154. The Rapture is Unbiblical (Rethinking the Rapture Part 2)

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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the broadcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 154,

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The Rapture Is Unbiblical. Introduction.

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Well, hello, everyone, and welcome back to the broadcast. We are a show that opens up the Bible, digs deep into the truths of Scripture, and tries to understand what is going on in this crazy theological world known as eschatology.

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Now, with so much confusion and fear and panic in the world, and with so many people thinking that we're on the precipice of an imminent rapture, we want to be an oasis of sanity on this show.

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We wanna be a place where you can come to get biblical truth frankly delivered that comes right out of the

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Scripture so that you will know the hope that we have in Jesus Christ so that you will know the height and the depth and the breadth of his kingdom and the spread of its dominion, and so that you and I will be equipped to build the next

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Christendom out of the ashes of our collapsing American secularism.

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Now, with that, I wanna say hello to all of our new subscribers because there are a ton of you.

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If you've been watching this show for a little while, then you know that I wanted to take the profits from the show and reinvest it into the show.

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We monetized the show last June, and we set up a bank account, we did all of that, and I didn't wanna just pay the bills.

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I wanted to upgrade the equipment, maybe get a fancy camera at some point because right now we're using a pretty cheap camera and just squeezing every bit out of it that we can, but I also, more than that,

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I wanna see more people understand the glorious post -millennial truth, understand the hope that we have in Christ, the optimism that we have for the future and for the world, and I wanted people to be encouraged to get busy building in Jesus's kingdom.

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And because of that, and because of you, and I treat every single one of you like shareholders in this show, especially if you're watching the show, you're sharing the show, you subscribe to it, you're signed up for one of our membership tiers,

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I wanna treat you like a shareholder, and I wanna give you a shareholder's report of what our first two ads have done this new year, and it is crazy.

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In my first ad, which I ran at the beginning of the year, we reached 300 new subscribers, which is amazing.

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That's absolutely amazing. 300 new people are hearing about these truths, and that is a glorious thing.

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That's a big church in New England just for $300, so why wouldn't we do that? Now, two weeks ago, when

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I was in Pennsylvania, I ran a second ad, and I was totally blown away by the results.

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By the end of the first day, I was expecting like 100 subscribers or maybe 50 or something like that.

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By the end of the first day, we already had 1 ,000 new subscribers, which was mind -blowing.

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By the end of the week, we'd already reached 6 ,000 subscribers, which I can't even begin to comprehend. And now, as the ad will finish running tomorrow, we have just cracked, at the time that I am recording this, we have just cracked 13 ,200 subscribers on our way to 15 ,000 subscribers, not that far away.

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And I don't even, by the way, I don't even have words for that, but just to put that into perspective, at the beginning of the year,

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I announced our big, hairy, audacious goal, because every year, I want to have a goal that seems so big, so crazy, that I can't even imagine how it would be accomplished unless God does something to make it happen.

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So at the beginning of this year, my big, hairy, audacious goal was 5 ,000 subscribers.

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I said, Lord, if you could grow the show, and at that point, that was more than doubling the show.

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I said, if you could just grow the show to 5 ,000 subscribers, we could reach more people, that would be amazing.

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We've already done that, and it's March. We've already blown that goal out of the water, and soon, we're going to see the show tripled when we hit 15 ,000.

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It tripled from our goal, and none of that is because of us.

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And in fact, none of that actually is because of you. It's because of the kindness of the

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Lord to put his hand to favor on this show and to increase this message. So thank you for subscribing.

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Praise be to God for what he's done for this show, and because of that, I want to say hello to every single new subscriber who is here, and from the bottom of my heart, thank you for making this show a resounding success, and thank you,

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God, for all that you have done to get the word out to more people. Now, couple more things before we really dive into today's episode.

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Because we have 11 ,000 new people here, I need to tell you what this show's about.

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First, this show's about eschatology, but we've been in a series on Matthew 24, and we're now 18 episodes into that series.

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So you're showing up after 18 episodes in this series, and that's cool.

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That means you've got a lot of content that you can be catching up on. It's been my contention that Matthew 24, which has been where we're at, if you can understand

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Matthew 24, then you can understand Revelation, you can understand some of the hardest passages in the

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Bible. Because Matthew 24 is the key to unlocking eschatology.

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If you don't understand Matthew 24, you're not gonna understand the book of Revelation, you're not gonna understand the passage that we're talking about today.

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This chapter is so crucial for understanding how eschatology works and for dispelling the futurist claim that all of these things are gonna happen in the future.

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Because as we've seen over the last 18 episodes, they have in fact already happened in the past.

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These events that we've been speaking about over the last 18 weeks did occur in the future, but just not our future.

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They happened in the first century future of the disciples who saw and heard what

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Jesus said. They saw the signs and wonders in their lifetime. So they did happen in the future, just not our future, it was theirs.

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And when you understand that, the book of Revelation and the passage that we're looking at today in 1

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Thessalonians 4 begin to make so much more sense.

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So with that, if you're new, I would highly recommend that you go back and watch the previous episodes in this

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Revelation series, because they're gonna be essential for you so that you can understand this passage that we talk about today, so that you can understand things like wars and rumors of wars, tribulation, great tribulation, abomination of desolation, earthquakes, famines,

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Jesus returning on the clouds, and the second coming. All of that, we have argued, has already happened.

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And by the way, I think we've argued convincingly. So what you will see in those episodes is that Jesus is speaking to his disciples about things that are gonna happen in their lifetime and in their world, and he uses

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Old Testament passages to help them understand how these things are gonna take place. So go back, listen to those episodes.

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They are going to be critical for you to understand them, because too many people today just project onto these passages a 21st century

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American worldview when we need to be reading it like a first century Jew. In those first 17 episodes, we do exactly that.

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So go check them out. I believe that they're gonna be extremely beneficial and helpful in your journey to learn eschatology.

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So that's the first thing I would say. Now, second, because 11 ,000 new people have showed up on this show,

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I wanna let you know that we have an online merchandise store for the Prodcast that is called

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The Prod -Ducks. I know, I'm that cheesy. But you can go to the store at www .prodthesheep

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.com where you can find really cool, reformed, funny, eschatological, high -quality items.

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I went through several different vendors to find the highest quality items that I could find because I care about that for you.

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So go there, look at it, check it out. You'll find some really great gear. This month, which is the month of March, this month, our merchandise of the month, our

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March merch, our thing that we are promoting, our month of March special is our new

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Martin Luther beer glass, which is, I think it's pretty cool. If you know anything about Luther, you know that Luther loved beer.

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Luther even said this, whoever drinks beer is quick to sleep. Whoever sleeps long does not sin, and whoever does not sin enters into heaven.

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Thus, let us drink beer. So in order to honor our dear friend and sagely scholar

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Martin Luther, this month we're bringing a wonderful new glass for sipping all that fine hefeweizen while you're learning about the end of the world.

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Because why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you wanna celebrate by drinking a beer when we're talking about the victory of Christ over all the nations?

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That's our mission. And that's a mission that's worth raising a glass to and offering a toast to the King of Kings.

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So go check out that brand new beer glass. It's pretty cool. It's on the product store. So I commend that to you.

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And finally, before we get into our show today, I wanna tell all of you who have just shown up this first time you're watching this, the show before, we have three membership tiers that help us get this message out to more people.

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We have three membership tiers where you can literally support this channel, help us make good content, help us make excellent content, help me research this, produce this, and get it out to more people.

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I want this show to be able to reach millions of people with the glorious and optimistic gospel of Christ.

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I am tired of living in a world, and I hope you are too, where the number one

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YouTube channel in the world is Mr. Beast. Like, that's ridiculous.

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Can we have a people who are curious about the things of God, who wanna know who

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God is? I believe that that's coming in the future. I believe that the earth is gonna be filled with the glory of Christ as the water covers the sea, that I believe his government's gonna continue to increase, his kingdom is gonna continue to increase, all the world is gonna be discipled, and this show is trying to help accomplish that.

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So if you wanna support us, if you wanna help us, join one of those three membership tiers, and you can read more about all of that on the

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YouTube page, and I will provide a link for that in the show notes. And now with that, let us begin today's episode, which is called

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The Rapture is Unbiblical. It's our second part in a two -part episode on the rapture, and we're gonna be looking at 1

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Thessalonians 4. So with that, let us turn to our passage and see how this is not a future

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Wonkavator that yanks us up to the heavens, but it is in fact, a first century judgment coming against the

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Jews. Let's read the text. But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.

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For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.

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For this we say to you by the word of the Lord that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the

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Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the

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Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ will rise first.

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

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Lord in the air. So we will always be with the Lord, therefore comfort one another with these words.

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And that leads us to part one, the importance of context in eschatology.

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For over a century, 1 Thessalonians 4, 13 through 18 has been the golden calf of dispensational eschatology.

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They've ripped this passage right out of its historical and biblical moorings and it's been paraded before congregations and seminaries as the ultimate proof of a secret end times rapture where a sudden vanishing of millions of people leaving behind chaos and empty clothes and empty planes pummeling down to their doom, abandoned vehicles careening over cliffs, the sheer weight of the tradition and the repetition of this kind of malarkey has made this doctrine seem like it's unassailable and nothing other than the cold hard truth of what the

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Bible says. But just because a lot of preachers preach it and just because a lot of seminaries teach it doesn't make it true.

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Because if that were the case, Martin Luther should have never reformed from the Catholic church because they were preaching and they were teaching but what they were preaching and teaching was wrong and we as men and women who love the reformation and wanna see the reformation continue to grow have now moved our sights onto a new target that needs to be reformed and that is eschatology.

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This passage has been hijacked, it has been twisted, it has been rebranded to fit an eschatological system that did not even exist for the first 1 ,800 years of church history.

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The idea of a pre -tribulational rapture is totally absent from the pages of church history until you get to the dispensational charlatan known as John Nelson Darby.

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He invented it. The early church fathers, the reformers and centuries of biblical scholars never interpreted verse

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Thessalonians four in the way that dispensational modern day prophecy shamans do.

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It was only through a combination of speculative thinking mixed with the esoteric proof texting and a dash of near total disregard for the biblical context that this witch's brew has come to fruition and the stakes could not be higher because if first Thessalonians four teaches a secret rapture, then this show is wrong.

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But if it doesn't teach a secret rapture, then dispensationalism collapses under its own weight.

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Without this very passage, there is no pre -tribulation escape, no two stage return of Christ, no great disappearance before the supposed seven year tribulation.

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If this text falls, then their entire theological framework crumbles like a house of cards.

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This passage is sort of like the ring of power. If we can throw this one into the fire, the dispensational interpretation of it

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I mean, then the whole kingdom of dispensationalism comes crashing down and that's what we're gonna do.

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What we're gonna see today is that this passage does not predict a future rapture.

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And if that's the house of cards that the dispensationalism have built, if that's the hope that they've placed in this passage, well, it doesn't hold.

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It will fall utterly and completely when you read the passage in its proper biblical, linguistic and historical context.

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To grasp Paul's meaning, we have to strip away our modern assumptions.

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We have to return to the first century world. We have to understand who Paul was writing to, what they were experiencing in their world, in their lives, what his words would have meant to them, not to us, what they would have meant in their language, in their context and in their time.

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Without that, we will inevitably impose our modern biases onto this text.

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And that is precisely what has happened for far too long.

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As we will see, Paul was not pinning a coded message to 21st century Americans who were obsessed with end times fantasies, lores, messy charts and bestselling prophecy fiction.

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He wasn't doing that when he wrote 1 Thessalonians 4. He was writing to a real people, a first century people,

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Thessalonian believers who he knew personally on first name basis.

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And he was speaking into their suffering and their persecution. And he knew that they were enduring violence from the

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Jews and persecution from the Romans. And he was writing to people who knew the promises of Jesus, who believed that Christ was gonna be coming back to bring an end to the old covenant world, but yet who had not seen those things come to pass.

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They had waited and they were patient, but now they were falling into fear.

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Like all of us would have feared if we were in that moment, if we were in their shoes, if we were the moms and dads who buried our children, if we were the sisters and brothers and friends who lost loved ones, if we were the ones who believed in Jesus, but saw our friends dying before the full reality of his kingdom had come to pass, you and I would be fearing as well.

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You and I would be asking the same questions they're asking. And we would hope that someone like Paul would come along to remind us to hope in Christ.

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See, these aren't about us, these promises. They are for us in an applicational way, but they are not about us.

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They were not written to us. They're not about our circumstances. They're not about our time. They're about theirs.

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The first century Thessalonians were looking around and they were seeing that the temple was still standing.

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The Jews were seemingly becoming more violent, more powerful, and more opposed to the church. And many of these first century

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Christians were wondering to themselves if following Christ was really worth the cost.

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You and I get upset when we don't get our bagel and our chai latte. Well, I don't drink a chai latte. I drink real coffee like men.

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But my point is, we get upset over flippant, silly things. They were getting upset and nervous because their people were being murdered.

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They were wondering if Jesus was really gonna come and vindicate them and bring an end to the old covenant world.

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They were not worried about the kinds of things that we are worried about today when we have so much wealth, so much food, so much income, higher life expectancy, all sorts of things that they couldn't have even imagined.

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They were worried that the kingdom that Jesus promised was not going to be fully inaugurated and that maybe somehow they had missed the boat, that they had missed the resurrection that would evidence that this new covenant kingdom had come to these men, to these women, to these children, to these families.

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This was not an abstract theological debate. This was not for 10 foil hat wearing 21st century

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Westerners. This was Paul writing to them a very pastoral letter that was meant to comfort them in their distress and to give them hope that Jesus and the church was the future of the world, not the

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Jews, not their law, not their temple, not their sacrificial system, none of that. To rip this book out of its historical setting and to pretend like Paul wrote it to us is to ignore the suffering that our brothers and sisters in Christ suffered in Thessalonica.

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It's to pretend that we are more important than them, that our time matters more than theirs, that we are the referent by which

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Paul was looking. That's especially to me, it seems unloving, especially when we have no exegetical reason for doing it.

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So for the next few moments, I want to look at this passage and I want to show how

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Paul is talking to them about things that will happen in their lifetime and not about a psychedelic mystery rapture.

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And that leads us to part two, context and time in Thessalonica.

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Now, the first thing that we need to understand is that Paul was not speaking into a normal era of history.

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He was addressing believers living in one of the most unique and non -repeatable periods of world history.

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They were living between the Old Covenant and New Covenant. They were overlapping periods of time.

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They were living in AD 30 to AD 70, this 40 -year window where two worlds were completely colliding.

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The Old Covenant world of temples and priests and sacrifices was collapsing. It was waning.

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It was setting, but it was still standing. The temple was still looming over the Jerusalem context.

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The priesthood was still functioning in the temple courtyard. The sacrifices were still being made on the altar.

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But according to Jesus and Paul, this era was nosediving.

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Christ had pronounced his doom in Matthew 23. He had told his disciples that not one stone was going to be left upon another in Matthew 24.

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And he had declared an end to that old system and had established a new covenant in his blood to replace it.

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That new covenant had already begun to rise like a sun creeping across the horizon.

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And it was going to be the last and final era of human history. The Spirit had been poured out at Pentecost, which meant that the new era had come.

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The gospel was going forth to the nations as a sign that the end of the old world had come and that the beginning of the new world was there.

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The kingdom was expanding. The gospel was being declared. It even says in Hebrews that in these last days that God was speaking to us through his son so this new kingdom was here, but it had definitely not come in its fullness yet.

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And it was not existing as the sole way for men to come to God.

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It was existing side by side with the temple. The old order had not yet been torn down yet, even though Jesus, the building inspector, had already nailed its condemnation letter on its door.

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Because of this, this 40 year period where both of these worlds were overlapping, where the old world of temples and priests was overlapping with the new world of Christ and his church, because of that, you have a unique period of time that we ought to think about and know about in order to understand passages that were written to people who were living during such a unique era.

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When we understand this, I think it is key to unlocking Paul's words in the book of Thessalonians because it's the reality that Paul and his audience were living in.

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That's what makes dispensationalism so absurd is because they patently ignore the reality of what

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I'm talking about. They ignore this utterly unique context that the men and women of the first century were living in and they try to force every single passage into a future timeframe as if all of biblical prophecy operates with us in mind.

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Paul was not writing. Fundamentally, he was not writing to Christians who were living in a settled church age, an age where there is no temple, an age where there is no sacrifice, an age where the only way to come to God is through Christ.

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He wasn't writing to people who lived in that world. The old world was still groaning in its death throes.

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It was dying as gracefully as a rabid dog and it was lashing out at the first century church. And the new world, the new covenant, the church was emerging, but like a baby with the dexterity and the mobility of a toddler.

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Things were in flux in this period of time. And the Christians in that time weren't even sure that the church was gonna make it.

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They were like, the Jews are gonna kill us. The old covenant world is gonna prevail. And Paul is speaking vehemently into that.

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The Jews absolutely were trying to hold onto their power. They were violently persecuting the church in a last ditch effort to stop what they knew or what they intuited was coming.

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And Paul is speaking into that and reminding Christians of the hope that they have in Christ.

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The persecution that they were facing caused churches like the Thessalonian church to be caught in the crosshairs of a lot of different things.

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They weren't living in a normal period of history like we are. They were living in the last days of the old world and the first days of the new world as Hebrew one, two tells us.

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That is why Paul's words are so urgent to them. That's why he says, we who are alive and remain until the coming of the

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Lord that's why he says that because he thinks that, he believes that, that people who are alive in the

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Thessalonian church are going to remain until Jesus returns. These words would have been utterly meaningless if Paul thought that they were for us and concerning the end of the physical cosmos.

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He wrote them to people who were going to see the coming of Jesus to close out the old covenant era.

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He knew that, he believed that. Some in the Thessalonian church were not even gonna taste death until they saw these things happening.

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So he was writing to them to tell them to have endurance, to tell them to have patience, to tell them to wait like Christians since some of them were gonna be alive when

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Jesus returned. You either have to believe that the coming of Christ is a judgment coming against Jerusalem that happened in AD 70 or you have to believe that Pauly has lost his marbles.

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And as we've repeatedly shown on the show, Paul was not only wicked smart, it's what we say in New England, but he knew the seismic shift that was happening in redemptive history.

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And he knew that these events were gonna happen in the lifetime of his audience. Paul was not crazy.

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He was not the one who had lost his marbles. I actually think it's the Dispies who are the ones who have the hole in their marble sack.

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The things that Paul was describing were not patterns that would repeat themselves in every generation or even in the final generation, they were events that belong to that generation alone.

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If we do not read this passage with the context in mind, we will never understand it properly.

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We will look like Joe Biden in front of a teleprompter and I don't want that for you. So with that,

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I want us to not only read 1 Thessalonians 4 in our context, but I wanna read it in light of its context.

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And if you do that, you'll see that it also has great parallel with Matthew 24, with what

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Jesus said in the Olivet Discourse. Paul is actually mimicking, he is imitating, he is quoting from Jesus in the

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Olivet Discourse. And I wanna show you that now in part three, Pauline and Olivet continuity.

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Today, many dispensationalists have abandoned the idea that Matthew 24 is talking about the rapture.

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They don't even claim this passage as one of their passages anymore, because it's so clearly not about the rapture.

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When it says that it will be just like the days of Noah, everyone who has a brain realizes that in the days of Noah, it was the wicked people who were swept away, not the righteous.

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Therefore, Matthew 24 cannot be about the rapture. They know that.

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They're not even, some of the best dispensational thinkers, sorry, I laughed because best and thinkers with dispensationalism kind of made me laugh.

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Anyway, they don't even claim this verse as one of their passages anymore. So that's why they hang the entire rapture case on 1

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Thessalonians 4. As if that approach is gonna help them, because as we're gonna see, it doesn't.

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As it turns out, this passage actually doesn't prove their point. It says the exact opposite of what they are expecting.

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Paul in this passage connects back to Matthew 24, and he talks about the same things that Matthew 24 talks about.

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He uses the same words that Matthew 24 uses, so that if Matthew 24 is not about the rapture, what we're gonna see is that 1

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Thessalonians 4 can't be either. Let me make this unavoidably clear. If Matthew 24 was fulfilled in AD 70, so was 1

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Thessalonians 4. If Matthew 24 is not about a future rapture, then neither is 1

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Thessalonians 4. Why? Because Paul covers the same things. He says the same things that Jesus says in the exact same ways that Jesus says them, and it shows us that Paul is borrowing from Matthew 24 to show us the same thing that Jesus has already said.

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Paul is not inventing a new doctrine here. He is quoting Jesus in the Olivet Discourse, and as you are gonna see, the continuity between these two passages is striking.

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This means that if one passage is preterist, both are preterist. If Matthew 24 is about the judgment on Jerusalem, then so is 1

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Thessalonians 4. It is undeniable once you see it, and now I'm gonna prove it to you. For instance,

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Jesus in Matthew 24 and Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4, both describe

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Christ coming down from heaven. For instance, in Matthew 24 30,

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Jesus says, then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the land will mourn, and they will see the

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Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. Now, Paul echoes this exact statement in 1

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Thessalonians 4 16 saying, for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout.

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Again, if one passage is about 80 70, so is the other. Both of them are talking about the Lord descending.

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Here we go again. Both passages also include the voice of an archangel. Matthew 24 31,

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Jesus says, and he will send forth his angels with a great trumpet blast while Paul in 1

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Thessalonians 4 16 says that Christ will come with the voice of an archangel. The theme is identical.

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Divine judgment and vindication is about to happen to the old covenant world, and the judgment is going to be accompanied by an angelic proclamation.

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Jesus says that Paul says that both of them are saying the same things because they're talking about the same thing.

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Here's another example. Both passages describe the trumpet of God. Jesus says in Matthew 24 31, and he will send forth his angels with a great trumpet blast.

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Paul says the same thing in 1 Thessalonians. He says, and with the trumpet of God, 1

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Thessalonians 4 16. If the trumpet in Matthew 24 is about heralding the destruction of Jerusalem, then the trumpet in 1

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Thessalonians 4 is being blasted in the exact same way. Likewise, both passages describe the gathering of the believers, the gathering of the elect.

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Jesus says in Matthew 24 31, and they will gather together his elect from the four winds while Paul in 1

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Thessalonians 4 17 writes, then we who are alive and will remain will be caught up together with him in the clouds.

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These are saying the same things. Jesus's elect are gonna be gathered. The believers in the

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Thessalonian church are gonna be gathered. The same language, same imagery, same event. Paul continues borrowing from Jesus's words to teach his disciples in the city of Thessalonica when he says about the believers meeting

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Christ in the clouds. Jesus says they will see the son of man coming on the clouds of the sky.

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Paul mirrors this in 1 Thessalonians 4 17 saying, we will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the

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Lord. If Jesus was using apocalyptic language about clouds to describe his coming and judgment,

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Paul's doing the same thing. It's because he's quoting Jesus. He's not making it up.

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This is reinforced by the fact that both Jesus and Paul use contemporary first century language that indicates a near expectation of first century fulfillment.

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Jesus declares in Matthew 24 13, truly I say to you that this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

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Jesus expected that these things were gonna happen in the lifetime of his disciples. Well, Paul says the same thing.

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1 Thessalonians 4 15 he says, we who are alive and remain until the coming of the

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Lord. Paul's not writing about something thousands of years removed from his experience.

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He expected that he, I think he expected that he was gonna be alive when Jesus returned. He was killed in 68, two years before it happened.

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But it's clear that he expected some were gonna remain until the coming of the

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Lord. There were some people in the Thessalonian church in his audience who were gonna be alive when Jesus came back in judgment against Jerusalem.

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Jesus said in Matthew 24, Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 4, they're saying the same things.

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Both passages emphasize that the time of Jesus's coming is gonna be unknown even though it's imminent in their first century context.

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Jesus says in Matthew 24 36, but of that day in that hour, no one knows. Paul adopts this sort of view as well in 1

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Thessalonians 5 one through two when he says, you know full well that the day of the Lord is like a thief coming in the night. In one passage, you have a preterist outcome.

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If they're saying the same things, both of them have a preterist view. Jesus literally says in Matthew 24 43 that his coming is gonna be like a thief in the night.

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Paul uses the exact word for word phrase in 1 Thessalonians 5 two, do we really believe that all of this overlap is a coincidence?

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Let's keep going. Jesus warns that unbelievers were gonna be caught unaware. They were gonna be doing their pagan stuff all the way up until the moment that Jesus comes back and punishes

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Jerusalem. Some of them are gonna be caught like in the days of Noah, Matthew 24 37 through 39, and Paul adopts this kind of view as well.

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Some are gonna be caught unaware when he says that some are gonna be saying peace and safety right up until the very end of the calamity in 1

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Thessalonians 5 three. They're both saying the same things because they're talking about the same events.

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The parallels continue with the image of birth pangs. Jesus in Matthew 24 eight describes the coming judgment as the beginning of the birth pangs as a woman in labor.

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Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5 three says, the sudden destruction will come upon them like labor pains upon a woman and child.

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I mean, do we think that Paul is just so happening to accidentally use every single one of the phrases and terms that Jesus is using while talking about a completely different and random event?

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Of course not. Paul's applying the teaching of Jesus, quoting

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Jesus in order to encourage people who believe in Jesus to keep looking for the first century coming of Jesus.

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Here's another one. Jesus exhorts believers to be watchful in Matthew 24 42.

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He says, therefore be on alert because you do not know which day your Lord is coming.

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And Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5 six, so then let's not sleep as others do, but be alert and sober.

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Same thing, saying the same thing. Paul borrows from Jesus again in his exhortation against drunkenness because Jesus warns his disciples not to be like the wicked servant in Matthew 24 49 who begins to drink habitually with the drunk.

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Paul does the same thing in 1 Thessalonians 5 seven when he says for those who sleep, sleep at night and those who get drunk, get drunk at night,

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Paul's adopting the same phrase. That's not a coincidence. Paul is consistently drawing from the well of words and analogies and phrases that Jesus uses on the

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Mount of Olives. I don't know exactly how many words there are in the Olivet discourse, but a high percentage of them are showing up in Paul.

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And that is not a coincidence. That is not an accident. That is deliberate and intentional. He's quoting

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Jesus. And because of that, we can conclude that Paul is intentionally mirroring

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Jesus's language to accomplish the same thing that Jesus was trying to accomplish, which is to communicate the downfall of Jerusalem.

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Both passages also use the same light and dark themes. For instance, Jesus in Matthew 24 27 compares his coming to lightning flashing in the sky from the east to the west.

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Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5 five writes, you all are sons of the light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of the darkness.

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Jesus in Matthew 24 declares that the faithful will be rescued from the tribulation. Matthew 24 13 through 14 and 22.

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Paul says that believers are gonna be delivered from the wrath, 1 Thessalonians 1 10 and 5 nine.

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Jesus speaks of angelic involvement in the gathering. Matthew 24 31, Paul says that the archangels role is there in Christ's coming as well.

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1 Thessalonians 4 16. Jesus uses the Old Testament day of the Lord in Matthew 24 29 through 31.

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Paul does the same thing in 1 Thessalonians 5 2 through 3. The suddenness of the judgment is the same. Jesus compares it to the days of Noah, Matthew 24 37 through 39.

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Paul compares it to a sudden destruction where people are yelling peace and safety, 1 Thessalonians 5 three. Both passages emphasize that the living and the dead are gonna participate in the event.

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Jesus says in Matthew 24 40 through 41 that some are gonna be taken and some are gonna be left, referring to judgment and not rapture.

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Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4 15 through 17 that the dead in Christ will rise first, they will be taken, and those who are left alive will remain, they will be left.

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The parallels are too overwhelming to ignore. Paul is not introducing new eschatological events at the end of human history.

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He's reinforcing what Jesus has already said. And he's teaching his disciples in the city of Thessalonica what

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Jesus said. And he's doing it in a very Pauline way, which means that Matthew 24 and 1

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Thessalonians 4 and 5 are speaking about the same things, the same event, the same judgment.

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They're not about a future rapture. And with that, just all the parallels

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I showed you, and I know we went through those fast, but just all of those parallels should prove the point and the episode really could be over.

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But I don't wanna do that because I wanna walk through the passage that the dispensational types claim as a rapture passage.

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I wanna go through it piece by piece, line by line. And I wanna open it up even further because I want more than anything for this doctrine of defeatism that I think was crafted by demons to be finally and totally defeated.

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I want the church to be hopeful. I want the church to build. I want the church to stop staring at her navel or staring at the clouds waiting to be raptured out of here.

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And I want the church to build. So with that, let us now transition to part four.

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We don't want you to be uninformed. Now, Paul begins this section with a super pastoral tone.

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As he's writing to them, this is what he says, but we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren.

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He's not talking to you and I. Again, the passage applies to us.

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It has meaning for us because God included it in the Bible. But when Paul sat down at his little writing desk to write this letter, he was not thinking about 21st century

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Christians. He wasn't. He was not talking about you and I. He didn't have you and I in mind.

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He had no idea probably that even North America existed. Paul would have basically thought that Asia Minor and that the

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Roman Empire was the known world. He would have thought that basically that was it. Maybe he would have had an idea of like the far remote places of like India and China.

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It's likely he didn't know about Australia, South America, and North America, Greenland.

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It's likely he didn't know about any of these places. So when he's writing, he's writing to them. He's writing to real people who he knew on a first name basis.

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He's writing to people who he pastored. He's writing to people who are from the church that he planted in the city that he planted it in.

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He's writing with love to people that he's hugged and greeted with a holy kiss and comforted in their affliction to begin the letter like we, which is

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Paul and his apostolic entourage, we don't want you, which is the Thessalonian church, we don't want you to be uninformed.

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When he writes like that, he's basically forbidding you and I from applying this letter as a 21st century meaning.

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He's saying, this letter is so clearly for them, not for you, because it was addressed to them, it was postmarked to them, it was delivered to them, it was concerning them, it was opened by them, and it was enjoyed by them.

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To think that this applies to you and I would be like dressing up in all black and going and stealing everyone else's mail in your neighborhood and going home and sitting down on the couch with a smile on your face and acting like everything that was written was written to you.

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All of the contents of your neighbor's letters, you read them, it's like, oh, this applies to me. This was written to me.

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This is about me. No, it's not. You would be a sociopath to act like that. And yet, an entire swath of Christendom calls that kind of madness biblical.

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It's crazy. From the outset of this letter, Paul is making it clear who he's referring to.

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And he's not referring to an esoteric prophecy about a far distant event disconnected from the concerns of his people.

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He's talking about them. He's talking about them in their first century Thessalonian context.

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He's talking about the real grief, the real pain, the real suffering, the real trials, the real things that they were walking through.

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And because of that, he doesn't want them to be uninformed. He doesn't want them to suffer in their first century trials like the pagans suffer who have no hope.

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He wants them who are called by Christ, who are suffering first century trials and tribulations to suffer like a

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Christian, to suffer with the gospel, to suffer with the words of Jesus that he gave to his disciples in the

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Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24. He is comforting them with Jesus's words.

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He is comforting them with the near term judgment coming of Christ. He is comforting them that Jesus's judgment on the

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Jews was coming soon. And that would have been really good news for them. Why?

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Well, you think about it like this. If you were a victim of a heinous crime,

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I mean, I know this is a hard thing to say, but try to put yourself into the mind frame of someone who's a victim of a serious crime, like a rape, for instance.

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And you're listening to the judge and you're listening to the judge pronounce the guilty verdict on the perpetrator.

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It doesn't erase the pain that you've walked through, but it does give you hope that justice is gonna happen.

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You'd be really weird if you had went through such a horrific punishment or such a horrific crime had been perpetrated against you and the judge just flippantly said, eh, let me talk about something completely different.

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That wouldn't make any sense. That would be hurtful and that'd be painful. It would be like a mother getting alerted that the killer who killed her son was gonna be let free, scot -free, no punishment.

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That would have been hurtful to her in the same way. It would have been hurtful to the men and women who were suffering at the hands of the bloodthirsty

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Jews if Paul was looking past them to talk to me and you. If Paul was looking and talking to us, it would be like this.

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It would be like him saying to them, you know, I know that you're suffering because I know you, we're friends.

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I'm writing this letter to you. I know that you're suffering. I know that you're beaten and wounded. I know that the

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Jews are executing your children. They're executing your husbands. They're executing your wives for your faith in Christ and I know that you're looking around and you're seeing that their temple is still standing.

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I know that they've killed some of your own children and yet their high priest are still offering sacrifices, but fear not because I've got some good news about a rapture that's gonna happen 2 ,000 years from now that has nothing to do with you.

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Can you imagine a more sick and a more unloving and a more stupid thing that Paul would have said to that people who were suffering in that way?

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That would have been merciless and hateful and that is not what Paul is doing.

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When you understand the context of the book of Thessalonians and you forget for a moment that the world doesn't revolve around you and your world, you realize what

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Paul is saying. Paul is saying we don't want you to be uninformed. He's talking to them about their situation and their time and he's telling us everything we need to know about what this letter means.

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He's talking to them about something that will comfort them that will happen in their lifetime in the coming of Christ he's talking about.

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He means for it to comfort them because it was gonna happen in their lifetime. The new covenant he was trying to tell them is still winning.

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Even though the temple's still standing, don't worry, take a deep breath, wait, watch the vindication of the

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Lord is coming. That's what he wants his people to understand and that's what I want you to understand is that if you understand the context of 1

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Thessalonians, you can't get to a dispensational future rapture. It would be unloving and stupid to do so.

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Next, we're gonna look at part five. Those who have fallen asleep.

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Paul's next phrase in chapter four concerns those who have fallen asleep. Now, I'm here to tell you that Paul is not angry at members of his congregation who are falling asleep during the sermon.

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Now, what I do when that happens is I just modulate really loudly. I'll start talking like this and the person will settle in and then

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I'll say, and then Christ and... Paul. That's not what

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Paul's doing. Paul is not talking to people who've fallen asleep or people who've taken a nap. Paul is talking about people who've died.

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This is covenant language. This is a theological term, fallen asleep, for those who have died and yet not been resurrected yet.

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And if we're paying attention to our biblical, theological and typological theology, then we'll understand that this is something that has happened before.

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For instance, I don't have time to get into this a lot, but I do wanna point out a couple of things. Think about Adam. God made

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Adam and he said that it was not good that man was made alone. So he was gonna make for him a suitable helper.

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So what does God do? It says that God put Adam into a death -like sleep only to raise him up again so that he could claim his bride.

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Now, I would be remiss if I didn't tell you that that's about Jesus more than it's about Adam because Jesus was also put into a death -like sleep.

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And he was also resurrected so that he could claim his bride. But the point remains, Adam was put into this sleep that looks like death so that in his resurrection, he claims a bride.

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Same thing is happening to Abraham in Genesis 15. He's cast into a, same word, by the way, in Hebrew. He's cast into a deep, dark, death -like slumber before awakening to see the presence, the fiery presence of Yahweh walking through the severed animal parts in enacting and transacting and sealing a covenant.

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These moments were not just personal experiences to these people. They were covenantal turning points.

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They were death, burial, and resurrection moments. To sleep is to die without the resurrection.

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That's my point. To sleep in this context is not a siesta.

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It's not a noonday nap. It is to be on one side of eternity yet without resurrection.

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It's to have physically died and your soul not yet be with God. That's what it means, to be asleep in that sense.

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So that's exactly what is going on in the book of Thessalonians. That's what's happening here.

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Men and women in the Thessalonian church, they died. They died by Jews persecuting them and killing them.

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Their loved ones were killed and they were grieving, but their grief was tangled up in a theological dilemma inside of their mind.

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And they were saying to themselves, well, if they died before the coming of the Lord, will they be left out of the resurrection?

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Will they be left out of the kingdom? Will they miss the train? Will they miss the bus? Did they show up to the airport too late and they missed their flight?

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That's what they're asking. They knew that Jesus had prophesied that the end of the old covenant age was coming and that the arrival of the new covenant age was dawning,

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Matthew 24, three. They knew that judgment was coming upon Jerusalem, Matthew 24, the whole chapter.

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They knew that. They knew that the temple was gonna be removed, the sacrificial system abrogated, the priesthood put down, they knew that.

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And yet, as time marched forward and their friends started dying, their loved ones were martyred, doubt started creeping in and we can understand that.

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They were starting to wonder to themselves, are they gonna miss out on the full unveiling of the kingdom of Christ?

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To say it another way, this is a uniquely covenantal theological crisis that they're going through.

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When we die today, we know exactly what happens or at least we should. Our souls go immediately into the presence of Christ because to die is to be with the

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Lord. But for them, this was a brand new and very disorienting reality.

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They knew that before Christ in the Old Testament, the dead didn't go to heaven. They went to Sheol. They went to the realm of the dead.

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They went to that place where they were awaiting the resurrection but they hadn't tasted it yet. You see, they understood the shadow of the old covenant where the dead were still waiting in the grave for the redemption was still lingering because the temple was still standing.

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But what about the new covenant? What about death being ended?

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What about resurrection? They had these questions on their mind because they still saw the temple.

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They still saw the sacrificial system. They still saw the old covenant standing. So they were wondering, did we miss the bus?

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Is resurrection not for us? What happens to those who died before the full inauguration of Jesus's kingdom?

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That's the question that they were asking. And Paul's answer to them is urgent.

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And it's clear. He says to them, do not fear because those who've died in this unique moment of history from AD 30 to AD 70, when both of these redemptive worlds are existing side by side, he is encouraging them not to fear because they haven't missed the bus.

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Those who died in this unique moment in history will be the first to rise, Paul says. They're not gonna be left behind.

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They're not gonna be left out of or locked out of Jesus's coming victory. When Christ returns and he puts down the old world and he puts down the whore of Babylon, which is

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Jerusalem, and he puts down the priesthood and all of the trappings of the old Mosaic system, when he does that, all those who died in Christ are gonna be the first ones to be welcomed through the gates of the new covenant world.

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They will rise and they will reign with him. And once that old rival kingdom is cast down, every soul who died between Jesus's resurrection and between their redemption were gonna go immediately into the presence of the

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Lord. And they were gonna await their final bodily resurrection that'll happen at the end of human history.

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They were gonna live with Jesus in a perfected spirit until the day when their soul and body are reunited together in glory.

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Paul's message is not about a distant rapture. It's about an imminent reality.

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The covenant resurrection of those saints was at hand and they were far from forgotten.

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They were gonna be the first ones vindicated by Christ. They were gonna be the first ones to step into his glorified kingdom.

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They were gonna be the first ones to taste the blessings of the new age. And yet, modern readers, especially dispensationalists ripped these verses out of their history and out of their context and they forced them into some end time speculative fantasy.

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They ignore Paul's audience, his urgency, their context, and they do not realize that Paul is not describing the general resurrection of all believers across history.

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He's speaking about a first century inauguration of the kingdom of God. Those who had fallen asleep before the arrival of that kingdom in full would not miss out.

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He's telling the Thessalonians, don't be afraid. They are not gonna miss out.

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In fact, they will rise first. That is what Paul means by those who have fallen asleep, which means it's not about us, it was about them.

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And the moment that we understand that, the passage begins to make so much more sense. This is not, again, a blueprint for a future rapture, but a first century promise of resurrection.

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Now with that, let's keep on moving forward into part six, those who remain.

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Now, Paul continues his argument. He's talked about those who died before Jesus returned. Now he's gonna talk about those who remain until Jesus returns, which would be really funny if somebody there, like in the first Thessalonian church, if they remained.

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Like Paul is not saying that you're gonna remain until Jesus comes, even if you're 2 ,000 years old.

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Imagine if there were people alive today who were like, I'm still waiting, still waiting on Jesus to return.

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My back really hurts, I'm 2 ,000 years old. That's foolish. This is what Paul says.

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For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the

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Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. First Thessalonians 4, 15.

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So far, Paul has assured the Thessalonians that their departed brothers and sisters in Christ would be the first to enter the kingdom's glory.

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When the old covenant world collapsed, they were gonna be the first ones in. They're gonna be the front of the line. But what about the ones who remain, the ones who were still alive when

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Jesus came? What was gonna happen to them when Jesus returned? Well, unlike the dead, these

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Thessalonian believers were watching history unfold in real time. They were living through the final days of the old covenant era, and they were waiting for the promises of Christ to be fulfilled in their lifetime.

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They weren't waiting for a secret skyrocket to snatch them up and into the sky.

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They were waiting for the visible, covenantal coming of the Lord. The moment when the old covenant world was finally done and the new covenant kingdom was standing alone in all of her glory,

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Jesus had warned that the great tribulation was gonna come upon that generation,

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Matthew 24, 21, that the destruction in Jerusalem was gonna be like, it was not gonna be like anything that they had ever seen before or would ever happen again.

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But for those who remained, for those who endured into the end, the faithful saints, they would witness the greatest transition in human history, the greatest chapter change from one to the next.

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They were not gonna experience death before they saw their vindication, the judgment upon their enemies, the removal of the old world, the full arrival of Christ's kingdom.

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They were gonna see Jesus's phrase that he is the resurrection and the life, and no man comes to the

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Father but by him. They were gonna see it fulfilled in their life because people, up until that point, believed that you could still go to the temple to meet with the

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Father. They were gonna see the moment where there is no more temple, and the only way to come to the

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Father is through the Son, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, by the spirit of power.

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Paul's comfort to these believers is to hang on. They weren't at a disadvantage because they hadn't died yet.

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They were actually, it was a glorious thing. They were the ones who were gonna survive the judgment and witness the triumph of Christ firsthand.

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They would be the first people to see the new dawning age had come.

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They were gonna see the kingdom's arrival. They were gonna see the unrivaled kingdom of Jesus in that world without a temple.

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And Paul was telling them that they had a mission, and their mission was to remain faithful. Their mission was to endure the tribulations and the persecutions and the beatings.

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They were to endure all of those things so that they could see the old covenant world collapse and fall with their own eyes.

01:00:01

Jesus had already promised this in Matthew 24, 13. He said, the one who endures to the end will be saved.

01:00:08

Paul is saying the exact same thing in 1 Thessalonians 4 .15 when he says that the dead in Christ will be the first to enter the kingdom in its fullness, but for those who remained alive, they would be the ones who would be the first ones to witness it.

01:00:22

Modern dispensationalists, again, ripped this passage out of his first century context, and they forced a square peg into a round hole.

01:00:28

They read the we who are alive and remain as if it was referring to us, a future generation who is gonna avoid some great tribulation.

01:00:37

That is not what Paul is doing. He's talking to first century people who are about to go through the most cataclysmic event since the downfall of Adam in the

01:00:46

Garden of Eden. They were gonna see the old world collapse and the new world rise.

01:00:51

They were gonna be the ones who would step into the new world as the first participants. They were gonna be the first ones to step into the unrivaled age of Jesus and his church.

01:01:02

They would be the living witnesses of the public vindication of Christ and of his church and of his people and the destruction of Jesus's greatest enemy, which turned out to be the apostate

01:01:18

Jews. They were gonna see the unstoppable expansion of his reign in their lifetime.

01:01:23

And they weren't gonna see it expand to the whole world, but they weren't gonna start to see it expand in their lifetime, and it's been expanding for 2 ,000 years.

01:01:32

They, the ones who remained, weren't just about hanging on by a thread and eking out some sort of existence.

01:01:39

They were being preserved, and they were being perfected through the fires of tribulation so that they could be the foundation of the church that would last and that would be built and that would grow over the last 2 ,000 years.

01:01:54

They were gonna watch the wicked swept away while they were left behind to build in the same way that Noah watched the world around him destroyed while he was left to rebuild it, in the same way that Lot watched

01:02:07

Sodom and Gomorrah burned to the ground while he was left to rebuild that region. You think of the faithful remnant in Jerusalem who watched the city fall, watched the temple burn, watched it all, and they would have recognized

01:02:21

Paul's words immediately that this is not a rapture. This is survival, endurance, patience, and victory.

01:02:31

They are the ones who are gonna rebuild from the ashes of the old covenant collapse.

01:02:37

They were gonna build a kingdom that would never end, a kingdom that would fill the world like a little pebble growing into a large mountain until the kingdom of our

01:02:47

Lord Jesus Christ has covered everything. And that leads us to the next question.

01:02:53

What does it mean that Christ himself is gonna descend? That's what we're going to tackle next in part seven, the one who descends.

01:03:04

Paul's statement in 1 Thessalonians 4, 16, for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God.

01:03:13

This has been tragically misread by modern day futurists. They see this as a sort of future bodily descent of Jesus at the end of human history.

01:03:24

They say, Jesus is gonna descend visibly, and the church is gonna be yanked up visibly.

01:03:33

But when we read this in light of the prophets and in light of the apocalyptic genre, and in light of its proper biblical and historical context, and in light of good faithful hermeneutics, this passage becomes clear that Paul was not describing the end of the world, but the end of the old covenant age.

01:03:49

We've talked about this a lot, but I'm just pressing it at this point. I'm squeezing it at this point.

01:03:55

This was about Christ coming in judgment against apostate Israel. This is him descending in judgment, a reality that was soon gonna take place in the first century that was prophesied for many centuries that was leading up to the actual event.

01:04:08

For instance, throughout scripture, the word coming, when it comes to God's coming, is not about a secret yank away.

01:04:17

It's about judgment. For instance, in Isaiah 19, one, we've talked about this passage before.

01:04:23

God says, behold, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud, and it's about to come to Egypt.

01:04:30

This doesn't mean that God was gonna visibly appear in the clouds doing a kind of heavenly ollie while riding down the vert ramp in route to physical

01:04:41

Egypt. This was prophetic imagery. This was language that was used consistently to depict judgment against a nation,

01:04:50

God's judgment against a nation. The same is true in Micah 1, three through four, where God says, behold, the

01:04:56

Lord is coming forth from his place, and he will come down and tread on the high places of the earth, and the mountains will melt underneath him, and the valleys will be split like wax before the fire, like water poured down from a steep place.

01:05:14

Here the Lord's coming is not about mountains melting. That's never happened in all of human history.

01:05:20

And the last time I checked, there's never been a valley that was poured out like water.

01:05:26

I mean, imagine. Imagine a big old cup of valley being poured out. This is clearly apocalyptic language.

01:05:35

Mountains melting, the skies being rolled up like a scroll, valleys being poured out like water.

01:05:41

The Lord's coming is not about a visible, physical phenomenon.

01:05:47

It's about his descent and judgment. This is a poetic description of judgment.

01:05:53

It's gonna be so intense that it would be like the mountains melting. It's gonna be so intense that it'd be like entire valleys ripped up and poured out like water.

01:06:02

It's gonna be so intense. It'd be almost as if the sky itself were rolled up like a scroll. That's what this is saying.

01:06:10

Because if it's not saying that, then Micah lied and Isaiah lied.

01:06:16

And all those passages in the Old Testament that talked about the destruction of a people, Edom, Sidon, Babylon, Assyria, all of them, all of the prophecies in Egypt, all of them, that we know happened.

01:06:31

We know the Babylonians were destroyed and we know when they were destroyed. We know when the Egyptians were destroyed. We know when the Assyrians were destroyed.

01:06:38

And we know that these prophecies say things like mountains melting, clouds, God coming in the clouds, all of that.

01:06:43

So we have to understand what this means. Because if it really means that the mountains were melted when one of these nations was destroyed, then the

01:06:52

Bible is untrue. Because no mountain melted when Egypt, Babylon, Sidon, Tyre, or any of those other countries were destroyed.

01:07:01

This is apocalyptic language or the Bible can't be trusted. That really is what we're talking about in the same way.

01:07:10

In Psalm 18, seven through 15, David describes God's coming in apocalyptic language.

01:07:17

He says, then the earth shook and it quaked and the foundations of the mountains were trembling and they were shaken because he was angry.

01:07:25

And he bowed to the heavens also and came down with thick darkness under his feet.

01:07:31

And he made darkness his hiding place, his canopy around him, darkness of waters, thick clouds of the sky.

01:07:38

The Lord also thundered in the heavens and the most high uttered his voice, hailstones and coals of fire.

01:07:44

The language is clearly metaphorical and apocalyptic. And it's describing divine intervention in judgment rather than a literal breaking apart of the cosmos or cosmos.

01:07:58

The same interpretive key that we just saw in the Psalms, that we saw in Isaiah, that we saw in Micah is exactly what

01:08:07

Paul is doing in 1 Thessalonians 4, 16 through 17. He's not speaking about physical astronomical perturbations.

01:08:14

He is speaking about apocalyptic images of judgment. For instance, 1

01:08:19

Thessalonians 4, 16 through 17, Paul says this, the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God.

01:08:31

The Lord's descent here is not a physical event where he's coming blowing a trumpet, like the

01:08:39

Grinch coming down off of Mount Crumpit. That's not what Jesus is doing. It's not a physical event of a trumpet blowing judgment.

01:08:47

It is a coming in judgment against Jerusalem. It's echoing the same prophetic motifs that are found all throughout the

01:08:54

Old Testament that uses images like trumpets and coming with the clouds and all of these things.

01:09:00

And this understanding is reinforced by the fact that the language of divine warfare is used in this passage because divine warfare is a common theme in apocalyptic literature.

01:09:13

So it's very clear Paul is employing it. Paul says that the Lord comes with a shout. He's not coming shouting the latest praise song that shows up on Caleb.

01:09:24

He's coming shouting like a battle cry, crying like a soldier who is screaming as they're running towards the enemy.

01:09:31

He's coming like Joshua and the Israelites who are surrounding that great city of Jericho, shouting, watching the walls fall,

01:09:40

Joshua 6 .20. He's using the same war cry that was heard in Joel 2, verse 11, where God leads his heavenly army against his enemies, which if you know something about Joel 2, it's about Judah in the first century.

01:09:53

This image is one of Jesus adopting a war -like posture against his enemies and his enemies are the

01:10:02

Jews. If you think about Joshua, which is

01:10:07

Jesus's name in Aramaic, actually is Yeshua, which is Joshua. If you think about Joshua surrounding the city of Jericho and screaming at the top of his lungs while all of the

01:10:22

Israelites around him are screaming at the top of their lungs while Jericho's walls are crumbling, you'll get a really interesting typological picture of Joshua as the pre -Christ, as the type of Christ.

01:10:36

And like Joshua, Jesus, the true and better Joshua, comes down with his armies, surrounds the city of Jerusalem, and with a shout, the walls came tumbling down.

01:10:49

Do we think that that's a coincidence? Do we think that Paul talking about Jesus coming with a shout and using those

01:10:56

Joshua -like themes is a coincidence? Absolutely not. This passage is talking about Jesus descending upon his enemies, not necessarily descending laterally from the sky.

01:11:10

Like the Israelites descended upon their enemies, like they descended upon their foes,

01:11:16

Jesus is gonna descend upon his enemies. Any peyote -infused, technicolor rapture interpretation that we dream up is just that.

01:11:26

It's not what this is saying, it's fantasy. And we see that even clearer.

01:11:32

Part eight, the trumpet that is blown. Now for centuries, men have imagined this scene as a cosmic siren, a deafening sound that will one day rip through the fabric of the universe and signal the evacuation of the church from the earth.

01:11:50

I remember in kindergarten, we had these sirens that would go off and out, and we would have to go into the bathroom, and we have to sit with basically our head near our knees in like the fetal position, and we had to wait for the siren to go away.

01:12:03

Maybe the siren was for a hurricane or a tornado, or maybe it was an active shooter threat, whatever it was.

01:12:09

I remember hearing these sirens, and I remember thinking about that, is this gonna be what it's like when

01:12:16

Jesus returns, when the siren is gonna go off, and everyone's gonna hear it, and chaos is gonna be unfolding, and the pagans are gonna be averting their ears and plugging their ears because they're bleeding from the loud, crashing trumpet blast of Jesus.

01:12:31

Is that what the end of all things is gonna look like? But that's fantasy, because that's not what

01:12:37

Paul's talking about. When Paul said that the

01:12:44

Lord is gonna come with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first, he wasn't announcing the end of the world.

01:12:52

He was announcing the end of a world, the Old Covenant world, the

01:13:00

Mosaic covenant. All of that was about to collapse. And if you remember, the

01:13:09

Old Testament covenant, the Mosaic covenant was inaugurated with a trumpet blast. If you remember on top of Mount Sinai, it said that the people stood back, and it sounded as though God were blasting a trumpet.

01:13:20

Here you have the Old Covenant world of the Mosaic covenant beginning with a trumpet blast, and here you have

01:13:27

Paul saying it's gonna end with a trumpet blast, a fitting end. It began that way, it ends that way.

01:13:34

It was inaugurated that way, it closes out that way. It was risen up that way, and it will be put back down that way.

01:13:42

That's what Paul is saying. To understand anything different is to bring a meaning to the text that's not there.

01:13:51

Plus, it's to ignore what trumpets actually mean in the Bible. When we look back at the pattern of Scripture and we see what trumpets mean, they're never random sounds, and they're never rapture events, and they're never what the dispensationalists claim that this is.

01:14:11

Trumpets are warnings. They're summons, and they're battle cries. In the days of Israel, the trumpet was the signal that the battle was getting ready to begin.

01:14:22

That's what it meant. It was the sound of God leading his people in battle against their enemies.

01:14:30

The trumpets would sound, and all of the different camps would come together, and they would go against the

01:14:35

Canaanites. Well, here, the trumpet blast means that the enemies of God are no longer the

01:14:44

Canaanites. The enemies of God are no longer the Gentiles, nations.

01:14:50

The trumpet is blasting, and God's people have been called to war in 1 Thessalonians 4, but it ain't the

01:14:58

Antichrist that they're going to war against. It's the first century Jews. It's the temple that had been abominated.

01:15:06

It's the sacrificial system that the Jews allowed to continue after the true and perfect sacrifice had come as an act of blasphemy, saying that Jesus wasn't good enough.

01:15:15

We'd rather kill our bulls and goats. The trumpet blast was that the enemy of God had been identified, and that the

01:15:25

God of the battle has finally come, and he's ready to take his troops against her, and the enemy was

01:15:32

Israel. That's what Paul is saying. That's what trumpet blasts mean. Isaiah said that a trumpet is going to be blown to summon the exiles home and to judge

01:15:42

Israel's oppressors. Joel says that the trumpet was going to sound before the great and terrible day of the Lord. We know from the book of Joel that's

01:15:49

Judah. Zephaniah said that the trumpet was going to ring out before the Lord God poured out his wrath upon Jerusalem, and that's what's happening here, and again, we can't forget about Jericho.

01:15:59

The priests were circling around the city for seven days, blowing the trumpet until the seventh day when the walls fell in utter ruin.

01:16:06

That is what trumpets meant. Trumpets were not a signal of escape. They were a signal of war, of pursuit.

01:16:14

The idea that a trumpet is being blown so that the church can run away is not even close to what a trumpet blast actually means in the

01:16:24

Bible. It is not about running away. It's about running towards your enemy. It's about summoning the troops for war, not putting on the white flag and running away.

01:16:33

That's not what it means. The sound of this trumpet in 1 Thessalonians 4 is a sound of war.

01:16:40

Jesus is calling the troops to battle the Jews who had killed the

01:16:45

Christ, killed the church, and who had abominated the old covenant trappings, and now they would be brought to their reckoning.

01:16:54

That is exactly what Paul is describing, not a cowardly rapture, and as we've said, the

01:17:03

Thessalonian Christians understood this. They weren't waiting for an otherworldly evacuation plan.

01:17:11

They were waiting for vindication. They were suffering. Their enemies were still in power and laughing at them and mocking them.

01:17:19

The old world had not yet collapsed, and they were wanting to know, how long, oh Lord, are you gonna wait?

01:17:25

How long before your justice is done? How long before we're vindicated? And Paul's answer, in telling them that the trumpet is getting ready to blast,

01:17:35

Paul's telling them, it's not much more time, guys. Hang tight, it's about to happen.

01:17:44

And Paul is telling them about the same trumpet blast that Jesus describes in Matthew 24, when he said, and he will send forth his angels with a great trumpet, and they will gather together his elect from the four winds.

01:18:01

Jesus had made it clear that Jerusalem was in the crosshairs of God. And when

01:18:07

Jerusalem fell, when the temple was destroyed, when the smoke of the divine judgment was rising over the ruins of that old covenant city, then the kingdom of Christ would be fully revealed.

01:18:19

And now, Paul was telling them that at that moment, that that moment was at hand.

01:18:27

The trumpet wasn't announcing their runaway party, it was announcing the arrival of God's war against the

01:18:36

Jews and his vindication of his church. Modern readers have twisted and mangled this text beyond recognition, and it's time that we reclaim it.

01:18:48

They've ripped the trumpet and its meaning out of its first century in biblical world, and it's time that we fling that imaginary doctrine into the fires once and for all.

01:19:00

They believe that it speaks about a rapture of an end time event where Christians somehow vanished from the world, but they are wrong.

01:19:09

Paul was not writing about a future event, he was writing about a first century event to real people in a real church living through a really terrible crisis.

01:19:20

They weren't sitting around speculating about what was going to happen in the future, they were enduring trials in the present, and they wanted to be comforted, and Paul comforted them with the trumpet blast was going to be heard in their lifetime.

01:19:33

And I don't mean a physical trumpet blast, I don't mean that everyone was going to be plugging their ears because it was so loud,

01:19:39

I mean that a trumpet blast represents the war of God. And Paul is saying to them, don't worry guys, that trumpets about to be blown, your enemies are about to be destroyed.

01:19:51

That is exactly what Paul means. Part nine, those who are caught up.

01:20:02

For years this verse, again, has been ripped out of its context and out of its biblical world.

01:20:07

Futurists have imagined Christians shooting into the sky like Rocket Man, like astronauts meeting Jesus in mid -air flight, disappearing while the world burns into chaos and ruin.

01:20:18

But that is not what Paul is saying. When Paul wrote, then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with him in the clouds to meet the

01:20:28

Lord in the air, 1 Thessalonians 4 .17, he was not describing an escape, he was describing a victory procession.

01:20:37

The word harpazo in Greek means to seize or to claim or to take by force.

01:20:46

It's not a language of rapture, it's a language of conquest. It doesn't mean removal from the earth, it actually means to be gathered into Christ's triumph.

01:20:57

It doesn't mean that we're brought up, it means we're brought into something. That is really, really important.

01:21:04

And that is exactly the kind of moment that Jesus was describing. Paul wasn't saying that the

01:21:11

Thessalonians were about to leave the planet or any other Christians were gonna leave the planet.

01:21:17

He was saying that they were gonna be lifted into the full reality of Christ's kingdom.

01:21:24

They were not gonna be taken out of the world, they were gonna be put into his kingdom.

01:21:30

They were going to, that the dead in Christ were going to be vindicated and now the living saints were gonna be swept up into his new covenant kingdom, which would be glorious.

01:21:41

We get this in English, even though it's complicated. If I were to say to you that Trump's presidency is going to sweep the country up into a new era,

01:21:51

I am not telling you that a broom is gonna come down and fling people into the sky while they're screaming.

01:21:59

Of course not, we're not idiots. We know what the words mean. To be swept up into something doesn't mean to go up.

01:22:08

In the same way, to be caught up into the clouds doesn't mean to go up vertically.

01:22:17

It means to be caught up into this new kingdom. That's what it means. And you say, well, what about the clouds?

01:22:24

The clouds certainly mean up. Well, throughout scripture, clouds are not transportation vehicles.

01:22:30

Clouds are not little mini Teslas that will take you from here to heaven. Clouds are symbols of divine enthronement, not vehicles for transportation.

01:22:40

Daniel 7, Matthew 24, and the entire biblical tradition uses clouds to signify

01:22:47

God's rule and his presence in judgment. To be caught up into the clouds is not about flying away.

01:22:57

It's about Christ's kingdom being publicly revealed. And you might say, well, what about the phrase to meet the

01:23:04

Lord in the air? Well, this has nothing to do with being airlifted. The Greek word for meet is apontesis, which refers to going out to, not going up.

01:23:19

To meet the Lord in the air is to go out to the Lord. That's what it's saying. I know our

01:23:24

English translations have really put their thumb on the dispensational scale here to try to make us think that this is a vertical movement, but the word actually means to go out.

01:23:36

The word actually comes out of battle language in the Roman Empire where a city would run out to a victorious ruler who was coming back in victory.

01:23:48

He had just won a decisive battle and the city was coming out to meet him, not going up into the sky.

01:23:55

That's what the word means. You think about in Acts 28, 15, where believers go out to meet

01:24:03

Paul and to bring him into Rome. That's the same word, apontesis. The same is true here in 1

01:24:10

Thessalonians. People are not going vertical. People are going out. The saints weren't being raptured up.

01:24:19

They were meeting Christ in his rule. They were coming into his kingdom, which is symbolized by him reigning on the clouds.

01:24:28

And why does Paul say to meet him in the air? Well, because the air was always considered the enemy's territory.

01:24:37

In Ephesians 2, 2, Paul calls Satan the prince and the power of the air. To a first century audience, the air was the battleground.

01:24:45

It was the spiritual realm that was ruled by the demonic forces, but now Christ is saying that he's taking over.

01:24:51

You're gonna meet him in the air. Not that your body is gonna go up in a whirlwind, but that you are going to come into the full reign of Christ, that he's gonna put away the prince and the power of the air.

01:25:01

He's gonna put away the principality and the powers that rule over the skies, and he's gonna bring you and I into his kingdom.

01:25:08

To the Thessalonians, this was not about being zipped up to heaven. This was about coming into the kingdom.

01:25:17

And they knew this. Their city, the Thessalonian city, was a hotbed of pagan superstition.

01:25:25

They had all sorts of omens, sacrifices, rituals, and they spent their lives fearing these kind of unseen heavenly rulers who ruled over the skies.

01:25:38

But Paul was telling them that the air that once belonged to darkness now belongs to Christ.

01:25:45

This was not about going up. It was about coming in. It was about coming into Jesus's kingdom where his rule, his power, and his authority now is unrivaled.

01:25:58

And I would say this, because we believe that the world is spherical.

01:26:06

At least, maybe you do. But if up is heaven for us as Americans, then wouldn't it be down for someone on the opposite side of the world?

01:26:20

So where do we get raptured? Like, if rapturing is about going up, then it depends on where the earth is and its rotation on which direction you go.

01:26:32

If you're in America when the rapture happens, you go up. If you're in China, what do you do?

01:26:39

Do you go around the world and then go up? Do you go through the earth?

01:26:47

Heaven is not about a physical location that is just vertical of us that hovers over the clouds.

01:26:54

The biblical concept of up has nothing to do with altitude. It has everything to do with exaltation.

01:27:03

Jesus ascended into heaven, not necessarily vertically. And what

01:27:09

I mean by that is that the vertical part of it was the less important part of it. It wasn't that he was just going higher in physical space.

01:27:18

He was going up in his enthronement and glory. And the same is happening here.

01:27:24

The faithful are not being lifted off the ground. They're being lifted up and into the triumph of Christ's dominion.

01:27:32

This was not retreat. This was an invasion. This was not abandonment where the faithful were being snatched away into safety.

01:27:38

This was about being gathered into Jesus's reign, standing in Jesus's victory, exalted with him as he crushed the kingdom of darkness.

01:27:47

Paul's message was not about leaving the world. It was actually about overcoming it.

01:27:54

The Thessalonians were not being whisked into the sky. They were being sealed into the victory of Christ kingdom.

01:28:02

And he is the one who conquers the powers of darkness. And he is the one who now is Lord of the sky.

01:28:08

That is what this passage is getting at. And that brings us to our final section, which is part 10.

01:28:16

A first century comfort. Paul was not a detached theologian.

01:28:22

He was not a man who was locked away in an ivory tower, crafting theories about eschatology.

01:28:28

He was a battle -hardened pastor. He was a man and a shepherd who carried the scars of persecution on his own body.

01:28:37

He was a man who bled for the church. He was a man who suffered alongside the saints that he was writing to.

01:28:43

And he's a man who didn't write cold -hearted letters that look past people and their circumstances.

01:28:50

Paul was a shepherd. Paul cared for his people. And this letter was personal.

01:28:57

The Thessalonians were not getting together and having eschatology debates for fun. They were grieving.

01:29:04

They had real sorrow, not theoretical. Their world was unraveling before their very eyes.

01:29:10

Their loved ones were dying. Their friends were being dragged off, beaten, and executed.

01:29:15

And they had heard Jesus's own words about the end of the old covenant age, but their doubt was creeping in.

01:29:22

The temple still stood mocking them. Their persecutors were still ruling over them.

01:29:28

And worst of all, some of their own people in that very church had died. And they were curious, wondering if they had missed out on the kingdom.

01:29:38

Had they perished too soon? Paul refused, as a good pastor would, to let that kind of despair take root.

01:29:48

This is what Paul says. We do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who have fallen asleep so that you will not grieve as the rest who have no hope.

01:30:00

1 Thessalonians 4, 13. Paul's not rebuking them here.

01:30:06

He's like a father, putting his hand on their trembling shoulder and comforting them. Yes, their loved ones have died.

01:30:14

Yes, the storm clouds of judgment were gathering, but Paul was lifting their eyes away from their circumstances to the horizon of hope.

01:30:24

He was showing them that their suffering was not meaningless, that their pain was not unseen by God, and that their fallen brothers and sisters and mothers were not going to be left behind.

01:30:37

He says, for the Lord himself will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 1

01:30:43

Thessalonians 4, 16. That's not an abstract promise. That's not a future, wait a minute.

01:30:51

That's a decree by God, a pledge that those who've died in faith would never be forgotten nor forsaken, not erased from the story of redemption, but they would be first, first to enter into the full glory of Christ's kingdom, the first to stand in his triumph, the first to taste its vindication.

01:31:11

They were gonna be the ones who were rushing in toward him like a tidal wave whenever his kingdom came in full.

01:31:20

And what about those who were still alive? Well, Paul's answer is clear. If you're still alive and Christ hasn't come yet and put away the old covenant world, stand firm, hold the line.

01:31:34

The kingdom is gonna come in your lifetime. Keep fighting, keep building, keep holding on, have patience, have hope.

01:31:42

Don't fear, don't give up, don't quit. The Thessalonians were not told to huddle in fear and anxiously wait an escape plan.

01:31:54

They were told to lift up their heads, to steel their spines, to sturdy their hearts and to prepare themselves to continue their witness to the world until the old world had fallen.

01:32:07

The persecutors who oppressed them were on borrowed time, Jesus told them and Paul echoed as well.

01:32:14

The temple system that rejected the Messiah was crumbling. The covenantal shift was happening.

01:32:19

It was right at hand, right at the very door. And they were about to see it with their very own eyes.

01:32:24

That's why Paul says, therefore comfort one another with these words.

01:32:31

1 Thessalonians 4, 18. He tells them comfort, not confusion.

01:32:37

He tells them hope, not terror, not hopelessness. He tells them comfort because the kingdom that he's saying is coming is near to them because the suffering that they experienced has an expiration date.

01:32:52

And because the enemies of Christ were about to be shattered right before their very eyes and the faithful were gonna be exalted in the kingdom of our

01:33:00

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. They were gonna be the foundation and the bedrock of this 2000 year old to this point kingdom that has continued growing ever since.

01:33:10

They and this was the heartbeat of what Paul was saying. He wasn't warning them about an end time evacuation plan.

01:33:17

He was warning them about to have confidence or he was telling them to have confidence in the victory of Christ.

01:33:25

He was telling them to have hope because their redemption was coming. Their vindication was coming.

01:33:32

Dispensationalist today twists these words into a message of weakness. They turn

01:33:37

Paul's charge of endurance into a cowardly escape hatch, ripping it out of all of its context and meaning and everything else.

01:33:47

But again, Paul wasn't pointing to a future event, not at least in our future.

01:33:54

He was writing to real men and women about things that were gonna happen immediately in their lifetime, about the furnace of God's fury being poured out on the first century

01:34:04

Jews. He was telling them, you're dead or not lost. They will be the first to rise and you who remain be strong and don't act like cowards, build and work and do everything that you do for the glory of Christ.

01:34:20

He was telling them to comfort one another with those words because the kingdom is coming, the old world is collapsing and the king will be victorious.

01:34:29

Paul was not a man who trafficked and peddled in fear. He was not a man who handed out uncertainties.

01:34:35

He was a warrior who had seen the risen Christ and he was now passing on the iron clad confidence of the gospel to people who were wavering, encouraging them not to despair, but to have hope.

01:34:48

Some would wonder if all of it was gonna be worth it and he would tell them to stand firm in their faith and to keep fighting and to keep pressing because their redemption was coming and Paul believed it,

01:35:02

Jesus believed it and therefore I believe it that it was gonna happen in the first century and it did.

01:35:09

When Jesus came and destroyed the city of Jerusalem, the church was vindicated in the same way that when someone is arrested unjustly and then later more information comes out and their name is cleared, this is what was happening.

01:35:26

Jesus was going to come and vindicate his church. He was gonna show the world who

01:35:31

God had chosen. Would it be the temple and would it be the

01:35:37

Jews? Would God lift them up on a pedestal and show the world that they were his chosen people or would

01:35:45

God show the world that the first century Jews had so abandoned his covenants, so abandoned his laws, so abominated his temple that he would lift up the church and he would bring them in union to Jesus Christ and he would bring them in union with the

01:36:06

Israel of old, the true Israel, the faithful Israel and he would vindicate them.

01:36:13

One of the reasons why Jesus destroys the temple and the old covenant world is to vindicate the church, to show the world exactly who

01:36:24

God has said is the Israel of God. The true Israel is not the Jews who persecuted and killed the

01:36:31

Messiah. They were not Jews. The true Jews, the true Israel was the church whom

01:36:38

God vindicated. You remember when Jesus died, his resurrection was his vindication. AD 70 was the vindication of the church and Paul comforted his people with these very words, not a rapture passage, a comfort passage about things that would happen in their world and in their day.

01:36:59

Now let's go to our conclusion. For far too long,

01:37:05

Christians have been told to sit and wait for an escape and as they've sat and wait, they've done nothing and as they've done nothing, the society around us has collapsed and as the society has collapsed, we've had the nerve to complain about it when all along we should have been working.

01:37:23

We have been fed this diet of despair for far too long and we have turned into a lazy, weak, pathetic and apathetic church, trained to see the world as a lost cause instead of a place where we are called to build.

01:37:40

We've been conditioned to believe that our greatest hope is to be yanked out of here so that things don't get worse.

01:37:49

Instead of having faith, instead of obeying our marching orders, instead of doing something, we've basically clung to retreat papers.

01:38:01

Instead of a kingdom that's gonna advance, we've been treating it like a lifeboat that we cling to just before we fall down into the depths.

01:38:12

Our mission is not that and this is why I'm so hard on dispensationalism.

01:38:18

People may not understand why I'm so hard on it because they'll say, well, isn't there plenty of other enemies that we can go after?

01:38:24

I mean, there's the secularist, the humanist, the atheist, the Buddhist, like, you know, just pick your enemy and yeah, that's true but I don't go after the

01:38:34

Buddhist because they're not claiming to be Christian. I know they're lost.

01:38:41

I know they don't have the spirit of God. I know that they don't know their head from a hole in the ground. I don't mean that to be rude,

01:38:47

I just, they don't have the spirit of God and they don't know truth. I don't really go after the atheist that hard because they don't have the spirit of God.

01:38:54

What really irks me though is how this disease has crept into the church of Jesus among spirit -filled people.

01:39:05

This idea that we lose, this idea that we are constantly defeated, this idea that we should approach the world with a pessimistic lens just doesn't even sound like Christ who tells us to fear not, who tells us to hope, who tells us to disciple the entire world.

01:39:22

Oh, wait, forget about it. I didn't really mean that. Like, that doesn't make sense. Jesus didn't leave us here to lose.

01:39:32

The rapture lie that's been perpetrated for far too long has robbed the church of generations of builders and warriors and workers and laborers who would labor in the fields of Christ.

01:39:46

It has convinced fathers to forsake their post, mothers to give up the fight, and it's enticed generations to abdicate the dominion that we were called to extend in the name of Jesus.

01:39:57

I've talked to people before, I'm not making this up. I've talked to people who say, we don't wanna have children because we don't wanna bring children into a world like this.

01:40:06

We're just waiting for Jesus to return. That is stupid. That is not biblical.

01:40:15

If we continue to do things like this, then we're no different than the pagans.

01:40:21

We're the people who are supposed to have hope. We're the people who are supposed to believe that Christ conquers and Christ is victorious and Christ will build his church and nothing, not even the gates of hell will stand against it.

01:40:34

Our calling is faith, hope, and love, not depression, defeatism, and escape.

01:40:44

That's not the faith that Christ bought and paid for. That's not the kind of faith that's gonna turn the world upside down.

01:40:51

That is the kind of heretical apostasy that has produced a society like ours that hates

01:41:01

God. Why would they love God? All the Christians have abandoned the world waiting to be sucked out of here because basically to hell with the world.

01:41:11

Jesus didn't tell us to do that. He didn't tell us to bunker down, he told us to build.

01:41:18

He told us to make disciples of all the nations and to teach everyone on earth how to obey him.

01:41:25

He told us that his kingdom was gonna be like leaven that leavens the whole lump, like a mustard seed that grows into the greatest tree, like a stone that grows into a crushing mountain that crushes every nation and tribe and people on earth so that he will have the all in all.

01:41:42

He told us that his government and his authority would grow until it couldn't grow any further. He told us that his authority in heaven and on earth was gonna be unrivaled.

01:41:50

Right now, he said in Matthew 28, 18 that I have all authority in heaven and on earth. He's reigning now, he's putting his enemies under his feet now, how dare we not believe that?

01:42:01

And how dare we not push into that? And how dare we not build with that purpose?

01:42:08

So brothers and sisters, you're here, I'm assuming you're here for a reason. If you're a dispensational, please don't take my mockery as hatred.

01:42:15

I don't hate you, I love you. I love you enough to tell you these things are false and I would beg for you to repent and see what

01:42:21

God says in his word. But if you're here and you already see these things, what are you supposed to do about them?

01:42:28

You're supposed to work, you're supposed to take dominion, you're supposed to advance the kingdom, you're supposed to be a man and a woman that build the kind of marriages that resemble the very gospel, marriages that last and don't end in divorce, families that flourish, children that are catechized and discipled, men who start businesses and bring wealth to the world, men who bring righteousness to the city gates, men who plant churches and who raise up elders and who conquer the world for Christ.

01:43:04

I think that one of the worst possible things that we can do as men and women who've been bought and paid for by Jesus is aim too small.

01:43:14

Live your life like everything has purpose and everything matters.

01:43:21

Live your life like your labor is not in vain, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15. Live your life like a city that is sitting on top of a hilltop and shining for the world to see.

01:43:33

Live like you're actually thinking in terms of generations, like your generations are going to be here in 100 years instead of zapped out of here.

01:43:43

Live like you're going to leave an inheritance to your children's children. Live like you're going to fight battles today that are going to make it easier for your grandchildren to fight battles tomorrow.

01:43:55

Live in such a way that your life will bear fruit and it will be a blessing to generations because the world is not a sinking ship.

01:44:06

The world has been given as an inheritance to Christ and Christ is using his church to bring his victory to the world.

01:44:15

So live that way. Live like the King of Kings has given you a directive and you will not bow down to anyone or anything until that directive is finished.

01:44:28

The earth is going to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the water covers the sea.

01:44:34

Live like that, believe that, cling to that until the final enemy that exists on earth is crushed by Jesus himself, that enemy is death.

01:44:44

Work and keep working. And stop worrying about a rapture that will never come.

01:44:52

Stop waiting for an escape. Stop waiting for an excuse to get out of the job that Jesus gave you.

01:45:00

Why would Jesus rapture the church out if we haven't done what Jesus told the church to do?

01:45:06

Stop wasting your days gazing at the sky when Jesus has called you to put your hand to the plow.

01:45:13

Take responsibility, lead your family, build community, shape the culture, take dominion.

01:45:21

The future belongs to Christ. And we who are here to claim it in his name must claim it and must advance it.

01:45:34

And while you're at it, I want you to support the work of the kingdom.

01:45:41

I want you to work hard in your job so that you can have extra money so that you can give to your local church.

01:45:47

Give to your local church. Start with a tithe, that's 10 % of your income, and give it to the local church.

01:45:56

Why would you do that? Because as you're building your house and as you're working hard so that you can give an inheritance to your children, you're also funding the kingdom.

01:46:06

You're funding the advance of Jesus's kingdom that will stay, that will remain, that will keep building until Jesus returns.

01:46:14

So fund it. Don't give your scraps to God and then expect something dynamic to happen.

01:46:20

Give generously to your local church. And if you're faithfully giving to your local church and you wanna do things like support other ministries like this show, beyond liking, subscribing, and sharing it with others, then go to the product store at www .prodthesheep

01:46:38

.com. Check it out, get some epic gear, and you're supporting this show. You're supporting this ministry. All of the money goes right back into it.

01:46:46

Consider joining one of our three membership tiers, but don't do it unless you're giving to your local church. Jesus's church is not gonna grow by accident.

01:46:56

It's gonna grow because faithful people are investing in it. They're investing their time in it, they're investing their talent in it, and they're investing their wealth in it.

01:47:05

We're not here to hide. We're not here to wait. We're not here to bury our head in the sand.

01:47:12

We're here to take ground. We're here to push it forward as hard and as fast and as righteously as we can, which means that we're gonna have to invest in the local church.

01:47:25

We're gonna have to invest in the kingdom of God in our area. I don't even know how many countries are represented by the audience of this show, but it's more than just one.

01:47:37

We need to have an approach of financing the kingdom of God in our local areas. Whatever area that is for you.

01:47:45

And if you have leftover blessings that you have, contribute to things like this show because we're going hard for this purpose.

01:47:52

With every ounce of energy that I have in my body, I want to advance Jesus's kingdom.

01:47:57

And I wanna teach Jesus's people to have faith and have hope and have an optimism about Jesus's kingdom.

01:48:05

So it's time for us to get to work. It's time for us to build.

01:48:11

And until next time, God richly bless you brothers and sisters. And I will see you next time on the broadcast.