Jesus Christ’s Return, What We Believe, Part 9

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Four, two, three. Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community.

For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Christmas, New Year, and the Kootenai Community Church Seminar

Well, I hope that you had a good Christmas. This is Andrew Rappaport, host of The Wrap Report, joined by my friend, Jim Osmond, pastor of Kootenai Community Church. Pastor Jim, welcome again.

Thank you, it's good to be back in the saddle.

So I do hear, let's just get this rumor out of the way, because I hear that you're welcoming in the new year with a seminar. You want to talk about some clouds that don't have any water in them is how I heard it.

But I hear that up in Idaho, if people want to go up there January 14th and 15th, you're going to have Justin Peters come out and do his Clouds Without Water seminar.

Yeah, we are. And of course, there's a connection between Justin and our church because he lived here for some years. And of course, Justin and I are friends. Anybody who knows who I am knows that. Justin and I are friends.

And so he wanted to know if he could come up and do a presentation and do some recording here. So we're going to facilitate that. We're going to use our church and we're not going to charge anybody to come to the conference.

We're going to make that free. And then we're just going to take up an offering to cover the cost of the refreshments. So on Friday, we're going to do two sessions, four on Saturday, and it's going to involve a Q &A.

And we're going to serve refreshments for that and make it a delight for everybody who was there. And any offering that's taken up over and above the cost of the refreshments goes to support Justin Peter's ministry.

There you go.

So folks, if you're in the Sandpoint, Idaho area, go check that out. That'll be January 14th and 15th. So just a quick plug for Kootenai Community Church there. So I hope that everybody had a good Christmas.

Looking forward to New Year's. We are going to be celebrating New Year's as a church. I don't know, what do you guys, does your church do anything for New Year's?

No, we don't, no. We have a Christmas Eve service. So we had that. And then we don't do anything for New Year's or New Year's Eve. It's just, we let it pass and people hang with their families.

Yeah.

In the event that New Year's falls on a Sunday, then we have a worship service on that morning.

New Year's Day.

Yeah, you know, I knew of, this is totally off topic, but I knew of a church in New Jersey that used to cancel service on Super Bowl Sunday. Now just take a step back and think about that first off, because I don't follow football, but Super Bowl Sunday, the Super Bowl's usually at night.

I at least know that much of it. Like why in the world do you need to cancel the morning service? Like if you had an evening service maybe.

In our time zone, the Super Bowl doesn't start until the middle of the afternoon, even where we're at. So even when it would be, it would come closest to impinging upon ours, but there's no need to cancel it.

Unless you're giving people the opportunity to drive 10 hours to wherever they're gonna watch the Super Bowl and they can't make it to church. And then you get over to Eastern time zones and what's it start at?

I think it's like seven.

Like six o 'clock at night for you guys.

Or something like that?

Is it six or seven at?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Yeah, I just, to me, I looked at that church and went, okay, you've made it clear what is your priority and it's not the Bible.

Yeah, we're gonna bow to the idol of the culture even when the idol isn't even threatened to impinge upon our normal worship of God.

Yeah, oh my. So, yeah, so let's get into, we're continuing our series here, we're on our series number nine in this series, looking at what we believe. This is from the doctrinal statement at Striving Fraternity.

So we'll just remind you, it's in the show notes, but if you just go to strivingfraternity .org and go to the about section, under the about, you will see a, what we believe. We're specifically, if you open up the section on God, we're looking at God, the son, and we're just finishing up on the last couple of paragraphs here to finish up on this section.

So, Jim, if you would, for us, would you mind reading the section we're gonna look at today?

Absolutely, so this is about three paragraphs from the end of the section on Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ will return to receive the church, which is called his body, unto himself at the rapture, and returning with his church in glory will establish his millennial kingdom on earth, Acts 1, 9 through 11, 1 Thessalonians 4, 13 through 18, and Revelation 20.

Jesus Christ is the one through whom God will judge all mankind, John 5, 22 to 23, including believers, 1 Corinthians 3, 10 to 15, and 2 Corinthians 5, 10, the living inhabitants of the earth at his glorious return, Matthew 25, 31 to 46, and unbelieving dead at the great white throne, Revelation 20, 11 through 15.

As the mediator between God and man, 1 Timothy 2, 5, the head of his body, the church, Ephesians 1, 22, 5, 23, and Colossians 1, 18, and the coming universal king who will reign on the throne of David, Isaiah 9, 6, and Luke 1, 31 to 33, he is the final judge of all who fail to place their trust in him as Lord and Savior, Matthew 25, 14 through 46, and Acts 17, 30 to 31.

Premillennialism, the Rapture, and the Millennial Kingdom

Now, this week is gonna be the first that we really get into some of the end times discussions that we've kind of touched on briefly in previous episodes. This is gonna be the first where we're gonna have some of our amillennial brothers and post-millennial brothers that will disagree with some of the things in here.

But I want you to note that there's, even within this, there's a lot that they would agree with. And so, this is something we wanna address some of those differences. Now, granted, this is the doctrinal statement of striving for eternity.

This is not a doctrinal statement for Christianity. I wanna make that point clear because a doctrinal statement says where we agree, where we disagree. And we're saying here where striving for eternity is.

We are premillennial, pre-tribulational. That doesn't mean that we think those who are not are not brothers in Christ. That's an important distinction to be made because what we find is a lot of people tend to see that or think that somehow if we are having a position, we're calling everyone else a heretic, everyone else unsaved.

That's not the purpose of a doctrinal statement. As you heard, I'm referring to amillennialists and post-millennialists, they are brothers, at least some of them. Some premillennialists are brothers too, not all, okay?

And so it's not this doctrine that's going to define whether they're saved or unsaved. But the issue here is that there are differences. We hold to a different position. Now, what does this mean for a ministry?

Well, this does not mean that I come into a church or Anthony comes into a church or any of our speakers would come into a church and be teaching on premillennialism unless that's what we're asked to speak on.

I was recently asked to come into a church for two Sundays and speak on dispensationalism. Now, that's not something I would typically be focused on unless the church is asking for that. However, as our ministry, when we're teaching through things, yeah, that would come up.

That's going to come up in our systematic theology. That's going to come up here with view of end times.

Why?

Because we're trying here to focus in on some specifics for our ministry. If you're going to be part of our ministry, if you're going to speak on our ministry, you're going to know our perspective. Does it mean this is what we focus on?

No, actually, I don't know how often I talk on end times. It's not very often. It's an area where I think there's a lot of speculation that goes on in all camps because things are not as clear. Hindsight is always 20 -20.

And that's the thing. We can look at the first coming and man, it's crystal clear to us. It wasn't so crystal clear to those that lived in the first century before. And so that's something we have to remember and recognize.

Some of the things we think are so clear are not going to be as clear as we think they are. So let's get into this. Because this is one thing that we all agree, Christ will return, right? All Christians would agree with that.

The difference is, and I mentioned some terms, let me define them. Premillennial, postmillennial, amillennial. Because I don't want to take for granted that people understand those. So I'll start with amillennial.

Amillennial in Greek is negative. So millennium is a thousand year period. This is out of Revelation chapter 20. Revelation chapter 26 times refers to a thousand year period. And so the question is, is that a millennial period?

A thousand year kingdom? Does that refer to the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah ruling and reigning as king, literally and physically? And so amillennial is the idea that there's no millennial kingdom, physical kingdom.

Now, that is the idea that there is a period of a kingdom now that Jesus is reigning. It's not a thousand years, it's this spiritual kingdom. The idea there is that we are not gonna see a physical reign of Christ.

At the end of the age, there's gonna be a judgment. Postmillennialism is the idea that there's a postmillennial, that Christ is gonna return postmillennium. So after that millennium kingdom. Some, whether it's physical or not, there seems to be some, I've met people that say they're postmillennial that believe in a literal kingdom and some that don't.

So I think in postmillennialism, there seems to be some give on that. But the idea is when does Christ come? They would say after that kingdom. Premillennialism is the idea that Christ would return before this thousand year kingdom.

There'd be a physical and literal 1 ,000 year kingdom and Jesus will reign during those thousand years. So the pre is premillennium he comes. So that's just to give you guys an overview of that. And each of those have their own views within.

Now I will state, many people make an argument against premillennialism because it's a new theology. Well, it's about a little over 120 years, 130 years old as far as a formal position. It was something that came about in the late 1800s, early 1900s, that it really got developed into a system.

And the common view was amillennialism. That's what was held by the Catholic Church and it was carried over into the Reformation. Now I will say this just as a note, a lot of amillennialists will say that you can see the writings of amillennialism detailed in a man like Augustus or Augustine, however you want to say his name.

People have differences. So when you look at that, I remember doing a paper, Jim, when I was in seminary on Augustine's view of the millennium and it's very interesting when you actually engage with his writings because yes, he does say a lot of things about us being in a kingdom now.

The problem is he actually thought it was a literal thousand-year kingdom. And so both premillennialists.

Prior to 1 ,000 AD, so he could take that.

Exactly, see, both amillennialists and premillennialists can go back to Augustine because both of us can use what he said and view it because he thought it was a literal thousand-year kingdom. He just thought he was in it.

And that actually was the position of the Roman Catholic Church up until a little after 1 ,000 AD. I think it was Pope Innocent II, I think is who it was at the time, who then spiritualized the thousand-year kingdom because well, 1 ,000 years passed.

So just so you have some history there and we shouldn't knock on any theology because it's new because guess what, folks? There was a time that the reformed theology was new. When they had the Catholic Church in their teaching and people reformed it, that was new.

That didn't make it wrong. Well, they would say, well, it wasn't new. We got it from Augustine. Well, just remember, we get our premillennialism from Augustine as well.

Oops.

So with that, let's just start with this. And so I'm saying we're gonna take a premillennial view. Jesus Christ will return to receive his church. Now, this is something that we'll talk about in a moment called the rapture, that he's going to the first step.

And we would argue, both Jim and I would be in agreement here. It would have been very different if Bud was here this week. It would have been fun. We should have seen if Bud could come back just for this one to get the post-mill view.

And notice that what I just said there, Bud is post-mill and he's still a co-host here. We don't have, we can get along even though we have differences. So these things should not divide us. But I would argue that the very next thing, what is the next thing in history, in God's plan of history, would be what we call the rapture, where he takes the church out of the world.

And it is an idea that God will, if you've seen any of the movies in the, what are they, 80s, or you watch the Left Behind series or read the books where just everyone vanishes. Granted, that is speculation.

We don't know exactly what will happen. So all the youth groups where someone plays a joke and they all drop clothes on the ground and they all hide. Will that actually happen? Don't know. Maybe you'll go with your clothes.

But the idea is that God will come and take his church out. And the reason we believe that is because it seems that God still has unfulfilled promises that he made to Israel. And so Jesus will receive his church and the church will no longer be the organization he works through on earth, but he's gonna return to working with the nation of Israel.

And so he's gonna receive the church unto himself at the rapture. Now, I skipped the part on purpose, but I wanna let Jim at least answer anything that he has about that part of it. Anything you wanna add to that?

No, I don't think I can add anything. I think that's clear. You are not dealing here with whether that rapture is pre-tribulational, mid-tribulational, or post-tribulational. That's something you're gonna deal with later on in your eschatology.

But we are recognizing that there is something as something called, that we call the rapture, though the word is not mentioned in scripture, the event is described, 1 Thessalonians chapter four.

Correct. And you bring up a good point because within premillennialism, there's at least three, really a couple more, but they all fit kind of within the three different views. Pre-tribulational, mid-tribulational, post-tribulational.

What those have to deal with is when the rapture occurs. Does the rapture occur before a seven-year period, which is before the thousand-year kingdom, midway through, or at the end? Three different views of that.

And so the idea is that the first thing that we would say pre-tribulational, the first thing in history is the rapture's gonna come, that's gonna start a seven-year period where you'll have an antichrist rise, he'll make a covenant with Israel, halfway through, he breaks it.

He then, at the end of the seven-year period, Christ returns, brings in the thousand-year kingdom. That would be the overview of the premillennial view. Mid-tribulational, they're gonna think that that rapture occurs somewhere in the middle.

There's a pre-wrath view, but that's kind of in the middle as well, so that fits into the pre-mid. And then there's the post view, so the post is that the Christian church would go through the seven-year period, the church would be raptured as Christ returns, and then the thousand-year kingdom.

Now, if that's a whole lot to understand, that is just kind of giving overviews. We're gonna dig in more detail that later on, many episodes later, when we get to the end times. But we wanna just give that overview.

Now, I skipped over this part where it says, he receives the church which is called his body, and I wanna focus in a little bit on that. Why is the church called his body? If you go to 1 Corinthians 12, and many people know that passage because it speaks of spiritual gifts, and we're gonna get into those in a couple of episodes from now.

But when we look at this, you end up seeing that it's referred to as one body, but with many members. And this is a description that you and I have one body, and how does our body work? Our body has to work together.

And when our body isn't working together, something is hurt or broken, the rest of the body has to make up for that. And so I think the reason I felt it important to include, which is called his body, is the focus of what is the church.

Throughout this doctrinal statement, if you notice, I'm mentioning things that are to be emphasized later. And there's reasons to emphasize things later. It's the repetition that I want all of us to really get and understand and review over and over, because the more we hear this, the more we understand it.

And so the church is referred to as the body, which is many parts but function together. That's important when it comes to a church. Jim, you're a pastor, I'm a pastor. I know we've had these experiences.

Have you had times in church where one person is upset over something and it starts to have an effect on the rest of the members?

Yeah, it certainly can. That's why the author of Hebrews says, "'Don't let any root of bitterness spring up among you "'by which many are defiled.'". So that close-knit functioning of the body, the way the body is knit together and meets together for worship, service, fellowship, love, and communion, and et cetera, creates an environment in which it is possible for one person's discontentment, bitterness, anxiety, whatever it is, to spread to everybody.

We always have to be careful that whatever we do and how we do it, that we are not adversely affecting everybody around us, just by virtue of the fact that we're connected so closely to them in the body.

I always remember, and granted, I don't follow team sports, so don't blame me. Someone out there, you will know who I'm speaking about. I don't remember the guy's name, but I always remember my first pastor, when explaining this, always talked about a professional baseball player who was a pitcher.

Now he, my first pastor could have probably gone professional, playing professional ball, but he became a pastor, but he was very good, very into sports, and he would always use this illustration because there was some pitcher where someone hit a ball and it came right at the pitcher and it hit his toe, I think his big toe.

It was big or little toe, I forget which, and it actually ended his career because his toe was hurting, he ended up shifting differently, throwing the ball differently. His pitch was never good enough anymore and it ended up ruining his career.

So what it showed is that even though the toe may seem like a small body part, it affected the whole body where he couldn't do what he was paid to do. The idea of that, and that's what, I'm spending a little bit of time on the emphasis of the church as a body so that we understand, because especially in our day and age right now, if there's ever been a time that the body of Christ, the universal body of Christ needs to come together, that would be it.

And so I think it's fitting in this section where we're talking about things that people do divide over, end times. This is not a time for us to be dividing over end times. This of all times is a time we should be gathering as saints, those of us who know Christ, to work together as best we can for the cause of the gospel.

Not saying we have to agree completely, but there's a lot we can agree with. And so I think that's important though, and that's why I wanted to include the section of this being his body in a section where I'm mentioning where people disagree.

So we mentioned that he's gonna come, that Jesus Christ will return to receive his church, which is called to his body, unto himself at the rapture, and we mentioned all that, and returning with his church to glory.

So this is the idea, again, from a pre-millennial, pre-tribulational view, that we believe Jesus is gonna rapture the church to himself, and then after seven years, he's gonna take the church with him to glory, and then for seven years we'll be there, and then we would actually return, and this is what the rest of it says, we'll establish his millennial kingdom on earth, then we'll return with him as he reigns and rules, literally, during a thousand years on earth.

Now, this is the position that we would hold to. I've kind of given the overview of it, and I think that there's lots here we could get into, and we will, but I don't want to focus so much on where we, well, there's all the disagreements, but this is a doctoral statement to say this is a position we're taking.

We're saying this is where we make a stand. These things are important. I think if you listened to the last episode in the series where Pastor Jim talked about the importance of the fulfillment of a physical kingdom being required for the divinic covenant, and so you see that's how these things would play out.

So, and anything that you would like to add on the section there on the end times before we move on to some other issues here?

I'll just throw out one thing real quick, Andrew, and I'm gonna do this only because I'm, Bud's gonna probably be back on here in order to spew his post-millennialism at the end of this doctoral statement for later episodes, so I'll just throw this out.

So he can clarify everything we say.

Yeah, he can come back in and argue against this. I got a great friend in our church who makes this statement. He said, if you read your Bible left to right, you have to be a pre-millennialist. If you read your Bible right to left, you'll be a post-millennialist.

And what he means by that is, if you start at the right-hand side of your Bible and you read back, you're gonna get to 1 ,000 years there, and only two chapters in, and you're gonna ask yourself, what can that possibly mean?

I wonder what the 1 ,000 years is supposed to refer to. Well, it must be allegorical. It must be figurative. It must not be a literal 1 ,000 years of the resurrection at the beginning of Revelation 20.

It must not be a literal physical resurrection. Therefore, this must be allegorical. And then you will take that and reinterpret all of the passages that precede that, prophetic, typological, all of that, in the previous 65 books of the Bible.

You'll interpret all of that in light of what you read into Revelation 20. But if you start at the beginning and you trace that kingdom narrative all the way through the Old Testament, you see the promise to Abraham of a land to seed and a descendant, and you see the promise to David of a land and a king and a ruler, and you read the Old Testament prophets, and then you see Jesus coming, fulfilling that, and then you see what the New Testament epistles expect in terms of that, and then you get to Revelation 20.

It all makes sense. Read your Bible left to right. You're premillennial. Read your Bible right to left. You are post-millennial.

But there's some, Jim, that are gonna say, I'm pan-millennial. It'll all pan out in the end.

Yeah.

I had one friend, I liked what he said. He would say he is fully pro-millennial, meaning if there's a millennium, he's all for it.

Yeah.

And so I think that when it comes to eschatology, study of end times, it's gonna be the area that I don't emphasize the most because, though it was so clear to those before the first century of how Messiah was gonna come, many of them got it wrong.

And we can look back and go, we got it right, because we got hindsight. And I think that we're gonna get some of those things wrong, myself included. I don't know where, but there's reasons I hold to what I hold.

We'll get into them when we look at end times. So let's look at this next section, Jim. Jesus Christ is the only, is the one through whom God will judge all mankind. Now, this is really important to understand for folks.

John 5, 21 to 23 says, for not even the Father judges anyone, but he has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son. And as they honor the Father, he who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.

And so this is clear that the Father gives judgment to the Son. That's important because one of the things that people like Jehovah Witnesses or others who deny the deity of Christ ignore is the fact that Jesus is the judge.

For Jesus to be the judge, he has to be in a right place of being a judge. It means he has to be innocent. Now, a judge cannot sit on the bench and be also one who's accused. So in this case, for Jesus to be the judge of morality, of sin, he can't have sinned.

He has to be in a place that only God can be. He sits in the place that only God can sit in. So it's one of the elements. And what makes him, as Psalm 7, 11 says, a just judge, well, it's because he's God.

He's a just judge who's, I don't think, Jim, some of the people that do evangelism always read the rest of that, who's angry with the wicked every day. Wait, God can't be angry. I recently did the debate on Apologetics Live on Calvinism is useless and dangerous.

And the whole thing this guy was trying to say is God loves everyone. I said, what do you do with Psalm 5, 5 and Psalm 7, 11, where it says he's angry with those who commit iniquity. He's angry with the wicked.

Is that his love?

Yeah. Oops.

So Jesus Christ alone is the judge who's gonna judge all of mankind. That's what we put there, but he actually already judged the angels. They've already been judged. There's gonna be a consequence, a final consequence coming for them.

But we're saying that all of mankind will be judged by Christ, the importance of that. That means that we are all accountable to Jesus. We are all gonna stand before him one day, as the scripture says, we're gonna bow our knee and confess him as Lord.

That is the reality. He is the judge. This is something that is essential for us to understand and communicate, especially when we share the gospel. Because people think, oh, Jesus is just another way.

No, because there's no other man-made religion that sets themselves up with someone other than God being the judge. Muhammad isn't going to judge you. He's gonna be judged by God in Islam. Same with Joseph Smith.

Although, well, yeah, Joseph Smith, some of his followers did claim that he'll be like the fourth person of the Trinity and he'll be up there judging with Jesus. But ultimately, they would not claim that he is the judge.

But the Bible says that Jesus is the judge. And we have three areas in which he, three groups of people that we're gonna see judged. Believers, living inhabitants on the earth at his glorious return, and unbelievers dead at the Great White Throne Judgment.

Now, two of these, all Christians would agree with, believers and unbelievers. We've added a third one in that brings us back to the discussion that we were looking at. And so let me address that one first and then come back to the believers and unbelievers.

So we said that the judgment will, Christ will return on the earth and then there will be a judgment. Now, the way in premillennialism is that there'll be a couple of judgments that end up being seen before the final Great White Throne Judgment.

But the idea is that there will be a judgment of the inhabitants of the earth at the time of his return. So those who are alive when he returns before the thousand year kingdom, there is the idea that there would be a judgment he does then, and that only those that are redeemed would enter into that thousand year kingdom.

Now, that doesn't mean they stay redeemed everybody. What do I mean by that? Those who are redeemed will have children and those children, some will believe and some will not. And so at the end of the thousand year kingdom when there is a revolt of unbelievers, those unbelievers are the children of the inhabitants that first came into the kingdom.

And so just to be consistent with our end times view, I had to include a third view in here. Everybody would hold to believers that God is at the Great White Throne Judgment, he's gonna judge the believers and unbelievers known as sheep and goat, goats.

And so you're gonna have those two groups, those that have eternal life will be in the new earth and new heavens, those that have eternal death will be thrown into the lake of fire, okay? So those are the two that everyone agrees.

We've added the third to be consistent because it does seem to be within premillennialism the view of another judgment. So Jim, anything with God coming or Jesus coming as the judge that he will be the one to judge the world or specifically mankind?

No, I would just add a clarification that when we say that he's going to judge believers, we don't have in mind the same kind of judgment or the same standard of judgment as what we see when he judges unbelievers either at the beginning of his kingdom or at the end of his kingdom.

And we do have a judgment at the beginning of that kingdom, but it is not believers who are judged on the basis of their sin or as a payment for their sin because believers' sins have already been paid for at that point.

That judgment that takes place at the beginning of his kingdom is for the purpose of establishing a kingdom of only righteousness, only the sheep get to enter into that kingdom at that point. Some glorified saints and others non-glorified saints who have endured through the tribulation.

But that judgment is intended to purge the entire earth of all the wicked and that would be a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. There are Old Testament prophecies that anticipated the purging of all of the wicked from all of the nations prior to the establishment of the messianic kingdom.

And then of course you have unbelievers who have not yet been raised in their unglorified but eternal immortal bodies at any point in this. There's never been a resurrection of the damned, of the unbelieving, and that happens at the end of that kingdom.

So that they spend all of eternity in unglorified but eternal imperishable bodies that spend all of eternity suffering in damnation. So you have to split up, I think, those two judgments to make sense of the way in which they are described in each case.

And the thing there is believers being judged, we will be judged, right? Judgment isn't always, we're gonna be judged as being righteous because of what Christ did. But we're also gonna be judged because we're gonna have crowns given in the final.

And so our rewards, our service that is being judged.