The Rapture and Christ’s Obedience

Transcript

GRM 1237
04/12/2020
The Rapture and Christ’s Obedience
Selected Verses
Gil Rugh

Good evening, welcome to Indian Hills Community Church as our family gathers together in this special way again. It’s our normal pattern, obviously, to meet on Sunday night but not on Easter Sunday night. But with the change in everything we thought it would be good to get together as a church family again tonight. So good to have you gathering together with us.

Going to do something a little different tonight, not totally different. Usually as part of our Sunday evening service we do a question and answer, questions you’ve submitted I answer. We do that in conjunction with the study we’re doing. Earlier today we talked about the salvation work of Christ in connection with what we’re emphasizing at Easter. We talked about the past, present, and future work of Christ in salvation. We’re in Romans 8 on Sunday night but we’re going to pause in Romans 8. I want to focus our attention tonight on some of the questions that have come in. Some of them relate to the work of Christ, the rapture of the church, active and passive obedience of Christ, and what do we see the scripture teaching on that subject. Matters related to the return of Christ, to salvation, had a question about the soul, some others, so we’ll see how far we go.

I’m going to start with a question that came regarding the rapture of the church. But before we look into that, let’s have a word of prayer together. Thank you, Lord for Your blessings. Thank you for this day, Lord, it’s a special day no matter where we are, how we meet, what changes may go on. One thing is forever before us that the Savior who loved us and died for us has been raised from the dead, He is alive and we belong to You through faith in Him. So, we thank You for the blessings of the day. Thank you for the privilege of coming together to look into Your word. Bless our time together. I ask that the Spirit would take these truths and again, impress them upon our hearts and minds, encourage our hearts. May we have a greater appreciation of the treasure we have in Your word as we look into it together. We pray in Christ’s name, amen.

Question was passed on to me, asked me to address a person’s comments on the internet. This was a question submitted to a person on the internet who has a ministry, John Piper, it has to do with Christ’s return. This person asked the question of Piper, “I know this is a huge debate, I would love your thoughts, how many times is Jesus coming back? Is He coming back in the rapture, according to 1 Thessalonians 4 and then returning a second time to defeat Satan according to Revelation 19? Is Christ returning one more time or two more times?” So I thought I would give you my understanding of scripture, it won’t be new to you. We believe that Christ will return at the rapture to call the church into His presence, meeting Him in the air, and taking the church to heaven, then seven years later He’ll return to earth. That is a different view than reflected by Piper in his answer. Piper is a post-tribulationalist. He believes Christ will return once and that after the Tribulation and before the Kingdom. Sometimes we call that covenant pre-millennialism. He says in his response, “I don’t think there are two comings of Christ in the future, but only one.” Then he presents those that believe in two, he presents what their view is in the rapture. Then he says, “now I grew up in a home, in a church, that believed that view called the pre-tribulation rapture view.” It’s called that because we believe that Christ will come for the church before the rapture. Then he went on to say that “he studied it, looked into it, and came to the conclusion Christ will only come once and that is just before the millennium, to establish the kingdom.” He gives his meaning. One of the verses he uses, the first verse he uses, is Revelation chapter 3 verse 10. I’ll just look at these verses with you, then I’ll just give you an overview of the reasons why I hold to a pre-tribulation rapture. But in Revelation chapter 3 verse 10 Christ is addressing the church at Philadelphia, He says “Because you have kept the word of My perseverance I also will keep you from the hour of testing, that hour which is about to come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.” He believes that this is God’s promise to keep us from the hour of trial. “That probably doesn’t mean we are taken out of the world but rather God will keep us from the faith destroying effects of the hour of trial. He will guard us, He will protect our faith. I don’t think that its a New Testament teaching that God rescues His people from trial, but He protects them through trial.” Now that last statement is true. Jesus told His followers when He was preparing them for His departure, in the world you will have tribulations, be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. And the New Testament talks about tribulations and we go through tribulations.

But that is different and distinct from the coming great Tribulation prophesied in Old Testament prophesies. And what is anticipated beginning in Revelation chapter 6 and going on to chapter 19, that is a time like the world has never seen, a time when billions of people will die under the judgments of God. In verse 10 of Revelation 3, He says “because you have kept the word of My perseverance, I also will keep you from the hour of testing, that hour which is about to come upon the world.” And that will begin in chapter 6 of Revelation as the future is unfolded. So that’s a special time of testing and tribulation, it’s not like those other testings. So I don’t think it’s an accurate handling of the scriptures, Old or New Testament, to just make this part of the testings that are part of our life in a fallen world. This is the time of testing that is going to come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth. And we’ve studied in detail Revelation chapter 6 to 19, so I take it that is a time of unique testing called ‘the day of the Lord’ in the Old Testament, prophesied by Jesus in Matthew 24 as a coming time and a number of other New Testament. So, I don’t think that’s an accurate reflection just to say, well, the New Testament talks about times of testing and trial for believers.” It does! But this is a special hour, that special unique time that was yet future and would come upon the world.

He also has another evidence, “The passages that settled the matter for me were 2 Thessalonians 1 and 2 Thessalonians 2. Both of these chapters talk about the coming of the Lord in a way that makes two comings, one to rescue and one to judge, extremely unlikely if not impossible.” So, let’s look in 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, 1 Thessalonians 1 Paul is writing to the Thessalonians and they are going through testings and trials. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 he commends them for their faith in the gospel and the evidence of that faith. Then down in verse 9, “For they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God.” And that’s similar what we talked about earlier today, that our justification is followed by our sanctification, they are not separate events. They are distinct, justification is God declaring us righteous and sanctification then is the development of the new life we have in connection with being declared righteous. That has been evidenced in these Thessalonians. But note verse 10, they are serving the living God and are “to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from wrath to come.” That anticipates a wrath to come that we’ll be rescued from.

Come over to 2 Thessalonians, chapter 1, a little more development in this second letter. Now the persecution is intense in Thessalonica so Paul talks about, verse 5, “this is a plain indication of God’s righteous judgments so that you will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which indeed you are suffering. For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed.” Now you see what he’s writing to do here, to encourage them. They’re suffering at the hands of unbelievers but that’s not the last word. The last word is those unbelievers will suffer at the hands of almighty God when Jesus returns to mete out punishment on those unbelievers. When is that? That’s recorded in Revelation 19 and then the ultimate outcome will be at the end of Revelation 20 when they are sentenced to hell. So we can talk about the coming of Christ but just like talking about the coming of Christ in the Old Testament, if that’s all you have, you don’t appreciate that there would be two times of His coming. He came to suffer and die, then He will come to rule and reign, that’s about two thousand years apart. The Old Testament doesn’t indicate that. It talks about the coming of Messiah, He’ll rule and reign in glory. Then the Messiah will come and He’ll suffer and die. Peter said the Old Testament saints and prophets couldn’t see how that could fit together because God hadn’t revealed there are two separate comings of Christ to earth, so that’s not unusual. So we can talk about the coming of Christ. And if we talk in the Old Testament, yeah, when Christ comes, He’s going to be a Savior who suffers and dies and raised from the dead. He’s also a Savior who will come and bring judgment on His enemies and deliver His people and establish a kingdom. Well, we can talk about it and call it the coming of Christ, this is the coming of Christ when He will pour out His judgment on unbelievers who have so persecuted His people. I take it that will be at His coming to earth and He’ll set up judgment.

Now when you come to chapter two, which in Piper’s response puts these two passages as the key to his believing in only one coming, they say, well, yeah, he’s talking about that coming to mete out judgment, but I want to put this in perspective where we are. Chapter 2, verse 1, “now we request you brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, that you be not quickly shaken from your composure and be disturbed by a spirit or a message or a letter, as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.” Now that’s that unique time in the plan of God, that seven years that precedes His second coming to earth. The Old Testament collapsed that period of time.

Do you have that chart on the seventy weeks handy? We could put that up. The Old Testament collapses the coming of Christ in the sense that it talks about the first coming and the second coming. You should have this on your screen. This is the seventy weeks of Daniel that we talk about. The Old Testament only talked about down to this time, that’s the first sixty-nine weeks of Daniel that we have talked about in previous studies. Then it jumps over what we have colored here as the ‘church age’ and talks about the ‘day of the Lord’ here. Now it takes the New Testament to fully unfold what about this time here? So these Thessalonians need to have further information. You’re not living in this period of time here. And you note what he says about it, I want to give you an understanding about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him. What do they know about that? Come back to the end of 1 Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 (verse 13), “We do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.” Now watch, “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” Their bodies will come out of the grave and ascend to meet Christ in the air, He doesn’t come to earth. Verse 17, “Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.” That’s the coming of the Lord and our gathering together to Him in verse 1 of chapter 2 of 2 Thessalonians. I’m speaking to you with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus and our gathering together to Him, we are gathered to meet Him in the air. Now as you go down into chapter 5, he opens up, “Now as to the times and the epics, brethren, you have no need of anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” Then he talks about the day of the Lord. Then he encourages by saying, verse 9, “God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation.” That time of wrath will not envelop us because we’re going to be gathered up to meet the Lord in the air. So we will not be going through that time of wrath but we will be taken out so we don’t have to endure it. This fits with John chapter 14, we’re not going to go to these verses but let me remind you of it particularly John 14 (verse 2), “In my Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” He’s not talking about coming to earth. Where did He prepare the place for us? In His Father’s house in heaven, in glory, that’s where the church will be taken to when Christ comes to meet us in the air, then there will be a time of wrath on the earth.

So we come back to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, don’t be shaken, I know the persecution you’re going through can be very intense, but you are not in the day of the Lord. And you don’t have to be afraid that you missed that day. Let no one deceive you for it will not come…, the day of the Lord “will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed.” Now much discussion on that word apostasy, we’ve spent some time in looking to that, we can’t do that again this evening. You can access that on the website where we did more detail on this. But the word apostasy is just a Greek word carried over into English, ‘apostasia,’ you can even see it, we just carry over apostasy. You have in the margin of your Bible, “a falling away from the faith” but the word apostasy just means a departure. I went back to Liddell and Scott, their Greek lexicon, one of their meanings is a departure, a disappearing, that’s the verb form of this noun. It is only used as a noun one other time in the book of Acts where it talks about departing from Moses. We use it as an apostasy is a departure from the faith. But what’s he talking about? “Unless the departure (apostasy) comes first,” I take it the departure comes first. And the verb form of this is used I think fifteen times in the New Testament, it’s used in going from one place to another. So I take it we’re talking about the rapture here, that would fit down in verse 7, “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. Then the lawless one will be revealed.” Who has the power to restrain the wickedness and activity of Satan, the devil? Well, the Holy Spirit, He’s the only one. The Bible through the apostle John and the epistles of John, remember, greater is He who is in you that he who is in the world. So the devil’s work is restrained by the power of the Holy Spirit in us as believers and in the church. But He will be removed. Oh, I read one article this afternoon. The person said, well, the Holy Spirit can’t be taken from the earth. No, but He can be removed in the way He came.

Remember in the gospel of John, chapter 14, chapter 15, and chapter 16. Jesus promised His disciples that when He left He would send the Holy Spirit. Why don’t you come back to John’s gospel chapter 15. This is why my answering questions always turn into a sermon. John chapter 14 verse 26, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name,” so He’s going to be sent. But He’s already present, He descended on Christ at His baptism in the form of a dove, He’s mentioned in the gospels, He’s mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis, the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep. Come to chapter 15 of John verse 26, “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me.” Come down into chapter 16, verse 7, “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will convict the world,” and so on. So there is a special coming of the Holy Spirit and work of the Holy Spirit that will be a result of the resurrection and ascension of Christ. What happens in Acts chapter 1? Jesus tells His disciples you tarry at Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you’ll received power, that happens in Acts chapter 2 when the church is established. So the restrainer in connection with God now developing and building the church, He is restraining and holding back the work of the devil. The day of the Lord cannot come because this is the time God is building the church.

It’s not until He resumes His program with Israel. And the unique ministry of the church, baptizing us into the body of Christ as members of His body, the bride of Christ, that ministry, He is removed in that capacity. Just as He came in a special way, He leaves in a special way, now the restraint is removed. Back in 2 Thessalonians 2, the Spirit restrains, then that lawless one will be revealed, now we can have the beginning of the seventieth week of Daniel and its unfolding, the day of the Lord prophesied in the Old Testament, what is talked about here in the New Testament that will culminate with the return of Christ in Revelation 19. So I think a proper understanding and in the context of the book when he talks about that. Well, some say, why didn’t he just say you’d be in heaven if the day of the Lord had come? Because He’s unfolding more details that they understand. This isn’t just a matter you’d be in heaven, but you understand your tribulations, your sufferings. I told you about the coming of the Lord, I told you God hasn’t appointed us to wrath, I did that at the end of my previous letter, 1 Thessalonians 5. Now I told you in chapter 1 of this letter, Christ is coming, He will punish those who are opposed to the truth. But His special coming that will precede the seventieth week of Daniel, that’s what holds it back. When that ends, we’ll get to this in our study of Romans 11, then God will resume His program with Israel. Right now He’s dealing with the church and that’s the special ministry of the Holy Spirit in building the church. So I don’t think these references are properly understood.

Let me mention one other thing he says, in 1 Thessalonians 4 verses 16 and 17, he references these words, he says “now my understanding of these verses and I don’t see any reason to think otherwise, is that yes, we will rise to meet the Lord in the air. That’s what it says. It’s like a great welcoming crowd. Then we will descend with Him in His triumphant arrival.” We’re going to have a problem. You want to pop that chart back up that we had, if you could. Just unfolding, we’ll mention this later…, what he is really saying is when Christ returns in the air, we won’t go up to heaven with Him, He won’t take us to His Father’s house where He has prepared a place for us, we’ll just turn around and come back down to earth. That’s a post-tribulation rapture. Do you have that second chart handy on the post-tribulation rapture? Here’s the pre-tribulation rapture which we’re holding. That when Christ comes for the church at the end of the church age, He’ll descend in the air, meet the church; first resurrected saints of the church age, then living saints transformed. First Corinthians 15, in a moment, in an atom of time, twinkling of an eye, we will be changed. We will meet Christ. We’ll return to heaven, then later, seven years later, after the day of the Lord, the great Tribulation, we will return with Him for the establishing of His kingdom.

Piper’s view is there is no return. We have to go through, and he generalizes the tribulation, that it’s just this period of time, then the Lord comes in the air, we are caught up to meet Him, then we just turn around and come back down with Him, and we establish the kingdom. There is a serious problem here. If that happens everybody at this point is glorified because they are raised from the dead and all living saints, all saint’s dead and living now here from the church age, are glorified. We go up and meet the Lord, come down. When He comes down in judgment all unbelievers are destroyed, all living unbelievers. Only glorified saints are going into the kingdom. But we read in Revelation chapter 20 that after a thousand years there’s a great rebellion from the people on the earth against Christ. Where do they come from, glorified saints having children? Jesus said in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven so glorified saints won’t be having children. Where does rebellion come? The Old Testament talks about the kingdom and there will be rebellion that will be judged. So that’s a serious problem when he tries to say this is the second coming to earth. That means all saints are glorified at that time, only glorified saints go into the kingdom. After a thousand years some glorified saints are going to change their mind and rebel against Christ? Well, then they end up not taking a literal view of the kingdom and one problem comes to another.

Another thing I’ll mention here that he brings up. In verse 17 and it sounds good, in fact he puts it this way, “I recall how stunned I was when I was round twenty three years old and I saw for the first time that the word ‘meet,’ in verse 17, we’ll ‘be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.’ ” It’s used two other times in the New Testament. He missed one, there’s three other uses of this expression, he says there’s two, and it’s the same exact expression, “eis apantesin”, it’s exact same expression, eis is the preposition, apantesisn. It’s a word, get the lexicon, it means meeting. He says the other two references, and he uses two, Matthew chapter 25 verse 6 and Acts chapter 28 verse 15, it was in a context where someone met someone and then they went back to where they were so he says this means they’re going to meet Christ in the air and then come back here.

But why couldn’t we be meeting Christ in the air, even if that’s the true meaning, and going back with Him? He’s coming down to meet us, we’re coming up to meet Him, and John 14 says He’ll take us to the Father’s house where’s He’s prepared a place for us. Unless Piper does not believe in earthly kingdom at all which would make him amillennial, I haven’t pursued all that, but I think he is a post-tribulational covenantalist. But where are you going with this? We could be going back but the word ‘meet’ according to the lexicons just means to meet someone, now the context determines what you’re going to do after you meet Him. It’s only used three times (John chapter 12, verse 13 is the other reference that Piper missed) there’s three of these exact expressions using the word ‘meet’ with a preposition eis. The lexicon says it means to meet. In the Old Testament it’s used many times and it can be meaning to meet someone who is friendly, someone who is unfriendly. So I think we want to be careful about, oh, this struck him and, boy, I read this and the word meet means to meet them and then accompany them back to the place you just went from. Well, you’re reading something into that. The John reference is a reference to the Palm Sunday meeting, I believe, John 12:13, where they meet Him on the road. It just means to meet but it could mean Christ is going to take us. if you’re going to look for where He’s taking us, bringing Him down to earth is a serious problem. So I wanted to answer that specific.

Let me just run you through the reasons we looked at when we studied the pre-tribulation rapture in detail. I won’t give you all the references, you can get those. So if we could start to list these with number one, the focus of the seventy weeks of Daniel. These are just some of the reasons, they are not all of them. I think these all come from a literal interpretation of scripture, we’ve studied literal interpretation. But here is another person, this is not Piper, this is a man named Reymond, who has written a reformed theology. He says “dispensationalists, most would insist that the first tenant of dispensationalism, is the bible be interpreted literally and it’s meaning must not be spiritualized. The question arises, why must the Bible be so interpreted? I suggest that this is the only hermeneutic that allows dispensationalist to draw their needed distinction between Israel and the church.” In other words, he says, the only reason we take the Bible literally as dispensationalists is because we want to keep Israel and the church distinct. I have to give you another example of what he says. Why should I endure this alone? Later he says, this is a footnote, “undoubtedly temporal, earthly promises of a land were given to Abraham and his descendants in the Abrahamic Covenant,” and he lists the references out of the book of Genesis, “but the land promises were never primary and central to the covenant intention, and a literal and complete fulfillment of these promises under Old Testament conditions was never envisioned by God.” He’s obviously got insight into the mind of God that God has not revealed because if you read those, and we’ve gone through those, God says walk on that ground, that ground where your feet are walking will be yours. And now it takes Dr. Reymond to tell us God never intended that to be taken literally. I say (God says), fooled you, fooled you, I repeated it, I repeated it, I repeated it, I repeated it to your son, I repeated it to your grandson, but I never meant it. That’s what happens when you depart from literal interpretation. Alright, the focus of the seventy weeks. That’s Daniel chapter 9, seventy weeks are decreed for Your people and Your holy city, they’re just for Israel. That’s why it was on the chart earlier. So that’s the first reason, it’s just for Israel and the seventieth week is yet future, that is the day of the Lord.

Second, the ministry of the Holy Spirit through the church, which we just talked about. Christ promised to send the Holy Spirit when He ascended to heaven. In Acts 1, that’s yet future, but He tells them wait, wait at Jerusalem, the Holy Spirit will be sent in not many days. He comes in Acts chapter 2 and the church begins. Then we read in 2 Thessalonians the Restrainer has to be removed before the seventieth week of Daniel can unfold, the day of the Lord, and the manifestation of the man of sin, that central figure in Revelation chapters 12-13. So that fits, He’ll leave in the way He came. It doesn’t mean He’s absent, the Holy Spirit is God, He’s omnipresent. But He was going to be sent from heaven in a special way that He hadn’t been present before. Jesus said He’s with you but He will be in you, so He’s already with the disciples in their ministries, but I’m going to send Him to carry out a special ministry. When the church is complete the church will be raptured. The Holy Spirit is removed in that ministry which was a restraining ministry that held back the seventieth week of Daniel. The church wasn’t revealed in the Old Testament. It’s just one thing after another, the death and resurrection of Christ, talked about just as though they all just… now we have further revelation, so that fits.

Third, the church does not appear. It’s mentioned repeatedly in chapters 2 and 3, then in chapters 4 and 5 the church is seen in heaven. In chapters 6 in Revelation, the church is not mentioned again, from chapter 6 through chapter 18, not until we get to chapter 19 and the bride of Christ is coming with Christ as He descends in the clouds. Just fits, take it as it is.

Fourth, the church is promised deliverance from wrath to come. God has not appointed us to wrath, we saw that in 1 Thessalonians 5 as part of the promise. In Revelation chapter 3, verse 10, God promises the church… Remember these churches are representative, they are actual, literal churches but there are messages to those churches that are applicable to churches down through history. We are promised deliverance out from wrath to come. ‘Eck’ the preposition, ‘out’ as the basic meaning. Then what happens? We see the church in heaven in chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation, then we see the unfolding of the judgments that mark the beginning of the day of the Lord, the seventieth week of Daniel. We’re promised deliverance.

Number five, there must be a gap between the rapture and the second coming. Who’s going to populate the kingdom? I mean, there’s going to be an explosion of growth in that kingdom. It’s not revealed that there is a thousand years, first phase of the eternal kingdom anywhere in the Bible until you get to Revelation chapter 20. That doesn’t make it less true. But it is revealed there would be people born in the kingdom, there will be people who die under the judgment of God in the kingdom, there will be people who are never saved who are in the kingdom. You have to have a time gap between the coming of earth to establish the kingdom by Christ and the rapture. If the rapture and the second coming to earth are the same event you have a hard time with the kingdom. We can’t take it all literally because where are we going to get these people? And they recognize this, some of them do. One writer creates a ‘pause’ when we meet Him in the air or maybe when He comes to earth not every unbeliever is destroyed. But the scripture indicates that when He returns with the church, the judgments of Matthew 25 are judgments of the living at the second advent. Believers who are alive at the second coming to earth don’t get glorified bodies. They go into the kingdom in their physical bodies and they will have children and repopulate the earth which has been severely depopulated by the billions who have died. And the result of who knows how many who have been executed at the judgment set up by Christ in Matthew 25 at the second coming. You have to have a gap between the rapture and the second coming to earth if you’re going to believe in a literal kingdom to fulfill the promises of Old Testament prophesies as well as the development in the New.

The sixth reason, the departure in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, verse 3, the apostasy, I take it is the departure. You put that with verse 7, the removal of the Restrainer, which I take to be the Holy Spirit. So, you understand the gathering together to the Lord. We still talk about the coming of the Lord. I can talk about when the Lord comes, it will be with a full glory of the manifestation of His presence and everyone in the world will see Him. And there will be mourning . We say, oh, well then, then what? That’s when He comes to earth. I can talk about the coming of Christ to earth, then He’ll mete out judgment on His enemies. But I can also talk about the coming of Christ in the air for the church. So we have two phases revealed in the coming to the earth. So just like the Old Testament didn’t reveal two comings to earth, now New Testament revelation reveals something new. Paul said that it wasn’t revealed in the Old Testament, Ephesians 3, the mystery of the church, that was revealed to me. God’s creating a new group of people, not to replace Israel, but during this period of time, when Israel is set aside as the focus of His salvation until He resumes and the church will be removed. Now, we realize there’s two phases to the second coming to earth. A coming for the church, that would fit because the church doesn’t fit. The church didn’t begin until after the 69th week of Daniel, remember, after the 69th week, doesn’t say in the 70th week. After the 69th week, the Messiah will be crucified, and then shortly after that we have the church beginning, then we’ll have the rapture of the church. Shortly after that, with the signing of the covenant, we have the beginning of the 70th week of Daniel.

Then a 7th reason is the imminent returning of Christ for the church, we’re to be ready at any time. If we have to go through the day of the Lord for Israel, they’ll be crying out for Him to come, they’ll be looking for His deliverance, because they are on the verge of being destroyed. And it will take the intervention of Christ from heaven to bring about their deliverance.

There are other reasons, John Walvoord at the end of his book on the rapture, lists 50 reasons for a pre-tribulation rapture. Obviously not all of equal weight, but I just selected these seven, seven is the number of perfection, completion, so I put those. That’s where I am on the rapture of the church.

Alright, let me say something else about another area completely. If you have questions, you can submit those, e-mail, text, drop them by Sound Words, they’ll get to me. But related to the work of Christ, I had a question come in that asked if I’d address the active and passive obedience of Christ, and if I didn’t want to address it, if I’d recommend something. Let me just address it and then I can recommend something if you want to read. Active and passive obedience of Christ, it is confusing. I want to say if you’re a Bible-believing believer you believe in the obedience of Christ, He always did the will of His Father. He came as a servant, He did the will of God, it’s consistently mentioned. So He was obedient, He kept the Law which He lived under, the Mosaic Law of course. None of that is at issue.

I was reading John Murray, his comments on the obedience of Christ, it’s also in his book on the atonement, but this came out of the four volumes. He does an article on the obedience. I can’t tell any difference in what he believes in that than I do. Where the disagreement comes, and he says, Murray says, this is the later development, because he doesn’t believe it, among reformed people. Some reformed, and it’s a popular reformed teaching, Christ had to perfectly keep the Mosaic Law and that’s how He obtained righteousness that could be passed on to us. So, they have two aspects of Christ being our Savior. His active obedience is His earthly life, during which He kept the law of Moses perfectly, because of that He acquired righteousness. Then He died on the cross, that was His passive obedience. In active obedience, He was exercising His will to obey the law of Moses, so that brought righteousness. The passive obedience, He was submitting Himself to the will of the Father in dying, and that paid the penalty for our sin. And people hold this strongly. I’ll read you an article, then I’ll tell you where it comes from, it says, “It was necessary for Christ to be obedient to the law of God in order to provide the righteousness that is the ground of justification. The perfect standard of God’s righteousness expressed in His law, consisted of two aspects, prescriptive commands that required full obedience and penal sanctions for the breaking of those.” That’s the active and passive, you have to keep the law and then you have to pay the penalty. “We would be left in the state that Adam was in before the fall, innocent but without positive righteousness, that God required for fellowship with Him if Christ didn’t perfectly keep the law. Therefore man stands in need of a substitute that will not only die obediently in our place to forgive sins, but will also live obediently in our place to provide the righteousness that is credited to us through faith.”

Then he brings in, and we studied this, Adam. Remember that contrast in Romans 5? Turn to Romans 5, while I talk, and I’ll turn there. In Romans 5 he contrasts Adam’s one act of disobedience and then compares it to Christ’s one act of obedience, verse 15 of Romans 5, “The free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man Christ.” So verse 16, “the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned.” Verse 17, “by the transgression of the one, death reigned.” So verse 18, “so then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation.” And the balance of that is the one Man Christ, the second Adam doing one act of righteousness. verse 19, “so through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.” They quote this verse, Romans 5:19, Adam’s sin actually provides an actual lived out record of human disobedience which is counted to be ours, he becomes the basis which God justly constitutes all men guilty. In the same way Christ’s vicarious obedience provides the actual lived out record of human righteousness which becomes the basis of how God forgives us. Are we talking in verse 19? I get frustrated. This is John MacArthur and Dick Mayhue in the “Systematic Theology” and John MacArthur, Dick Mayhue are dispensationalists which frustrates me in their theology. It’s worthless when it comes to the doctrine of salvation which is so crucial because it’s been corrupted by reformed thinking, they don’t have the basis of it. Reformed theology goes back, not all reformed theologians, but this is where this whole idea develops out of. That’s why John Murray says “it was a later development of some reformed theologians, this act of active and passive obedience.”

Some believe in a covenant of works. Adam was under a covenant of works in the garden of Eden so he had to do what God said, not do what God forbid, and then he could be righteous. So they call it a covenant of works. Not every reformed theologian does. John Calvin, the theologian of sixteenth century did not believe in a covenant of works. He said anybody who would teach that misunderstands that’s talking about the Mosaic Law. John Calvin believed the first redemptive covenant was the Abrahamic Covenant, which we would hold. John Murray holds the same thing, the theologian that I referenced earlier who is strongly reformed. I say not every reformed does. But they think now that the covenant of works Christ had to as the second Adam, fulfill a covenant of works. But what does Romans 5:19 really say? “Through one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners.” What is that? Verse 18, “so then as through one transgression.” He’s not talking about the life of Adam was a life of disobedience. There was one act of disobedience that brought the fall. So this contrast with the ‘one’ and the ‘many’ that goes through this section as we studied it beginning in verse 12 down through.

So what about Christ, His one act of obedience? They’re saying, I just read you, well, you know it’s almost like a collective singular, this one act of obedience encompasses Christ’s whole life of being obedient to the Law and that’s how He acquired righteousness. That’s not biblical. And I don’t know why dispensational theologians pick this up which has as it’s only foundation in what is called a covenant of works which is created out of the error by covenant theologians. Never called a covenant in the Bible. Then we develop this, then we make a big point of it, these are big pages, and it goes on. “From the beginning of His life, Jesus continued to amass a perfect record of human righteousness that would be imputed to sinners who would trust in Him for salvation. In this way, by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” It took a whole life of Him but it only took one act of one transgression for Adam to bring about the fall. It only took one act of Christ on the cross to pay the penalty for sin and provide, because when the penalty could be paid God provided His righteousness. You know, the New Testament never says we get the righteousness of Christ credited to us, it says we get the righteousness of God credited to us through faith in the work of Christ. So this whole development, active and passive theology, if you want to see a presentation of it, you could get MacArthur and Mayhue. You could read from an a-millennial’s perspective of a reformed theologian who promotes it, Reymond. He has a one-volume reformed theology, it’s relatively recent, it was published in 1998, very readable and has some good things in it. In fact he went to a dispensational school but now he’s amillennial, by his own testimony.

So active and passive obedience, you don’t hear much about it from those who are interpreting the Bible literally. Unless some dispensationalists, I’ll read references to it, McCune in his theology references it as something true but he doesn’t develop it. I think they just pick it up in the air of the theology that they’re reading. We don’t believe in the covenant of works. Christ didn’t have to come to earth and keep the Law to have a righteousness to give to me, He had God’s righteousness. We were credited and counted righteous by God because He declared our penalty paid in full, there is no righteousness to be earned. I earned what I earned and it was condemnation and a sentence to hell. Christ by one act of righteousness provided what could not otherwise be done, He paid the penalty, now God could justly declare me righteous. This is like righteousness is something you have to build up. It’s God’s righteousness credited to my account, it’s not something Christ earned. Now there’s no doubt He had to be the sinless Lamb of God to be a fit sacrifice. That’s different than saying He had to do that to build up righteousness so He had that to give to us. He had to be sinless so He would be a fit sacrifice pictured in the unblemished animals of the Old Testament sacrificial system but He didn’t have to accumulate righteousness so He’d have that to give to us. He came to enable God to declare us forgiven so He, Christ, could provide righteousness.

So I don’t have a problem talking about the righteousness of Christ if I understand thats the righteousness that Christ provided for us by dying on the cross. The righteousness of God, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, that statement. One of those statements, in fact it’s Murray Harris, who is not dispensational, but he has… I believe it’s a footnote on this passage for his reformed friends, verse 21, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” He makes note, “the expression ‘the righteousness of Christ’ is not a New Testament expression.” Although he says I don’t have any problem using it if by that you mean Christ provided for us to be declared righteous by God and credited us with His righteousness, the righteousness of God, because our penalty has been paid. So the active and passive righteousness of Christ, you don’t get that from just a normal study of scripture, that’s why I don’t talk about it. We talk about the obedience of Christ and He was the perfect Lamb, He’s the Lamb of God without spot. The book of Hebrews tells He didn’t have to first offer a sacrifice for His own sins and then one of ours like the Old Testament high priest did, He first had to offer a sacrifice cause he himself was a sinner. Christ was not. That’s just showing you the fit sacrifice, not that He was accumulating righteousness by His daily obedience any more than Adam was storing up disobedience by disobeying God. We’re only told about one act of disobedience and that did it, that’s what Romans 5 is talking about, one act of obedience. So you can read about the active and passive but be discerning in that.

I have some questions about the soul I want to talk about but that will take more time. So we’ll do that and if you have any questions or comments, e-mail them in to Jeff or in to Indian Hills here, or text them in, we accumulate them. Next week we’ll get back into Romans 8 but I’ll probably try to allow some time, the last fifteen minutes or so, to answer some of those questions. I’ll probably pick up with this question on the soul, that immaterial part of man, since that came in. I do have some comments I want to make on that but we’ll close with a word of prayer and end the day that way.

Thank You, Lord, for the riches of Your word. Lord, we come in and grapple with these things and they are good for us to be challenged. And Lord, we thank You for many faithful men teaching the word. And Lord, we realize there’s room for disagreement. Where there is disagreement, we want to search the scripture and then we want to be open to declare our difference, to show why we think the scripture is more clear for this position than another position. We want to be careful that in everything we allow Your word to be the final authority, we realize our opinions don’t carry weight. Your word is weighty and we have authority when we accurately represent and present Your word as Your truth. So thank You for our time together in the word today. Lord, we are separated physically but we’re not separated spiritually so we thank You for the oneness that is ours in Christ as members of the body of Christ, for the glory that we anticipate, for the hope that is ours. We commit ourselves to You as a church family in the days of the week ahead, we pray You’ll protect us, use us. May our testimony shine brightly, may we demonstrate Your love, Your mercy, and Lord, may we not be afraid to share the truth. May You be honored wherever we are, whatever we’re doing. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.