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Pastor David Mitchell
All right. Well, I'll get started here. So good to have all of you with us. Good to have our home folks on board. Wish we could give you a hug today, maybe soon, and great to have our Tradeway friends from around the country.
It's always, we get tickled when you come to of course, Canada and visit, and this is just as good. So we're glad to have you on board. Okay. Let me share my screen right quick. Hold on a second. I've got to tidy it up a little bit here first, because if you see my desktop, you get nervous.
It's a lot of stuff. All right. Let me find it. All right. Almost ready. Hold on. All right. Davo, can you see my screen now?
Yes, I sure can. Do you know if last week's lesson had been uploaded to the website yet? It's not quite.
Okay. It's ready, but we didn't get it to Ben until today. So it'll be uploaded later tonight. Okay. We're having some
I have an answer for you, Gerald. You'll see it at parkmedicalresearch .com where you can click on virtual services. You'll see that very soon.
We're having a little bit of internet trouble out here in the country. And so our bandwidth hasn't been good enough to get that sent to Corsicana, where Ben can load it, but we'll get it done today. It's like taking 10 hours for stuff to upload, so especially videos.
All right. So anyway, that's a bit of a problem. So you can see my screen okay? Yep. See it just fine. Does Romans 8 .23? It does indeed. All right. Okay. Well, we've been going through Romans and we found out, you know, several, you know, this past year anyway, studying through it, how many times have we studied Romans?
I don't know how many times I've gone through this passion, but I never really noticed that. Right in from about verse 23 and a couple of verses right in that area, it actually talks about the rapture.
And I never thought of this as a rapture passage about the rapture of the church, but it says, and not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves, waiting for the adoption to it, the redemption of the body, that adoption there and the redemption of the body is a reference to the rapture, which is kind of interesting right there in that passage.
And I think it's also interesting, look at verse 18. I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory, which shall be revealed in us. There's always been suffering for brothers and sisters in Christ from the first century through every century until now.
And so Paul is helping us with our suffering by pointing out the fact that all you gotta do is look past this life slightly or past a few days, and we'll get to this place out there when the rapture happens and we're with the Lord.
And at that point, any suffering we went through here will have been worth it. And you think about the suffering that the father allowed, I don't really like to use the word allowed with the father, he causes things, he doesn't allow things, but that's something you gotta check out because we've all been taught that he allows this and he allows that, that's not the kind of God that he is.
He doesn't just sit there and watch and see what happens, that's what allowing is, he doesn't do that. But he did send his son, Jesus Christ, and even as Jesus was contemplating going to the cross, he said, could you let this cup pass from me if possible?
I don't wanna be separated from you. Nevertheless, thy will be done. And God, the father's will was for him to go onto that cross and he did it faithfully. And how did he get through it? The scripture tells us that Jesus himself looked forward beyond the cross that time when we're all together and that's how he got through it.
So that's how we get through our suffering as well. And what's interesting here, let me click the button once and watch what happens to these words creature. See, this one says creation. They're actually the exactly the same Greek word.
So I'm just gonna pop that in there and turn these into the same word creation. And when you realize that is you read down through 19 through 22, it shows that the entire universe, which was affected by the fall when Adam and Eve sinned, the entire universe was placed under a curse and time becomes our enemy.
Whereas before that it was not. And after this age is over, it won't be ever again our enemy. It will just be timeless, timeless time to learn more about God. And we'll never totally know all about him because he's infinite and we're finite, but we'll always for many, many, many, many billions of years, age into age, the Bible says, we'll go out there and we'll keep learning more and more about him.
That's exciting to those of us who love to study the scripture and learn more about the Lord, isn't it? So this is kind of where we were, but this idea of the creation groaning and waiting for the rapture, that's exactly what it's talking about because look what it says.
The creation is groaning and it says here because the creation itself also shall be delivered. So you know how it says we're changed in the air? Well, all of the entire creation is gonna be changed at the point when Jesus comes back.
And so Jesus didn't just die for us, he did die, he died for the father for one thing, he died for us, but he also died for the entire cosmos, God's orderly universe, which is what John 3 .16 says, for God so loved the cosmos, the orderly universe that God had created, that he sent his son to die and then be resurrected and then put it back in place, put it back in order.
And Jesus accomplished so much, we call it the finished work of Christ, everything that he finished as he was on that cross, last words he said was, it is finished, it is finished, paid in full, and what a beautiful thing.
So the creation itself is waiting for the glorious, into the glorious liberty of the children of God. So look what this says, the creation's gonna be delivered at the same time we are. So at the rapture, when second coming happens, and the rapture happens, God is, Jesus is actually gonna put the world back in almost pre-fall conditions, almost like the Garden of Eden, where the lion will lay down with the lamb and so forth.
And so these are some of the passages we've been involved in and it leads us out to a study on the rapture in these kinds of things. All right, so hold on, I'm having a little trouble seeing my screen here, sorry.
All right, so in the past couple of sermons, you guys have been with me. If you haven't, if you're here for the first time, we asked last time, when does the rapture of the church happen? And we talked about that a little bit.
And time before last, we gave three different chronologies. We gave the chronology Jesus himself said the order it would happen in, and he said it would be tribulation, then the second coming, and the resurrection, and then the rapture, in that order.
And we know the theory out there about the rapture happening seven years prior to his coming. I grew up with that theory. All the Baptist churches I ever was in believe that, and a lot of the Bible churches believe it.
I no longer believe it, but I did my whole life. My mentors believed it, except Otis changed his mind on it before he went to be with the Lord. And Brother Rocky passed away so long time ago, I think he would have changed his mind too, because as we get closer to the end times, the word of God tells us our eyes will be open to better understanding of these things.
And I don't blame guys like Dwight Pentecost who wrote Things to Come. He got it wrong, but he wrote it so many years ago. All of us, even you guys that are not, don't claim to be theologians, but you're just born-again people.
I shouldn't say just. You're children of the king, right? You have more insight into those things than the scholars did, say, 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago. Isn't that cool? So I think Scripture bears that out too, not just my opinion.
I'll show you that in a minute. But the wonderful thing about it is that the chronology of Jesus, and then you go and you look at the Apostle Paul's chronology, exactly matches Jesus's, of course, because God wrote the Bible.
But tribulation, then the second coming, and that happens at the last trump, and the rapture after that, or with it, but shortly after it, and after the resurrection. And then Daniel in the Old Testament, same chronology.
You have the first resurrection has to happen first, and then it happens at the end of the church age. Same chronology. So we talked about these things, and if you're interested in that, go back and go to our website, Park Meadows.
Be sure you add the word church at the end, or you get a different Park Meadows. So it's parkmeadowschurch .com, and you can find these messages. Just a couple of Sundays ago, we talked about some of those things.
Now, okay, now let me move to the next slide. Boom, okay. So other than Jesus Christ's resurrection, we then ask ourself the question, how many resurrections are there? And to me, that's a very important question, because here's what happened.
The people who created the theory that the rapture happens seven years before the second coming, but not part of the second coming, they had to change a lot of other beliefs to make it fit that. And there are no clear, not one clear scripture in the whole Bible that teaches that an invisible secret coming of Jesus happens before his actual coming.
And the actual coming happens at the end of the church age, and which is right before the first resurrection. Scripture bears that out from the Old Testament through the New. So they created this theory and had to change some other things.
So one of the things that they did, and this is what you have to do when you start to fall into false teaching. And listen, let me say this quickly, because I don't break fellowship with people that disagree on this at all.
I mean, that's not an issue with me. I didn't even like this topic most of my life. I studied the great doctrines of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, salvation, all of these wonderful things the Lord is doing and has done.
That was my favorite topic. But I was challenged by a friend on this quite a few years ago, and the Holy Spirit used that person to cause me to actually do a study on my own. I'd never done one. I just accepted what my mentors taught me about it.
Turned out they were wrong. And Otis admitted it, changed his mind on it before he passed away. But the thing about it is they had to change things and began to teach that there were many resurrections, not just a couple.
And if you were with us Sunday before last, we studied this question on how many resurrections are there other than Jesus's? And the Bible says there are two. But these guys wrote in their books, oh, but actually there were more like, remember when Lazarus came out, there's a resurrection.
And they would talk about these other incidences like the people that came up when Jesus was on the cross, that came out of the graves, walked around. Those are resurrections. And so these two resurrections that the Bible talks about are actually divided into a little a, little b, little c, and all this stuff, all to make their theory work.
Problem is the Bible doesn't talk about that. Bible doesn't say it works that way. It says there are two. There's no a, b's and c's. There's two other than Jesus's. So let's just re-examine this a little because there's a couple of other things I want to say about it.
And you say, why is it important? Well, it's very important because if I were Satan and I wanted to, and I love the blood of Christians and Jews, what I would do is propagate a lie that made them think they don't need to prepare for the end times because they won't even be here.
They'll be raptured away. Then the stuff happens. You won't even be here. And that way, since they won't be prepared, I could kill even more of them. And that is exactly what Luceford did. He propagated this lie and some great men and women of God bought into it and made it popular, including Scofield, who I love.
Scofield, he's just a man, though. He made a mistake, all right? And he was influenced by other theologians. And that's dangerous when we get influenced by theologians. We need to just always let the word of God be the authority, so key.
God is always taking church groups through cycles. They'll start out with God's sovereign. They come around where man gets a bigger part of everything going on. All of a sudden, it becomes humanistic and Arminian.
And then the true believers pull out of that group and go start something new. That's what happened with Martin Luther. It happened with Augustine before him. And it's still happening today. And that's okay.
That's part of God's plan. But the thing is, if you understand the resurrections, you will understand where the rapture happens because it nails it. It puts a time. And I'm not talking about the day and the hour.
We can't know that. But you can know the season, and you can know where it happens with respect to the other great events. That's what I'm saying. You can understand that Jesus and Paul and Daniel gave the same chronology after the tribulation of those days.
I will come, Jesus said, like the lightning from the east to the west. That doesn't sound like a secret coming seven years earlier, does it? He says, when I come, he said, there'll be false prophets teaching that I came in a secret place.
Don't believe them. Because when I come, it'll be like the lightning from the east to the west. All right? And he made it very clear that he's gonna send his angels at that point and call forth his elect from the four corners of the earth and from all over the place, wherever they are, they're gonna come up to him and be with him.
So the rapture happens as he comes. And if that doesn't fit what you've been taught, it doesn't fit what I was taught either. So that means you have to go back and study on your own rather than believing what, as we joke about our church, cool old preachers have said.
Sometimes we believe stuff just because a cool old preacher said it. And one time my son Ben said, dad, he was laughing back there. I said, why are you laughing? He said, dad, there's no such thing as a cool old preacher.
But anyway, I disagree with that. But so here we have, let's talk about this. Now, so what if we wanna say there are more than two resurrections? Well, let's bring up this idea of Lazarus. So here, Lazarus' sister Martha said there would be a resurrection at the last time.
Now that's interesting. And what's interesting is Jesus agreed with her on that issue, okay? And so my question would be, is this a resurrection? What happened to Lazarus? Now, Martha didn't believe Jesus could heal him because he was dead.
And she said, he stinketh. She didn't believe he could bring him back, but she did believe he would rise in the resurrection, which would happen at the last day. And Jesus agreed, well, there is that resurrection.
So I'm gonna ask, okay, but what did he do? Then he spoke and he called forth and said, Lazarus, come forth, didn't he? And what did Lazarus do? He obeyed the Lord. And he came out of that grave, still wrapped up in his grave clothes.
And they had to take him off, unwrapping and set him free, all right? Is that a resurrection by the Bible definition, all right? Or is it a healing? So here's what it looked like. This looks like a pre-Renaissance picture.
Well, not oil, but it's an artwork pre-Renaissance. How do I know? Because if you look at the person's feet, they don't look like they're on the ground. They're floating. And it wasn't until after the Renaissance when painters learned how to attach human's feet in their paintings to the earth.
So God just was a spark of wisdom came into the world during the Renaissance. And of course, the Protestant Reformation happened at the same time. So both physical science, art, everything changed, but so did theology because God brought Martin Luther, John Calvin, and all these guys.
And all of that was a light from heaven at a particular time in history, exactly at the right time in history. So, but the point is, look at Lazarus. That does not look like a resurrection to me. That looks like a healing, in a sense.
Now, he raised him from the dead, okay? But that's not the same as a resurrection, and I'll show you why. Okay, here's what a resurrection looks like, maybe. Okay, so here's Jesus coming out of the grave in his new glorified body.
And by the way, that is part of the definition of what a resurrection is. Is a person dies, their body's committed to the dust, but when they're resurrected, they come out with a new glorified body that the apostle Paul said is like the sun compared to the old body, which was like the moon.
They're not even comparable, except we will recognize each other, and it's the real us. It's our real body. It's just that we've been changed, as the Bible says, and we'll be glorified, and we'll look more like that, maybe, that's an artist's depiction.
But my point is, it doesn't look like, it doesn't look like that. That's not a resurrection. That is, okay? So now how do we get this from scripture? Well, in John 11, 24, Martha said unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.
And Jesus said, and heard, I am the resurrection and the life. And he that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And he's using this, raising this dead man as an object lesson of what the actual resurrection will be like.
But when we go into Romans chapter six, we start to see the definition, Bible definition of resurrection. Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism unto death, that like as Christ was raised up. Now that like is very important, because it means it's the same way as his resurrection, ours will be that way.
A true resurrection will be like when Christ came out of the grave, not when Lazarus came out of the grave. Why? Lazarus had to die again later. That's not a resurrection. That was more like a healing.
And then later he passed away and was buried and he will be resurrected at the same time our loved ones are at the same time we're raptured. So like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the father, see that's a whole different thing there.
We're talking about glorified bodies. Even so we also should walk in newness of life. So you can't do that in your old body. Lazarus was not able to walk in newness of life, not all the time, because he still had an old man.
Some of the time, like when your new man is in control, yeah, you do, even in this life, but it's just not all the time yet because we still have this old body of flesh. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, just like Jesus, we die, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.
Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. So we see some components here of a true, an actual resurrection.
Number one, it must be on the last day of the age. And down here in Romans 6, 4 and 5 and 6, we see these other points. There must be a death, okay, unless we're raptured. That's the exception. Number three, there must be a rising up from the dead and there must be a new life.
And that's what Lazarus didn't really have. He still, he was just flesh and blood in his old body. It was just fixed and Jesus healed him, but he would die again. And we must be raised in the same way Jesus in the likeness of his resurrection.
That's what a true resurrection is. Now, as we go on in the next verse, it says, knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more. There's a real key. Is a true resurrection, you don't die again.
You come out of that with a new glorified body, all right? So true resurrection, the resurrected person never dies again. So you can't go in there and try to create a theory that moves the rapture from where the Bible says it happens and moves it seven years prior to that and say, well, that's because there's some, see, here's the problem.
Trying to be consistent, they knew that the rapture couldn't happen until after the resurrection. They said, well, there's part of the resurrection happens way back here though, just like they did with Lazarus and all these others.
Bible doesn't teach it that way. First Corinthians 15, 41, not if you read it honestly and you keep the 10 rules Bible interpretation, which you can access those, Dave Huber can make that and Ben Russell can make that available to you and Ben Mitchell.
They can make the 10 rules of Bible interpretation available if you ask for them. First Corinthians 15, 41 says, there is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars for one star differeth from another.
So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. Now see, that's not what happened to Lazarus and those other examples are not resurrections. The true resurrection other than Jesus' and it was a forerunner of the true one that's coming, will be at the end of the church age and there hasn't been one since Jesus, all right?
It's sown in dishonor, this body of flesh, this old man that deserves to die because of sin, it is sown in dishonor, but it's raised in glory, just like Jesus. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.
Now Lazarus did not have that, so that was not a resurrection, that was a healing in my book. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. See the key? It's a spiritual glorified body. Yes, it is physical in the sense that it's real and you can see it, recognize it, touch it.
And Jesus ate fish and ate bread with his apostles after his resurrection. It's just in a higher dimension, but it's a body. But it's not the same as this body, it's like the sun compared to this body being the moon.
There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body, it couldn't be made more clear. In a true resurrection, these natural bodies are changed into spiritual bodies. It's still your body, but it's changing.
That has not happened yet and it won't happen till the end of this age and that's when the second coming happens and the rapture. In fact, the rapture very clearly has to happen after that resurrection and that's why these theologians tried to move resurrections forward and say there are others that have already happened and will happen seven years before Jesus comes back.
It's not in the Bible, so you can believe that if you want to, but you might as well believe other people who have said things that aren't in the Bible if you want to go that route, who knows where you end up.
I don't like that kind of stuff. So the resurrection includes the old man being eliminated and destroyed and the glorified body coming out of the grave. Very clear. Revelation 20, starting with verse four, and I saw thrones and they that sat on them, judgment was given unto them, and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus and for the word of God and they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.
So these are people, part of the church, who that group says the church is already raptured so they're not on the earth. The Bible says they're not only on the earth, but they're having their heads cut off because of their belief in Jesus.
That's the church, ladies and gentlemen. It's just, it's without debate to me at this point, it's just that the church is still there. There are Christians in heaven watching and seeing their brothers on the earth having their heads cut off and asking Jesus, how long will you wait before you go down there?
And then it shows very clearly that those people who died during the tribulation, you know, will be raised and go into the thousand year period and reign with Christ as well, just like we will. We will be reigning with Christ, so will they.
But the rest of the dead live not again until the thousand years were finished. Now that tells us that there are some people who didn't get raised at that first resurrection. And this gets more clear as we study the scripture.
It alludes to a second resurrection at the end of the thousand year reign of Christ. So now we see there are two resurrections. There's one at the end of the church age. There's one at the end of the thousand year millennial kingdom.
The dead live not again until the thousand years were finished. What dead does this mean? This means spiritually dead. Those who were spiritually dead, they won't be judged till the great white throne judgment.
They are not judged at the end of this age. Christians are. We're not for our salvation, but for our rewards. But those who are not saved are not even raised at that point. They're raised at the end of the millennial kingdom.
So there are two resurrections. Jesus called them, put it this way. He said, there is a resurrection of the life and there is a resurrection unto damnation. And there are two resurrections. He named it.
The apostle Paul names it. Daniel talked about it. And that's exactly what the Bible teaches. So in verse five here, we see this first resurrection happening very clearly. Verse six very much makes it clear.
It says, blessed and holy is he that has part in the first resurrection. On such the second death has no power. In other words, if you're raised or raptured in the first resurrection, which happens at the end of the church age, you will not go to hell.
Because only saved people are raptured, are resurrected in the first resurrection. They are all God's people. They are the elect. They are the ones that Jesus died for and paid their sin debt. I know we sin, but our sin has long time been taken care of by our Lord.
And even before 2000 years ago, when he gave his blood, the Bible says you can go back before that, to before the beginning of the earth, before the earth was founded by God, Jesus Christ was crucified, the Bible says.
In God's mind, he already had died for his children. Jesus said, no man comes to me unless the father draws him. But he said, of them, I will lose nothing. But we'll raise it up in the end. So at the first resurrection, everybody that comes forth at that point is a saved person and will never suffer the second death.
Isn't that beautiful to know? So this defines the first resurrection, defines when it happens, defines who it is that gets resurrected, and so much more. It happens after the tribulation period, and the benefit of it is that those who rise in that one will never see the second death, which is hell.
It will have no power over them ever. Now, Jesus likened this one in John 5, verse 25 to a resurrection unto life. But in that same passage, he mentioned the second resurrection, it would be unto death.
Now we move on to Revelation 2011, and I saw a great white throne, and this is at the end of the thousand year millennial kingdom. When that next resurrection happens, there is a thing called the great white throne judgment.
I saw a great white throne and him that sat on it from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. You do realize since God the Father is outside of time and he's the I am, if he comes into time, the elements flee, right?
Because time can't exist and so stuff can't exist. So all of a sudden the elements begin to flee and we see this happening here. And fortunately, the Lord has created this four square city for us to be safely in when this happens.
And I don't know how all that works, but I know the Bible talks about it. It's pretty exciting to think about, isn't it? And then all of a sudden you have this judgment of the lost and they all come before him and answer for what they did in their body.
And they are the people who believe they were saved by works and they didn't want Jesus. They just wanted to stand before God on their own merit. And unfortunately, this great white throne, there won't be one of them that passes because they missed the mark.
All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is no sin in heaven, so they missed the mark. Now let's move on a little bit here. Second Timothy 4 .1, I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his judgment.
Now that's interesting in Second Timothy because the context of this passage Paul was actually telling the young preacher, Timothy to preach, you know, be ready in season and out, preach the word of God.
And he says, I charge you. So he just simply, this is just thrown in there to say, Timothy, I want you to think about the rapture and Jesus coming back. And you think about all that stuff and you put that thought in your mind when you start preaching to people because I want you to preach with power.
That's what this kind of context. But it's interesting information here because it says Jesus Christ will judge the quick, which normally means in the old English, it means the living and the dead at his appearing.
And you might say, well, now, wait a minute. That kind of sounds like you got, you know, lost people and saved people raised there. That conflicts with what we just said. But when you really look at the context, it doesn't say that because what this means is physically alive and physically dead.
And it's clear from the context. So what this is saying is you're going to have people who were physically had died, Christians, born again people who had died like my sweet grandmother, Virginia Hall, can't wait to see her again.
She will come up in that resurrection at the end of this age. And if I'm still here, I'll be raptured and she'll come up first. I will not proceed her, but I'll go up with her to meet Jesus and there will be a judgment seat of Christ for us at that point.
And that's what this is talking about. And the quick would be like me, if I'm still alive at the rapture, I didn't have to experience physical death. And the dead is like my grandmother who had died and gone on before me, but we will both go up.
She'll come up in her glorified body. I will be changed in the air. We will then face the Lord Jesus for judgment of the works we did in our body and we'll receive rewards and suffer loss. But it has nothing to do with our salvation or eternal security because that was sealed before the foundation of the world.
So it's about our rewards. And that's what this judgment. Now see the lost people are not invited to this one. The non-elect are not at this one because they're not gonna be in heaven. They're not gonna receive rewards.
This is just for Christians. And this is, you know, the guys that came up with their theory included some truth on these issues, of course, but the church has always understood this. So it's good that they left some truth in there, but you know, most false teaching is like 98 true, right?
And it's that 2 that's the killer. You say, well, Brother Dave, why do you make an issue of this? Because it's important to me that you be prepared. We started Tradeway to help people, you know, have the potential to benefit financially so they can use that money to prepare for this event and get your family ready.
It's huge in my book because we've all been lied to and we think we're not gonna be here. We're not gonna prepare and be ready and Satan's just gonna go through and just blood's gonna flow to the horse's reign.
It's just, he's just gonna kill every Christian and every government that has all of this technology. Like the United States, this is the last place I wanna be when we get to that place because they have all the technology to find you.
He's seeking drones. I mean, they can find you, right? So I wanna be somewhere where their technology isn't that good. The Lord hadn't shown me the place, but let me quickly throw this in case you weren't here last few Sundays when we were studying these things in more detail is that Jesus said, look, don't worry right now.
These kinds of things like earthquakes and wars, rumors of wars and pestilences like the coronavirus, that's what we've been talking about that, obviously. He said, these things must come to past and the end is not yet.
So there's still time to prepare, still work to be done. And until you see something happen to one or more of those two mosques on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, you know, you've got some time. But something is gonna happen to one or both of those mosques.
You watch, it's gonna happen. It'll be a big news item, by the way. You just start a mini war, pretty good war for a few days, but that won't be Armageddon because there won't be time yet for that, but it'll be a skirmish.
And then the Jews are gonna build a temple there. And then when you get three and a half years into the seven year tribulation period, the Antichrist will have a rise and he will offer a pig on the altar.
When you see that, don't even go get your coat out of the house. You need to get out of the city and you need to find a place to hide. All right, so you have some time, right? I would prefer that you not wait till he offers the pig.
When you see him start building that temple, you need to go find a place, all right? And try to find a place. Technology has a hard time finding you. That's my advice and that's just what I believe. That's for me and my house.
That's what we will plan to do. The first resurrection takes place and then Jesus judges at the coming of his kingdom, i .e. just before the thousand year millennial kingdom. Now, if you think you get raptured away before any of this stuff, you won't prepare at all.
And Satan will have a field day with you and your family. And the heads will be chopped off of the Christians and the Jews everywhere worldwide. It's gonna be a slaughter fest for those who didn't study the scripture and didn't know what to do.
This is an important topic to me at this point. Like I said, most of my life, I wasn't even interested in it until a friend challenged me. I don't know, time flies. Maybe 10 years ago at this point. I don't remember when.
Maybe 15 years ago, really is more like it. And he said, just ask two questions, Brother David. That's all I ask you. He said, how many last trumps can there be? And number two, would you consider letting Jesus Christ chronology in Matthew 24 be more important to you than the books you've read?
And I said, that's fair, yeah, I'll do it. So it ruined me because I had to start studying it then. And so I have, but anyway, I hope you will. Who does he judge in this, by the way? The quick and the dead, right?
Well, if you just keep looking around at some of the context that was right before this verse, it says all scripture is given, just a few verses up above, all scripture is given by inspiration of God is profitable for doctrine or proof correction for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
So he's speaking to Timothy, the young pastor, and to other Christians saying, you know, not the world system, but he's preaching to the elect and specifically Timothy, the pastor. And he says, this is the judgment seat of Christ where we will be judged for our good works and receive rewards.
So therefore, Timothy, you need to preach hard and you need to stay true to good doctrine. That's the whole context of this. So the appearing here, the quick and the dead is those who had gone on before us, but are saved and they'll be resurrected.
And then those of us who are still alive will be changed in the air. That's the quick and that's, then the judgment seat of Christ happens for our rewards. It's pretty clear. You just have to study enough to put it all together.
And it takes a little bit of study. It really does. All right, so there are exactly two resurrections, that unto life and that unto damnation. Now let's look at this beautiful passage in First Thessalonians 4 .16 one more time before we leave these ideas.
All right, for the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God. That's the last trump that's listed in Revelation. There are seven of them.
This is the seventh trump. And the dead in Christ shall rise first, like my grandmother, for example. Then, to me, the word then means later, not seven years prior, okay? To me, it means later. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them and the with them implies not much later, okay?
Like, this is my favorite word. My son, Paul, kids me about it. A nanosecond later, okay? So my grandmother, we call her Nana. So Nana comes up out of the ground and a nanosecond later, David goes up with her and Charlotte and the whole family and all you guys.
We all go up with them. And so shall we go to meet the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord. And this is part of the second coming. He has just appeared. The sign of the Son of Man appeared as the lightning from the east to the west and the trump was blown.
And Jesus said, it's like this, and if you go study it, Matthew 24 and other places, he said, the tribulation happens first, all right? Then the Son of Man comes. And he said, then you guys are gonna be like vultures to a dead animal, how they flock to that dead animal.
It's like, you're gonna flock to me. When you see me, you're just going to flock to me. And even the dead will come out of the grave to save people and we will be changed and we just go up to be with him.
It's all part of the same thing. And it happens like the lightning from the east to the west and it's not in secret. In fact, he said, only false teachers will teach you that it happens out in the desert in a secret room.
He said, believe them not, for when I come, it will be as a lightning from the east to the west. We have to let the Bible be the authority. I don't care how much we love these cool old preachers. And I love them too.
You learn some, I mean, there are other stuff they teach. Schofield, almost everything he teaches is so awesome. But see, they had to kind of get a little bit overboard with dispensationalism to make their theory work too.
But I believe the Bible teaches there are dispensations. I mean, obviously there's an Old Testament and New Testament. There's two. You can't argue there aren't dispensations. And you got this big beef in theology, between dispensationalists and those who call themselves covenant theologians.
That's all human, it's all silly because both are taught, both are happening. You've got covenant theology does exist, but they overdo it. And then you've got dispensations, but they overdo that usually to make some theory work.
You know, when you become an adult, become free as a Christian, is when you stop caring about the argument and you just want to seek the truth together and you use the 10 rules of Bible interpretation.
Quit taking stuff out of context to make it fit, right? Don't make it fit. Let it speak to us. It's God talking to us. We don't need to change what he said. Okay, rabbit trail. Pretty good rabbit trail though.
All right, so the rapture happens as part of the first resurrection. It is so clear from Daniel to Paul to Jesus. Everybody said it that way. Only these weird theologians, and they're not weird, they're good men, sorry.
They're good men. They got deceived. And I was gonna say this a minute ago and I forgot. I believe there's two kinds of false prophets, by the way. The Bible teaches this. I didn't just make this up. Bible teaches it.
There is a false teacher who teaches, but he loves God, but he's got it wrong because he learned it from another cool old pastor who had it wrong and he didn't study on his own. So he's got it wrong and he's teaching it wrong, but the Holy Spirit will correct him with the word of God later, and he'll apologize and get it right and teach the truth on these different issues.
There's that. But there's also false teachers that the Bible says Satan puts into the church to try to destroy. In those, it says, unto them are reserved the darkness of blackness forever. They were ordained.
And it says in Jude, they're ordained, foreordained that they would go to hell and be false prophets. So there's that kind too. It's hard to tell the difference when you see someone just telling lies, but I think you can, because you can tell when a person loves the Lord and they're just a bit prideful and a bit wrong and they won't admit it.
And they're still gonna be in heaven with us, obviously, because all of us have a little bit of that. And yet there are those who are like sent from hell and they're just there to do damage. The other people do it accidentally and hate it when they find out they did it.
So I do understand that. I do believe, I don't know Dwight Pentecost, but my mom met him, went to a friend to meet him and sat in the room with him and met him. And I know he loved the Lord. He just got this a little bit off.
All the guys at Dallas Theological Seminary got off on this, but so did the Southern Baptists and Independent Baptists. All of them were thrown aside by previous preachers who proposed this, and they were big preachers with large churches.
So they just bought into it without studying it, I think. That's what I did. So the rapture happens as part of the first resurrection and the raptured one cannot go up prior to the resurrected ones who had passed on before them.
The two go up together, but the raptured ones come up a nanosecond or two after the resurrected ones. Scripture is so clear on that. So if you can identify where that resurrection happens, you know where the rapture happened, and it didn't happen seven years before it.
All right. So the raptured ones following along with the resurrected elect and going up to be with the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with him. Verse 18 says, "'Wherefore, comfort one another with ease.'".
Why did the Apostle Paul keep saying comfort one another if the church wasn't gonna be here going through some tribulation? Why do we need to be comforted if we're not even here? We're just taken out and don't see any of that.
If you go into the first second Thessalonians, first second Timothy, time and time again the Apostle Paul says, "'Now it's gonna be hard. "'You're gonna go through terrible tribulation. "'Comfort yourselves.
"'Remember the word of God. "'Remember the things I taught you. "'Remember the resurrection. "'Remember the glory that will come later, "'and you'll get through this thing.'". Because the glory that comes later cannot be compared with the suffering that we go through here.
What's suffering? If you're not here, you don't suffer. So all of that to me was concocted by man, sadly enough. Had a little bit of Satan behind it, I think, inspiring it. Now let's think about this resurrection one more moment here.
Let's go, this is fascinating. A lot of folks don't realize it, but the book of Job is one of the oldest books in the whole Bible, even though chronologically Job was, you know, not at the front end of Genesis 1 -1, obviously, but the book itself and the time period when Job lived was closer, maybe even preceded Abraham's life.
So the Bible's not exactly chronological sometimes. Time you get to Job, he would have lived back maybe with Abraham or even before that. So think about how long ago. That's almost 2 ,500 years ago. And look what Job is saying.
This is so beautiful. "'Oh, that my words were now written. "'Oh, that they were printed in a book.'". Well, guess what, Job, they are. All of our acts and words and deeds are printed in a book, and that's what we're judged for, for our rewards or suffering loss at the judgment seat of Christ.
And so verse 24 says that, "'They were graven with an iron pen "'and led in the rock forever. "'For I know that my Redeemer lives.'". That's Jesus, right? Job, 2 ,500 years ago, you know, almost 600 years before Christ was born.
He said, "'I know that my Redeemer liveth "'and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.'". That's the second coming. And look at this. "'And though after my skin, worms have destroyed this body.'".
So Job's been in the grave a long time, hasn't he? "'Yet in my flesh shall I see God.'". That's the resurrection. And he goes up a nanosecond before us, and then we rise up with Job and my grandmother, and we meet the Lord in the air.
And he says right here, "'And though after my skin, worms destroy this body, "'yet in my flesh shall I see God.'". He makes it clear. "'Whom I shall see for myself with my eyes.'". So his physical body, which is now dust, most likely, will be restructured, put back together, all the molecules of his body, and God will glorify that, take the sin away, the old man will be gone, but it will be Job and his friends and family will recognize Job, and it will be Job's eyeballs.
See that, what he's saying? "'My eyes shall behold, not another.'". It's not like God makes me a robot and takes my soul and all this and sticks it in another body. It's my body. You see the difference?
I mean, this is a literal resurrection. And 2 ,500 years ago, God's man Job wrote about this, and he said, "'I know that my Redeemer is alive, "'and I know that at the end of the age, "'even though I've been in the ground for thousands of years, "'I'm gonna rise again, and with my own eyes, "'I'm gonna see for myself, "'I'm gonna see the Lord face to face.
"'Though my reigns be consumed within me, "'this will happen.'". And he says in verse 25, "'I know that my Redeemer liveth, "'and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.'". That's the second coming.
Part right after that is the resurrection and the rapture. And that's one of the oldest parts of Holy Writ that we have, and it still lays it out in the same chronology. It's really quite amazing. All right, we're winding down time here.
Let's see if we can have a little bit more fun. First Thessalonians 5 .1, "'But of the times and the seasons, brethren, "'you have no need that I write unto you.'". I mean, Paul's converts were well-schooled in the Word, right?
So they understood the chronology. But there had been a false teacher coming into the churches saying that the resurrection actually already happened, and Paul rebuked him and said, "'You are doing damage to the church "'when you teach these false chronologies.'".
It's all in the Scripture. But he says, "'You understand the times and the seasons. "'For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord "'so cometh as a thief in the night.'". You cannot predict the day and the hour.
"'For when they shall say.'". Now, who's they and who's we? Well, we are the elect. We are God's people. They, that's the world system. Those are the sons of Belial, and there's way more of them than there are us.
Always have been. We're a remnant that God decided to save, a remnant from a fallen, lost, annihilated race. And in his grace and mercy and love, he decided to save a remnant. I believe he did it for his son, Jesus, who loved the earth and who loves humans.
And so for his son, he saved a remnant and gave us to him. That's how I believe it happened. "'For when they shall say peace.'". That's the world, the lost people of the world. They'll say, "'Peace and safety.'".
Why? Because the Antichrist is promising them, I'm the best leader in the world. I'm gonna bring you peace and safety. That's why they allow him to rise up in power. "'Then sudden destruction comes on them "'as travail upon a woman with child.'".
Now, you remember in Matthew how I pointed out that it said that you're gonna have earthquakes and you're gonna have wars and rumors of wars. You're gonna have pestilences like the coronavirus. And don't be, you know, don't be upset about this.
These things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. And then he comes in and has this idiomatic expression where he says, "'This is the beginning of sorrows.'". That is an idiomatic expression that means birth pains of a woman about to have a baby.
But here, 1 Thessalonians just spells it out. It doesn't use the idiomatic expression. It says the words, "'It's like the travail of a woman with child, "'and they shall not escape.'". So what happens is these signs that we've been given, such as earthquakes, such as children being obedient to parents, which now is therapeutic.
You give them drugs for that now, not when I was a kid. It was called a paddle. It had my name on it. It's called the David board, and it was right by the table where I ate every day. Anyway, that method works pretty good, better than the drugs.
But now we have diagnosed children disobeying their parents. So that never happened before. So that happens to be one of the signs that's new that had to happen before Christ came back. Well, now it's happened.
And there are many of those. We could go back two, three weeks ago and talk about more of them. But these signs happen, but as they get stronger and closer together, like a woman about to have a baby, the labor pains get stronger and closer together.
And then all of a sudden the child is born. All of a sudden the Lord will come back. And that is a beautiful picture and a key to understanding the signs. "'But you, brethren, are not in darkness.'". Now, what did it just say?
It said the world system to them, Jesus is gonna come like a thief in the night and catch them and they're not ready. "'But you're not like that,' he said.". Why? Because you're in the word and you have the Holy Spirit.
So you have the word of God, that's the water, and you have the Spirit. You got the water and you got the Spirit. That's how you got saved and that's how you grow. And you have the word of God and you understand the times and the seasons.
I don't have to remind you of that, Paul said. So they understood these things. He says, therefore, you're not in the darkness that the day should overtake you as a thief. See, we should be ready for all of this.
It's not as a thief to save people. You are the children of light and the children of the day. We're not of night or of darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep as others do, but get ready for this thing.
Let us watch and be sober. We have work to do. We have preparation to take care of for our family's sakes, for our churches. For they that sleep, sleep in the night, and they that are drunken, are drunken in the night.
But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love and for a helmet, the hope of salvation, like I said a couple of Sundays ago, that expectation of the rapture, that's what the helmet of hope means because hope is like a word formula in the New Testament.
Usually it talks about the rapture as the great hope of the church. So a helmet goes on your head. So when you get down, things around you, like the coronavirus things driving you nuts because you can't get out like you want to.
You can't even hug your grandkids, driving me nuts. And are your kids, unless they happen to have gotten put in the house with you right when it happened. So luckily I had two of those. And so that was lovely.
But man, think about it. I need a little bit of mental health here. So I put on the helmet of the hope of salvation. What do I do? I think about, well, you know what? This too shall pass. And someday the Lord is gonna come and shout, church, come up here.
And all this stuff's gonna be over. And the glory of that, the suffering here will not compare to it, right? So we still have work to do. Verse nine says, for God has not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him.
Obviously talking about salvation in verse 10. So guess what? The word wrath in verse nine is not talking about that you're gonna get raptured so you don't have to go through tribulation. It's not, this is their big proof text taken out of context as all of them are.
Big proof text. You're not appointed to wrath so you can't go through the great tribulation. That's not what this is saying. In fact, the whole passage is talking about being ready and not being discouraged and how to get through these kinds of troublous times.
None of that makes sense in context. But if you look at the word wrath, it's talking about hell. And the very next verse is talking about heaven. So we're not appointed to hell. Duh, we know that. This is no reference to the rapture or any of that.
This is just a fact. We're not appointed to hell. We have eternal security because of the finished work of Christ. And that one drop of his blood was all it took to save us from every sin we ever thought of or ever did.
And we're saved by him plus nothing. So we can't unsave ourselves. That's what verse nine means. We're not appointed to hell. But what are we appointed to? The opposite, to obtain salvation. That's what the verse means.
Why would you pull that out and create a theory around it? Because you did and it's sad. We don't have to continue though. We can let the scripture speak. Wherefore, comfort yourselves together, edify one another, even as you also do.
See, why do we need to comfort ourselves? Paul's continuing what he said. Because Paul thought each generation might be the generation that goes through the tribulation. They all thought they'd be there for the rapture.
My grandmother thought so. But guess what? You had to have that children becoming disobedient to the parents thing happen. That hadn't happened yet. So she was a little bit off. And we need to see the temple built, right?
So that'll be exciting when we see that. Now, verse nine, like I said, is common proof text for the pre-trib rapture theory. This is out of context. And in fact, the whole passage teaches the opposite.
It is not saying God will never allow His saints to go through tribulation. Read Foxe's Book of Martyrs if you don't believe that. It's a great book, by the way. If you pick it up, you won't put it down until you read the whole thing.
It is saying that He will never allow His saints to experience hell. Very, very important. For God has not appointed us to wrath. I think I'm gonna save some of this for next time because we'll be moving into some new verses in Romans 8 next time, too, to encourage you.
But I'm gonna talk about this for a couple of slides next Sunday, the Lord willing. I'm gonna deal with this error of using this verse to try to prove you don't go through the tribulation. I'm gonna deal with it in detail.
I'm gonna take but two slides. It'll just blow it away, okay? Because it's the Scripture that does it. The Scripture blows it away. And the Scripture is the only authority. And by the way, our rule in Park Meadows, if you guys, all you visitors, you're not visitors if you've been here before.
You're part of the church anyway. But if you wanna go by our rules, our rule is this. We just seek the truth. If one of us points out to the other that we taught something in error, we will get up and apologize for it and never teach it again.
That's how we wanna be until the Lord comes back. So we invite you to do that with us, okay? Now, I wanna do one other thing here. Hold on one second. Yeah, you know what? I'm not gonna try to do. Yeah, I can do that.
Hold on, let me jump over here. I wanna pop up something beautiful to end with, okay? Luke chapter 21, verse 25, and there shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and the stars. Now, we're not quite to that part.
Some of that's gonna happen right prior to the second three and a half years and right during the last three and a half years of the tribulation period. But that's coming. And it says on earth, you will have distress of nations.
Now, some of that's already happening with perplexity. I used to teach this in the 1980s to our Sunday school kids, high school kids. I said, that right there means things will get so bad on the earth that the governments can't handle it and help the people.
Well, look what's been happening the last few weeks. It's almost a circus watching the different political figures trying to figure out what to do. None of them know what to do and they're all contradicting one another.
And it's because God brought this event to pass for his purposes and they can't fix it any more than they can fix the weather or the economy, but they're always trying to fix all of it, right? They can't.
They're humans and they shake their little fist up there at God and we don't have to be that way. We can watch and know God is in control. But isn't that interesting? Jesus Christ is speaking here and showing out into the future.
He said, you're gonna have, the earth will be the distress of nations, perplexity, the leaders won't be able to help the people and the sea and the waves roaring. Guess what? That is a biblical phrase, kind of like a word formula.
The sea and the waves is the people groups of the world. It's the people, the masses of people are gonna roar against their governments. Have you seen in the last few days in some of these countries, China for one of them, people are going to the streets, blaming the leaders for not taking care of this properly.
And it's turning into anarchy in some nations right now. Men's hearts failing them for fear and for looking after the things which are coming on the earth. Just trying to make life work in the midst of all this is gonna be really hard and people are gonna have heart attacks over it.
They're just gonna swoon for the powers of heaven will even be shaken. Now that hasn't happened yet, but it's coming. And then shall they see the son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
That doesn't sound like a secret coming, does it? They, who's they? The world will see it too. The lost people will see it. The saved people will see it. All these movies they made about the rapture, the lost people couldn't see it.
It's like all of a sudden, planes fell out of the sky and they couldn't explain it. But this is not how it happens. This is like the son of man coming as the lightning from the east to the west. Every eye shall see it.
The lost and the saved shall see him coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And look what Jesus said. When I come back like that, he said, when these things begin to come to pass, look up and lift up your heads for your redemption draweth nigh.
Well, I think they're already beginning to come to pass. So we need to be like the old saints building the wall in Israel where they had a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other, and they were laying bricks, but they had that sword ready for the enemy to attack while they were trying to do God's work.
Only difference is now we still need to have that and we need to work, but we need to glance up from time to time because he's coming. He's coming back soon and we need to be watching and we still need to be working, but the redemption of our body draws near.
That's what it's talking about. All right, Dave, I'm gonna bring you back in. We can close in prayer. It's been a joy to be with all you guys today.