In The Twinkling of an Eye Part I Various Texts

As I begin this sermon, I want you to understand that what

I am about to say to you may by some be considered controversial.

I have been resolved in my ministry here at Eureka Baptist not to shy away from controversy.

It is a pastor's responsibility to be a prophetic voice in turbulent times.

What I mean by prophetic is not that I hear a word from God and give you that word.

A prophetic word in our day is when pastors, through their preaching, bring the

Bible to bear on the issues of our time, and what we know is that the times in which we live are extraordinary.

Please understand that what I am about to share with you is true. This is not a party -line thing where I, out of my bias, am siding with one political party over another.

At the end of the day, neither I nor our church is committed to a political party.

Our commitment is to Christ and the Scriptures. It is true that we vote a certain way because one party comes from a

Judeo -Christian worldview, but let me reiterate, our commitment is fully to Christ and the

Scriptures. What we care about is the truth. I want the truth, and you want the truth, because as Christians, we are people of the truth.

So we need to observe what is happening in our world together. The extraordinary events that have taken place recently in our world relate to the larger biblical story concerning how the world is going to end.

The table is being set right before our eyes, and we should not be blind to this.

We do not know the exact timing about when everything will come together, but the world we live in is no question moving in this direction at a rapid speed.

So here we go. Over the last three years, our world has seen unprecedented events.

In March of 2020, we heard the news that a virus called COVID -19 had started to make its way around the world and into the

United States. A virus that started in China was now spreading everywhere.

At this time, governors all over the country were giving mandates, telling people not to have gatherings larger than 10 people.

Everyone around the world, in some way, was affected by COVID -19. The world truly had changed.

Then something else happened in late May of 2020, where police officer

Derek Chauvin and a black man named George Floyd in Minneapolis had an incident where Floyd lost his life.

Now, no reasonable person believes that Chauvin's actions were without fault, but evil people wanted to spread a narrative, and that narrative was that George Floyd was killed because Derek Chauvin murdered him, and this murder was motivated by race.

There is no evidence to suggest that this was true, but the powerful elites in our country did not care about the facts concerning this case.

They saw this as an opportunity. It was an opportunity to push forward their agenda.

What these evil leaders do is they create the crisis, and then they offer themselves as the solution to the crisis.

What happens is they deceive people, they get more power, and our country looks less and less like it once did, less and less like it was founded to be.

The message sent is that this country, deeply influenced by the Bible, deeply influenced by Christianity, needs to be burned down.

And literally, in the summer of 2020, it was burned down. In the city of Minneapolis, not far from here, a police precinct and dozens of businesses were burnt to the ground, and it did not stop there.

Cities all over America experienced riots with enormous damage.

The total cost of the damage caused from the riots reached about $2 billion.

Instead of calling these rioters to stop and arrest them, the evil leaders of our country encouraged them.

Evil leaders all over the world joined and spread the narrative along with those leaders in our country.

While this was all going on, so was COVID -19, and a vaccine had been introduced to the public.

But what happened with this vaccine was different. Unlike other vaccines, this vaccine was being pushed by the government, and ordinary citizens were receiving high pressure to receive the shot.

Some people who had a strong conviction not to take it lost their jobs.

Anyone who did not take the vaccine was seen as a health risk to society, even though many already had natural immunity.

Then something else happened. November 2020 came, and this was the most anticipated election in American history.

And the day after the election, it was obvious that something went terribly wrong.

There were shenanigans that took place, and the globalists, who were already causing problems in the areas

I already mentioned, wanted to continue to push their evil agenda forward. They got the media and big tech all to sing the same chorus, and that chorus was that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

But if you are so confident that there was no voter fraud, then show the evidence.

You have nothing to hide, but they presented no evidence. In fact, all the evidence pointed to the fact that this was not a fair election.

But the elites in our country and all over the world did not care. It was necessary that the globalists be in power to continue to push their agenda forward for the world.

The same thing that happened in November of 2020 in America happened this past fall in the

South American country of Brazil, the largest country in South America. They had a leader who was against the globalist movement, and the corrupt elites in our world made sure that he did not remain in office, and they succeeded.

The same narrative was once again spread there. The narrative, once again, was that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, even though the people knew it and protested in masses.

And the leader of Brazil, who allegedly lost the election, fled the country.

The last three years, we have lived through George Orwell's book, 1984.

Then we learned about the origins of COVID -19. We were told that the virus came from a wet market.

But this, once again, was a lie told by the global elites. What we learned is that the

American government helped fund the Wuhan lab in China, where the virus came from.

At this lab, they would make viruses. Now, we experience viruses that come from nature.

But this virus from the Wuhan lab was a man -made virus. One former employee, scientist and doctor, said that this virus was intentionally released to cause havoc all over the world.

And this person said this at a great cost to herself. You might think, who would do such a thing?

There are very evil people in this world, and that includes the Chinese government.

They are communists who do not value human life. And you must understand this about communists historically and in the present.

They do not value human life. So we should not be surprised that they released this virus on the world that killed millions of people.

Then in February 2022, another major event happened. Vladimir Putin, Russian president, and his country invaded

Ukraine. When this happened, students of Bible prophecy had alarms going off in their minds.

Ezekiel 38 -39 describes an end times war that involves

Russia, where the leader of Russia is a ruler the scripture calls Gog. This man will team with countries such as Turkey, Syria, and Libya.

All of these will have the common enemy of Israel. So why is the nation of Israel in their sights?

The Muslim countries that Russia teams with already want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

And Russia, who is one of the world's main oil suppliers, does not want

Israel as competition. Especially in these days when all these countries are boycotting

Russia. Israel has a massive amount of oil.

So you can see how a war will happen, and Putin already has a relationship with the leaders of Syria and Turkey.

In my understanding, this war against Israel will happen only a few years before the tribulation.

This will be a war where Israel will be weak, and no one will come to their aid, and God will supernaturally rescue

Israel. Every year, the United States alliance with Israel becomes weaker, and without the

United States backing Israel, Israel will be enormously vulnerable. And they are vulnerable right now.

And they are on the brink of war right now, as these Islamic terrorist groups that surround them, these nations that surround them, want them.

Want to wipe them out. And this is just the beginning, I think, of what we will see down the road.

Now, while all this is happening, we have also seen the economy tank. Inflation is through the roof.

The GDP continually is enormously low. And there are talks of a universal digital currency, which will move into a one -world economy, a one -world currency.

We have also seen Christian persecution on the rise. Christians are being called all kinds of names.

Christians are seen as the problem of this world, because true Christians are against this evil globalist agenda.

Recently, we have seen violence toward Christians. We saw this in Nashville several weeks ago, where three teachers and three students were killed by a radical transgender person.

In Muslim nations, violence toward Christians is normal. But in the West, this is new.

And the animosity toward Christians in the West is only increasing. Look at what's happening in Canada.

We have also seen food shortages, train derailments where rural towns are being greatly affected with the chemicals that are being spilled from these trains.

We have seen suicide skyrocket. Saddest of all, as Christians, we have seen some of the greatest corruption take place within the

American Evangelical Church. False teachers are praised.

Compromisers are praised, while true teachers are called unloving. Satan has done lots of work disguising himself as an agent of light, pushing forward this evil globalist agenda, even within the

Church. Some of Evangelicalism's favorite speakers and authors are helping push forward the globalist agenda.

So let's put all of this together. Over the last three years, what we have really seen is biblical prophecy set in motion at a rapid pace.

What the Bible teaches is that at the end of this age, there will be a one world government, a one world currency, and a one world ruler.

The world leaders through the power of Satan will come together to form this final one world government.

To bring this about, they will use their power to deceive the world. And all of this comes from one,

Satan, who has planned this and is implementing all of this as the world yields to his will.

It is truly remarkable that we have seen all of this take place in such a short time.

We should not be ignorant as to what is going on. Nothing I said here is politically correct.

Political correctness is an enemy of the truth, and so no Christian should be politically correct.

But this will put you at odds with the American Evangelical Church because the American Evangelical Church is largely ruled by political correctness.

It is largely not ruled by the fear of God, but ruled by how to please man.

Everything I just stated in this introduction is considered a no -no. But we are people of the truth, and we should know what is going on in the world and understand everything according to Scripture.

What I have stated thus far is the evil plans of evil leaders and the darkness that has followed from their plans.

But the knowledge of what is happening all around us should fill us with great hope.

As the world falls apart before our eyes, we need to be ever watchful for a glorious end -times event that Scripture describes.

This glorious end -times event is known as the rapture.

So what is the rapture? The rapture is the biblical teaching that as the world gets dark and marches toward the end, the church of Christ will suddenly, in a moment, be taken from the world.

We don't know the exact time when this will happen. As Jesus said in Matthew 24 -36, no one knows the day or the hour.

But what we can see is that that day, when Christ takes His church to be with Him, is getting closer.

And we know this because the signs that Jesus told us to look out for are happening all around us.

We don't know when it will be, but it could be soon. And as Christians, we should be vigilant for that glorious event that is coming.

So what I am going to do in this message is show you where Scripture describes this extraordinary event known as the rapture.

And as we look at Scripture to describe this event, it should fill us with great anticipation to follow

Christ with that much more fervency in this dark world. So as we jump in here,

I do not have a text that I want you to specifically turn to as we normally do in this church, but I encourage you to take notes.

I will be referencing several passages from Scripture, so I encourage you to write those down and you can look at those later on.

But as always, we start with the big idea. And here is the big idea. Live with the expectancy that Christ can take you at any time.

Live with the expectancy that Christ can take you at any time. We are going to start by looking at where the

Apostle Paul describes this grand event. The Apostle Paul describes the rapture event in several locations in his letters.

The Greek word for rapture, the English word that we use, literally means to be snatched.

Think of an eagle snatching its prey. We see eagles in this area. They fly over and we see them along the road pursuing roadkill.

You've probably seen them capture living things as well. What these eagles do is they swoop down and they snatch their prey, suddenly take their prey into the air.

This is what it will be like at the rapture. Only, of course, it will be good to be taken.

Believers alive at that time will literally be snatched and taken into the air to meet

Jesus. This comes from 1 Thessalonians 4 .17 that we are going to look at in a minute.

He also describes the second coming as two separate events.

The second coming and the rapture. These are two separate events. What the

Bible teaches is that there will be a seven -year tribulation. This comes from a famous passage in the

Bible from Daniel, known as Daniel's 70 weeks in Daniel 9 verses 24 through 27.

During this seven -year tribulation, the world is going to become completely unhinged through the reign of the

Antichrist and God pouring out His wrath on the earth. When Paul describes the second coming in 2

Thessalonians 1 verses 7 -10, he describes an event of judgment and also a time when the believers alive at the end of the seven -year tribulation will rejoice at Christ's coming.

But when Paul writes about the rapture, there is no judgment in mind.

It's only positive. It's only glorious. The rapture, many theologians have called the blessed hope of the church.

And that comes from Titus 2 .13. The rapture is an event that happens before the final seven -year tribulation where the

Father sends His Son to get His people, to get His bride. The most clear description comes from 1

Thessalonians 4 verses 13 -18, which I will read, where Paul writes,

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep.

For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive who are left until the coming of our

Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

Then we who are alive who are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the

Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

The 1 Thessalonians 4 passage shows the rapture being an event that will be quite a shock to the world.

If you think COVID -19 was a shock, wait till this. People will be taken from their daily lives to be brought up to heaven.

This will be sudden. It's just going to happen one day. You can maybe imagine the lies that will be told that will hide the truth of what actually happened.

You might wonder how the corrupt elite establishment of the world will explain away millions and millions of people all over the earth suddenly vanishing.

There will never be a time where it is more obvious that the Bible is true.

But there will once again be a great effort to hide the truth. Since as Romans 1 .18

says, this is what the ungodly do. They suppress the truth.

In the introduction I explain all the things that are happening in our world that have set the table for the rapture.

Something else has happened in that time that has also set the table. The federal government has acknowledged what many have been saying for half a century.

And that is that UFOs, Unidentified Flying Objects, are real.

They really have been spotted in the skies. Numerous people have spotted them.

They have been caught on video. As Christians, when we ask the question, are

UFOs real? And if UFOs are real, then there must be aliens.

As we ask this question, we need to be careful how we answer. What is implied in the

Bible is that there is only life on one planet in the entire universe, and that is earth.

The earth is the focus of creation, and the Lord creates the universe so big to show how big he is.

Genesis 1 .1 says that God created the heavens and the earth. The heavens are the universe, and the focus is the earth.

The earth is the place where God's grand story is playing out, and is playing out on earth and nowhere else in the universe.

So there is not life on other planets. Evolutionists desperately want to find life on other planets, because if life happens somewhere else, it adds weight to their evolutionary theory that earth is not unique, and the process of evolution has happened in other places, as they say happened here.

A number of years ago, when the federal government announced that they were pretty much shutting down NASA, what they said was they want to focus their efforts on finding life on other planets.

And of course, as taxpayers, we should be saying, what a waste of money. And as Christians, we should be saying, what a waste of money. You're not going to find anything, because there is not life on other planets.

But as Christians, are UFOs real? And I've already said this, the answer is yes.

So how do we reconcile this? These aircrafts have been spotted on video.

So what are these UFOs that people have seen? They are demons.

Spirit beings. Not angels, but demons. What these

UFOs have been able to do, no human aircraft could ever do. They defy the laws of physics.

UFOs have been spotted doing supernatural things, as spirit beings do.

They travel thousands of miles per hour. They can stop on a dime.

They can go through water without getting wet. UFOs are supernatural because demons are supernatural.

They are not bound by creation, by the laws of physics like we are as humans.

So what is going to happen at the rapture when Jesus takes all believers to be with him?

How is the world going to explain this away? I submit to you, the table has already been set for that.

This might sound crazy, but they are likely to say a mass alien abduction has happened, and these millions and millions of people, who coincidentally all have something in common, they're

Christians, were taken away. The corrupt leaders of this world will no question lie about this.

Because the Bible can't be true. That's not an option. But for believers, the rapture will be an enormously glorious event.

As this lie will be told, believers will be with Jesus in heaven.

The Apostle Paul continues describing the rapture in the following chapter, in 1

Thessalonians 5, verses 1 -11. In verses 9 -11, he says that God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our

Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with him.

Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. You'll notice at the end of chapter 4, he says encourage one another.

At the end of chapter 5, encourage one another. So the question is, as Christians, are we encouraging each other about the rapture?

Now that the redeemed are off the earth, the floodgates of destruction will be unleashed.

And we've seen this in history. Think of the planet after Noah and his family were in the ark.

Think of Sodom and Gomorrah, when Lot and his family were pulled from there. With the righteous gone,

God will not spare the earth like he does so often now. When Christ raptures his church, the earth will be a dark place for these seven years, this final seven year tribulation.

In Paul's second letter to the Thessalonians, in 2 Thessalonians 2, verses 6 -8, the

Apostle Paul describes what is holding back both the complete takeover by the wicked powers in this world, and what is holding back the wrath that God will pour out.

There he writes, You know what is restraining him now, so that he may be revealed in his time.

For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.

And then the lawless one will be revealed. So the question is, who is the restrainer?

This is a question that many have asked as they've read this passage in 2

Thessalonians 2. Who is the one who restrains the final one world ruler from taking power?

Because he wants to take power, Satan wants to usher in this final one world government, but he can't do it yet.

Who is restraining him? Well, directly the restrainer is the

Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit will let the one world ruler take over when

God removes the spirit in dwelled believers all over the world. When the church is removed from this world, this world will be a very, very dark place.

So this passage in 2 Thessalonians 2, which describes the rise of the Antichrist, is describing the church being removed from the earth as the

Holy Spirit who indwells these people is taken out of here. Now the spirit will still be here, of course, because he's

God, but all these people that the spirit indwells will not be here. And think of how dark this world will be without Christians.

Christians are the ones that keep this place from falling apart.

When you think about it, the Bible was greatly influential in establishing our country.

Christianity is the reason this country has experienced so much success, so much prosperity, so much peace, and so much good.

Christianity is the reason. And this is how it is all over the world. Wherever Christianity is, there is blessing.

But once you take away God, once you take away the Bible, there's chaos. Anything goes.

And this is how it will be at the end. What's going to happen is that God is going to pour out His wrath upon the earth, and so is

Satan, through the final one world ruler. When Christ raptures

His church, the earth will be a dark place for these seven years.

So the restrainer will be removed, and that is the church, since God uses

His church to be a light in this world. So thus far, from the

Apostle Paul, we have seen the clear focus of the rapture in Paul's two letters to the

Thessalonians. He also describes this event to the church in Corinth in 1

Corinthians 15, verses 51 through 53. There he writes,

The trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

Now what is interesting is that just about every Christian you meet will say that Christ can return at any time.

I remember going to an ordination council, and an ordination council is where a pastor is pursuing the process of being ordained, and what that process is is that he writes a paper on his beliefs concerning what the

Scripture says. And one of the conversations is concerning the end times.

And I remember going to a pastor's ordination council once where the pastor was asked, Can Christ return at any time?

Can he return this very day? And the pastor said yes, but there was a problem with his answer.

In his paper, he believed that Jesus was going to return after the tribulation.

Anyone who believes that Jesus is going to return after the tribulation, or even halfway through the tribulation, cannot say that Jesus will return at any time.

Only those who hold to the Preacher of Rapture can say that.

What you will notice as you read the New Testament is that it is full of passages that stress the expectancy of Christ's return to this earth.

Jesus says this several times in Matthew 24 and 25, as we just saw when we went through that a few months back in our journey through the

Gospel of Matthew. In Matthew 25 and 13, Jesus said, Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

Watch therefore. It's very clear. Watch. This explains the imminence of Christ's return.

My understanding would be that the get ready verses in Matthew 24 and 25 are generally describing the time around Christ's return.

With the rapture before the tribulation and his second coming after the tribulation in mind.

Jesus is talking to his disciples, knowing that this would be written down, and future generations would read his words, telling them that no one knows the timing of these end times events.

But we should live with expectancy, knowing that it will come.

Now, as I already mentioned, there's a notable difference between the events following Christ's second coming and the events following the rapture.

At the second coming, believers will begin reigning with Christ on the earth, as Revelation 5, 9 -10 describes.

While at the rapture, believers will go to what is called by theologians the intermediate state, otherwise known as heaven.

It's the intermediate state because you go there to be with Christ for a time, and then when he returns, you'll come to the earth and reign with Christ for 1 ,000 years, and then after 1 ,000 years, you will reign with Christ for all eternity on the new earth.

And the new earth is described in Revelation 21 and 22. So the

Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4, 17 says, We will always be with the

Lord. Think about that. When you are raptured, and we may be raptured, when you are raptured, you will always be with the

Lord. You'll be with him in heaven for 7 years, you'll be with him for 1 ,000 years, and then you will be with him forever and ever and ever on the new earth.

Think about that. Think about how amazing that is. He is the one you were made for.

And at the rapture, when he takes you, suddenly, he will take you to be with him.

This is truly, truly remarkable. And as we think about the times in which we live, the world in which we live, as I explained, all these unprecedented events that we have seen, we should not be ignorant to the reality that Christ's rapture, this rapture, this snatching, where he suddenly takes the church to be with him, we should not be naive to think that this will be soon.

It sure looks like it could be soon. You know what's interesting?

In the Gospel of Matthew, we saw that Jesus rebuked the Jewish leaders because they were able to observe the weather, but they could not understand the times in which they lived.

The Messiah was standing right before them, and they did not understand it. We should not make the same mistake.

And I'm afraid so many, in the American church especially, make this mistake. They are not anticipating the rapture.

And many places don't teach the rapture. He's coming. It's imminent.

It could be today. And with that in mind, we need to live our lives where we are ready to meet him.

So to this point, we have seen the Apostle Paul explain this glorious doctrine known as the rapture, and he mentions it in several places.

We have seen him mention this in his two letters to the church in Thessalonica and also to the church in Corinth.

So that's the Apostle Paul. It was a focus of his writing, the return of Christ, and not just the return of Christ, but the rapture, these two distinct events.

Now next Sunday, what we are going to look at is what the Apostle John said about this event.

John wrote the Gospel of John, 1 John 2 and 3, and the most prophetic book in the

Bible, the book of Revelation. We are going to look at what he said about this and what a glorious reality this is.

Let's close in prayer. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.

I thank you for the clarity of it, that it tells us how the world is going to end. It does tell us that it's going to get dark, but it also tells us that there is this glorious event that Christians, that those who follow

Jesus can anticipate and should anticipate, and that we would live lives worthy so that when he returns, he'd be pleased with us.

And my prayer is that everyone in this room would live that life. Everyone who can hear me would live that life, that they'd be trusting

Christ and following him closely and ready to meet him. And as the

Apostle Paul wrote, that we would encourage one another with these words in these dark times.

He is coming back. May we be ready, Lord. In Jesus' name,