We're talking about mysteries. This, I don't know if I'm gonna do, get everything covered this morning on this topic of the rapture, and that's the seventh mystery. We've talked about the six other mysteries in the Bible, and just to review those, we had the mystery of the body of Christ, the church, mystery of the indwelling Christ, mystery pertaining to the blindness and the restoration of Israel, and the mystery of the incarnation, both of Jesus Christ, the word became flesh, and also the mystery of the incarnation of the devil. And so that leaves us one mystery, and it's a big mystery. It's the mystery of the rapture. And I've got a fair amount of notes here this morning. I'm gonna give you some good doctrine. Good thing about being in a smaller church where you get to know people pretty well. You always got to be careful as a preacher that you don't just throw so much at people that you kind of lose them. You get into topics like the rapture and you get into what's going to happen at the rapture and what happens to your body and those kinds of things. You get into some deeper doctrine and deeper theology, but y'all can handle it. So it's going to be good. Dig a little bit here this morning. You can turn over there to really two passages. One is 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15. And then really you can also look over at 1 Thessalonians 4. Those are probably the two main passages, at least very directly, that deal with this idea of the rapture. Now, what I'm gonna do this morning is I'm gonna, I don't know if I'm gonna get through all my notes, so we might need to finish this next week. But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you an overview of what the rapture is, and then we're gonna dig a little bit into these passages of scripture and see what they have to say. And many of you know what the rapture is, some of you may not, but the rapture is, let's read it in 1 Thessalonians 4. Let's just see what it says there in 1 Thessalonians 4. It says there in verse 13, but I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that you sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord that we which are alive and remain under the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up Okay, caught up. That's really the two words I wanted to pull out of this passage, and we're gonna dig into a little bit more of this passage as well. But we're gonna be caught up together with them in the clouds. Those are the dead. The dead are those that are alive, that die in faith in Christ, are saved. They're gonna be caught up first, and then the rest of us, and I mean that, I hope I'm one of the rest of us. I'm fine going second. I'm good with that, you know? Where I'm gonna be caught up together after those dead in Christ, and we're gonna be caught up. So that's this concept of a rapture, this catching up. And you'll see it also over there in Acts chapter eight, and I'm gonna give you some types of the rapture in the Bible, but you'll see this term caught up in other places in scripture. You see it over there in Acts chapter eight. This, of course, is the story of Philip, and Philip is ministering to this Ethiopian eunuch who's reading Isaiah 53. And I gave you, I think, that last week Acts chapter 8, you have, I believe, the first man saved as we are today by faith in Christ. He was a descendant of Ham. He was an Ethiopian eunuch. In chapter 8, chapter 9, and chapter 10, you have one of the representations of each of Noah's sons being saved. In chapter 8, you have a Hamite. In chapter 9, you have a Shemite. That's Paul. And in chapter 10, you have a Japheth, that's a white folk. And that was, of course, Cornelius was saved. But here in chapter 8, you have Philip ministering to this Ethiopian eunuch. And he says in verse 37, And he answered and said, And he commanded the chariot to stand still. And they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized them. And when they were come up out of the water, the Philip, the Lord, look what it says, caught away, Philip. He was caught up. He was caught away. And they saw him, it says, and found him in Exodus there in verse 40, and passing through the cities, and passing through, he preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea. In the context of 1 Thessalonians 4, it's a catching up. It's a rapture. People say, oh, well, the word rapture is not in the Bible. Well, that's okay. I read something this morning and some guy was trying to go back to the Latin and all this other stuff. And we don't do that in this church. You all know that. We don't need to go back to these languages or whatever, the Latin. It just makes people feel smart, you know? That's what it does. Oh, you got to go back to the Greek. You got to go back to this. You got to go back. And this guy who believed in the... I think he was trying to teach a mid-tribulation rapture. I may get into that a little bit, but he was trying to go back to the Latin and all this nonsense. And we don't need to have the word rapture in the Bible to believe in a rapture. We don't have the word trinity in the Bible, yet we believe in a trinity. All right? So don't get real hung up when people try to question you when they don't know what they're talking about. I was in my Genesis class this week, taking my Genesis class. I'm on my last semester in seminary. Been a real blessing. And the teacher was talking about, he was talking to some guy who was like, well, you can't fit all the animals into Noah's Ark. So he asked him some questions. He said, well, do you know how big Noah's Ark was? No. Do you know how many animals he was trying to get on the Ark? No. That's how man is, right? Well, you believe in the Bible. Rapture's not in the Bible. Well, you just, you don't study the Bible. You just don't want to believe it. And so you don't want to, you're going to try to poke fun at it. So the guy who says, well, you know, who's saying they couldn't have fed all the animals and there was Ark, well, you don't even know how big the Ark was. I mean, how can you say that? That's man, right? That's what man does. So we believe in our doctrinal statement in our church, we believe in the pre-tribulation, pre-millennial rapture of the church. And I'm going to get into this. I probably won't get into it next week, but I will tell you right now if you, and I'm going to look at this chart in a minute, but if you do not have a rapture of the church, and you have the church in the tribulation, you got some messed up theology. And you got people believing you can lose your salvation, people believing you gotta endure to the end, and all that is because they see the church over here in the tribulation, right here, and that's when you got all this doctrine about taking the mark of the beast and losing your salvation, and you got Matthew 24, and Jesus is saying you gotta endure to the end. And if you got church people having to live through the tribulation, What happened to Ephesians chapter four? We're sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. And no one can snatch me out of my father's hands. You have the church. Does that mean the doctrine changes for us? So we're eternally secure. But if you're alive through the tribulation, well, now you got to switch gears and now you're in another program for your salvation. You got to get a real mess in your Bible. And people that don't, and I've taught you all this before, but people that don't believe in eternal security, they believe in work salvation, they're not rightly dividing their Bibles. So we believe in a rapture that's gonna happen if you look at this chart. And I know this is a big, busy chart, but we're gonna have this time right here that we're in. We call this the Church Age, alright? Call it the Age of Grace. This is Clarence Larkin's chart, Ecclesiastical Dispensation. And then after this, before the Tribulation, so when we say we're pre-Tribulation, pre-Millennial, this is the Millennium, this is the Tribulation, the Rapture happens right here. It happens before those two things, okay? And I read something on the Billy Graham Evangelistic Crusade. You guys say, what do you get on these? You know, I just have a look at stuff. And he was talking about the rapture and, well, you know, some believe this and some believe that, and we don't really know. And that's the modern church though. That's what they do. And that's what they were saying. And not, you know, I know God used that man greatly early in his career and some of the stuff he did. But now it's all just like, well, you know, some believe there's a rapture, some don't. Don't really matter, who cares, whatever. It does matter. It does matter, and people get really messed up. And I know a lot of people, honestly, they're gonna go to hell because they believe doctrine that was written after the church is raptured up, taken on out of here, and they're trying to live that way for their salvation. So that's the rapture. It's the taking up of the body of Christ. You saw it there in 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 17. We're caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord, where? In the air. Okay, and I'm gonna get into that here in a little bit, but we're gonna meet him in the air. We're not meeting him on the earth. We're going to meet them in the air, okay? And there's a difference in the Bible. And people look at judgments and they look at the Lord's coming and they say, oh, there's just one coming of the Lord and there's just one judgment. Well, not according to the Bible, there's not. If you read your Bible. Now, unfortunately today, most Christians don't read their Bibles and they're not reading the right Bibles and they're reading hearing men that are correcting the Bible and telling them all kinds of stuff. And a lot of what we do in the church today, we just say, none of this stuff really matters, you know? And so we just all want to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. And that's how the world is. That's how the church is. The church just follows the world at a, you know, maybe a 20 or 30 year distance or whatever. So that's the rapture. It's the taking up of the body of Christ to meet the Lord in the air before the tribulation. And then obviously also obviously before the millennial reign of Christ, because that happens after the tribulation. All right, now I'm gonna just have you go over there and turn to 2 Peter 3. When does this fit into the 7,000 years of human history? 2 Peter 3 is a verse I've given you before, but I wanna just kind of fit this into the, where are we at in human history? Where are we at now and how, when are we thinking this rapture might happen? And I'm not gonna give you a date this morning, 2 Peter 3, verse 8, it says this, In Psalm 90, verse 4, another verse that talks about a day and a thousand years, It says in verse four of Psalm 90, for a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday. All right, so you have these references in the Bible. Now that doesn't mean as Bible believers, we take the word day every time it appears and assume it's a thousand years. Obviously in Genesis chapter one, and when God's doing his creative work, that's a day, it's evening and a morning. That's very obvious from the context. But you also have this picture in the Bible of a day being a thousand years in God's economy. And so I've given you what we know for sure. There are some things we know about human history, right? We know, based on history, that from the creation until Jesus Christ's coming was 4,000 years. We know that. We know that just based on timeframes and histories and the chronologists and all that. We also know that the millennium is a thousand years, right? We know that from Revelation chapter 20. It says it like six times. So despite you're all millennialists and you're reformed people who say that, well, you know, maybe it's not really a thousand years. Maybe that just means it's a period of time. No, that's not how you interpret your Bible. It's a literal thousand years. So if you have 4,000 years before Christ came, you have 2,000 years of the church age, and you have a thousand years of millennium, that's 7,000 years. And if you understand numbers in the Bible, and I know I'm giving you a lot this morning and hope you just get what you can and praise God for that. Day eight is a day of new beginnings. So eight in the Bible is new beginnings. So you have the eighth day would be the new heavens and the new earth. And that's where things all start over again. And the Bible comes full circle. Everything comes full circle. So you have this original earth in Genesis 1.1, that's perfect. And you have the new heaven and the new earth in Revelation 21, that's perfect. And it comes full circle. But if we have 7,000 years of human history, that's based on a seven-day creation. The seventh day, what did God do? He rested. In the Bible, the millennium is called a rest. You read it through Hebrews and the references to rest are talking about the millennium. So that means the 7,000th year of human history is the millennium. And so if the millennium is 1,000 years, then, and we're close, right? Because we're 6,000 years and we got a thousand year millennium, we're really close to the rapture. Now, I'm not gonna tell you and people say, well, you can't know. And the Bible says you can know the times and the seasons, so we should know. We should study and we should be familiar with where we're living and when things are gonna happen. So I believe the rapture is gonna happen in my lifetime. not just because I wish for it, but because I believe biblically we're at 6,000 years of human history, and that means that we're close. I gave you the verse last week, I'm not gonna have you turn it there again, about the blindness and the restoration of Israel and Hosea, where it says after two days, I'm gonna restore my people. And two days would be obviously 2,000 years. And so that means after two days of a church age, Right here. You're gonna have the rapture. So, you know The same time I you know, if I'm alive in a hundred years, I'm not gonna discount the Bible system I mean, you know, we still believe the Bible but and that's what I see and I'm comfortable enough to teach it That's Hosea 6 1 & 2 was the reference I gave you last week Another reference on that is John chapter 11 verse 1 to 4 1 to 14. You don't need to turn there But it's interesting that when Lazarus dies Lazarus is a picture of Israel, but you know how many days the Lord waits to go? He's in the grave four days, that's true, but he waits two days to go. He delays two days before he goes to actually raise Lazarus from the dead, but you are right, it's four days. He's in the grave four days, but there's a two-day waiting period. The Lord waits two days. So he's waiting two days to restore, to again deal with Israel in that two days of 2,000 years is the time we live in today. So let me go, let me take you over to 1 Corinthians 15. I wanted to give you an overview of where, what the rapture is, where we believe it's going to happen in history. Let me give you some things here in 1 Corinthians 15. Really the two main passages on the rapture are here in 1 Corinthians 15, starting there in verse 50, as well as 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. And let's see what we can get through here this morning. But 1 Corinthians chapter 15, Verse 50, now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump. For the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory." That's a great passage of Scripture right there. Talks about what's gonna happen to us. This is what's gonna happen to us when that Trump sounds, it says there in verse 52. And when that Trump sounds, we're going to be raptured up out of here, and that's what's going to happen. We're going to get incorruptible bodies. If you haven't noticed, you kids maybe, you know, you think you're invincible. Well, you'll figure it out. Wait another 10 years, and you'll realize that body of yours is corruptible. And it says they're interesting in verse 50, and I'm gonna give you some theology this morning. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Now that's an interesting statement, isn't it? Your flesh and your blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. So that means you can't go to heaven in your current body. And let me give you some references on this. Luke chapter 24, you get a picture of the resurrected Christ. And Christ is in his new body. And I imagine, not imagine, I believe our body, because we're going to be like him, our body will be like his body is. And it says here in Luke chapter 24, he says there, he's now in his resurrected body. He came and stood in the midst of them, verse 36. That's pretty cool. I don't know if he didn't need to open no doors. He just kind of showed up in the midst of where the disciples were meeting there. And it says they were terrified and affrighted. And suppose they had seen a spirit. He has flesh and bones. The reference over there in verse 50 of 1 Corinthians 15 is flesh and blood. So you have, we have a body of flesh and blood based on what I know as scripture, the resurrected body of Jesus Christ. was a body of flesh and bones. The Bible says flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. There's something about our blood that happened when Adam sinned. When you go back over there to Genesis chapter two, you go back there quickly, Genesis chapter two, you have a picture of Adam being created here in Genesis chapter two. And it says, this is after the Lord has had him go to sleep and he's taken a rib out of him and he made woman and brought her into the man, verse 23 of Genesis two. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called women, no reference to blood. Now y'all are gonna think I'm crazy and that's fine. Some of you will, some of you won't. But I think biblically that there was something different in Adam's body. Now, Adam was the, Jesus Christ is called what? He's called the second, he's called the second Adam or the second man. And so Adam's body there in Genesis chapter two is referred to as a body of flesh and bones. Jesus Christ's resurrected body is referred to as a body of flesh and bones. We are flesh and blood. And I think what happened there in the Garden of Eden, and I'm not gonna get into all that this morning, but when Adam took that vine tree, that's what that tree of the knowledge of good and evil was. You go to Judges, I think it's chapter six, where you have a picture of all these trees. You have that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is a vine tree. And when he took that forbidden fruit, just like Noah did, right? Got that vine and he's got himself drunk. That forbidden fruit did something in his body. And whether he had a circulatory system that was water or something, But when he took that fruit of the vine, something happened in his body and changed him. And this verse says that flesh and blood. So we at the rapture, we're gonna get a body, I think, of flesh and bones. I don't know what it's gonna be like. I mean, you get a picture a little bit of that of Jesus when he's showing up in rooms and he's not opening, no doors were open and stuff like that. But I believe biblically that the body we're gonna have, a resurrected body is gonna be a body of flesh and bones. Your body of flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. You cannot get in. There's something about your body, their blood, that is not something that God can... It's the source of sin. It's just a problem for us. And so what's going to happen at the rapture is we're going to get an incorruptible body. I think that incorruptible body is going to be a body of flesh and bones because that's what Adam's body was before he fell. And that's what you see Jesus Christ's body. It's interesting there. You see in Ephesians chapter 5, let me give you another reference on this. Ephesians chapter 5. The Bible says in verse 30, this is talking about the body of Christ, obviously here. And he says, for we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. Okay, so we are picturing Jesus Christ. We're a member of his body. And that body is described here in Ephesians chapter five as a body of flesh and bones, not flesh and blood. All right. So back here to 1 Corinthians chapter 15, It says there, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither does corruption. That's your body now, you're corruptible, you're corruption, but it's gonna inherit incorruption. Verse 51, behold, I show you a mystery. There it is, a mystery. Now, let me just say something right now about all these people that try to make, oh, we just have one return of Christ. Can I just say the second coming of Jesus Christ is no mystery. You can read all the old, I mean, Jesus telling his disciples in Matthew chapter 19, when the son of man comes at the regeneration, when the son of man sits on the throne of his glory, and the 12 disciples are gonna sit on 12 thrones, judging the 12 tribes of Israel. Zechariah 14, where it says that, in that day, I'm gonna come and stand on the Mount of Olives. There was no mystery about the second coming of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. That was very prophetically given in many scripture passages. This coming of the Lord, meeting in the air is a mystery, okay? So if you try to make this all the same as the second coming, It doesn't really fit. And there's other reasons why it doesn't fit either. This is a mystery. And it says the mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. Now that word sleep in the Bible, you probably know this is a reference to death. I can give you probably 20 references on that. Let me just give you one for the sake of time. Go to John chapter 11. And this, I have at least eight, I think seven, eight scripture passages and I stopped writing them down. But the Bible, when the Bible uses this term sleep, it often refers to death. It often returns to death. John chapter 11, this of course is Jesus with Lazarus. And it says there in verse 11, these things said he, and after that he saith unto them, our friend Lazarus sleepeth. But I go that I may wake him out of sleep.' Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well." They're not getting it, right? They're thinking he's just sleeping, that Jesus thinks he's sleeping. How be it Jesus spoke of what? Of his death, of his death. And you know the passage over there in 1 Corinthians 11, when they're getting ready for the Lord's supper, Paul says that so many of you have fallen asleep because of their sin. They have died. So oftentimes the Bible, we'll see it when we get over to 1 Thessalonians 4, that word sleep is a reference to a death. It's a reference to a physical death, particularly for a believer. And so when it says there, we shall not all sleep, that's talking about potentially us. Amen? Right? Don't you want to be of the alive and remain crowd that don't sleep. It says, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed. So the mystery is that we shall not all sleep, we shall all be changed. And that's gonna happen at this rapture. When you get raptured on up out of here, you're gonna get a new body and it's gonna be an incorruptible body. and you're going to have a body that's not going to be a body of flesh and blood, it's going to be a body of flesh and bones. And that's going to happen at the rapture. I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to getting a new body. I was, I don't know, I woke up one morning this week and my neck was killing me. And I went to the doctor, the chiropractor, and he's like, what'd you do? I'm like, I don't know, I have no idea. I'm like, I must be getting old, you know? When you're hurting and you don't even know why, you know? And he adjusted, he did something and actually it helped quite a bit. But it's because we have corruptible bodies. But the rapture's gonna happen and we're gonna be taken up and we're gonna be given a new body. The redemption of the body is going to happen. That's Romans 8.23. You can read about it over there. It's that adoption to wit. It's the salvation that's not occurred yet, right? We're not fully saved. I mean, we are. We're guaranteed that we're going to be spending eternity with Christ, but our body is not saved yet. Your body didn't change when you got saved. Your soul did, but your body did not. Your spirit did, it became a fellowship and communion with God, but your body did not change. Well, that's gonna come at the rapture. You're gonna get a new, a glorified body. When will this happen? When will this happen? Well, here in the text, it says at the last trump, at the last trump. And don't get me going on our past president, cause you won't, yeah. because people say Trump and all this stuff, and I don't have much tolerance for that nonsense. Now, there are some people that teach what they call a post-tribulation rapture. Now, if you know what pre means, it means what? Before, right? Post means after. Mid would be mid, middle, okay? So we believe a pre-tribulation rapture, meaning that we're gonna be raptured before the tribulation. There are some that believe in what's called a post-tribulation rapture. So that means the church is gonna go all the way through the tribulation, and then we're gonna be raptured in a post-tribulation rapture. That make sense? Okay, I mean, it's not right, but you understand what that statement is. Part of the reason people believe that, well, people can't rightly divide their Bibles, part of the reason they believe that is they get these trumpets all messed up. they get these trumpets all messed up. Now, let me just point something out in the text. The text here is the sound. The trump is the sound a trumpet makes. Okay? That's a sound the trumpet makes. What your post-tribulation people are gonna say is they're gonna come over here to Revelation 11. You can turn there. You can turn there, Revelation 11, where you know the trumpet judgments. You're familiar with the book of Revelation. You know there are those trumpet judgments there in the book of Revelation. So there are some that would say, well, Revelation 11, if you look there in verse, let's read verse 15, and the seventh angel sounded. And if you read earlier in the passage, I think back in Revelation 8, you'll see these are trumpets. Go back to Revelation 8, verse 2. It says there, and I saw the seven angels which stood before God, and to them were given seven, what? Trumpets. All right, so now you have the seventh angel. So your post-tribulation person comes along and says, well, that's the last trump. The seventh trumpet, that's the last trump. And if that's the same trump as the one in 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4, well, this is the end of the tribulation. This is the Lord's return. So now you have church people in the tribulation. Well, there's some problems with that. Let me give you some problems with that. So if you ever come across a post-tribulation person, you can pull out your notes or maybe help them understand this. First of all, in 1 Thessalonians 4, look at 1 Thessalonians 4, as we look at this trump that's associated with the rapture, in 1 Thessalonians 4, It says there in verse 16, it says, for the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout with the voice of archangel and with the what? The trump of who? It's the trump of God. All right. These angels that are given these trumpets, these angels are the ones that are doing this. It's not God. Now, God is the one judging them. But there's a distinction made in Revelation chapter 11 between the angels that are blowing the trumpets and the trump of God in 1 Thessalonians 4, and they're not the same thing. They're not the same thing, okay? This is the trump of God. It's not the trump of an angel. It's interesting here that in our text, If John is really getting a revelation of the last trump that is also the same noise that's made in 1 Thessalonians 4, why does he make no reference to that? Why does he make no reference to the rapture at all in the context of Revelation 10 or 11 or 9 when he's talking about these seven trumpets? He does not. It is interesting also that the trump in 1 Thessalonians 4 is at what? It's at a moment, a blink of the eye, right? It's very quick. If you look over here in Revelation 11, actually verse 10, it says, So he's beginning to sound this trumpet. Now we know the tribulation, the great tribulation is three and a half years, right? So these seven trumpets that are being blown in this period of tribulation take place over a three and a half year period of time. This Trump that happens in 1 Thessalonians 4, it's a moment, it's a twinkling of an eye. It's very quick. So they're not the same thing. The Trump in 1 Thessalonians 4 is the noise a trumpet makes. In Revelation, you're talking about trumpets, all right? So there's a difference between those. They're not the same. So let me give you some other things here. Where is this gonna happen? We're talking about the rapture. Where will this happen? Well, it tells us here in 1 Thessalonians 4, you can turn over there now. 1 Thessalonians 4. It says, for the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. And then back there, it says in verse 15, for this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord. All right, so we're talking about a rapture that's gonna happen at the coming of the Lord. Okay, it's the coming of the Lord. But where is he coming? Because you have a coming, of the Lord at his second coming, right? And that's the coming I mentioned before where the Lord returns physically to this earth, right? Okay, and I'm gonna give you some verses on that just so y'all don't think I'm making this up, but in Matthew chapter 25, go ahead and turn there. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to show you the distinction between the coming of the Lord talked about here in 1 Thessalonians 4 and the coming of the Lord when he comes to the earth. They're not the same thing. It's not the same event. In 1 Thessalonians, I'm sorry, Matthew, I had you turn over there to Matthew 25. It says, verse 31, This is after the tribulation. If you go back and read chapter 24 of Matthew, chapter 25, verse 31, That's the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, which is a Jewish term, by the way, the Son of Man. He's never called the Son of Man in the context of the church. It's a Jewish term, and He's coming to this earth to sit upon the throne of His glory. That's not the coming that we're talking about over here in 1 Thessalonians 4. He's not coming to the earth in 1 Thessalonians 4. It says we're meeting Him in the air. We're gonna be caught up together with Him in the clouds. So He's not returning all the way to this earth at the rapture, but He is at the second coming. And you can read over there, Zechariah 14. Let me read that one. I referenced it before, but over there in Zechariah 14, it makes it very clear. Verse one of Zechariah 14, Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the woman ravished, and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then shall the Lord go forth and fight against those nations as when he fought in the day of battle. And verse four, and his feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives. That's his physical return to this earth. Talked about also in Revelation 19, you have four different accounts of his second coming in the book of Revelation, just like you had four different accounts of his first coming in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So here you have the Lord's coming to the earth. That's not what's happening in 1 Thessalonians 4. He's meeting us in the air. We're meeting him in the air. It's not the same thing. And your modern theologians who read the Bible and make it all allegorical, or they go back and correct it, and they do all this stuff, and, well, it's the same thing. It's one return, it's one judgment, and it's not the case. This is not the same thing. Now, let me give you some reasons, some other reasons why we believe in a rapture, and we may actually get done here if y'all wanna bear with me just for another 10 minutes or so. Let me give you some other reasons for the rapture, okay? Reasons for the rapture. Why do we believe in a rapture? Let me give you some reasons. Well, as I said before, it's called a mystery. It's a mystery, something that wasn't very clear in the Old Testament, someone that you didn't understand, so it can't be the second coming. because it's a mystery. It's something that was not understood that was revealed to Paul primarily in his teachings. One of the other reasons we believe in the rapture is the differences between the church and Israel. There's differences in the Bible between the church and Israel. So when the Lord comes back the second time, he's coming back to do what? To establish his kingdom, his earthly kingdom, which was promised to who? To the nation of Israel. So he's coming to meet us in the air for the judgment seat of Christ right here. And at the same time, the Jews are going through the tribulation. He comes back at the second coming to again establish his kingdom for the nation of Israel. Two different people he's dealing with. I've taught before that the church is God's spiritual people and the nation of Israel is God's physical people. So he's dealing separately with them. And if you mix the two together, you're gonna have a mess on your hands in the Bible. So we believe part of the reason we believe in a rapture is simply because of the differences between the church and Israel. God's gonna take the church up. He's gonna return to dealing with the nation of Israel. He's gonna come again and he's gonna set up his kingdom for the nation of Israel. So two different people and he's dealing with us differently. We cannot be here in the tribulation. We cannot be here. Doctrinally, we cannot be here. God cannot be dealing with the church in Israel and the different programs that exist for them at the same time. It makes the scriptures a mess. And you have contradictions throughout the Bible. So we believe in a rapture because we got to take it on out of here. And then God's going to return to the nation of Israel and he's going to return to dealing with them again. If it doesn't happen, it's a mess. You got a mess in your Bible. And you got to mess doctrinally with people. And I'd see it all the time. Yeah, people all the time. I talk to them all the time. And I talk to them and I'm like, it's just right division. And you're talking to someone for like five minutes. It's like, what can you give them? You try to give them a few things, but it's hard, right? But we believe in a rapture because of the differences between the church and Israel. We believe in a rapture because this kind of goes along with that, but the distinctions in salvation, there's distinctions in salvation in the Bible. And I'd say what? There are people going to hell, they will go to hell because they don't understand this. And they're teaching salvations by works, and they're teaching you got to endure the end, they're teaching all this kind of stuff. And it's because they're reading scripture that's written out here into the future, and they're coming back and applying it to the church age. If we're saved by faith, and if we're saved, which we are, by faith and trust in Christ alone. That's what we go out and preach. When we go out in the street, when we go out door-knocking, that's what we're doing. We're preaching the gospel, the death, burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the imputed righteousness that you can have by simple faith. That's it, no works, nothing else, amen? That's good time, glad I live now, you know? But when you get over there into the New Testament, you go in there into the parts of the New Testament, go over to Revelation chapter 14. I'll give you a few references here. Revelation chapter 14, and this is in the tribulation, and people will reference these passages all the time. People, oh, well, you need to have works, you need to maintain, you gotta endure, all this stuff. Revelation 14, 12, here's the patience of the saints. Who are the saints? They keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. I'm not preaching that this morning for you, by the way. In order to be saved, you have to keep the commandments and have faith. Not today, you don't. We're not the nation of Israel. It's a different program. And can you see the problems? If we're saved by faith and now we're in the tribulation, do I now have to be saved a different way? If not, maybe, you know, maybe I hope I die before that then, right? If I can die into the current system, I'll just, you know, let me die now. I don't want to live. I got to change gears in the tribulation. That makes no sense. And God's going to switch things on you. And that's Revelation chapter 14, verse 12. You can read the book of James. People get all caught up in the book of James. It's just a mess. People get all into Lordship Salvation and you don't know what Lordship Salvation is. That's this teaching that you have to basically save people who really live by it. People that are really saved will really live right. And James isn't really saying that works has anything to do with salvation. He's just saying that the kind of faith that saves you is the kind of faith that's gonna produce works. Well, that's a bunch of nonsense because you have a flesh that you can yield as members of unrighteousness. You can do what the devil can do. You can live like the devil. You can live just like that lost person down the street, but they get into the book of James and they gotta make it fit. So how do you make it fit? Well, it doesn't really say what it says you say, you just try to twist it. And you just went over there to James chapter one and you saw it's written to scattered 12 tribes, it's the nation of Israel. It's a lot of teaching of the people in the tribulation. There's Matthew 24, 13, those that endure to the end shall be saved. You got all the teaching in Hebrews. I'm not gonna go to all that now, but in Hebrews, you have those that endure and hold fast their confidence until the end. Over there in Hebrews chapter six, the writer of Hebrews, which I think is Paul, was saying that, you know, if you, those who have been tasted of the Holy Spirit and been enlightened, if they fall away, they're never gonna be renewed again to repentance. Well, that teaches salvation can be lost, obviously. Now, I've read people have creative, your theologians have some real creative ways taking the Bible and saying, oh, it doesn't really mean that. Those people weren't really saved or all this other nonsense they do. But if you take it for what it says and you understand the Hebrews is written to Hebrew people, do you have any church epistles written to only Gentiles or only Jews? No, the church is neither Jew or Gentile. We're the body of Christ. But yet you have books, James written to the scattered 12 tribes. Those are Jews. Hebrews is written to, well, Hebrews, you know, but yet people take it. And there's a lot of great stuff in Hebrews that can be applied to the church. I mean, you have tremendous there about the priest and the being Jesus Christ sitting down and those priests who had to continually stand. And you can make a lot of great spiritual application, but you need to make sure you rightly divide when you come to those books. So one of the reasons we believe in the rapture, and I was gonna go through the verses, I won't do that. You can read those in the tribulation, Revelation 14, nine to 11. You take the mark of the beast, you're done. You're done. You read Revelation 14, verses nine to 11. You take the mark of the beast, you're finished. Okay? So you're living your life, you're living, maybe you're doing to the least of these, my brethren, or whatever, the pressure becomes too great, you take on the mark of the beast, you're done. You lose whatever salvation you had. Not true for us. It's not true for us. So if you believe and take the Bible for what it says, and you believe in eternal security, which we do for us, and you see verses in the context of different timeframes telling you that you can lose your salvation if you've taken the mark of the beast and you gotta keep the commandments, you gotta endure to the end. The only way to reconcile that is to understand the division that occurs in the Bible. And that division happens when the church is taken out, things are gonna change in the tribulation. If you have, is that just not a mess? Right? I mean, you got people in the, we're living into the tribulation and all this stuff and well, how am I saved then? Thought I was saved by faith. You know, it just, It's just nonsense. One of the other reasons we believe in a rapture is the teaching of Paul. Paul is dealing in the book of 1st and 2nd Thessalonians with some teaching that they were telling people that had already happened. Paul says in 1st Thessalonians 1.10, it says over there that we are delivered and to wait for his son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from what? The wrath to come. Well, there's some real encouragement, Christian. God's delivered you from the wrath to come, but you're gonna be in the tribulation. Well, wait a minute now. Have I been delivered from the wrath to come? And if you look over there at Revelation 6, you'll see the same term, wrath, used to describe the tribulation. Revelation 6, verse 17, look at what it says. In the beginning of these seals that are open here, these are the seal judgments, verse 17, for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand? Paul says we're gonna be delivered from that wrath to come. So there's some great encouragement to you Thessalonian believers. You're gonna be delivered from the wrath to come, but you still gotta go through the tribulation. Really? It's not right. 1 Thessalonians 5, 9. So Paul says to the church, in addition to the passage we read in 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15, that we're delivered from that wrath to come. We're not gonna be in that period known as the tribulation, okay? So that's another reason we believe in the rapture. A couple other things I'll give you are some types in the Bible. There are types of rapture in the Bible. There's a couple I'll give you just quickly here. You have over there in Genesis chapter five, you have a picture of Enoch. You all know who Enoch was. He was in Genesis 5. It says, I preached a message on him. He says he walked with God and was not because God took him. He was raptured. Okay, he was raptured. And Enoch, of course, was how many years old? 365 years old. Okay. Now 365 is that just by coincidence, I'm sure, randomly, no reason, then 365 is the number of days in a Gentile calendar. Enoch is a very clear type of picture in the Bible of a saint who was raptured. He's taken out before that judgment comes, that time of the flood. And by the way, it says over there in Hebrews chapter 11, I think it is, is that Enoch was translated. You know what it says? It happens to us, we're translated. We're translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear son. So Enoch's a very clear picture in the Old Testament of an Old Testament saint who's raptured. He's very clear. John is another type of a New Testament person who's raptured. John is a type of the church. The disciples signaled him out over there in John 13 as the one whom Jesus loved. Remember that, John? He was that disciple whom Jesus loved. He had a special relationship, and the church is referred to as Christ's beloved in Ephesians 1, verse 6. Look what happens to John over there in Revelation 4, and then we'll be done. Revelation chapter four, what happens to John? It says over there in Revelation chapter four, by the way, in Revelation chapter two and three, you have what? You have the seven churches, right? You have those seven churches that are given. Great study on the history and what's happened in the churches. Those are obviously churches in the context doctrinally of the tribulation, but then what you happen here in Revelation chapter four, it says here in verse one, and after this, I looked and behold, a door was opened in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet. There's it, that's interesting. There you have that trumpet making a noise, a voice. And remember what it said in first Thessalonians four, the trumpet is the voice of God. Same thing here, trumpets, the voice of God, the trumpets talking with John. And what does he do? He takes him up, come up hither. He takes John up. And for the next chapters four, all the way through chapter 19, you do not have the church. The church is gone. And John is a very clear biblical type. There's many other things about John that make him a type of the church in the Bible, but he's taken up, he's raptured very clearly here in Revelation chapter four, come up hither. So another type and very clear. And obviously the other reason we believe in the rapture is the absence of the church and the events of the tribulation. I gave that already. Okay, well, thank you. That was, I think I got through my notes and let's go ahead and take a break.