I don't have a single passage that we're gonna be working out of this morning. But I will ask if you can stand, we'll read one of the passages pertaining to the bulletin cover that Maya did for us. And it's based on Revelation chapter five, verse nine. So if you wanna turn there, we're gonna have busy fingers this morning. Revelation chapter five, verse nine. And I'm actually gonna start in verse eight. Now, when he had taken the scroll, Revelation chapter five, I'm starting in verse eight. Now, when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, you are worthy to take the scroll, meaning the Lamb of God, and to open its seals, for you were slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God, and we shall reign on the earth. And right along with that, I just wanna jump ahead to chapter six, verse one. Now, when I saw the Lamb opened one of the seals, I had heard one of the four living creatures saying with a loud voice like thunder, come and see. You can be seated. Father, this is a message that is not foreign to Bethel Baptist. We speak about this very often. And this morning we're going to be talking about the tribulation period and the rapture. Both are events that occur one after the other, and we want to have some good, clear understandings. So Father, I ask that you would open our hearts and minds and bring us to those passages that you have spoken to us regarding tribulation and the rapture. So, Father, I ask that what we talk about here is your will and your words for us. In Jesus' name, amen. I mentioned that I want to talk about the rapture and the tribulation period. This is going to be actually a two-part kind of a series, if you will, this morning. We're going to talk mostly about the tribulation periods. You know, a little bit of rapture is going to be, you know, intermingled. And then hopefully next week we'll talk a little bit more specifically about the rapture itself. But I think kind of what brought this to my mind is We just went through an election and the man who was voted into office, Donald Trump, is what we would call a nationalist. In other words, Donald Trump is sworn and committed to protecting the sovereignty of this nation as well as our borders. Now this flies in the face of globalism and we have globalists who are on a mission to erase all borders and to also destroy any sovereignty that any single nation has because you can't have your own sovereignty when you are part of another global community. So Donald Trump has been a problem. He's been a thorn in the side of the globalists, which is why they work so hard to keep him out of the running for the office of President of the United States. But now that he's won, he's been elected and will serve as the next president, God willing, Lord willing, Globalists are in terror because they understand that Donald Trump is a huge obstacle and a big hurdle for them achieving their goals. And even, you can Google this person, his name is Yuval Harari, who is a major player in this globalist agenda. But he has said that Donald Trump I think the words that he used was that Donald Trump will be a death blow to this globalist agenda. And obviously scripture tells us otherwise, but Donald Trump will be a thorn in their side. So when things were looking very, very glum, and gloomy because we are headed toward this one world global society and one world global religion. Now we have this light, it seems, even though Donald Trump is not our hope. But we have this light or this hope now, well, maybe things will kind of get back to normal and improve for us. Is the rapture then delayed? I mean, has it been put off for a little while? Because things seem to be on the uptick here in America, right? Well, I can assure you that God's plans accounted for this. And there will be no interruption in God's timing for when the rapture will actually happen. But I thought that it would be worth discussing and talking about this again this morning. So what's this global order? Scripture informs us that ultimately this global order that the world has been moving toward is going to be the kingdom of the Antichrist. And the timing, well, how does this global order affect the church is what we want to kind of understand here. How does it fit within God's prophetic timeline? We talk often about the nearness of the rapture. Every morning, you know, pastor says, well, if the Lord comes while we're in service here, you know, so be it, and we'll finish the service up in heaven, right? But we talk about the nearness of the rapture and the coming of the Lord for his church. Remember, the church is his bride. We want to understand, you know, has the rapture here have been delayed? And the answer, in a nutshell, obviously, I think you would all agree with me, the answer to that is no, it has not been delayed. It will happen at the very moment that God intends for it to, the very moment that God has planned for it to happen. We talk about the fact that the rapture is an imminent event, and that's not a word that we use very often in our vocabulary, imminent, but essentially it means to kind of hang over, it's impending. So if you can picture something hanging, ready to drop at any moment, that's what we mean by imminent. It can occur like this because there are no signs for it. So we can't look and see when there's going to be this trigger for the rapture to happen. When I'm sitting at a stoplight, I very often will be looking at the lights for the cross traffic. And when I see that light turning orange, I know that the next thing is going to be, I get a green light. So I know exactly when I can start up again. There are no signs that you can cheat and look for to find out when the rapture is going to occur. So scripture provides that much information for us, the fact that it is going to happen at any time, and we are to be prepared for it. So God has revealed his prophetic timeline to us in scripture, and we simply just need to read it to find this time frame out. It's not going to give us the minute, or the hour, or the day, the week, the month, or the year when this is going to happen, but we can place the rapture at a certain point in time. In the Christian camp, we call that pre-trib, meaning it will occur before the tribulation period. On the last page, if you have a copy of my notes, the last page I just did a rough timeline. I noted the point of creation when everything began. I put down, by the way, if there's any dates here that you're looking at on here, I put down 4004 B.C. That's Bishop Usher had gone through the genealogies in scripture and arrived at a date of 4004 B.C. for creation. I would agree very closely with that because I too had gone through genealogies and it brought me back to about 4000 B.C. So yes, I do believe in a young Earth. And then I marked all these points, A, B, C, all the way through L, and listed what those certain points are. So the flood, occurred about 2450 B.C. Abraham lived about 2000 B.C. We have the Exodus on C on your graph there was about 1445 B.C. King Saul was around 1075 BC. We have the captivity of Judah that Pierre talked about this morning. It was in 586 BC. We have the cross roughly about 29 AD. Yes, Jesus lived to be 30 years old. He was born probably a few years before zero on the calendar. And then all of a sudden we get to letter H, we have no more dates because these are things in the future we don't have these dates yet. But you have the rapture, then you have the tribulation, then we have the second coming of Jesus Christ, we have the millennial reign for a thousand years, and then we have the new heaven and the new earth. This is the order of eschatology of future things that we here at Bethel Baptist hold to and agree to, even though there are other camps who have some other ideas of the timing of things or even the actual events. So there's disagreement as far as the events and timing and even the interpretation of some of these things. beginning with the establishment of the church, which happened at Pentecost after Jesus ascended. So when the church was established, some believe that at that point, the church has now become a replacement for the nation of Israel. and that all the blessings of the Old Testament now pertain to the church. We would disagree with that because we believe that God still has a plan for the nation of Israel. And that plan, we will, you know, Pastor will be talking through this as we get into chapter 9 and 10 and 11 of the book of Romans. It talks about the fact that Jesus will again return his attention to the nation of Israel. In fact, if you want to turn to Romans chapter 11, In Romans chapter 11, it's gonna be a while before pastor brings us to this chapter. In verse 11 of Romans chapter 11, Paul says, I say then, have they stumbled, meaning Israel, that they should fall? And Paul says, certainly not, but through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. So the church has been established and it's to prod Israel and to say, listen, my salvation and my grace has been poured out on the Gentiles. You rejected it. Take a look at them. This is what you want. This is what is happening with Israel. And if you skip ahead to verse 25, Paul continues and says, for I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion. that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel shall be saved. Has Israel been saved yet? Have they come to repentance and a saving faith in Jesus Christ? not that I'm aware of. So this must be a point yet in the future meaning that Israel will come back into the picture and God is going to do a work in them. So God is not done with Israel. The church has not replaced Israel. So There's some other points of agreement. After the church, then, we talk about the rapture. The rapture is a big point of contention. Is it pre-trib, as I mentioned? Or there are those who hold to a mid-trib position, meaning that the church is going to be on earth halfway through the tribulation? Or is it post-tribulation? Is the rapture gonna happen after the seven years of tribulation on earth? So there's a lot of contention there, a lot of points of disagreement. We hold to a view that says that the rapture will happen before the tribulation. And this is one of the things that we're gonna try to flush out over the next two, this Sunday and next Sunday. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, if you want to turn there, I mentioned that we're going to be doing a lot of page turning, but 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, in verses 13 Paul says, but I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. We have hope, and Paul is referring here to the rapture. We have hope. And in verse 18, also in terms of the rapture, Paul says, therefore, comfort one another with these words. So, I wanna return here to this, what I call a hurdle, this first hurdle here, has the church replaced Israel? And of course, we've already answered that question, no, he has not. But he has paused the work that he was doing through the nation of Israel. Israel was supposed to be the light to the world and declare God. In fact, the world was to come to Israel. You have the Queen of Sheba and all these people who traveled to Israel And they came so that Israel can declare the glory of God. Israel failed in that regard. So God put them on hold. And on this timeline, there's like a parentheses in God's whole calendar here of his prophetic timeline. There's a parentheses here where the church has been inserted, and it is the church that is now doing that job that Israel was brought about to declare. So God is working through the church right now, and Israel has been put on the sidelines until God returns his attention back to them. So Romans chapter 11 that we just read there, obviously we have mentioned the fact that God is not done with Israel because Israel will eventually, as we are told in Zechariah chapter 12, verse 10, they will recognize that Jesus, the man whose hands they pierced, was their Messiah, and they will come to faith in Jesus Christ. So the church has not replaced Israel. In fact, we spent almost two years going through the book of Ezekiel, and the last nine chapters of that book talk about how Israel, in the millennial kingdom, will do exactly that thing that they failed to do while here on earth. Prior to the cross, anyways, because the millennial kingdom will be here on earth. But Israel will be doing their priestly functions, and in doing so, it will be a visual presentation to all the nations of the world in the millennium of how all these things that they had done, all their practices, their sacrifices, and all the ordinances, how it all pointed to Jesus Christ. So they will do that job of declaring Jesus Christ to the world in the millennium. So That, of course, comes after they have come to faith in Jesus Christ. During the time of the tribulation, I want to point out the fact that God's wrath is going to be poured out on her for the fact of her disobedience and also her rejection of Jesus Christ up until this time. And after that period of wrath being poured out, that's when they will find that Jesus Christ was their Messiah. And it's critical for us to understand what wrath is and what the tribulation actually is. So I wanna talk about what is the tribulation or what is tribulation? If you turn to John chapter 16, This is a passage that many people will go to to say that we need to go through tribulation. In John chapter 16, if you go to verse 33, Jesus says, these things I have spoken to you that in me you may have peace. In the world, you will have tribulation. but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. So Jesus says in this world you will have tribulation. Now is that what people will be going through during the tribulation period? Are those two the same thing? There are those who say that Jesus said we should expect tribulation in this world, so what makes you think that you will skip out on the tribulation period? If you're to have tribulation by the words of our Lord, why do you think for a moment that you will escape that tribulation in the tribulation period? So we have to understand tribulation and what I will refer to as we continue, wrath. We need to make a distinction and understand what these are. Do we have sorrows? Do we have pains? Do we have troubles? Do we have loss? We have all kinds of things. So yes, we are going through persecutions, even to some level, some degree, maybe some have, obviously others have more persecutions or going through persecution than we are, but we still have a level of persecution. Those persecutions and those troubles that we are going through, well, number one, they're by the hand of man, we have to understand that. If there's persecution in this world, people are being persecuted for the name of Jesus Christ, that's by the hand of man. If we're going through sorrows and troubles and trials and things of that nature, that's simply because we are fallen people living in a fallen world. And this is what we can expect in this world. But is that the same thing as the tribulation period? We want to distinguish what those troubles are that we face in this world, those tribulations versus the tribulation period. And I'm gonna ask you to turn now to Revelation chapter four, I've mentioned that Revelation is a chronological book. It is in order. It tells the history of The churches, so we have past, there's seven churches listed in Revelations chapters two and chapter three. Each of those seven churches, among other things, represent a period of time in the history of the church. So seven churches span from the time of the inception of the church up until the point of the rapture. So you have periods of time in there. Jesus, in chapter 1, gave us an outline of the book of Revelation. In verse 19, he tells John to write the things which you have seen, past tense meaning all the things that he saw in this vision of Jesus Christ in chapter 1. The next thing that he is expected to write, or commanded to write, is the things which are, which we will find in chapters 2 and 3, which are the churches, because that is the present time. And then the third thing, the third part of the outline of the book of Revelation is John is commanded to write the things which will take place after this. So again, it's a chronological book. John will mark these transitions with after these, or then, or now. So all these things happen in order. So you have chapters two and three about the churches. And when you get to chapter four, it says after these things, after what things? Well, after the churches. So after the church age, he says, I looked and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me saying, come up here and I will show you things which must take place after this. So John is transported into heaven after the church age. What does he see? Verse two, immediately I was in the spirit and behold a throne set in heaven and the one sat on the throne. Of course, we know this is our Lord. Verse three, and he who sat there was like a Jasper and Sardius stone in appearance. And there was a rainbow around the throne in appearance like an emerald. Around the throne were 24 thrones. We have 24 more thrones and elders, 24 elders sitting on the thrones. They are clothed in white robes and they had crowns of gold on their head. We need to understand who these elders are because John is writing now after the church age, he's brought up into heaven and he sees 24 elders sitting on thrones. Well, we'll talk about this a little bit more in depth hopefully next week, but in a nutshell, I laid out for you five points. 2 Timothy 2, verse 12 tells us that the church will reign with Jesus, okay? So you have thrones in heaven with elders sitting on there. This is a representation of the church being in heaven, reigning with Jesus Christ. Another point here is that the elders, you notice that the elders are wearing crowns. And in verse 10, it tells us that they cast their crowns before the throne. Well, angels don't get crowns. Nowhere in scripture do we find that angels receive crowns. Nor do we see anywhere in the Old Testament that the Old Testament saints received crowns. However, the church, the body of believers, is rewarded with crowns. And I put, we're not gonna go there, but I gave you one, two, three, four, five, six references to crowns that the Lord will give to his servants, the church. And it is those crowns which the elders sitting on the thrones cast before the Lord. A third point here is the fact that the elders, we find out, are clothed in white linen. If you were to back up to Revelation chapter 3 verse 5 and the church of Philadelphia, you will see, actually I think it was Smyrna before that, you will see that the white linen is the garments of the church. A fourth point that we can understand that this is a representation of the church being in heaven. You see that the elders are singing the song of the redeemed and that's what we read this morning beginning in verse 8. You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals. And it talks about the fact that you have made us kings, meaning that we're reigning with him, and priests to our God. 1 Peter 5 talks about the fact that we are a royal priesthood, and we shall reign on the earth with Jesus Christ. That's what we found out in 2 Timothy. The fifth point that we, that is actually the fifth point that helps us determine that these 24 elders here are representation of the church now being in heaven, the rapture having occurred already. So the fact that we are made priests and kings, these are things promised to the church. So chapter four, we see the church age come to an end. We see them up in heaven. Chapter five opens up, obviously, after chapter four. And we see that God the Father is sitting on a throne who has a scroll. And as you read through that chapter, we find that there is only one who is worthy to open that scroll. And that's what we read is the fact that Jesus was worthy to open up the scroll. We come now to chapter six in verse one, which we also read at the opening, and we see that the Lamb, Jesus Christ, now is the one who opens the scroll. As he opens up the scroll, what do we find? We have the four horsemen, and Maya did a nice job of pointing that out here in the middle here of the picture that she put on our bulletin. But you have the apocalyptic four horsemen, which is the tribulation period. And chapters 6 through chapter 19 of Revelation is all about the tribulation period. And we see that it is being unleashed by the hand of Jesus Christ himself. It is Jesus who opens up the seals and His wrath is being poured out. So there is a difference between the tribulation period, the troubles of the tribulation period, that is the wrath of God, versus the tribulations that we experience here, which are just the trials and sorrows and pains living in a sin-cursed world, being fallen people. So there's a difference between tribulations and sorrows versus the wrath of God being poured out in the tribulation period. So we have to understand that and make this distinction. So we are not looking for a get out of jail for free card. But 1 Thessalonians 1.10 tells us that Jesus saves us from the wrath to come. So wrath is not meant for the church. We will have troubles in our lifetime, but we are not to go through the tribulation period. So that's key to understanding and making sure that we understand the difference between the wrath of God and troubles that we face. In Revelation chapter three, as long as we're there, just gonna head back to the churches. In Revelation chapter three, verse 10, this is to the faithful church at Philadelphia. In verse 10, Jesus says, because you have kept my command to persevere, I also will keep you from, not through, I will keep you from the hour of trial, which shall come upon the whole world. This is speaking in regards to that tribulation period. So God tells, Jesus tells his faithful church, you're going to be kept from that. You will not go through that because that is my wrath being poured out on Israel and the nations. So God's wrath is poured out is where we are concerned, the Church, God's wrath was poured out on His Son Jesus Christ. I mentioned that at the table when we looked at Isaiah chapter 53. This is the Gospel message, is the fact that Jesus stood in our place and God the Father poured His wrath out on His Son so that we don't have to face that wrath. Again, understanding that we will not go through the tribulation period and experience God's wrath. So what is the tribulation? Who is it for? We kind of answered that already. It is really for Israel and also for the nations who have rejected Jesus Christ. We looked at the timeline, I mentioned that 586, we have the Babylonian captivity. Israel was taken off into captivity in 586 by the Babylonians because of two things, her idolatry and disobedience. So God sent Judah, Pierre again talked about that this morning, that the southern kingdom was taken captive by Babylon in 586. And in Daniel chapter nine, pastor has already taken us through this. But in Daniel chapter nine, if you wanna turn there, Daniel discovers from the books, amazing, it's mentioned from the books. Daniel was a student of the Old Testament, obviously, and very familiar with the books in the Old Testament and the Torah. But in chapter nine, Daniel is praying and he's reading the books, these Old Testament books, and he has come to the knowledge of the fact that we are to be here in Babylon for 70 years. So he determines this by reading the books and also what was made known through the scroll of Jeremiah, who lived about the same time, probably just a little bit before Daniel, but their lives overlapped. So in Jeremiah, chapter 25, verses 8 through 11, This is where Daniel, he didn't go to chapter five, he read through the scroll, but what Jeremiah wrote in chapter 25, in verses eight to 11, it says, therefore says the Lord of hosts, because you have not heard my words, behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith the Lord, and Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, against its inhabitants, and against these nations all around, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, a hissing and perpetual desolation." Verse 10, "'Moreover, I will take from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the lamp, and this whole land, meaning Israel, shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon 70 years." So Daniel's reading the scroll of Jeremiah, and he determines we are going to be here for 70 years. Daniel starts to pray because he's going to be calling on the Lord's faithfulness, saying, Lord, we are nearing that time, 70 years is nearly up. And he called on the Lord in his faithfulness to release the people. In verse 12 of Jeremiah 25, God continues, then it will come to pass when the 70 years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon. And then we find out that the remnant will also return back to the land after 70 years. While we're in Jeremiah there, chapter 29 gives us a little bit more information. Jeremiah 29 verse 10. For thus says the Lord, after 70 years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word towards you and cause you to return to this place, the land, for I know the thoughts that I think towards you, says the Lord. So after 70 years, Jeremiah again recorded the fact that they will return back to Israel. Now what's really interesting is before all this occurred, If you go back to the book of Deuteronomy, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is that book that Moses preached to the nation of Israel right up when they're standing on the border of Canaan, ready to enter into the promised land. In Deuteronomy chapter 28, Moses Moses spoke about the blessings of obedience and also the curses of disobedience. In Deuteronomy 28, verses 36 and 37, under the portion here of disobedience, in verse 36, Moses says, the Lord will bring you and the king, whomever you set over you, to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone, and you shall become an astonishment, a proverb and a byword among all the nations where the Lord will drive you." So Moses warned them and said, you and the king that you set over you, well, wait a minute, they didn't even have a king yet. That came later when they rejected God and said they wanted a king. So Moses said, you're gonna have a king. So your king and you will be brought to another nation as captives because of your disobedience. So it was spoken of prior to obviously the captivity. In 2 Chronicles 36, Verses 20 and 21, we also read this. And those who escaped from the sword, he carried away to Babylon, where they became servants to him and his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia. 21, verse 21, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths. As long as she lay desolate, she kept Sabbath to fulfill 70 years. So 70 years, the land is going to be dormant and collect the Sabbath rest that it was supposed to happen. Well, have we read anything about that before? In order to understand that, we need to go back to Leviticus, which is also prior to Israel going into the land. Leviticus chapter 25, So you have Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, in chapter 25, verses two through four. I'll just start in verse one. And the Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai saying, speak to the children of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land which I give you, then the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. Six years you shall plow, you shall prune your vineyard and gather its fruit, but in the seventh year, there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath for the Lord. Leviticus 26, just one chapter over, verses 32 and 35. Again, this is under disobedience here. If you are disobedient, verse 32, I will bring the land to desolation and your enemies who dwell in it shall be astonished at it. I will scatter you among the nations and draw out a sword after you. Your land shall be desolate. and your cities waste, then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths, as long as it lies desolate, and you are in your enemy's land." So what we have here is before they got into the land, God said, six years you can do your crops, the seventh year the land has to rust, it has to be fallow. Well, Israel didn't do this. So apparently, 70 times Israel did not leave the land fallow for that seventh year. And you can trace this back to the time when they asked for a king, if you turn to 1 Samuel 8. God was the king of Israel. And it got to a point where they rejected God and said, we want a man king just like all the other nations. And God allowed it. He told Samuel to tell the nation of Israel this, if you want a king, here's what this king is gonna be like. This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you. I'm looking at 1 Samuel 8, I'm in verse 11. This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you. He will take your sons, and appoint them for his own chariots to be his horsemen, and some will run before his chariots. He will appoint captains over his thousands and captains over his fifties, will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. So he's gonna take the best of your sons and the best of your daughters here. In verse 13, he will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, bakers. Verse 14, and he will take the best of your fields, So this is essentially a tax that the king will demand of every person who farms his land. A portion of that will go to the king. Well, Israel soon realized that we can't afford to let our land lay dormant for a year. We have to give all this back to the king. We have to keep farming year after year after year. So over a period, so 70 times, that seventh year, the land was not desolate, was not fallow, let's put it that way. That's a period of 490 years. So this is why Israel had to be in captivity for 70 years to let the land get her 70 Sabbaths back. So now, how do we come up with this tribulation? Well, Daniel was praying and he said, Lord, remember your promise, 70 years, and you return us to the land. And God responded by saying, yes, Daniel, let me show you the period of the next 490 years for the nation of Israel, for your people. And this is what we want to make sure that we understand is that this is in regards to Daniel's people, the Jews. So in chapter 9, the second half of Daniel chapter 9, the Lord lays out a period of 77, in other words 490 years. The first set of sevens, which would be 49 years, we find this in Daniel chapter 9, beginning in verse 25. So the first 49 years, the first seven sevens, is what's going to be required to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. And then the Lord lays out the next period of 62 sevens, or 434 years, and it starts at a point when the Jews are commanded to go back and build the walls of Jerusalem. There's a point of 434 years, and at the end of that 434 years, the Messiah will be cut off, and that takes us right up to Palm Sunday. So what Daniel covered here is 69 periods of seven, or 483 years. So we're still short seven years. When the Messiah was cut off, the prophetic calendar for Israel was paused. So there's seven years remaining. That is a period of judgment time for Daniel's people, the nation of Israel. So this tribulation period, which is seven years off in the future, is a time of judgment. It's a time of the wrath of God being poured out on unrepentant Israel and the nations who have also not come to faith in Jesus Christ. They've rejected him. Jeremiah chapter 30 verse seven refers to this time as, this period of seven years here, as the time of Jacob's trouble, not the church's trouble. So what I wanted to point out this morning was the fact that the tribulation period is often the future here, but we've looked at some passages that said that God said, I will preserve you, I will keep you from going through that. I'm gonna keep you out of it because that period of time is meant for unrepentant Israel and it's my wrath. And my wrath is not meant for the church because my wrath was poured out on Jesus Christ, my son, not you. It was Jesus in your place, in our place. So next week, I wanna pick up and we'll talk more now towards the rapture. I do want to spend just a little bit of time next week talking a little bit more about the tribulation because Matthew chapter 24, Jesus tells us about this period of time. And there is a Jewish nature about the things that Jesus says. So I need to, again, I wanna bring out the fact that this tribulation period is not meant for the church. It's for the nation of Israel. So I just want to kind of close with 1 Thessalonians 1. In verse 10, Paul says, We are to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivers us, his church, from the wrath to come. And then again in 1 Thessalonians 5.19 I marked the wrong verse. I take that back. I'm sorry. In chapter 5, verse 9, not verse 19, this will be our benediction as well here. For God did not appoint us, his church, to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us. that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him. In verse 11, he says, therefore, comfort one another. Comfort each other and edify one another just as you are doing. So let's close in a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you have given us eyes and ears and understanding as to what your purpose is for your church. Lord, as Paul wrote to us here, we are to be comforted over the fact that we were not meant, we were not saved for wrath, but we were saved from your wrath. So Father, help us to understand this and make that distinction. But Lord, there's a whole nation of Israel and all the other Gentile nations, Lord, who have rejected your son, Jesus Christ. And Lord, you have called us to be preachers of the gospel. So Lord, I pray that you would keep us and hold us accountable, hold us faithful to proclaiming your name, your glory, your grace, and your salvation to the nations. In Jesus' name, amen.