Keep sharing good news without ads.
Pastor David Mitchell
Thank you, Bill, for that great lesson. All right, guys, let me move one little item over here out of the way, and we'll get started today.
We're so glad to have all of you with us. We've got a great crowd on today from around the country, really around the world, and the
Lord has caused us to sit and wait and be still, and that's not easy for any of us.
And we learn a lot about ourselves when the Lord puts us in a place where we have to sit and wait and be still.
You know what? That tie is making me nauseous, the way it looks on the screen.
I'm going to get rid of it. How's that? We're supposed to be at home anyway, right? So I might lose the jacket here in a minute, but we're in a place where we just have to sit and be still, and the
Lord teaches us about ourselves and about Him in times like this. And so really, when we come out the other side of it, we're going to be stronger, and it's going to end up being a really good thing for all of us.
And God has a plan for our nation, He's got a plan for you, for me, and we're in the best plan right now, whether it feels like it or not, because He doesn't have two plans.
He doesn't need an extra plan. He's perfect. This is the plan. So He's using this for His purposes, and may the glory go to the
Lord, it will, and that's our desire, don't you think? All right, well, let's get into the Scripture. It's interesting because I've been preaching verse by verse through the book of Romans, and so we're in chapter 8, and so that means we're 8 years into this.
Who knows? We might actually be. But we don't go fast through the book, through any book.
We go slow and look around while we're going, and that's how we do it at our church.
We hope you'll enjoy being with us. And by the way, if you're visiting today, from this day forward, you're family, so you won't be a visitor anymore after today.
So thank you for being here. All right. Well, in Romans, I'll tell you what, I'm going to just read this verse because we're a little bit beyond this verse, but if you're here for the first time, this will help tie in where we are.
Romans 8, 23, and not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the
Spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves, waiting for the adoption to with the redemption of our body.
I don't know about you, but I've read and studied the book of Romans so many times since I was first born again at the age of 24 in my car on the way to work one day, which totally changed my life, of course, but it certainly, for the first time,
I had a hunger for the Word of God, because lost people don't have that, and all of a sudden I had it. But I've read this passage so many times, and I never realized that right in the middle of Romans chapter 8, the
Lord starts talking about the end times and the rapture. And I never would have thought about this as an end times or certainly rapture or second coming passage at all, but it is, because right here where we talk about this groaning, that is because we have two natures.
When God saved us, He gave us a new nature, and His Holy Spirit was placed within us and sealed within us, and our bodies became the temple of the living
God, and how can that not change a person? So we have to be changing from the moment we're saved into more and more like Jesus Christ, and of course we know that, and that's exactly what
He's doing with us, but we still have that old man, and that old man pulls away from everything
God wants us to do and everything we even want to do, because the real us is the new man. And so I teach our folks, and I hope all of you get what
I'm saying here, to always be thinking about what you're thinking about, because your brain is part of the old man.
It's got a lot of bad input in it along with good input. Satan can influence it.
He can put thoughts in our minds, evil imaginings, and just untrue imaginings, and thoughts that will never come to pass, and fears that we spend a lot of energy on, which will never happen, but they seem real.
And so we have to stay in control of this whole body, including our brain, and we have to be watching and monitoring it like a watchman all the time, and that's our role, but we groan because that gets tiring sometimes, don't you think?
We groan because we don't want any part of us to be pulling away from the Lord ever, and yet it happens, and we come back, we have to confess our sins.
He is always faithful and just to forgive us our sins, which means faithful means he'll do it every time.
Just means it's right for him to do it because the blood of Jesus Christ has been applied to us individually, and we're saved by the blood plus nothing.
And so he has the right, and it is right, and just for him to forgive us every time. So that's how we live, and we get up and go again, and we're not going to be perfect.
We need to remember this, but that causes us to groan, but we're waiting for the adoption and the redemption of the body.
What's interesting is the words adoption and redemption are both salvation words, and as you know, if you've studied the
Bible much, salvation can be presented as past, present, and future. There is a past aspect, present aspect, future aspect of our salvation, and it's interesting because usually adoption, redemption, or like you think of it as past tense, like it's already happened.
God adopted me, and he knew me before the foundation of the world, before he even made anything.
I was his child. All right. But then there came a point in time and space when the Holy Spirit called me, took my chin and pointed it up and said, there's your
Savior, there's your shepherd, you're a sheep, you're hungry. He's got the food. What will you do with that? And he made Jesus irresistible to me in that moment.
And I received Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior because the Holy Spirit opened my eyes and quickened me and regenerated me.
And then I had a desire to receive Jesus as my Lord and Savior. And so all of those things are of God.
They're not of man. If you put any part of man in it, it's not real. The only part man plays is the receiving of the free gift.
And what a joy that is. That's why Jesus said it's like being born again. When he says it's like something, it is like that thing in the physical realm.
He uses physical things to teach us all these spiritual truths. And a baby has nothing to do with his own birth.
In fact, if you ask women, they'll say the baby was the problem. He was not helping in the birth process.
So it's all of the parents. It's all about the parents planning. It's all about parents' love for each other.
It's all about the parents, the birth of the child. But guess what? That child is born and immediately receives the benefits of that and is part of the family.
That's how it works for us. And not only are we born into his family, we are adopted in the sense that, you know, a birth child can be disowned by a parent.
But by all law that I'm aware of in the Western world, an adopted child cannot be disowned.
So we're adopted. But now it talks about redemption. We've been redeemed. That means we've been bought and set free by a price.
And that price it was paid was the blood of Jesus. That's past tense. But it's also there is a future tense meaning here.
And of course, this is a reference to the rapture. So let's keep going here. It's interesting. Oops, we went backwards.
I have no clue how that happened. OK, I'm not in control of the technology. The technology is in control of me.
All right. So we'll review a little bit here in Romans chapter 8, verse 16. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.
That is so wonderful, isn't it? I mean, even when we sin and we get out of fellowship, the
Holy Spirit never tells our spirit that we have lost our salvation. It tells us that we're children of God.
Only Satan would ever say something like, ah, you might not be saved. So never listen to him. We know what the
Lord says. The Lord says he knew us before the foundation of the world. In time and space, he called us unto himself.
And the same ones that he called, he justified. The same ones that he justified, he sees them as glorified already.
So if he sees you as glorified and in heaven already, guess what? You can't lose it, right? Because it's not of you.
It's of God. It's the blood of Jesus plus nothing. You see, here's the problem. Every great church that ever existed in history goes through a cycle.
Starts out with God's sovereign every time. Starts out with God. Even the church at Rome did. Goes around a cycle to where man gets more and more involved and humanism comes in.
And humanism from a religious viewpoint is called Arminianism. And it comes in and all of a sudden man has at least some part to help
God save himself. And there you lose it at that point. In fact, the great apostle Paul rebuked the church at Galatia and said, how much foolish can you be?
You began this walk. You began your salvation in pure faith. How can you think that you continue it by works?
It doesn't work that way. Listen, the great Charles Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers, said this.
He was self -taught, never went to college, never went to seminary, but he studied logic. Everyone that's a
Christian should go out on the Internet, take a logic course, I think. But he said this, an effect can never be the cause of the cause.
And think about that with regard to salvation. Listen, the cause was when the Holy Spirit called you and opened your eyes and gave you life from death.
Everything else is an effect. Everything else you did, you did because the Holy Spirit did that for you, because his father told him to do that for you and because Jesus had died for you, given his blood.
And the Holy Spirit literally came and applied that blood personally to your personal individual life on that day that he called you.
And that's the first day you had a desire for Jesus. That's how you know when that happened, because the natural body and mind does not have a desire for Jesus.
The Bible says there's none that seeketh God, not one. So that was the Holy Spirit. And that's how the gospel works, no matter what people may say.
All right. So the spirit bears witness with our spirit that we're saved. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together.
The Lord speaks of the fact that we shall only enter the kingdom of heaven by suffering. So we look around ourselves and we're caught in our house.
We can't go out. We can't do the things we're used to doing. And we get a little grumpy about that.
And sometimes we don't get along as well about that. We ought to look around, say, you know what? We're not living in a cave yet.
Right. We're in an air conditioned home. We're in a heated home. We have pretty much everything we've always had within that home.
And we have each other and we have the Lord. But we're going to go through suffering. And according to my
Bible, the suffering is going to get more and more as we go towards the end times. And I think we're in the end times, but we're just in the foothills, perhaps.
But we're headed that direction, we know. So we've got to understand we only enter heaven through suffering.
But look what it says. You may also be glorified together with Christ. Isn't it true that when
Jesus was on the cross, that one of the things that helped him get beyond it and even before the cross in the
Garden of Gethsemane, when he sweat blood, one of the things that helped him say, nevertheless, Father, thy will be done, is that he looked beyond the cross to a time when he would be glorified and we would all be glorified and we would all be saved and with him forever.
And he saw that and it made him say, OK, this is the suffering is well worth it. I will do this for the
Father and I will do this for my brothers and sisters. And he did it. And right before he died, he said, it is finished.
And in Greek, that means paid in full. The sin debt of all of God's people,
Old Testament, New Testament, God knows every one of them, not talking about the tares, talking about the wheat, not talking about the goats and talking about the sheep.
He knows every one of them. And that blood was given for every single one of them.
And so here we see we're joint heirs. And that means we own everything Christ owns.
For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
God wants us to focus on that future glory together. Can you imagine the rapture? Have you ever even thought about it, the reality of it?
There'll probably be a little quadrant up there in the sky for Park Meadows and all of our friends. We'll meet up there, shake each other's hands, hug each other without worrying about any coronavirus at that point.
And we'll say, man, it happened. It really happened. Here we are. We're in the clouds and we're with Jesus.
And we're coming back to this earth to rule and reign with him for a thousand years. We'll be just amazed.
Now, I'm going to skip down to verse 22, for we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
Now, I'm going to pop this in. We studied this last time, so I'm just going to pop right through it. What happens is when you look at the
Greek words here for creature, it's the same exact word as the word creation in verse 22. So I did some magic with my
PowerPoint and boom, I just wrote in creation up there because that's a very good translation of these words.
So this is actually talking about all of creation, that when Adam and Eve, who represent all of us, chose that they wanted good and evil, not just good, because Satan offered that and they said, that's what we want.
They got it. So all the beauty in the world, the waterfalls, the ocean, the babies, the grandbabies, our spouse, everything that there is, it's beautiful.
We get that. But we also get all the bad and the evil and everything we ask for. We get that with it.
We never just get one. We get both together in this life. And so that's why the Lord's preparing us that suffering will come.
But all of the when Adam and Eve fell into sin, they really didn't fall into it.
They jumped into it on purpose. They brought the whole creation into that because the earth was cursed as well.
And that's why it says here that the creation waits for the manifestation of the children of God. See that in verse 19?
Now, think about this. The Bible says the rocks, the trees, the waterfalls, the cows, the horses, the puppies, they're waiting for the sons of God to be manifested.
And that's talking about the verse we looked at a minute ago where it says the redemption of the body.
They're waiting for the rapture because when we get changed in the air, Jesus is going to come back and reign from here for a thousand years and put it back somewhat like it was in the
Garden of Eden, more like that than it is what it's like now. And they're waiting for this. And all of creation was made subject in vanity.
It was God's will that the fall happened, not creation's will, not even man's will. Although man did what he wanted to do,
God didn't force him to do anything. Man ate the fruit. Adam and Eve ate fruit because they wanted to.
And God held them accountable. But there was never a time when God thought any other thing other than that they would fall.
Because listen, Jesus Christ was slain before the foundation of the world. That tells you right there, there's only one plan.
So God knew they would fall, but they didn't. And they ate fruit because they wanted to and they were held accountable.
You know, Brother Otis Fisher, this gentleman who'd been teaching the Bible 50 years when he joined our church, had coffee with him two or three times a week.
For 13 years until he went to heaven to learn from this gentleman. But he told me once, he said, you know, people struggle with this idea of God being sovereign and man having a will that can both be true.
He said, David, it's so simple. If you look at the Garden of Eden, you know,
God knew they were going to eat the fruit. God had purposed that they would eat the fruit. God had purposed that Jesus would die for them.
And then he asked me a question. He said, but Brother David, did God tell them they had to eat the fruit? And I said, absolutely not.
He told them the day they ate the fruit, they would die. He said, that's right. So they did it because they wanted to and they were held accountable.
And in that statement, that old gentleman that I love so much and miss him every day, put the sovereignty of God and the will of man together better than any theologian
I've ever read in any theology book I've ever studied. He just put it together so simply and so easily.
And that's how it works. He also told me, look, God's in control of everything, David, but you need to live the best life you can live each day with the equipment
God's given you as of that day. So there it fits together as well, doesn't it? So it's not as hard as we make it.
Both are going on at the same time. But the creation is groaning here, waiting to be delivered from the bondage of corruption and waiting for the sons of God, that's us, to be delivered in the glorious liberty of the children of God, because at the same time that happens, the earth is going to be helped as well.
In fact, Jesus died for all of that, not just for us, but also for all of creation.
The whole of creation groaneth and travails in pain together until now. Now, I've taught on John 316 before, it's the most misunderstood book in the
Bible, but if you look at the word world where he says, God so loved the world's word cosmos and it carries with it the connotation, you can't separate the connotation from the meaning of word.
It means orderly arrangement. God's orderly universe was cursed when man sinned and placed somewhat out of order.
And Jesus came to die on the cross to put it back in order. Now, that includes to save God's sons and daughters.
That includes to save Jesus' brothers and sisters. And it includes that, but it's not all that it's about.
It also has to do with putting the universe back in order. In Genesis 1 .1,
we had an earth that was without form and void. And then the Holy Spirit hovered over it and gave it form.
And then you had the Garden of Eden that was beautiful and perfect. And then man decided he wanted good and evil.
He wanted evil with the good. And he got what he asked for. And now here's what we have now.
This is what our cities look like. We can't even go outside on the streets. They're so filthy. And this is what man can build.
And this is what has happened. But guess what? Jesus died on the cross to put this thing back together and to give it order again.
And you're going to see the lion laying down with the lamb someday soon. And that's why he died for all of it and for us.
Isn't that beautiful? Think about. All right. So that was all introduction. Our church members are snickering because they're always saying, you know,
David, you always have long introductions. Leave yourself a few minutes to preach. But, you know, why?
It's because I learn something new every time I go through a passage. So, you know, we're going to take it slow.
But that brings us into realizing that this passage in Romans is talking about the second coming and the rapture where this groaning will stop.
All right. So let's take a look at a little bit. I think it's very appropriate with what's going on around us to realize that there has to come a day when we stop saying, well, there's always been earthquakes.
Well, there's always been wars and rumors of wars. There's always been illnesses and famine. So what does that prove?
And we've got to stop saying that and start saying, well, maybe they're getting closer and closer together right now.
Maybe they're stronger when they happen. Maybe they're like birth pangs when a woman's about to have a baby and they get closer together and more frequent and harder until the baby's born.
But there comes a moment when the baby's born. There's coming a moment when Jesus comes back.
And these signs are just like that. So let's look at this interesting question. It's a wonderful thing to me that the
Lord actually was asked by his disciples.
Tell us about these things. When will the end of the world happen?
And that word in Greek is aeon, which means age. When will the end of the church age arrive and what will that look like was their question.
And Jesus answered it in detail. I had a friend one time, bless his heart.
I'm so glad he did it. He said, David, would you be willing to do something for me? And I said, what? He said, would you be willing to start letting
Jesus Christ's chronology of the end times be more important than the books you've read about it?
And I said, sure, that's fair. That haunted me for a year. I went back and studied the end times on my own, because up until that time,
I had just taken my mentor's word for it. I'd taken Bible scholars word for it, Dwight Pentecost, who wrote things to come.
I took his word for it. And I had never done my own study. But that challenged me.
And I started right here. So let's watch and see what Jesus's chronology is at the end times.
A little bit different than what many of you have been taught and what I was taught and what I believed most of my life up until this friend of mine challenged me that day.
Well, Jesus answered and said to them, take heed that no man deceive you, for many shall come in my name and say,
I am the Christ and shall deceive many. And you're going to hear of wars and rumors of wars. Be not troubled, for all these things must come to pass.
But the end is not yet. And so what we learn from that is that, yes, we have seen these things, but sometimes they worry us.
Sometimes we think, well, the end is upon us. And this coronavirus has people thinking that I'm sure the end is upon us, surely.
But he says, no, it's not. These things are going to come to pass. The end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation.
That literally in the Greek means race. Race shall rise against race. There will be more and more racial trouble, which is sad to me because we as Christians, when we're born again, we're of a new race.
We're all the same race. Color doesn't matter. But to the world, that is not true. If we're honest with ourselves,
I don't care how hard we work at racial relations. The world doesn't see it that way. And Jesus said, race will rise against race and kingdom.
That's the countries, the countries against countries. And there shall be famines and pestilences. Boy, there's the one we're dealing with today, isn't it?
And earthquakes in diverse places. Now, here's the key to understanding the signs. All these things are the beginning of sorrows.
That's an idiomatic expression that means birth pains. So in the East, Far East and Middle East, that they'll say that phrase and it means she's about to have a baby.
All right. So, so pestilences, boy, there is one, isn't it? But these things are going to get closer to closer together, more of them and kill more people, stronger, in other words, just like birth pains do before the
Lord comes back. And so, you know, pestilences, there's always been illnesses, but there are new ones that will arise.
And we're seeing that now. Jesus, let me remind you, he says, see, be not trouble. These things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
That means we still have work to do. Right? We're not supposed to get on top of the house on a white sheet and wait on him to come.
We're supposed to be found working when he comes. He told us that. But I have a question for you.
When you take a look at the things mentioned above, are those really signs of the second coming and the rapture?
Let me ask you this, are any of these things, things that didn't happen much? Are it all during the past, but now they're happening all of a sudden?
Well, here's the interesting thing. You could call those signs if you understand that they get closer together and stronger.
But there are things mentioned in the passage that we'll get to, in fact, one of them already here we see today, where they've never happened before.
And what's interesting is that Charlotte and I loved it when we did youth work back in the 80s. We were in our 20s, you know, 20 somethings years old, working with high school teenagers, teaching them the
Bible. And I can remember the things I used to teach those young people about the end times and the signs that would happen.
And do you know that a lot of the things that had not happened yet in the 80s have happened now? But there are even things that Jesus Christ mentions in this passage that haven't happened yet, but will happen.
So they get closer together, they get more and more of these signs and they get stronger. And that's the key.
So one of the ones mentioned here, the pestilences, is a little different than the others.
We've always had wars, we've always had earthquakes, but what we haven't always had is coronavirus.
It's new. And so we will have new pestilences that we've never seen before that will arise.
And in my lifetime, AIDS was one of those, SARS was one, and now this.
And so there's starting to be more of them and starting to happen. Diseases that had never existed on the planet before.
So the Lord continues. He says, then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted. Now, to me,
I know there are places in the world today, if you tried to go and witness on the streets anywhere in Iraq or Iran, maybe even in Saudi Arabia, in some parts of Israel, actually, the
Orthodox Jews give you a problem. You could easily be afflicted. They might even kill you.
But in the United States and in the West and most third world countries that are designed after the
Bible, whether they be Roman Catholic or Protestant, they're not going to kill you for being a
Christian yet. But there'll come a day when right here in this continent, they will do that. The governments of the world will collude and they will kill
Christians and Jews. And so that extent of it, I don't think has hit yet, even though there are pockets in the world and places in Africa, mostly
Islamic areas of the world where they will kill you just because of your faith in Jesus Christ.
But this is going to become universal someday. And that hasn't happened yet. So Jesus says it will, though.
They will afflict you. They will kill you. You'll be hated by all nations.
And you see that? That shows you that the nations are going to come after us eventually. So it's interesting, if you look at that little
Greek word, it means you could read the sentence this way, at the time that they shall deliver you up to be afflicted and kill you and so forth, then also shall many be offended.
So that's kind of a good way to translate that word then in verse nine. So at the time when you see them starting to turn
Christians and Jews over to be killed in a universal fashion by all nations, at that time, many will be offended and will betray one another and will hate one another.
So sometimes a son will turn a father in for being a Christian and things like that in the future. And many false prophets will arise and deceive many.
We're already seeing that where we see false prophets everywhere. And there are far more of them than there were in the 80s or 70s or 60s and so forth.
Sometimes we don't recognize them because they dress up like a preacher. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many will wax cold.
And I think we've started to see that natural love that God puts in the heart of a mother for children.
We've seen that waning. We've seen so many times when mothers have killed their children and said that God told them to do it.
I don't remember that when I was younger, but I've seen a lot of it in the last couple of decades.
And that seems to be a changing sign. It's getting a little strange and unusual.
We've never seen children go into schools and shoot other children ever in the history of the world until now.
So some of these things are new. They never happened in the 80s. They've happened now, though, and iniquity will abound.
But he that shall endure until the end, the same shall be saved. And if you go in and read that in context,
Paul talks about how all Israel shall be saved. And it's just talking about if you make it through all of this tribulation until the time when
Jesus comes, you will look at him and see him for who he is and be saved is what
I think the scripture means there. But I have a question for you. Can you name some signs that have happened in the past 10 years but didn't really happen that much before, if any, before that, you know, like didn't happen before the 80s?
And I think the answer is yes. I think we can even see some that haven't happened yet, like not universally nations are not killing
Christians yet. Hadn't happened yet, but it's coming. So we see Jesus is talking about all these things that will come to pass.
And this gospel of the kingdom. Shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come.
Do you realize we're living in a world where only in the last few years could you go in and type, you could just go to Google and type in the words
Italian to English. And then you can clip and paste something in Italian that some attorney wrote into that left pane and in the right pane, it'll put it in English in a nanosecond.
Every language pretty much that we know of and dialect in the world, the gospel, maybe not the whole
Bible, but at least the gospel message has been translated into now at this point in the
Internet as it becomes more universal. People in all the countries in Africa, India, everywhere, they're walking around the smartphone, they have access to the
Internet. I think we're at this point in verse 14. And so that one we can pretty much check off.
Now look at this one in Daniel. It's a great thing to take a look at Daniel in correlation with the book of Revelation when we're looking at the end times, particularly
Daniel. Look what it says in chapter 12, verse 4. But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book even to the time of the end.
So there is some information that the angel gave Daniel and said, but you won't be able to give it to people where they'll understand it until the end times, and then they will understand it.
Do you realize that you and I probably understand the material in the book of Revelation and all the
Old Testament prophets that correlate with that? We probably understand that better now than Dwight Pentecost did when he wrote
Things to Come. It's a book that thick on the end times. We probably understand it better than when he wrote that because we've had several decades to live as we live more into the end times and see things happen.
And that's what the angel was telling Daniel as the people that are in the end times start to see things happen. It will enlighten them to understand more detailed and more specifically what the words in the scripture mean.
And they will be open. Their eyes will be open more and more to how it really works. And I think we've seen that happening.
Now, it keeps going, though. It looks, it says that about the book being sealed. But it says even to the end of the, to the time of the end.
And look how it pictures some 2 ,600 or 800 years ago when
Daniel was given this by the Holy Spirit. Look how it pictures the end. It says many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be increased.
Now, you think about this. Travel will become more easy, easier, more easier.
Travel become easier. The invention of the jet airplane kind of solved that problem and made this come to pass.
And then the Internet made it where knowledge is increased exponentially, probably weekly, if not daily on the
Internet. So those two things had to come to pass before the end times could come.
But they have. So there are quite a few things that hadn't happened yet in the 80s when I taught the kids about things that would happen that have transpired since then.
We didn't have jets. I don't know if we had dial -up yet, but we were getting close, weren't we?
So I mentioned a minute ago that several years ago, a close friend and Christian brother, he was a
Jewish believer, and he asked me two questions. I told you the first one, he said, would you consider letting Jesus's chronology be more important than the books you've read?
And then he said, how many last trumps can there be? Answer that question. And then he just walked away from me. All right.
So I said, yeah, that's fair enough. But I studied it. I've been studying it ever since.
Now, let's look at verse 15 up there. When you, therefore, shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of in Daniel, the prophet, stand in the holy place, whosoever readeth, let him understand.
Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains. Well, that's a reference to the future where there has to be a temple built.
So there has to be a temple rebuilt on the
Temple Mount in Jerusalem because the Antichrist, three and a half years into the seven -year tribulation period, is going to walk into that place and offer a pig on the altar.
And that's what verse 15 is talking about. And the Bible says when we see that happen, we don't even need to go back in the house and grab a coat.
We just need to run and we need to run to the mountains. And I know it specifically says to Judea, but I'm going to tell you what, it's clear from Scripture that the tribulation is worldwide.
It is a worldwide tribulation, not just in Israel. It's toward Israel, but it affects the entire world.
So there's a little bit of information about what to do. If you find yourself here at that time, and many people think you won't be here, you've been taught you'd be raptured at the front end of the seven years.
I believed that my whole life, but I no longer believe it. As I did my own Bible study, I just don't see that the
Bible teaches that. But I know it's emotional. So we don't consider that a test of fellowship.
Never will, because it's very emotional and everybody's got to do their own study. We understand that.
By the way, if you heard Brother Bill teach the lesson earlier, he was the last holdout in our church who disagreed with me after I changed my view.
I basically believe that the rapture happens with the second coming at the end of the seven years.
And he was the last holdout, but I trusted him to teach. He taught through the book of Revelation twice, disagreeing with me.
But the second time through, when he would come to some of these text verses that people pull out of context to try to prove that theory.
By the way, there's only about eight of them in the whole Bible, about eight proof texts for that old theory.
When he would come to him, since he had started at the front of the book and read all the way through, and then often had started the first of a chapter and read down to it, he would look up at the class and say, you know, this is one of the proofs of the pre -tribulation rapture.
And he said, you know, if we look at this in context, it's not talking about that, is it? One after another, by the time he finished teaching through that time, he had changed his view.
Anyway, all I want to do is get you to study. I don't care if you agree with me.
I don't. I'm not. It's not about the argument at this point in my life. It's just about truth. So I just want you to study.
OK, now let's keep going here.
For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
So that's a reference to the second three and a half years, because it's talking about the offering of the pig on the altar that happens three and a half years into it.
We know that from Scripture. This great tribulation happens the second three and a half years. It doesn't mean the first three and a half are easy either.
That's tribulation, too. But this is called great tribulation, the second three and a half years. We've generally been taught in modern times that we won't be here for any of this.
And I challenge you to study and see if you think the Bible says it. Try to divorce from your mind anything you've heard men say in books you've read, because if you don't, you'll never be able to get past what they told you, because they implanted presuppositions in your mind that are false, that you think they're true because they planted them there as if they're true.
And of course, if you have false premises, the logic can be perfect. You know, throughout Dwight Pentecost's book, at that point, his logic can be perfect, but you still get a false conclusion because the premises weren't truthful.
And I'm not saying he lied on purpose either. I'm saying he didn't have the light that you and I have now. And Daniel said he wouldn't.
So I'm going to let it slide there as far as he goes. Verse 22, and except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved on the earth.
That's how bad the tribulation will be. If God hadn't brought it to a stop after seven years, no humans would be left.
But for the elect's sake, a lot of people ask me at meetings, do you believe in predestination? I say, no, I don't.
I don't believe in John 3, 16 either. I'm very selective in which verses I believe in. They look at me like, what?
And then I let them know I'm teasing. Yes, I believe it. I believe everything the Bible talks about.
It's in the Bible. I believe it if it's in context. And here it talks about the elect. Those are the chosen ones of God, the ones that God knew before the foundation of the world as his own children.
And he notifies you at the moment the Holy Spirit calls you. That's how Brother Otis said it. And I believe he was right.
I don't use it that way much because it's not biblical language, but that's kind of what happens at the calling is all of a sudden you're awakened and the
Holy Spirit shows you you're his child. What will you do with him? And then you choose him because you want to, because the
Holy Spirit changed your want to. The Bible says there's none that seek if God, not one.
So two seconds before that, you didn't want to. That's how I can prove to you that the Holy Spirit saved you. You didn't save yourself.
If that weren't true, you got to save the day before or two seconds before. But you didn't because you didn't want to.
And the Holy Spirit changes the want to. That'll help you understand how salvation works a lot.
I don't know that simple, but it's true. So God does shorten these days for his elect's sake, those days shall be shortened.
Now we get into more serious things happening. Okay. Something here, here's my point at this place.
We can look at these things like the coronavirus. We can look at earthquakes. And I've done my own study on earthquakes, by the way, using the national government's data on earthquakes.
And I have proven that they are getting closer together and more of them, but more importantly, killing more people.
And that's kind of what I looked at to see the strength of these birth pains. They're killing more people than they ever have in history.
It's definitely an uptrend if you chart it. I showed that recently to a class not too long ago.
But the thing is, those things get closer and closer. All right. But there are some, like Jesus said, you don't need to worry though.
These things have to come to pass and the end is not yet. We still have work to do. So I want to give you something to think about as far as if you're worried about those things, is that first there has to be something that happens to one of the two or both of the two
Islamic mosques, which I've been to both of them and looked at them and walked all around them, that are currently on the temple mount where the new temple of God will be built by the
Jewish people. One or more of those have to be destroyed before that temple, the new temple can be built.
So when you see in the news that something happened, who knows what Donald Trump might do, by the way, secretly or not.
I don't know. He probably doesn't have that in his mind, but somebody will. And something's going to happen to one or more of those mosques and all
H -E -double L will break loose for a while because all of Islam will hate that, you know, and boy, they'll be ready for war.
But something's got to happen to one or both of those. And then the Jewish people will begin to build that temple.
Now, when you see them start to build it, and I have heard so many times, haven't seen it with my own eyes, but I have heard that the cornerstone, in fact, my mentor,
Dr. Erwin Freeman, before he went to heaven quite a number of years ago, said they've already got the cornerstone.
And he said in Texas on the King Ranch, every year there is a new red heifer ready and sent to Israel from Texas.
Is that cool? And so they're ready, right? They're ready. But when you see them start work on that temple because the mosques are gone, then you need to really know to get in gear to be prepared, right?
So until you see that, you still have some time to work. That's my point. Secondly, the
Antichrist has got to offer a pig on that altar. And when you get to that place, you're three and a half years into the seven years, and you just don't even need to go in the house and gather stuff.
You just need to be ready to be gone, away from cities. Do not be found in a city. Be out in the countryside, preferably in a dry, cool cave somewhere with some food and water and your family.
When you see that temple being built, the new temple, it's time to head for the hills, literally.
Don't be found in the cities. Please heed my words and the Lord's words on this.
Then we have that event that we all call our great hope. After that last three and a half years is over, the second coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ occurs. Now think about God sending the risk return law into the universe.
Just like the law of gravity, it applies to business, applies to the stock market, everything we do in business. Even in our personal lives, it applies.
When you date someone, it's a risk. They might turn against you, right? They might reject you.
When you have children, something could happen to one of them. We know that. So there's risk return.
But the return makes all of the risk worth it. And you think about even the tribulation period.
That's the risk period, high risk period. But the return at the end of that is the biggest, awesome profit mankind's ever had, other than the first coming of Jesus.
But this will be even greater. It's the second coming of our Lord and Savior. Now, let's see.
Oh, man, we've got plenty of time. Let's keep going here for a little bit. You have an advantage when you're in a crowd in our church and I can see you, because when
I see you dropping off like flies, that's when I end the sermon. But since I can't see you, I may just go three or four hours here.
And I know you hate that joke, but I'm not really going to do it. Okay, but let's talk about this. I was asked to consider, would
I make Jesus Christ chronology of the end times more important than Dwight D.
Pentecost book that I'd read and many other books I'd read, the Late Great Planted Earth, all the
Hal Lindsey books and the movies. All of them get, so many of them get it wrong compared to scripture.
And I was asked, would you just take Jesus' chronology? I'll do you better. I'm going to give you
Jesus' chronology straight from scripture, then I'm going to give you the apostle Paul's chronology of the end times straight from scripture, and then
I'm going to give you Daniel's chronology in times from the Old Testament, some 2 ,600 or 800 years ago, straight from scripture, and we'll see if they correlate.
How about that? Because I don't, listen, I could care less if you believe David Mitchell's viewpoint on something.
I care a little bit, but it's not the issue. Truth is the point. But I do care that you agree with scripture.
And we must agree that scripture is authoritative and that if it's in proper context, by the way, you could probably get
Ben out there to provide for you if you don't have it, something Brother Otis and I put together years ago called the
Ten Commandments of Proper Bible Interpretation. You might want to grab hold of that, and it crosses denominational barriers.
There's pretty much universal agreement on how the Bible should be interpreted properly. So get a hold of that and then tell yourself this right here.
I will not cheat against these 10 principles just to win an argument. If you'll do that, it'll free you up, change your life.
All right. So let's look first at the manner. I'm going to look at two things here, the manner and the chronology that Jesus gives about the end times.
So let's look at how it happens first. He does not come in a secret coming where no man sees him, like has been taught to all of us, because think about it.
If he comes seven years before the tribulation, it's secret, they say in this theory that the church is raptured, but the lost people don't see
Christ. It's just like mysterious. It just happens. They got to figure out where did everybody go. That's how we've all pictured it.
It doesn't happen like that. Not in the Bible. That's in Hal Lindsey's books. Okay.
That's in fiction. Now, I know it's emotional, so go with me.
Let's just see what scripture says to see if it bears out what I just said. Okay. I do not believe that the
Bible teaches a secret coming. I believe that it teaches that when Jesus comes, he'll come like lightning from the east to the west and every eye shall see him.
In fact, I believe that Jesus himself warned that there will be false teachers in the end time that teach that he does come in a secret coming before the actual coming.
Now think about what that sounds like. Doesn't that sound like a theory that you've been taught? Matthew 24, 24 says, for there shall arise false
Christ and false prophets and shall show great signs and wonders in as much that if it were possible, they would deceive the very elect.
Behold, I've told you before, Jesus says, wherefore, if they shall come to you and say, behold,
Jesus came, he's already here. He came in the desert in a secret place or he came in secret chambers.
Jesus says, believe it not. So if false teachers come, and they may seem like great people, they always do.
I mean, it can't be a false teacher if they don't seem like a great person. Think about that. So they're lovely, they're beautiful, they're smart, they're great at logic, except their presuppositions are always false, but they make you think they're true and me for a while till we study scripture and find out they're not.
By the way, how do you judge these? Jesus said you judge them by their fruit. By that, he meant their doctrine. Does their doctrine match all of scripture or does he get cattywampus when you compare it to certain scriptures where it falls?
That's how you check these dudes out. But anyway, in so many words, Jesus says, do not believe people who teach that Jesus will come in some secret way before he actually comes as the lightning from the east to the west.
Don't believe it when they teach you theories like that. All right, so he won't come as a secret.
Everyone will see it. Jesus continues in the same story, for as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth into the west.
Now, think about what he just said. There are going to be false prophets that teach you that I'm going to come in secret. Don't believe them, because when
I come, I will come as the lightning comes from the east and shineth even to the west. So shall also the coming of the
Son of Man be. And then it's so interesting here. Now, see, a lot of these passages
I had real trouble teaching as a young preacher because I had been taught this thing about the rapture coming before the seven years.
But I would get to certain passages like this, and the Holy Spirit would say, you got a problem, buddy. You got a problem because this right here doesn't teach it that way.
So what would I do? I would skip these, like verse 28. I just skip past it and go the next one because I hadn't studied enough on my own, but I knew
I was conflicted. And that was the Holy Spirit convicting me that I was teaching stuff that was wrong, that I had learned from other preachers that made it sound great and books.
And so I would literally, I'm telling you the truth, I would skip certain verses because it didn't fit the theory and I couldn't make it fit yet.
So I would skip them. But I don't skip them anymore because look at this right here in the context of the second coming as the lightning from the east to the west, the next verse after it, not before it, but after the second coming.
I really think part of it, but you have him show up where every eye sees him first and then you see verse 28.
Look what it says. And Jesus always using physical things we're well familiar with, especially here in Texas, and we want to talk about buzzards, right?
We're going to talk about buzzards here for a minute. And he's going to use that as an allegory to teach us the spiritual truth of how the rapture happens and when it happens.
When does it happen? It happens after verse 27. I'm going to pause and let you look at it.
This is not David Mitchell. This didn't come from a book. This is scripture. For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the buzzards be also.
I'm going to put it in plain Texan. There they'll be gathered together. Now look at the picture.
Pretend you could take that carcass, that dead animal, and put it up in the sky, in the clouds.
And it literally could just float there, and it's dead, and it's got worms in it, and it stinks.
Don't you think that the Texas buzzards would go up from the earth and flock to it and be right where that is?
That is an allegory of the rapture. And why Jesus used that, I don't know, other than everybody knew what it meant.
He's talking about when Jesus comes in the air as lightning from the east to the west, and his church, some of them have gone on before, but the ones that are still alive and the ones that have died before, in fact, we won't precede them.
The resurrection will happen. They will come out in their new bodies. We will all go up like eagles or buzzards do, going to the carcass.
And it says, Jesus is the carcass. I know that's a weird allegory, but he picked it. So there he is, and we're just like the buzzards that just flock to it.
Both the dead will rise first and those of us who are alive and remain shall go up together with them and be chained in the air.
That is a picture of the rapture if there ever was one, especially to a kid that grew up in the country. I still live on a ranch.
This made perfect sense to me. Happens after verse 27, not before. Just want to get you to study.
That's all. Would you consider letting Jesus Christ's chronology of the end times be more important to you than what other people have taught you in books and in sermons?
I'd just ask if you would. Revelation 1, 7, Behold, he cometh with clouds and every eye shall see him.
It's not a secret. It's not some secret coming seven years before he comes. There's one second coming.
And after it, the rapture happens in verse 28. And they also which pierced him and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.
Even so, amen. He'll come like lightning. Every eye shall see him when he comes.
Now, here's the chronology of Jesus Christ. Immediately after the tribulation of those days.
Notice the word after. So now he had spoken earlier in the same passage about tribulation that was so great that the world has never seen it, nor never will see it.
All right. So immediately after the tribulation of those days, shall the sun be darkened and the moon shall not give her light and the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
Now, those are some signs that haven't happened yet that will happen during the last three and a half years and right up towards the end of that tribulation period.
And then after the tribulation of those days and then shall appear the sign of the
Son of Man in heaven. So after the tribulation of those days, Jesus Christ will return in the sky as lightning.
That's what it means by the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. The second coming happens. Every eye will see him like lightning from the east and to the west.
And that happens after the tribulation period, it says clearly here. And then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn and they shall see the
Son of Man coming in clouds of heaven with power and glory. Little, none of us would disagree on what this is referring to.
So first we see the tribulation period. Then we see the second coming.
Then we see this that's about to be told in the scripture. Then we see this next passage.
What does this sound like it's talking about to you? If you just took away any book you've ever read, anything you've ever heard a preacher say, and you were a child, 12 -year -old child who just got saved, decided to read the
Bible and you picked the book of Revelation to be the first thing you looked at and you read this, what would you think this is talking about?
We're not in Revelation, I'm sorry, Matthew 24. And you read this as a child. What would you think this means?
The next verse says, and he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet and shall gather together his elect from the four corners, the four winds, even one end of heaven to the other.
Does that not sound like the rapture? It happens after the tribulation and after the second coming, it's actually with the second coming, but there's an order to it.
He comes back as the lightning from the east and the west and we're drawn up like buzzards to a carcass.
We are raptured up to be with him. And then there are many things that happen as part of the second coming.
It's not a one instant thing. It goes for days and days, the different events that happen all the way out to the
Battle of Armageddon. It takes many days at that point. But that identifies where the rapture doesn't happen.
It doesn't happen before the second coming and it doesn't happen before the tribulation. So how many last trumps can there be?
The Bible says here that this event takes place with the great sound of a trumpet. So this is the chronology of Jesus Christ himself.
First, the tribulation, second, the second coming, and then the gathering of the saints together. This is very different than what
I was taught. Then Jesus continues. He says, Now learn a parable of the fig tree. When his branch is yet tender and put forth leaves, you know that summer is nigh.
So you can't know the day Jesus is coming, but you can know the season. When you see the trees budding, you know summer is near.
It's like that. You start to see the signs of the buds. You start to see them get closer together and more intense and stronger.
And soon the baby will be born, which pictures the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ back to this earth. So likewise, you, when you shall see these things.
Know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily, I say unto you, this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled.
Which generation, ladies and gentlemen? Well, if you're in the generation that saw Israel become a nation again, if you're the generation that saw children start to kill children in the school system with guns.
So the natural love wax cold. And one of the signs of the end times is that men shall become implacable.
That means you can't change their mind. They're coming at you with a gun. You say, wait, I got a wife and kids. Well, in the old days, even the mafia wouldn't shoot you.
They would pass you by if you said that. But implacable means you can't say anything to stop them. That's new.
That's new in this world. And so when you see these things, it says the generation that begins to see these things will see all of them fulfilled.
That's good news, ladies and gentlemen. That means you will see the rapture. Now, I know Paul thought he'd be raptured.
I know my grandmother thought she would be raptured. But you know what? My grandmother never saw the natural love wax cold.
My grandmother, she saw Israel become a nation that excited her. It's one of the things that made her think she would catch the plane air ride.
But she went on to heaven first. But there are still things that have to happen. That temple's got to be built and these things.
So we're just watching, right? But it says to me that if you saw the first of any of these, have you seen any new plagues lately that never existed before?
All right. Have you seen earthquakes become stronger and kill more people? Have you seen racial tension that we didn't even have 15 years ago?
It's gotten worse, not better. When President Obama was elected, he flared, he blew wind on the flames a little bit.
And some of the followers of President Trump, I'm not sure President Trump knows he's accused of it. I've never seen him be racist, but some of his followers are.
But I'm a follower and I'm not a racist. So I just think, though, that there are forces out there that are fanning the flames and that we see that as one of these things.
So we definitely see the beginning of these signs, right? So our generation will not pass until all of it happens.
That's encouraging. Those who see the first of the signs will see all of them, including his coming. So now
I'm going to ask you the question, am I getting that right? Did I interpret that part correctly?
I'll ask you the question, what do you think? Do you think that's what it means that generations shall not pass away? I've studied a lot.
I really think it does mean that. All right. Now, let me go into First Corinthians, chapter 15.
I now want to talk to you about Paul's chronology. We saw Jesus's. Jesus said tribulation and then second coming and then rapture.
That's not the order I was taught that in, but that's the order Jesus taught it. How does Paul teach it?
First Corinthians 15, 51. Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep.
That means die. We shall not all die physically, but we shall be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.
Listen, when it happens at the last trump, you remember in a moment ago, Jesus said after the tribulation of these days,
I will come, every eye will see me and I will send my angels. And at the blast of a trumpet, they will gather my elect from all corners of the earth.
This is the last trump for the trumpet shall sound and the dead in Christ shall be raised incorruptible.
And we shall be changed. Let me ask you a question. Just be very honest with me. Does Paul not say that the rapture cannot happen until after the dead be raised first?
Doesn't he say the dead will be raised incorruptible and then we will be changed?
There's an order to it. The resurrection has to happen first and then those of us who are still alive will be raptured and changed.
Isn't that the order? So you have to see the great resurrection. So I might ask you a question in a little bit if we don't run out of time.
How many resurrections does the Bible talk about? And you see these people that propagate false doctrine, they have to change things and add stuff to make it fit.
They'll come up with all new doctrines that no one ever believed. And I've read their books. I've read all of these books, so I know what their arguments are.
And they now go in and say, oh, well, there are many, many different portions of the resurrections, several, many.
For example, when Jesus was on the cross, there were people raised from the grave, walked around, and they'll use that to say, well, like Lazarus, you know, and they'll use that and say, oh, these are just parts of the same resurrection.
So it has like an A, B, and C. The truth is the Bible doesn't teach that. I'll show you why in a minute.
We get time to get to that point. So remember my friend asked me how many last trumps can there be?
The rapture happens at the last trump, according to Paul. And by the way, there are seven trumpets listed in the book of Revelation.
And for sake of time, we're not going to read them all, right? When I was younger, I'd sit here right now and read every one of them.
But I'm not going to do that to you. But I'm going to go out and read to you about the last one, okay? In Revelation 10, 7, but in the days of the voice, that means the sound of the trumpet of the seventh angel.
So the seventh angel is blowing the seventh trumpet. If you read the context, you'll see I'm right about that. It's talking about the seventh trumpet because the seventh angel is blowing it.
When he shall begin to sound, when he begins to sound, the mystery of God should be finished as he hath declared to his servants and prophets.
I didn't see that verse till maybe the last decade. It just popped open to me for the first time.
Excuse me a minute. It just popped open.
And I said, wait a minute. I know what the word formula mystery means in the
New Testament. It never means more than one or two things, but they're all interrelated, kind of talking about the same thing. And it says here that that thing that the
New Testament calls a mystery will be finished when that trumpet sounds. Well, so whatever this thing that's called a mystery is finished, in other words, this job is completed, then it is finished when that seventh trumpet sounds, and that happens to be the same time when the
Lord comes back. It has to be the same time when the rapture happens. I think Jesus already said that.
Let's see what Paul says. But anyway, for a second, let's diverge and see about this meaning here of what is happening at this seventh trumpet.
Well, the word finished here is a Greek word, teleo, which means completed, completely executed in the sense of like a document, a legal document, it's signed and it's done, or it means concluded, or it means the duty that was, whatever this mystery is, its duty has been discharged.
At the moment that this seventh trumpet blows. Now, I don't even want to take your time to look at it, but I just wanted to show you it comes from scripture.
These are most of the places, and I could have gone and listed them all, but they wouldn't fit on here. There's about four more, four or five more, but they all fit within this same category where you see the mysteries mentioned in these different verses.
And if you'll just look at the words that I have underlined, let me see if I can get my cursor up here. It's generally talking about the mystery of the church, that there would be people, including
Gentiles, who would be indwelt by the Holy Spirit, which did not happen in the Old Testament times.
It's a part, it happened at Pentecost and every Christian that's ever been saved during the church age is indwelt and the
Holy Spirit is sealed within us. That is unique. And it was a mystery to the Old Testament saints. They looked into it and saw it darkly, but they didn't understand it until actually the
Holy Spirit explained it to them through the Apostle Paul. In time, that's when it was revealed, these mysteries.
So all of these, you see, it's talking about something to do with the Gentiles church being indwelt or something like that.
In fact, in this one, 1 Corinthians 15, 51, we shall not all sleep, but we'll be chained in the air, and he calls it a great mystery, that's the rapture.
So it's either talking about the, it's basically talking about the church and the formation of the church and the indwelling of the church and the rapture of the church.
And this has been known through the ages as the great hope of the church.
So Revelation 10, 12 says the mystery of God should be finished. So if the duty of the church has been discharged and finished, it may now be raptured.
And what was the duty of the church to be a witness to the world? And at this point, when
Jesus comes back and every eye sees him, he now is the witness to the world.
In fact, every Jew that's still living will be saved at that moment. They will bow the knee at that moment, say, well, it really is him.
He really was the Messiah. I see that now and I receive him. And Paul, Apostle Paul said, all of Israel shall be saved at this moment.
But there's a lot of Gentiles on the earth that the Holy Spirit had called at this very moment. He called him and said, look up, this is your
Savior. And when Jesus came, he became their witness. And a lot of Gentiles are saved at that point, too, right at the very end of the church age.
All right. So the mystery that's finished is the church, the church witnessing to the world.
And it's finished. And so that's where the rapture of the church happens. If you study the book of Revelation, you have to admit the church is still there.
I mean, they're the very ones that the saints in heaven are looking down saying, oh, Lord, why do you delay your coming?
Go back because they're cutting our brother's heads off. I mean, there's still that's still the church is still down there.
And how in the world these people propagated this theory.
And I believed it for so long. And I'm embarrassed that I did not apologize to every saint that I ever taught that nonsense to.
Mystery is a word formula for the church, the indwelling of believers in the rapture and all kind of tied together.
And when that is over, that is over at the at the blowing of the seventh, the sounding of the seventh trumpet.
Now, let's go into Thessalonians here. And I'm real close to done out of time.
I can see that. But we have more of you than we usually have in our little church. So our prayer session went a little longer, which is a good thing.
So I'm going to take my time if you don't mind. First Thessalonians 4 .15, for this we say unto you by the word of the
Lord that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord will not prevent in the
Greek that is Thano and it means precede. We will not precede or go before them that are asleep.
In other words, those who died before us will be resurrected first and then we will come up with them.
We won't go up before them. That tells you it can't be seven years before the resurrection. It has to happen with the resurrection.
In fact, a nanosecond after it, because they have to come out of the grave and their new bodies.
And then we go up with them and we don't precede them. Paul made that clear. So we're looking at Paul's chronology now.
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout. Doesn't that sound like the second coming? With the voice of the archangel, there's the seventh trumpet is blown and the dead in Christ shall rise.
What? You say it. I want you to say it, because if you hear yourself say it, you'll believe yourself.
You won't believe me. When does it say? First. So the dead, the resurrection has to happen first.
Okay. Then everybody say it. Come on, type it in your text. See if you're still alive.
Wow, we still have most people here, too. You didn't go to sleep yet. That's good. Or you're asleep at your laptop. Okay.
Then, there you go. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore, comfort one another with these words. Again, we see the rapture cannot happen until after the first resurrection.
We shall not precede them. For the Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout. Not in secret.
This is the second coming. And the rapture is part of it. And the trump of God. How many last trumps can there be?
And the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them.
So Paul's chronology is the same as Jesus. Tribulation, then second coming and resurrection, and then rapture.
All right. He gives it again. I'm not going to. I got some other great stuff. We're going to save it for next time. But I want to finish up here.
So let me give me a couple more minutes. Second Thessalonians 2 .1. Paul gives this chronology in a different way in a different place.
Look what he says. Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of the Lord. So what does he mention first?
The second coming. The coming from the lightning, like the lightning from east to west, like every eye shall see him.
So I beseech you by the second coming of Christ. And secondly, I beseech you by the gathering together into him.
You tell me which happens first in order there. Same chronology he gave a minute ago and the same chronology
Jesus Christ gave earlier. That you be not soon shaken in mind or troubled neither by spirit or word or letter from us as the day of Christ is at hand.
So you don't need to worry that he's going to come in secret before he comes in the second coming as lightning.
It's not going to happen that way. And Paul was upset because there were some false teachers in his day teaching that nonsense.
And he was rebuking them in this passage, if you go read it. But he says very clearly the reason he started the verse.
And I know that we add the verses, but the reason he started his thought with, I beseech you by the coming of the
Lord and the gathering as he put it in the order that it's going to happen. So these people's minds would be relieved. Let no man deceive you by any means for that day shall not come except there come a falling away first and that man of sin be revealed.
That's talking about the Antichrist. So here's his chronology coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, our gathering together and the
Antichrist must be revealed and a great falling away will happen, falling away from the truth and the church and the secular world will happen before any of that happens.
So there you go. Now. You know,
Jesus says that day and hour, no man knows, but my father only in the days of Noah, it will be just like that before I come back.
Kind of fascinating to think about that, because he said they'll be eating, drinking and giving in marriage.
I mean, that tells you people are doing just normal things when he comes back. The economy apparently is going to be together because they're still eating and drinking and having weddings.
So if you're worried about the coronavirus ending everything, it's not going to. These things must come to pass.
The end is not yet. Comfort one another with these things. So don't you find it interesting that in that passage, now this is still in the
Matthew 24 passage, Jesus is still going and he's talking about all these things here. He talks about, you know, it's going to be like the times of Noah right there.
And in the next verses, what in the world is this talking about? And here's another passage that I couldn't teach in the past, because with the previous theory of thinking the rapture happened seven years before the coming,
I knew this didn't fit. Because what has Jesus talked about in chapter 24 of Matthew already?
He's talked about great tribulation like you've never seen. He's talked about false prophets that will teach that I came in secret before I really come.
And he said, don't believe them. And then he talked about the fact there'll be a resurrection. And Paul talked about that.
And the resurrection has to come first. And then we come up with them and all these things. He talks about when he does come, he'll come like lightning from the east to the west.
Every eye shall see him. And then we see this. Oh, then he said it'd be like the days of Noah, right? So he tells us some signs again.
But then we see this. You tell me what you think this sounds like. Picture it. Try to picture this. Jesus is giving a fore view of what actually happens.
This is real. He said, then. Then meaning what? After the tribulation period, after the second coming like lightning from the east to the west, then there shall be two in the field.
The one shall be taken and the other left. Then there'll be two women grinding at the mill.
One will just keep working like nothing happened. The other one's just gone. What does that sound like to you? Watch, therefore, for you know not what hour your
Lord doth come. So when I used to believe the old story, I had trouble teaching that because it came after the tribulation, came after the second coming.
It's clearly talking about the rapture. This is how Lindsay stuff right here, like boom, they just disappear.
But it happens at a different time than those guys wrote in their books. All right.
So I don't have any trouble teaching the whole Bible now, now that I had spent my time studying and being able to put it together in the proper scriptural chronology.
I had a wonderful friend named Gary Plumlee. When I was a brand new Christian, he was one of my mentors.
And he said this, David, as you go on out your life, growing in the Lord and studying theology, you're going to be tempted by theologians because they sound so reasonable.
They'll have a false premise. You'll buy into it. And then their logic is perfect. And you'll end up believing stuff that's not true.
He said, David, never let your theology make you become unbiblical. Wow.
I've never forgot. I can remember how he looked the day he told me that. And now
I'm going to end with this. I promise this is my third ending. All pastors that are any good at all have three endings, not just one, three closings.
All right. So Daniel 12, I want to just briefly give you Daniel's chronology. I've given you Jesus's, given you
Paul's. Here's Daniel's in the Old Testament. Verse one, at that time, Michael will stand up, the great prince, which stands for the children of thy people.
And there shall be a time of trouble such as never was seen by any nation, even that to the same time.
So there's your tribulation period that never was there trouble like this since there was a nation, even to that same time when it happens, there's never been trouble like that.
That's the great tribulation period. And at that time, thy people shall be delivered. That's the rapture.
Everyone that will be found written in your book will be delivered. Everyone that's still alive will be delivered.
Now, look at the time of the Daniel says this delivery will happen. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt.
And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever.
But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, seal the book, even till the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be increased.
We're there, aren't we? So we can understand this a little bit better. What's his chronology? First, we see great tribulation.
Then we see a second coming and a resurrection. And so forth.
Jesus gives it that way. Paul gives it that way. Daniel gives it the same way.
And that's something. So I'm going to leave you with this for next time. If you're able to join us next Sunday, the Lord willing.
I'm going to ask you the question, how many resurrections does the Bible actually teach? Because the resurrection has to happen first, and then those who are alive and remain go up together with them.
So the rapture cannot happen until after that resurrection. When is that resurrection? How many resurrections are they?
What does the Bible say about it? I'm not interested in what your books say about it or the old books I read say about it. I want to know what scripture says about it.
We'll talk about that next time. All right, Brother Ben, if you're still awake over there, my man,