ones who know. They are not embarrassed to put that in print. They are criticizing the view we hold, pre-tribulational dispensationalism. Well, of course, it's popular among the masses but thinking people don't hold that anymore. And it does seep its way down because men are trained this way in the schools and then they come out to pastor churches and on we go. Well, any rate, the wisdom is clear.
Verse 10, even the angels didn't know about this part of God's plan. Now this is an amazing verse, verse 10, “So that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.” Angels learned about this phase of God's plan when God put it into operation through us the church, and obviously revealed much earlier through the apostle Paul. So God kept it in cause angels are created beings, He didn’t reveal everything He knows to the angels because they are created beings, they couldn’t absorb everything He knows anyway. So I want to be careful we have a correct view, we take the Bible literally. When God says it's a mystery it is something that was hidden in God, not something that God had come up with Plan B about, kind of argument supposedly from intellectuals. Of course, God had it as His plan, the point is He hadn’t revealed it. You don’t have to have a doctor’s degree to understand what he said. Did I emphasis that enough? You should have been in my office for three days this week when I talked to the walls.
Go to the book of Colossians -- Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians -- Colossians 1:24, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church,” to understand what God says is the body of Christ. It is not Israel in the Old Testament, it is the church, it is a unique body. Again, it concerns me that what are called progressive dispensationalism says the church is not a unique identity. Like Israel is a nation, its comprised of the one people of God, Israel in the Old Testament, the church in the New, and you just begin to muddle things. He says here, “His body which is the church,” and “of this church,” and ‘this church’ is in italics but he’s obviously picking up what he is just saying in the previous since we are continuing the thought. “I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit, so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God.” What is he preaching? “The mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now has been manifested through His saints.” How many times does he have to tell us the church was not revealed in the Old Testament, you don’t find out about the church in the Old Testament? The church is a new entity, it was hidden, it existed in the mind and plan of God but it was hidden from men, it was hidden from angels as we saw. It “has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” This is a new work of God.
Now the plan of salvation has always been people are saved by grace through faith in the God who reveals Himself but there are different stages in that plan and the church is a new phase, a new stage. So this whole concept of taking the 70 weeks of Daniel literally and appreciating the break, fits with this completely. We are in a period, you just got an indication, but you wouldn't have figured that out in Daniel chapter 9. Now nothing changes in Daniel chapter 9 because we said after the 69th week and then the 70th week so you interpret that literally but what did the New Testament reveal? New revelation revealed between that 69th and 70th week, God is doing a new work, not focused on the nation Israel, it’s focused on what He calls the church.
The second point, the ministry of the Holy Spirit through the church. Since the church is a unique entity, it has a unique ministry, particularly with the third person of the Godhead, God the Holy Spirit, the ministry of the Holy Spirit through the church. Come to John 14, Jesus in the last night with His disciples had supper with them and they with Him, He will shortly be betrayed in the garden, and then be crucified. He is preparing them, look at John 14:16, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper.” There you have in your margin the Greek word is ‘paraclete,’ para, ‘alongside of,’ kletos, ‘to call,’ He is the one who comes alongside of. He is another one like Christ, another one like Me but He is different, He is the one who will be your Helper, your enabler, “that He may be with you forever.” Who are we talking about? Verse 17, “the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive”, so this is only for believers, “because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you”. Now note, he is not saying the Holy Spirt was not present on the earth. He was. The Holy Spirit is omnipresent, one of the attributes of God, means God is present everywhere and the Bible is clear on that, you can go nowhere to escape from God because His presence is everywhere. It is not pantheism, He is not in everything, but in His person He is everywhere, He is personably present, the Holy Spirit is. So it’s not His coming. Genesis 1 begins with the creation and the Spirit of God hovered over the deep, He was present at the beginning of creation, He is part of creating. But He is going to send Him to do a unique and special ministry. He was with the disciples, now He is going to reside within these believers, that is a change. During the time Jesus Christ walked the earth and spent time with His disciples the Holy Spirit was present. Christ did His miracles through the power of the Holy Spirt, but He didn’t indwell in a permanent way the children of God, that will change with the coming of the Spirit.
Come down further to verse 26, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name. He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said.’ I’m going to send Him, that indicates He is going to come to do a special work in a unique way. Don’t lose sight, we are told that the Old Testament prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit in their writings. So the Holy Spirit was active, He has always been active. But He has a new unique ministry of residing within the believer. You know how special that is? You not only have God with you, you have God residing in you. That does not make you God, God is distinct from you, but He resides within you. This is what he says when your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you. You haven’t become God, you haven’t become the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is a distinct person. Well, you say, I don’t know if I can grab that. I don’t know that I understand it all either but I know what it means when he says God will dwell in me. The Holy Spirit, God, is present there, so that unique ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Coming over to chapter 15:26, “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father”, note this repeated emphasis, that He will not come until Christ returns to heaven and sends Him. So the death and resurrection of Christ Is essential for this particular ministry of the Holy Spirit. “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you,” John 15:26, “from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me.” Come down to 16:7, “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away,” now keep that in mind, you know we have an advantage. Wouldn’t it had been wonderful if we could have walked with Christ on the earth when He was there? Yes, it would have been but you know what is more wonderful? The Spirit of God dwells within us. There is an intimacy there that goes beyond what’s meant to just be with Christ. “It is to your advantage that I go away.” Could there be any greater advantage than having Christ here? Yes, because the complete work of salvation will be completed, now God can dwell within man. “For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” That ministry of the Spirit depends upon the finished work of Christ, if I don’t go to heaven He will not come. I can understand what it says, that doesn’t mean I grasp every full ramification of this. How can I grasp that the Holy Spirit, Eternal God, resides within this physical body? God says that is such a real thing that you need to be careful what you do with this body cause you don’t want to grieve the Holy Spirit who lives there.
Again, people create pantheism but that is just a pagan doctrine. I am not God, I have God dwelling within me so that isn't an arrogant thing to say here, it would be if God didn't say that’s the truth. What’s arrogant is not to believe God and say He is a liar. So it is true. So the ministry of the Holy Spirit is through the church. This begins we have the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we don’t have time to go to all the verses, but I Corinthians 12:13, “For by one Sprit we were all baptized into one body,” that is the body of Christ, we have seen that repeated, the church. So it is the work of the Holy Spirit to identify us with Christ. Romans 6, the baptism of the Holy Spirit… it is not water baptism that does that for you, it is the baptism of the Spirit, the Spirit identifies us with Christ and His death, burial, and resurrection, you are raised with new life and the Spirit dwelling in us. Acts 1, the disciples now, Christ has been raised from the dead, He spent forty days ministering to them but now He is ready to ascend to the Father. That doesn’t mean He didn’t go to the Father, but to leave the earth in His glorified body on this occasion in Acts 1, He will not return to earth in His physical body until He comes to rule in the kingdom. We are told in verse 3 He had been interacting with the disciples over a 40 day period. Then He tells them to wait in Jerusalem, verse 4, “Not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father has promised, which you heard of from me,” I just read that with you in John what was promised, “for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” Ten days later on the day of Pentecost, Acts 2, the Holy Spirit comes. What does He tell them? They are still wondering, are You going to establish the kingdom? Note, He doesn’t say the kingdom has begun, He says you don't need to know that. Look at the end of verse 6, they ask, “ ‘Is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?’ ”
“He said to them, ‘It's not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority,’ ” you concentrate on what is revealed to you. Now later God will reveal more, that’s what Paul said, ‘now we have more revelation.’ But you see what we are locked into… I don't have to know what God has not revealed but I am fully responsible for what God has revealed. So just because someone asks you a question you cannot answer doesn't mean that what you're sharing from the Word is not true. I don't have every answer. I have every answer I need in the word of God. How would that all work out? What will be the details that we get? I don’t know, I only know what God has revealed. Now when we get through the book of Revelation where God’s revelation to man is now complete, well, now I have a fuller picture than you could have had before.
So you will be baptized. What happens when the Spirit comes? Verse 8, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses,” now note this, “both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” With the coming of the Spirit, the baptism of the Spirit, this new work the Spirit is going to do, there is a change in the ministry. Remember the Great Commission? Go into all the world and preach the gospel. What does He say here? Verse 8, you will be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the remotest parts of the earth. And some people spiritualize this and say, well, see, this is our Jerusalem, then we go out a little further and that be like… He is talking about literal Jerusalem, literal Judea. This is the way the book of Acts literally, historically went, it is important.
Come back to Matthew 10, Matthew 10, look at verse 5, here Jesus has picked His twelve apostles, His twelve disciples who will also be called apostles; they form that unique group, the Twelve, and their names are given in 2, 3, and 4. They are given unique powers in verse 1 because they are going out. Verse 5, “These twelve Jesus sent out after instructing them,” now note this, “ ‘Do not go in the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter any city of the Samaritans; but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,’ ” you don’t go to the Gentiles, you don’t go to the Samaritans. The Samaritans were mixed-blood Jews. When the Jews got deported to other lands some intermarried with the Gentiles and they formed their own religious system, the Samaritans as they are known, they developed a worship center at Mount Gerizim. This is a ‘only go to the Jews,’ this was God’s plan and program.
And what do you preach? Verse 7, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” and you do miracles, “heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers.” Why? This is evidence that the Messiah is here, we are ready for the kingdom; but Israel rejected Him, we will not have this man to rule over us. So God’s judgment comes on Israel, that was not something new, God warned of the judgment in the Old Testament. But He did not reveal what would happen in that time between when God puts Israel under judgment and we wait for the 70th week of Daniel, the Church Age. You’ve got to wait for new revelation for that. Maybe Israel, well, you say, maybe Israel would have done something different if God said you would be 2,000 years under judgment and then we will get that last seven years and it’s going to be the worst ever. Well, Lord, I think I would rather do something. That is where we don’t know everything.
But nothing has changed. Now we get to Acts. Why? The rejection of the Messiah is done, Christ will return to heaven, ten days later He will send the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost, and the church begins. Israel is on a sidetrack, so to speak, they are under the judgment of God, God's work of salvation does not focus in the Jews today. In the Old Testament some Gentiles were saved but God's whole work of salvation is focused in the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That is not true today, now you go to all the world, even during Jesus earthly ministry. Keep in mind Jesus is on earth in the gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, offering the kingdom to Israel. Tell them the kingdom of heaven is at hand, offer them proof, call them to repentance. Remember John the Baptist? Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. But with their rejection and crucifixion of the Messiah the door is closed, Israel is under judgment. The next thing for them is there will be an agreement signed between Israel and the leader of the revived Roman Empire, that is what was talked about in Daniel 9, that covenant for one 7 year period. And the Jews will think we have arrived and now we can have our own temple and the sacrifices, and the protection of this mighty world ruler. Then in the middle of that seven years everything changes. Then God brings His wrath in a fuller way on the nation Israel and we have studied Revelation chapters 6–19. So you see the change that takes place and it's related to the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Come to 2 Thessalonians and this is probably as far as we will get, we will have to pick up tonight, and hopefully finish up. We’ve got all night tonight so its good; no, still come, we won't take all night. Let's take the third point, the absence of the church in Revelation, the church is absent in Revelation 6–19, and that is important because remember that seven year tribulation is a time of wrath and the church is promised that it won’t have to go through the time of wrath. Come over to Revelation, you are familiar, in the first three chapters of Revelation the church is mentioned 19 times, we have studied Revelation together, 19 times in the first three chapters. In chapters 2 and 3 Christ addresses seven local churches, they were historical churches of the time. He addresses situations in them but He selects these seven churches because they are not only seven literal historical churches but the messages given to them have ongoing significance and purpose for subsequent churches, warnings given to those churches about sin, promises given about reigning with Christ in His kingdom, and so on. So those things are true of those local churches but then they are true for churches down through history so we learn from those seven churches. Then you get to chapters 4 and 5 of the book of Revelation and the church is pictured in heaven so you have a sequential development going on in the book Revelation. You have the church period the first 3 chapters basically, then you have the church in heaven under the picture of the 24 elders, and when we studied Revelation 4 and 5 we went through the reasons why the 24 elders are representative of the church. It is now resurrected, glorified, and rewarded, pictured with crowns of rewards and white garments in the very presence of God in heaven. Remember Christ promised in John 14 in anticipation of the rapture, I will come and get you and take you to my Father's house. He didn't say I'll come and get you and we will go into the kingdom; He says I will come and get you and take you to my Father's house. So that is the picture of the church in Revelation by John in chapters 4 and 5.
What happens in chapter 6, we hit the seven year period and then the Lamb breaks the seals on the scroll and we go into that seven year period of tribulation. The 70th week of Daniel and Revelation 6–19 walks us through that and we hit the middle of that seven year period in chapters 10, 11, 12, and 13 there. We see persecution will break out against Israel and God's wrath is poured out on the world as a whole but a specific purpose is to bring Israel to its knees. So particularly through that last 3 ½ years we will finally get to the place where Israel is brought to its knees, so it is a time of wrath, it is a time of judgment. The church does not appear in chapters 6–18, we don’t see the church again after we leave chapter 3 until we get into chapter 19 and the church, the bride of Christ, the marriage of the Lamb has occurred. He has taken us to heaven to His Father’s house, the marriage of the Lamb has occurred, and now we are ready to return with Christ to the earth for the establishment of the kingdom and the marriage supper of the Lamb, what is really what the Millennium is. So you see that order carried out and developed.
With that then we will pick up the next point tonight, the church is promised deliverance from wrath. The argument from silence doesn't prove a point but it supports a point. The church does not appear in Revelation 6-18, appears again in chapter 19 when the bride of Christ is ready to come from heaven, so doesn't indicate the church has been on earth. The marriage of the Lamb has occurred and we will be taken to the Father's house for that. Now we are ready for the marriage supper when the friends of the bridegroom… Remember John the Baptist? I am not the bride, I am a friend of the bridegroom; an understanding of the distinction there even though his understanding would have been more limited because he was confused that Christ wouldn’t establish the kingdom, but by revelation he could make distinctions that he couldn’t even fully understand until God gave further revelation.
So all of this, we want to keep our focus; I watch the news, I read about it, then I think what is my focus today? Well, it is on the coming of Christ. What am I looking for? Jesus Christ is coming to call the church, that could happen today, if Christ is coming at 4:00 this afternoon who cares who is president, who cares if the country is going to Marxism or socialism. What are we going to say to Christ? I wasn’t about His work because I was so worried about the world? I am not saying we are indifferent, I have my mask, fine, I’m not against it, but I am prepared for whatever comes. The Lord is going to take me by a different means? Physical death? I am ready. I am hoping for the rapture cause the last enemy is death and I just as soon not fight the last battle with death, I just like to skip it, but the Lord will give me the grace. But we are supposed to be living, and we will talk about this, in the light of the return of Christ. If we are not, if we are distracted in the world, we are worried, we are fretting, and we are caught up in these things, then we are not obeying. There are a lot of people to worry about what is going on in the world, we don’t have to. Didn’t Jesus say don’t worry about tomorrow, each day has enough troubles of its own? So what I want to concentrate on is: Lord, I want to do what You want me to do today and I want to be what You want me to be today. I have no control over tomorrow, but You do. But my responsibility today is to be living for You and we are going to see the Bible says that we are not going to be overtaken by this tribulation and caught off-guard. We are children of light, we don’t live in darkness. So somebody asks you this afternoon, what do you think about events going on in the world, you can say I don’t think much about them, I think about what is important. You know what I am looking for, you know what I am expecting? Not the outcome of the Georgia election. I’m looking forward to expecting the coming of my Lord and Savior, He may come today. And I think people think you are telling them a fairy tale, but God keeps His word, doesn’t He? We will see in our next point, He is coming to deliver us from wrath to come, so I have claimed that, He promises to come rescue us before the wrath is poured out and we want to live in light of that.
Let’s pray together. Thank you, Lord, for the riches of Your word and, Lord, we would not take for granted the privilege that is ours to have Your full revelation. Everything You intend for us to know until we are gathered into Your presence, and matters that could not be revealed to us at this present time are made known. But Lord, we want to take hold of these truths and have them take hold of us so we live in light of them. Lord, we see all that is going on in the world around us, the turmoil, the uncertainty, the fear, but we have promises that You have given that cannot be broken. You promised to come and rescue us out of this present world and, Lord, we want that to be our focus, to fulfill our responsibilities today, and our first responsibility is to You, to godly living, to be lights in this darkness. May we be faithful, may we be faithful as a church, may we be faithful in our individual walk. Bless this day before us. We pray in Christ’s name, amen.