Welcome to Rock Harbor Church's channel on Sermon Audio. We hope this message is a blessing to you and it helps you in your daily walk with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So please, settle in and grab your Bibles. Here's the message with Associate Pastor David Howell. This is for today. We're awaiting the blessed hope and refocusing on the doctrine of the rapture. Now, I'm going to do maybe two things with you this morning. I wanna look at the rapture next to the second coming, okay? A year ago or so, I did one message on two judgments and two destinations, okay? There's a great white throne judgment, You don't want to go there, alright? And that's at the end of Revelation chapter 20. And Jesus is scary. He's fierce. People run away from Him. They flee from Him. And the books are going to be opened. People are going to be judged by the works for their salvation. and nobody can be saved by their works for their salvation. Meanwhile, the other judgment is the Bema Seat of Christ, and it'll take place right after the rapture, right after Jesus comes back for his bride, the church, and he will also evaluate them on the basis of their works. That's the interesting part. but it won't be for your salvation. It'll be for your rewards, okay? And so we tried to emphasize the difference between those two judgments, okay? You wanna be at the beam of seat of Christ, even though, yes, your works are gonna be evaluated, and yeah, 1 Corinthians 3 does teach that some of our works may get burned up, and we might even, some of us, escape into heaven just as by the fire, by the nick of our, you know, the skin of our teeth, okay? But we're gonna be saved. because we can't lose our salvation at the behemoth seat of Christ, all right? So you keep that clear which one you wanna go to. Now, of course, you don't really get a choice. It depends on what you do with Jesus, okay? If you receive Jesus as your Savior sometime during your life, then you are going to the behemoth seat of Christ, and you don't need to be afraid, okay? He's gonna reward you there for the things you do, and you're going to get a mansion in heaven, according to John 14, and you're going to be part of the wedding festivities up there, the wedding feast of the Lamb, okay? So we're awaiting the blessed hope, and we're taking a look this morning at what we have here. two things, the second coming of Christ, as opposed to the rapture. We're gonna compare them a little bit, okay? And you may find some things in here that you disagree with, and that's fine, just as long as you understand that I'm right. Now, I support Dallas Theological Seminary a little bit, and I get letters from them, and recently I got this letter, and it said, Dear David, Recently, I, that's the president of DTS, I wrote to fellow DTS seminary supporters like you about biblical illiteracy, especially biblical illiteracy about prophecy. Now I hope that term biblical illiteracy doesn't throw you off, I can barely pronounce it, okay, at this time in the morning. By the way, is this what eight o'clock looks like? I haven't seen 8 o'clock for a long time. Actually, we're up Sunday morning by 8, but we're still getting ready to come for the Sunday school class that I teach during the second service, and then we come to the third service. You are a good-looking bunch of people at 8 o'clock in the morning, I have to say. Okay, getting up with the rooster like that. By the way, don't look at Leanda for an example of what looks good at 8 o'clock. because one of our three dogs got sick last night, our older dog, and she's been up all night taking care of it, but not just taking care of it, what does a dog do when it gets sick, when it gets old? We got a big backyard, and it's dark out there. And she goes way out to the far corner of the backyard under a trailer, and she's been out there during the night with the flashlight trying to get her to come in. And she doesn't want to come in because she's embarrassed, you know, poor doggie. And so Leanne has been up doing that. says the president of DTS, the biggest problem, now this is his opinion, but he's well informed, the biggest problem with Christianity today is that so few Christians know their Bible. How many of you here know your Bible this morning, okay? Raise your hands if you know your Bible, all right. You're getting to know your Bible? I hope you're in your Bible. I challenged my Sunday school class to read their Bible five minutes a day, every day, okay? And I'm not gonna challenge you today to do that, but I just mention that to you as a challenge from my class to the rest of you here, okay? Read your Bible five minutes a day or more, including what it says about the future. People don't know what the Bible says about the future. Many Christians miss joy because they believe prophecy is too confusing to understand. How many of you have heard people say that? Oh, prophecy is so dense and it's so dark and it's so gloomy and it's hard to understand. I don't wanna study prophecy, okay? In frustration, they give up on prophecy. Isn't that discouraging? Because God gave us clear instructions and hope about future events. He wants us to know about them. I'm gonna prove it to you in just a minute. He wants us to have courage to face tough times. If tough times are coming, then the Bible gives us the answer. And the Bible is there to encourage us about what's gonna happen ultimately even through those tough times. Yet many people, including many of God's people, don't know what his word says about the future. The good news is that this problem can be solved. For example, if I was to ask you what chapter of the Bible is the rapture in, would you know? How many of you know where to look for the rapture in the Bible? Not too many. Everybody, everybody should know. 1 Thessalonians chapter four. You should know that. Go home today, get your Bible out, and your highlighter, okay, and highlight verses 16 and 17 in 1 Thessalonians, okay, chapter four, because that is your blessed hope, all right? That's what's gonna pull you through. How many of you know what chapter the second coming of Christ is in? Where's the second coming of Christ found in the Bible? Anybody? Revelation chapter 19 and 20. I just told you a few minutes ago, okay? Revelation chapter 19 and 20. You have to pardon me. I was a teacher for 42 years, okay? I'm sorry, asking you questions at eight o'clock in the morning, all right? So, The president of DTS sees a problem. Now, what is the truth about the Bible, okay? You may be surprised to learn that it's one-third prophecy. Now, if it's good to read the Bible and good to study the Bible, that means if one-third is prophecy, you should be studying prophecy one-third of the time and not saying, oh, it's too frustrating, it's too dark, I don't wanna learn about prophecy. Did you know that God is a God of prophecy? Now, he's a God of a lot of different things, right? As well as prophecy, and he wants you to pay attention. Are you paying attention this morning? Okay, pay attention. God wants to talk to you this morning about your attitude toward prophecy, all right? Isaiah 46, for example, says this. Now, this is straight out of the Old Testament, okay? And in Isaiah, The chapters, 40s, the 40s chapters, however you would say that, okay, are full of verses about who God is. He declares who he is over and over again, and sometimes tells you a little bit about himself in these 40s chapters of Isaiah. In 46 he says this, for I am God and there is no other. Okay, that's great, he's the only true God. Okay, that's wonderful, that's good, but, I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning. Declaring the end from the beginning is God backwards, okay? End from the beginning, what he start, God, he starts with the end. And he sees everything back to the present time and then past us to, you know, the past, okay? In other words, God is the Lord of time, and time to him doesn't run in a line, you know, this way only, progressing into the future slowly, day by day. Time for him can be started right at the end, and he can go backwards if he wants to. Okay, that's what it says, right? Am I right? I'm not making this up. Declaring the end for the beginning, and from ancient times, things that are not yet done. So in ancient times, God would tell you about stuff that's not yet done. Okay, what do we call that when he tells us about stuff that's not yet done? We call that prophecy. Is God a God of prophecy? Yes, he is. He's going to do what he says, okay. In Isaiah 55 he says that. He says, I'm gonna send my word out and it's not gonna return to me void, okay. He's going to do what he says, so pay attention to what he says, and here it comes. We're gonna learn some of it this morning, okay? Now, one more point about prophecy, one or two more points. Hebrews 1, 1 and 2. God spoke in times past to the fathers. This is the first verse of the book of Hebrews. He spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets. Okay, so God, in the Old Testament, we would say, all right, he spoke to, you know, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, King David, okay, all those great guys. in by the prophets, okay? So just to give you an example of who the prophets are in the Bible, let me see. And you can join in with me if you think you know them, okay? There's Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, those are the four what? major prophets, they're longer in length, okay? And they're followed by 12 short prophets, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, okay? So there's a whole bunch of books of prophecy in, what did I tell you? One third of the Bible is prophecy. Pay attention to what God is saying. Now he goes on to say here, in the last days, The last days are ever since Jesus came, okay? And God's course for Israel is suspended, all right? He stops advancing the history of Israel and he deals with the newly born church, okay, which was not foretold in the Old Testament. And so there's kind of a break in Hebrew history for the church to take place. And in these last days, he's spoken to us by his son. Hey, that's Jesus, wow, that's great. So the forefathers, they heard Daniel and Ezekiel, but we get to hear Jesus, all right? Is that a good deal or what? whom he has appointed heir of all things, and through whom he also made worlds." Now, we love to read the Sermon on the Mount, and we love to read, you know, the Gospel of John and the teaching of Jesus, and we should All right, but Jesus also wrote the book of Revelation, okay? He got one of his favorite apostles up there in the island of Patmos and said, John, I want you to write to the seven churches, and I want you to write about the things that you have seen, the things that are, and the things you're going to see, okay? What is that? It's history. current events and the future in prophecy. And there's 22, I almost said 21, 22 chapters of prophecy in Revelation, all right? So what a deal is that? That's Jesus talking to you. And what does he say about you folks who venture into the book of Revelation once in a while? I hope you don't just sort of open your Bible. I mean, it would be better than nothing. Open your Bible, read five minutes somewhere, okay? I hope you read systematically. At least pick a book. The only trouble is, if you pick a book, you're gonna pick, you know, sort of favorite books and stay away from certain ones. If you read through the Bible systematically, yeah, there's gonna be stuff that you may not enjoy, but you're gonna read things like the book of Revelation, okay? And if you read the book of Revelation, this is what Jesus says to you. Now you can go home and get this blessing today by opening up your Bible to Revelation and reading it, okay? Anybody here need a blessing? I could use a blessing, how about you? Some of you, anybody here would like a blessing, okay? Don't need it, but you'd like a blessing. You're allowed to want a blessing even if you don't need it, that's allowed, okay? You can ask for a blessing from your father to pray for you or something like that, that's what they did in the Bible. And Jesus says, blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it for the time is near. Blessed is he who reads and hears the words of this prophecy. Okay, so there it is, all right? Jesus is talking to you prophetically and the question is, are you listening? Now, we know the world is a mess. We don't have to debate that, and I'm just amazed. I mean, I've watched the news for 50 years, and I just, I gave up watching it recently. I mean, that is a big, like, shocker for me. I used to subscribe to Time Magazine, and I'd take the covers off, because they were colorful, and hang them up around my classroom, and I called that the ring of Time, okay? The Ring of Time. I had my Ring of Time around my classroom. Okay, Time Magazine covers. I can remember the death of Frank Sinatra in 1994 or something, you know? And he was up there, okay? One of the cover articles. All right, our government wants to grow bigger and bigger, it seems like. Now, our Constitution, I don't know if you've noticed this or ever been educated about this, our Constitution, postulates a small government, okay? It limits the powers of government. When you read through the Constitution, that's all the government is allowed to do, but it has expanded enormously, monstrously, okay? If you get a government, you know, grade 12 government textbook and look at it, look at the executive branch. The executive branch is the second article in the Constitution. It's not the first, okay? The first is Congress. You know why? Because they make laws and they have the ability to tax you, okay? But the presidency, the executive branch has grown hugely And it has all of these offices and organizations that are attached to it and answer to it, like the DOJ, like the Department of Justice, for example. That's just one, okay? And there are many other blocks of government that don't answer to Congress, they answer to the president. Okay, so it's grown bigger and bigger, and it wants to, It's got the attitude, have you got a problem? We're gonna solve it for you, okay? Here's another government program, okay? And there's some money, okay? And some more bureaucrats, some forms to fill out, and we're gonna solve that problem for you, all right? It's their attitude. But the Constitution, you know what its attitude originally was? We're gonna help you solve your own problems, okay? And take care of yourself. But that thinking has been lost, okay? God help us to recover some of that, all right? And in the process, of course, the government wants to control us more and more, all right? It just, it's like Leviathan, like a gigantic octopus, and it just can't help itself, okay? It's never gonna back down, it's never going to shrink itself, it's never gonna say. You know, maybe we don't really need this Department of Education over here that gets all this money. It never teaches a student, never even teaches a teacher, okay? All they do is sit at desks and make up programs, okay? No child left behind, all right? And others, core curriculum, common core, okay? You know, brainy bureaucrats sit there and, you know, draw it out on a piece of paper. Never been in the classroom, okay? I remember I was teaching a few years, and they foisted project learning on us. Now, project learning sounds really good, okay? You know, the kids work on projects, and that's how they learn better than you talking at them, okay? All right? And then, you know, I did some of these projects, and what the kids do is they run upstairs, and they look on the internet, and they print off four or five pages, and they stick them together, and say that's their project. And then I would ask them, okay, tell me about Abraham Lincoln. You know, and I would be reading off of their project, you know. Where was he born? Oh, I don't know. Okay, well, what high office in the land did he hold eventually? I don't know. I just printed it off, okay? I gave you your project, be happy, okay, teacher? See, because the idea for that came from the bureaucrats instead of from the teachers, okay, who were in the classroom. Our leaders are making up crises for us. We just saw that on, you know, the, screen a minute ago. They're making up crises for us to force us, you know, to follow their instructions, and they're foreshadowing the great delusion in 2 Thessalonians. There's a great delusion that God is going to unleash on the world, and you can see it coming slowly, all right, where people, they're not following reason, their following delusion, all right? Evil is rampant in our streets. We have Antifa and BLM riots in our cities in 2020, and some more recently. Unrestricted, while the January 6th hearings go on and on, the attacks on our pregnancy centers are terrible, terrible ideas, because the pregnancy centers, they're not forcing anybody to do anything. and they're helping pregnant women. And then somebody says, oh, you know, that's a threat to abortion. How's that a threat to abortion, okay? Can somebody not go to the Planned Pregnancy Center still, even though there's a pregnancy center in the neighborhood? Of course they can still go, okay? They might not, but they can still go. So nobody's forcing them not to go. And you don't need to destroy a pregnancy center to enable people to avail themselves of abortion. and threats against the Supreme Court. Now, how about that Supreme Court of ours this week? What do you think about that? Okay. And you know, they did not ban abortion, did they? They didn't do that. What they were doing was dealing with the Constitution. What they were saying was, hey, this Roe versus Wade is weak law. And not only that, it invents, okay, the right of privacy, and from that, it invents the right to an abortion. But there's no such thing in the Constitution. You know, you read the first 10 amendments, first five amendments, freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion, freedom of petition, and freedom of assembly. Okay, did you know those five? You should know those. You should look them up and memorize them, okay? Because those are your first five freedoms in the First Amendment to the Constitution, okay? And you can read the other amendments too. You can read the whole Constitution, no right to abortion. But it was invented back in 72, 73. And so what the Supreme Court is saying today, they're not saying, you know, we're gonna outlaw abortion. Now they might, somewhere down the line, what they're saying is, we wanna get the Constitution back in whack, okay? Because it's out of balance here. You know, it's doing things that it wasn't designed to do, and interfering with stuff it wasn't designed to interfere with. But I got news for you. The worse things get, the closer we are to our blessed hope. And the Apostle Paul, he lived in times of the pagan Roman Empire. Okay, what a deal was that. This poor guy, you know, had to survive all of the pagan practices of the Roman Empire, and he wrote, you know what, but we got something to look forward to, all right, that's unbeatable. And he wrote in Titus chapter two, verse 13, The Apostle Paul, okay, living in the midst of the pagan Roman Empire, wrote that we should live godly for the present age, all right, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now, first of all, and this is a side sermon, you're gonna get this one for free. This verse is one of the clearest declarations of the divinity of Jesus Christ that there is in the New Testament, okay? The New Testament usually edges its way up sideways to the issue of the divinity of Jesus. Was he the son of God? Yes, he was, okay? But the cults say, no, he wasn't, okay? Because he never said it, they say, all right? But Jesus did say this in Mark chapter two and the other gospels as well. He did say to the poor crippled man, get up, take your bed and walk, And the guy did it. And then Jesus said, oh, by the way, too, I forgive you your sins. What? What? Blasphemy! Nobody forgives sins except God. Jesus says, actually he didn't say this, but you could tell he meant it. Jesus says, exactly. Nobody forgives sins but God. See what I mean? He edged his way up sideways too, but you were left flabbergasted with the claims. Now there's many of those in the New Testament, but not too many direct statements about the deity of Jesus. Doesn't mean the Bible doesn't teach his, you know, God. It does, all right? but it does it a little bit indirectly, usually, but this time, Titus 3, 13, directly, okay? Our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Wow, okay, but that was a side sermon. We wanna go back to the blessed hope. That's the title of the sermon. So Paul is saying, hey, you're living in the pagan Roman Empire, it's really, really bad, but you know what? You're looking forward to the blessed hope, okay, and appearing of our great God, Jesus Christ. And I just wanna repeat, the worse things get, the closer his appearing is. Now, if you can get your mind wrapped around that concept, it's gonna make a tremendous difference to your life, okay? Now, what do I mean? I mean, when you're watching the news and you see bad stuff unfolding, You can say, well, there's two things you can say. You can say, oh, things are getting horrible, I'm gonna go hide under the bed and spend the rest of the day there, okay? You know, I give up, I can't do anything. Or you can say this, you know what? Wow, that news is terrible. Jesus is close. He's almost here, okay? The worse it gets, the closer He is to coming, okay? Our blessed hope and appearance, all right, of our great God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, now, as we look at the blessed hope in scripture, a great question has arisen, okay, about this. And the question is, you know, is the second coming of Christ, is the coming of Christ one event or two events, okay? Big controversy about that. A lot of people like to lump them together because they like to keep things simple. Okay, he's coming back, second coming. Well, what about this business where he comes to the air and brings all the dead people out of the ground, dead Christians rather, and us also up in the air. What about that? Where does that fit in? Well, it's part of the second coming. Well, I would suggest to you not, okay? Because it's too hard to put them together. But throughout history, the popular view of the second coming is Jesus comes and returns in power and glory with the armies of heaven, fights the battle of Armageddon. Okay, so far so good. That's pretty much out of Revelation 19. He sits on the great white throne, he opens the books and judges everybody on their works, and he sends them to heaven or hell in one event, okay? So he comes and picks us up and he takes us to heaven and he judges us, separates us, sends some people to hell. And you see here some people going to hell and some people going to be with Jesus in heaven, okay? Except, you know from that sermon that I summarized for you, two judgments, two destinations, that ain't true. This ain't true, okay? It doesn't happen that Jesus judges and divides people into two, okay? There may be like a judgment of the nations, a la Matthew chapter 25, but talking about the big end of history, great white throne judgment, there's no division of people into lost or saved. The trouble is, only lost people show up at the Great White Throne Judgment, okay? And only Christians are stolen away out of Satan's world, okay? The strong man fell asleep, okay? And Jesus, Yes, I know it runs against your fur that he might be a thief, but Jesus shows up like a thief in one of his parables, and he raids the strongman's house because the guy's asleep. And Jesus even says if he were awake, he would have resisted. He would have locked up his house, okay? But I raided his house, and what did I take? I didn't, you know, I didn't take gold, silver. I took my people, okay, the ones who have received me as Savior, I took them right out of his kingdom, and I'm not even gonna touch down. I'm not even gonna be on the ground. I'm gonna take them right up into heaven to be with me, okay? So that popular conception of the last judgment is not true, and you need to tell people that. How many people have told you that they're gonna take their chances at the judgment? You witness to them, and they say, well, I'll take my chances when I get there. I hope that I'll have enough good deeds to get me past St. Peter into the portals of heaven. I would like to be in heaven, and I think I go to church twice a year, and I give a little bit to charity, and I don't steal. or kill people, so I think I should make it into heaven, don't you? No, I don't, because all those righteous deeds of yours are just a pile of filthy rags in God's sight. Unfortunately, his standards of holiness are a lot higher than ours. and the only one that meets his standards are Jesus, and on the cross, he sacrificed himself. What was he doing up on the cross? Was he making an example that we should follow him and be crucified? Well, in one sense, yes, very secondarily, but no, okay? He wasn't saying, hey, all you guys get crucified. He was saying, I'm up here shedding my blood to cover your sins. and it's the only way you're going to deal with your sins before my Holy Father, okay? He's too holy for you to approach him, to get into his presence, and so you've gotta be covered by my blood, figuratively, you know, in faith, to ever be able to stand in the presence of God. What if I don't, what if I'm not covered? Well, you wouldn't wanna be in the presence of God. Well, you know, I wanna go to heaven. No, you don't wanna go to heaven if you are not a Christian, okay? Because you'll be blown out of heaven, okay? It'll be such a terrible experience, you'll be very happy to be kicked out of heaven, unfortunately, okay? Because you would have your sin nature in heaven. There's no sin in heaven, okay? We're gonna get a new nature, by the way, okay? How many of you are ready for a new nature? Okay, how many of you are ready for a new body? Are you sure? Are you sure? Well, okay, we're gonna have a look at that, all right? Now, let's take a look briefly at the second coming, okay? The second coming, okay, is in Revelation 19 and 20. I'm going to read it a little rapidly, okay? Now I saw in heaven, I saw heaven opened rather, and behold a white horse and he who sat at him judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire and his name is called the Word of God. "'The armies of heaven were clothed in fine linen, "'white and clean, followed him on white horses. "'Now out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, "'that with it he should strike the nations. "'And he himself will rule them with a rod of iron, "'and his robe is written, "'King of kings, Lord of lords.'" Okay. And then in chapter 20, then I saw a great white throne, and him who sat on it, and from whose face the earth and heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God. And books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works by the things that were written in the books. "'The sea gave up the dead who were in it, "'and death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. "'And they were judged each one according to his works. "'Then death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. "'This is the second death. "'And anyone not found written in the book of life "'was cast into the lake of fire.'" Now does that sound like a good time? No, it doesn't. It sounds like a really scary, frightening time, okay? That's the great white throne judgment, the one you don't want to be at, okay? And notice about this second coming in Revelation 19 and 20, notice some things here, okay? When Jesus comes and gets us, we sang it this morning, by the way, thank you, Shannon. We're gonna be like a bride, and he's gonna be like a bridegroom. Now that's usually, when the bridegroom comes and gets the bride, that's usually a happy event, okay? A wedding, all right? Fun, festivities, happiness, food, wine, okay? Good times, all right? Does this sound like a good time, Revelation 19 and 20? King Jesus judges. At the rapture, he's not gonna judge anything, okay? Here he judges and makes war. What kind of Jesus is that? I never heard of that. Jesus makes war? Good night. Where is this stuff? In Revelation, it's prophecy. Read it and get a blessing. His eyes are like a flame of fire. You wanna look at Jesus in the second coming? Eyes like a flame of fire? No thank you. He is followed by the armies of heaven. Now very briefly, because I'm not covering all of this, the armies of heaven is you and me. When Jesus comes back at the rapture, he's not coming all the way down to the ground. He's going to be in the air. There's gonna be a shout and a trumpet call, okay? And the dead in Christ are gonna rise first. They're gonna go before us, because Paul is answering the question, Have the dead in Christ, to the Thessalonians, he's answering the question, have they missed going to heaven? And Paul says, no, not by a long shot. When Jesus comes to call us up to be with him, he's gonna call the dead in Christ first, okay? It may be that we may see some resurrected saints coming out of the earth, okay? And somewhere as they rise into the air, because Jesus is bringing them back with him, are all of the dead Christians. Their souls, their souls have been in heaven. What happens when you die? When you die, we put, your body into the ground, okay? And your soul goes to heaven. What did Jesus say to the thief on the cross beside him, the one that had faith in him? This day you will be with me in paradise, right? Right, okay? And to be absent from the body, says Paul, is to be present. with the Lord, so when you die, you go to be present with the Lord, your soul goes to heaven. Jesus bring those souls back, they're gonna meet the resurrected bodies, they're gonna be new people, okay? Now, we're gonna rise in the air also, and we're gonna see all these dead Christians alive around us with new bodies, and we're gonna be jealous. We're gonna say, Lord, where's my body? We'll see in a minute, okay? He has a sword that he's gonna strike the nations with, and his rod of iron. Is that a nice sort of, you know, comfy Jesus, you know? Somebody singing you to sleep at night, you know, hold you in his arms? No, he's going to strike the nations with his sword and rule them with a rod of iron, all right, during the millennium, later on, okay? He's coming all the way down to earth. Second coming, he comes down to earth and he fights a terrible battle. What's that terrible battle called? It's very famous. Armageddon, okay? And none of this is meant to comfort us. It's meant to warn us and educate us. Doesn't sound very comforting. He sits on the great white throne in chapter 20 and opens the books and judges all of the dead and the living without Christ. Anybody without Christ goes to the second resurrection and to the great white throne. And everybody there, as far as we can see, We read the text very carefully. Now, some people say, no, there'll be people who go to heaven from this judgment, but it's very difficult to see it in the passage, okay? It would be, you know, nice, okay, but that's sort of reading your feelings into the passage rather than the passage trying to tell you what to believe. And so it looks like, you know, everybody's gathered up, all of the lost without Christ, from death, from Hades, from the sea, okay, from the ground, and the books are read to them, and somebody looks, Jesus or somebody, one of the angels, looks in the Book of Life. The Book of Life has all the names of all the saved people. And guess what, okay? None of those people whose names are in the Book of Life are at the Great White Throne Judgment, okay? It's a checkup to make sure nobody slipped through and got to the Great White Throne Judgment by mistake, okay? And everybody, unfortunately, is thrown into the lake of fire. Now, this is a distraction that I don't have time for, okay? But people ask me, is my pet gonna be in heaven, all right? Leanne asked me last night. No, she didn't, but she wanted to, okay? Are there gonna be pets in heaven? Well, we don't know, do we, all right? But there is one creature who I am told Now, we have dogs and cats and chickens. We don't have any of these creatures. They're too big for our backyard. But there's a lot of people that love these creatures. And they claim this, theologically, that these creatures are the least corrupted of all of God's creatures since the fall. That's what they tell me. That's what they write about. That's what they sing about. There's even a song to these guys in the book of Job. Are you familiar with it? Okay. It was quoted in a Walt Disney movie with some US cavalry in it, and you know, they've got their horses and stuff, and the guy says this song to horses from the Book of Job. Okay, what's the noblest creature? Well, you know, you might love your dog and your cat, but they're not particularly noble, are they, all the time? But what's the noblest creature on earth? Okay. It's a horse. All right. And I went too far there. All right. And here's a bunch of white horses. Now is there anything so beautiful as a bunch of white horses? Okay. Well, ask Ben-Hur in the movie. Okay. And Ben-Hur stops, you know, about midpoint of the movie, going back to Judea, and he's now powerful and rich, and he's been a charioteer in Rome, okay? Though you don't see that in the movie, but they tell you. So he's back in Judea, and he wants to find his mother and sister, and he stops with this Arab. This Arab stops him because Ben-Hur was admiring his team of horses, a team of four white horses. And the Arab is trying to manipulate Ben-Hur into charioteering for him in the Judean Circus Maximus, okay? So this is high-stakes stuff going on at supper time, all right? So they have supper, and the Arab man asks him, how many wives Ben-Hur has? He says, well, I don't have any. And the Arab says, what? You know, no wives, you don't have two or three or four. That is not generous, he says to Ben-Hur, okay? I always remember that, all right? That's not generous to have only, like, no wives. I better not say one wife, okay? And then he says, all right, we need to go to bed now, but I gotta say goodbye to my darlings, okay? So then what does he do? One of the slaves rips open the whole side of the tin, okay? And Ben-Hur looks, expecting to see four beautiful young wives, right? Or more, or less. And instead he sees four white horses, okay? The Arab man loves his horses, okay? And he knows the lineage, and he knows their mother, the mare. And he says, I dare not take the mare out of my country. My people would never stand for it, okay? I could never take their mother out of the country. But I brought these four to go chariot racing against the Romans. You know, won't you do that? And he speaks to each one of them, kisses each one of them, goodnight, okay? His horses, all right, he's putting his horses to bed. How many of you have seen the movie Hidalgo? It's not a bad movie. This cowboy with a scrawny little paint pony, you know, paint is Indian, you know, multicolored, motley colored, you know, not thoroughbred, mongrel, a mongrel horse, okay? is a long-distance racer. And he's beginning at the movie, he's racing this Englishman across the woods and forests, you know, a hundred mile race or something. And he beats him and he's at the bar drinking. The Englishman comes in angry and insults Mortimer, what's his name? Veganson, you know? He insults him and the cowboy doesn't even turn around, he just keeps on sipping his whiskey, okay? Then the Englishman insults his horse and Mort turns around and goes, pow, okay? And the Englishman is shocked, you know, like, what's that about? You can insult me, but you cannot insult my horse, okay? So a lot of people think horses are very important. Did you notice anything in the passage in Revelation chapter 20? Jesus is gonna be mounted on a horse. Now, it's not up there, it's not on this screen, okay? Did you notice anything about the armies of heaven? That's going to be us coming back out of heaven. Okay? What are we going to be mounted on? Horses. Where do the horses come from? Where are they to begin with? They have to be where? Where are they? Come on, say it, I know you're afraid to. You're afraid to. Heretics, okay, horses in heaven, how dare you, okay? I'm dealing with the text, okay? What does the text say? Jesus comes mounted on a horse out of heaven, and the armies of heaven come out of heaven on horses. They have to be in heaven to begin with, all right? Are there pets in heaven? I don't know, but I think there's a whole bunch of white horses up there, okay? I may get thrown out for this, I don't know. All right, let's take a look at the first event, which is actually the blessed hope, okay? And it's the rapture in 1 Thessalonians. Even so, God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus, okay? Now, if you are in Jesus and you die, You don't die forever and be obliterated. You fall asleep, alright? And you're gonna be wakened up, alright? Okay, yeah, I know, your body decays, you know, it's like, it's death, okay? It's awful, it's terrible. But Paul doesn't see it in quite the same way as those who do not have Christ. Those in Christ fall asleep, and they're going to be wakened, okay? For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, the voice of an archangel, the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore, comfort one another with these words. Notice that last part. Therefore, comfort one another with these words, okay? Jesus is going to bring back all the souls of those who have died in Christ. Everybody who's been in Christ for 2,000 years and died, okay, is gonna be brought back. Their bodies are gonna be brought up out of the ground. Their souls are going to unite with them in the air around Jesus when he comes to the air to rapture us up to be in heaven with him, okay? Their dead bodies will rise first, be transformed into new resurrection bodies. which will unite with the souls coming down out of heaven." How many of you have relatives or friends who have died in Christ? What's going to happen to them? Where are they? Their souls are in heaven, and their souls are aware, okay? So they're in heaven rejoicing, enjoying, and they know that that's temporary. They're coming back with Jesus, okay? To the air to meet us, and also to meet their new bodies, okay? They're gonna get a new body from Jesus in the air, all right? And, So will we. This isn't gonna happen on the ground or below the ground. It'll happen in the air, okay? Meanwhile, we who are alive and remain on earth will be caught up. And the idea is like stolen. We're gonna be stolen out of the world. Sneaked out of the world. Burglarized out of the world, okay? The word is harpazo in Greek. And we don't use that one. We use the Latin word. Okay, which is rapturo. And we borrowed the Latin word to describe what happens. Now I mention this to you because people are gonna say to you, Jehovah's Witnesses are gonna say, The word Trinity's not in the Bible, okay? There's no such teaching, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all of them God. There is, of course, but they will say the word Trinity's not in the Bible. And they are right, okay? And you have to explain it from other verses. And they will also say, okay, there's no rapture in the Bible, all right? There's no word rapture in the Bible. Well, there is in the Latin version that Jerome made up, okay, and we used, you know, that word to describe what goes on. So the word rapture is not in the Bible, that's right, but the rapture takes place in the Bible. Jesus is not gonna come to earth at this time, he's gonna come to the air, and he's not gonna judge anybody or anything at this time, okay? Now, what about us who are alive? And, you know, do we get anything out of this deal? Well, Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15, behold, I tell you a mystery. Now, this is something you didn't know before. I'm telling you now, says Paul. It was a mystery. It was veiled in the Old Testament. We didn't know about it. We shall not all sleep. We're not all gonna fall asleep. Some of us are gonna be alive when Jesus comes back in the air, okay? But we shall be changed. If you're alive when Jesus comes back in the air, you're going to be changed, all right? In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. How fast is the twinkling of an eye? Twinkle your eye. Ladies, not me, okay? At the screen. It's fast. You blink your eye, it's super fast, right? Okay, you can't even say how fast it is. In the twinkling of an eye, we're gonna be changed at the last trumpet. Okay, well, what does that mean? It means that we who are alive are gonna get a new body too. Now, you say, well, I don't want a new body. Okay, I wanna keep the old one. I'm in pretty good shape. Not me, but some of you, okay? But you're gonna need a new body because this body can't go through the ceiling. And you're going up. Jesus is not coming down here to meet you. He's not coming in the room here. He's gonna call us up there. And we gotta go through the roof, right? Is that right, wrong? Okay, but it says we're gonna get a new body. And then in Philippians, and also in 1 John, it says, our sedent ships in heaven from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to his glorious body. Jesus could appear and disappear at will. after his resurrection. He could transport himself, okay? Distances instantly. He could eat food or not eat food. He had a body, he said, don't touch him. But his body was mysteriously different from ours. And it was, you know, capable of superhuman things that we are not capable of. But we're gonna get bodies that are like his, says Philippians, okay? Keep that verse in mind, look it up for yourself. And I noticed that the reference is not there, but it's Philippians chapter two or three, okay? Toward the end of the chapter. We're gonna get these new bodies, and we're to comfort each other with these words. Now, is a new body comforting to you? Yeah. Is Jesus judging and making war, striking the nations with a rod of iron, and sending, you know, vast numbers of people to hell? Comforting, is that comforting? Are you comforted by that? No, you're warned by it, okay? So I'm gonna suggest to you that there are two separate events in the one coming of Jesus. As Jesus comes back, there's gonna be a first thing where he's gonna come and grab his bride out of the strongman's house. He's gonna call his bride out into the air and take her to his father's mansions, okay? So, does any of this sound like Jesus' second coming? No, therefore I think they're two separate events. Now, if the rapture doesn't happen at the second coming, when does it happen, okay? And this is when you get into the tribulation. We're not gonna deal with the tribulation very much here today except to mention it. The tribulation is a seven year period of suffering and sorrow that will afflict the earth at some time in the future. Now the question is, are we gonna be stolen away by Jesus before the tribulation? during the tribulation or after the tribulation, okay? Now, the Bible teaches that there'll be seven years, okay? Could he come in the air to catch us away during the tribulation? Maybe after the tribulation. Well, maybe. For the rapture to happen during or after, you would have to ignore a lot of scripture that seems to indicate that Christians will not be here for the tribulation, okay? It's true that Jesus promised tribulation in the world. I grant you that at the end of chapter 16. But this is local, temporary persecution of Christians by man. It is not God's wrath on an ungodly world, okay? I do not think that Jesus promised that we would go through God's wrath on an ungodly world. Jesus spends five chapters in John's gospel explaining unpleasant and some pleasant things to his disciples and preparing them for his departure. There are chapters 13, 14, 15, help me out here, 16, and 17. They are his high priestly prayer and ministry to his disciples the night before he was arrested. Five beautiful chapters. And in them, in John 14 in particular, Jesus resorts to wedding language to describe to the disciples what it would be like when he comes back for them, okay? He says, let not your heart be troubled. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also. John 14, okay? Paul teaches in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 that we are the bride of Christ. Okay, so we're the bride of Christ. Jesus says, I'm coming back to get you. Don't be troubled, I'm going away. Now, if he had said, I'm going away, and you're gonna have seven years of hell to go through, he couldn't say to them, don't be troubled, okay? See what I mean? All right, so there's no mention of seven years of trial and tribulation here. What the mention is, is that I'm coming to get you to take you to my father's house. He does not say, I'm going away, and you're going through seven years of hell, okay, on earth, and then I'll come back to get you. And I gotta ask you, what bridegroom, how many of you ladies would answer yes to a bridegroom who came and beat you up first, and then said, well, that was for your own good, that was to purify you, and now, would you like to marry me now, okay? You know, it's unlikely. Well, Jesus is not gonna put us through the tribulation and then marry us, okay? If the church had to go through the tribulation, Jesus would have said something like, I'm gonna prepare a place for you and I'm coming back for you after you go through a terrible seven year tribulation so you can be with me, okay, so you can be purified if you survive. I realize, this is where this stuff comes from. that the church needs to go through some serious suffering before going to heaven, okay? Some people feel like that. Now, the church is going through suffering, but it's temporary and it's local. It's not worldwide, okay? And people, because they live in North America, they get the idea, you know what the church needs? It needs some good suffering in order to get purified and really follow Jesus seriously, okay? And they forget something. The church does suffer in the rest of the world. So there are three things wrong with this idea that the church needs some serious tribulation, suffering before it gets to heaven. First of all, this is a North American perspective. In the rest of the world, the church suffers terribly from persecution from ungodly men and governments. Does the church in China need seven years of tribulation to be purified? I don't think so, okay? Does the church in India need seven years of tribulation in order to be purified? I don't think so. It's already suffering tribulation, okay? Jesus, John 16, in this world you will have, you know, tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world, he said, okay? So the part of the problem with wanting us to go through the tribulation is that we think the church needs some more persecution. The sixth seal in Revelation 6 is described as the wrath of the Lamb. Ungodly men in that passage pray for rocks and mountains to fall on them. That's how bad it is to face Jesus, okay, in Revelation 6. They call on rocks and mountains to hide them, to fall on them. Not Christians, okay, they don't pray like that. Jesus' wrath is not for his people. It's for the ungodly world system and all its followers, not for his bride, the church. Jesus died to pay the penalty for all our sins. The Lamb's wrath is for sinful men. We cannot suffer the wrath of the Lamb for our sins because he paid for them all, okay? So, you know, if we were to have to suffer in the tribulation and it's God's wrath on a godly world, it would mean that we're doing some suffering for our sins and it would mean that we're, you know, trying to pay for our salvation somewhat, okay? Now, by now you may have gathered that there are three popular positions. about the rapture, and they are the post-tribulational rapture, the mid-trib rapture, and the pre-trib rapture. And you furthermore may have gathered that I favor the pre-trib rapture, because that is what the church, RHC, here teaches, and what Pastor Brandon teaches. Now we have fellowship with people here who follow the other two positions, and God bless them, okay? But I have to say in my two or three years with Rock Harbor, my position as a pre-tribber has hardened. And I've come to understand the consequences of the other two positions. I greatly fear that if mid-tribbers, okay, were to, you know, get caught in the tribulation, we might find ourselves praying for the mountains and rocks to fall on us to hide us from the terrible wrath of the Lamb. But that's not our relationship with the Lamb of God, with Jesus. That's not how he deals with us. We're not gonna have to pray for rocks to cover us. Secondly, I fear that the believing church will go through the tribulation would be Believing that the church would go through the tribulation would be a great hindrance to evangelism, okay? Who wants to go out in the street and tell people about Christ and then bring them in and say, okay, you new Christians, we gotta have a discipleship class. And the first thing is, you're gonna go through seven years of hell, any moment now, okay? Get ready, all right? That's what being a post-tribber would take you to. And you might just look, Let's just look at the top one briefly. Number one, the pre-tribulation position, okay? The cross of Jesus is 2,000 years ago. There's 2,000 years of history up until the rapture. The rapture is the gray, that's the Christians and the dead in Christ going up. The blue is Jesus coming down. Now how far does he come down? Does he come down to the world? No. He meets us in the air, right? Now, there's a whole thing left unsaid, untaught here, okay? Where are we going to be? Well, we're going to be in heaven. What are you going to be doing? You're gonna be trying out all the doorknobs in your mansion, okay? And see if any of the windows stick, all right? And see if all the taps are running. You're gonna be enjoying life in heaven with the Lamb of God. And that's just one of the things that's gonna go on, okay? There's a whole bunch of things that go on. But as I'm gonna say at the end, that's another sermon for another time, okay? And you can see the other two positions there if you want to. "'If all of this has not convinced you yet, "'I've got three more arrows in my quiver.'" These are wonderful verses, okay? You should write these down. You should highlight them in your Bible at home. Okay, 1 Thessalonians chapter one, verse 10. And to wait, now, you know, we're taking it out of the paragraph, and to wait for a son from heaven whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come. Who delivers us from the wrath to come? Wait a second, does he deliver us from the wrath that is now? No, it's the wrath to come, okay? Is that clear? Is that clear? Jesus is delivering you from the wrath to come. Not the wrath right here and now, the wrath to come, all right? For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation. appoint us to wrath, make an appointment for us for wrath to come. He didn't appoint us. You didn't get that appointment. You didn't get that memo because you're in Jesus and he's taking you to heaven, okay? He's not appointing you to wrath. I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come on the whole world. Wait a second, aren't there trials now for Christians? Yes, but are they on the whole world? No, they're the local tribulation that Jesus promised us in John 16, okay? But I'm gonna keep you from the hour of trial which shall come on the whole world to test those who dwell on earth, okay? To dwell on earth, it sounds like Jesus has separated us from those who are on earth, and they're gonna go through the trial, okay? We're separated from them, and the people down there on earth are gonna go through the trial, all right? Wow, fantastic, okay? So, I'm gonna read you from the statement of faith here, from Rock Harbor, okay? and that is about the rapture of the church, Christ will return in the air. Now this is in the Statement of Faith, which Pastor Brandon spent six months writing many years ago, okay? About 10 years ago when he founded Rock Harbor. Christ will return in the air for purpose of gathering the church to himself, both dead and alive, and this event is both imminent and pre-tribulational, that this is the blessed hope of the church. Okay, so what are you hoping for? A nice retirement? A nice job? A nice marriage? A nice reward from your boss? Okay. There's lots of things we hope for, right? And what was Paul hoping for and directing us to? The blessed hope, all right? When you see the news and things are getting worse, do you have to get discouraged about it? No, you can be encouraged that he's closer than ever, okay? Heavenly Father, bless us now with the blessed hope and with your word and with the comfort that it gives us. In Jesus' name, amen. Thanks for joining us for another lesson. We hope that this message is a blessing for you and helps you grow towards a more mature understanding of God's Word. For more information about our ministry, we invite you to check out our website at rockharborchurch.net. Until next time, remember, keep looking up for our redemption draws near.