Text: Matthew 24:3-14, I Thessalonians 4:13-18.
Introduction: Back in 1987 there was a woman with a frame shop out along the National Highway by the Kalayaan Gate to the Subic Bay Metro Authority. (It used to be the back gate for the US Navy base.) She did good work and I had a number of pictures framed there. She was a Christian and always had her radio on a Christian station playing music or listening to preachers. Unfortunately she began to listen to some cultic guy who predicted that the Lord was coming back sometime in late 1987. She began warning everybody, her customers and neighbors, and sold everything and closed her business.
On the appointed day she woke up happy and excited, waiting confidently for the trumpet sound expecting to get raptured. By noon when nothing had happened she began to get a little nervous, and as the day went on she was really worried. In the evening she began crying and wailing out loud. One of her neighbors heard her praying, “Lord please come now or I’ll be so embarrassed.” That’s why we don’t set dates!
If you watched the news this week you know the US finally concluded a treaty with Iran over its nuclear program. Actually, the Obama administration surrendered. Iran is now on tract to become a powerful player in the end time scenario. Remember last time we talked about the alignment of nations for a great battle that will occur at the beginning of the Tribulation period. Ezekiel 38 and 39 describe the battle and the nations involved. They include the kings of the far north, generally assumed to be Russia, as well as the entire area of Armenia and Asia Minor, and Ethiopia, which we showed has a treaty agreement with Russia, as well as Libya, Egypt and Persia, which is modern day Iran. With an ascendant Iran supporting terrorist activities all over the region it becomes clear that a nuclear Iran will be a powerful enemy of Israel.
A lot of people ask whether or not America is in prophecy for the last days. The direct answer is no. You cannot find any kind of reference to America in the Scripture. At the same time you can’t discard America from the end time scenario. The antichrist will rise at the head of a European empire and will control a world that has a nuclear Russia and China. How is he going to do that from Europe?
I’ll tell you how. Prophecy preachers have often said that America will have to decline and even turn on Israel before all this can happen. We actually see that happening now, but even with a weakened America, Europe doesn’t have the firepower to confront Russia or China on its own. So, where does America fit in? NATO.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization connects the United States to Europe in a defense pact. With the rise of the antichrist America will be a subservient nation as far as leadership, influence and foreign policy goes, but it will have the military muscle to back the antichrist in his bid to rule the world. So in that respect, I would say America will have a big part to play in the end times, but only as it is connected to the antichrist. But the direct answer to the US being in prophecy is that it is not found in the Scripture.
Here’s something else I saw this week. Obama said something recently that since he hasn’t been assassinated and he was re-elected that he is fulfilling God’s purpose in being the president of the United States. It’s an incredible statement for its effrontery, but ironically he is right, only not in the way he assumes. He is so full of himself that he thinks it is God’s will for him to carry out his anti-Christian agenda. I wonder which god he is talking about?
The reality is, if he’s fulfilling God’s plan it’s because he’s bringing America down to its knees militarily and influentially on the world stage, turning us into a third world country, weakening our resolve, corrupting our morals and preparing the US to submit to the rule of the antichrist. In that respect he is fulfilling God’s plan. It’s not something he should be proud of by any means. He is disgracing the greatest nation the world has ever seen.
I. The Last Prophetic Discourse of Christ (Matthew 24).
In the first two verses of this chapter Jesus predicts the destruction of the temple his disciples ask him three questions. When will this happen? What will be the sign He is coming to be King? Is there a sign to indicate the end of the world?
Now remember at the end of the Church Age, the Lord is going to rapture out all of the believers in Christ, that is, everyone who has received Christ as their personal Savior. This event will happen seven years at least prior to the Second Coming when Christ will set up His earthly kingdom. All of the signs that Jesus then gave to His disciples in the following verses pertain to the Second Coming.
Now the Covenant theologians, Presbyterians and Reformed Churches, believe all this was fulfilled in A.D. 70 when Jerusalem was destroyed. But if you read on through this passage, and compare it with the Book of Revelation, there is no way it could have been fulfilled in A.D. 70 unless this is all an allegory, and has no literal meaning. We reject that, because Baptists are literalists, but this passage in Matthew 24 is still controversial, even among Baptists.
Some refer to this as a “Kingdom” text. They believe everything Jesus has spoken about here will happen after the Rapture and is pointing to the Second Coming. Then about a hundred years ago C.I. Schofield wrote out a systematic study Bible that became popular among many Baptists for over half a century. He divided the text at verse 14. Everything before that was pre-Rapture, but everything after was Tribulation. Verse 15 on couldn’t be anything else. The Abomination of Desolation takes place halfway into the Tribulation period, so at the very least everything after verse 14 must be during the Tribulation.
I think there is a credible argument for both. Jesus is telling the disciples what to watch for to signify the Lord’s coming. But all the things He mentions in verses 3-14 have been happening for the last 1900 years. And they will continue, and I think even as we are seeing that they will become more frequent, and after we are raptured they will continue at an even faster pace until verse 15, and still continue to grow until the Second Coming.
II. What Signs Did Jesus Give Us? (24:5-14).
John warned us in I John 4:3 not to be fooled by antichrists, and said there are already many antichrists in the world. This was around A.D. 90. It didn’t take long for false messiahs to come along trying to capitalize on the Christian religion by presenting themselves as Christ. Jesus also gave us warning in verse 5.
In the second century there was a Jewish man, Simon bar Kokhba, who led a revolt against Rome, claiming he was Christ. He was killed in A.D. 135. Another Jew, Solomon Molcho, converted and was baptized a Catholic in Spain. But when he declared himself to be Christ he was burned in the Inquisition in 1532.
Ann Lee, an early leader of the Shakers, in 1772 claimed to be the female incarnation of Christ. There was even a Mormon antichrist. Arnold Potter in 1870 claimed to be the Lord returned and became known as the “Potter Christ” to the Mormons.
In the 1930s the Rastafarian movement began by claiming that Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was Christ. Selassie didn’t claim it, but this group claimed it for him.
In the 1970s the Korean messiah, Sun Myung Moon, claimed to be Christ returned. His followers were called Moonies, and were found everywhere, often in airports where they were always hitting people up for money. The movement faded away when Moon was arrested for tax evasion.
Jim Jones and the People’s Temple made news in Guyana in 1978 when, after murdering a US congressman, 900 followers of Jones drank poisoned Kool-Aid and died. Another maniacal leader, David Koresh, claimed to be Christ and led a following known as the Branch Davidians. They were all burned to death in an FBI raid that went bad in 1993.
In Kenya there is a cult called the Legend Maria. I don’t remember the founder’s name, but back in about 1993 he began to teach that he was Christ returned. A religion grew around him, his followers wearing either blue or purple robes, but about 1996 he got sick and died. But before he passed away he said he would rise from the grave in three days. His followers waited by the graveside in vain, but it did not weaken their belief. To this day they still do pilgrimages to the site, where they crawl on their knees for over a mile to see the grave, still waiting for him to rise.
Right now in Australia is a man called Alan John Miller who claims to be Christ. His wife, Mary Luck, claims to be Mary Magdalene.
Now these are only a few, but there have been hundreds of people claiming to be Christ since Jesus ascended back to heaven. All of them have been false, and all others until the Rapture will also be false. You know how you can tell if someone claiming to be Christ is an antichrist? It’s simple. If you are born again, and someone comes saying he is Christ returned and you are still here, he isn’t Christ.
In verses 6-7 we read of wars, rumors of wars, and nation rising against nation. The thing is, there have always been wars, and interestingly enough, most of the largest, bloodiest of all wars have taken place on the smallest continent, Europe. There was a general peace during the Pax Romana (Roman Peace) that lasted for 200 years until about A.D. 200. But Rome had an internal civil war in A.D. 311, and then faced constant battles with the barbarian tribes, the Huns, Goths, and Visigoths, until they finally succumbed in 476.
The rise of Islam in the 600s brought war from Arabia all across the Middle East and North Africa and into Spain. At the Battle of Tours in 732 the Muslim expansion was halted, and in 1492, the same year Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain sent Columbus across the ocean on a historic venture, they launched an attack against Islam to drive it out of Spain.
In the eleventh century the Crusades began and were waged for 200 years. Then in 1241 Genghis Kahn’s Golden Horde rode from Mongolia across Russia to Hungary and conquered most of Eastern Europe. In the 1400s Europe fought the Hundred Years War. It was a series of separate conflicts, but it took a hundred years before they were resolved. Then in 1618-1648 the Thirty Years War was fought the same way.
In the 17th and 18th centuries Britain and France waged the French and Indian Wars that stretched from the American colonies to India. Then Napoleon conquered all of Europe all the way to Moscow before the cold winters defeated his army. Besides the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War and the Austro-Prussian War devastated Europe in the 19th century.
And then came the 20th; World War I, World War 2, the Cold War fought in places like Korea and Vietnam, and then the Gulf War. All along there have been numerous smaller scale tribal wars including genocides all over Africa, and now we have the War on Terror.
The point is there have always been wars, but the last century saw an expansion of wars at an unprecedented scale. World War 2 killed more people than all the previous wars in the history of the world combined. And then suddenly there was peace.
In 1991, US President George H.W. Bush put together a coalition of 90 some nations to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. While the Soviet Union and China didn’t approve, they both said they would not interfere. The war was over in 100 days and the US pulled its troops out of the Iraq. By the end of the year the Soviet Union collapsed, the Cold War was over, and there was a brief period where there were no major conflicts going on in the world. It was man’s best effort to bring about world peace since Cain killed Abel. Doors for missionaries to penetrate areas of the world that had always been closed were wide open. But the peace only lasted a few months. Genocide broke out in the Balkans and Somalia, and two decades later there are conflicts in so many places that the world is more unstable and unsecure now than it has been at any time since WW 2.
Jesus also mentioned famines, earthquakes and pestilences. These have always been around on a smaller scale. Malaria, yellow fever and cholera have been a scourge across many continents. Today it’s AIDS. It was an undersea earthquake in 2005 that sent the tsunami across the Indian Ocean and killed 230,000 people. There have also been volcanoes, but it does seem that volcanic activity in the last 30 years or more has been increasing. But all these, Jesus said in verse eight, are the beginning of sorrows.
Efforts to exterminate the Jews have gone on since Jerusalem was destroyed, culminating in Hitler’s Final Solution that killed six of nine million Jews in Europe in WW 2. And now Iran has vowed to destroy Israel and when they get a nuclear weapon it could become a real possibility.
Christian persecution has also been ramped up at unprecedented levels in the last few years. ISIS is even crucifying children for their faith in Jesus Christ. All of this has been going on for two millennia, but when the Tribulation begins it’s going to get worse.
III. The Abomination of Desolation (Daniel 9:24-27).
In Daniel 9 we are introduced to a prophetic timetable of 70 weeks of years that would begin with a decree to rebuild Jerusalem. After 69 weeks, or 483 years, the Messiah would be cut off. The Persian king, Artaxerxes, gave this decree to the priest, Ezra, sometime in the 450s B.C. Christ was then crucified around A.D. 29-31. The 70th week, however, did not immediately follow.
Inserted between the 69th and 70th weeks is the Church Age, which we are in now. This 70th week will begin with the rise of the antichrist who will negotiate a seven-year treaty with Israel. But in the middle of the week, at three and a half years, he will break the treaty and begin a holocaust against the Jews like the world has never yet seen. Jesus warns the Jews in Matthew 24:15-16 that when this event happens they should immediately run for their lives.
Revelation 12:6 then says there is a place in the Wilderness where they will flee, a place that God has prepared and apparently will keep hidden from the antichrist’s forces seeking them. It also gives them the final clue as to the Lord’s coming. Twelve hundred sixty days, or three and a half years following this Abomination of Desolation, the Lord will return to establish His kingdom on earth, and to rescue these remaining Jews, as well as all who have been converted and have survived the Tribulation period.
Where does that put us today? The only sign we know concerning a time frame for the Second Coming is Israel restored in its land, which happened in 1948. All the things we have discussed today have been going on since Christ ascended into heaven, and will continue with increasing frequency as we near the end of the Age. But the Rapture will take place at least seven years before the return of the Lord.
IV. The Rapture of the Church (I Thessalonians 4:13-18).
Our hope for the Rapture is found in verses 13-14. Those who are trusting Christ as Savior have no need to sorrow at death, as do the unsaved. Our faith rests in the death and resurrection of Christ. The fact that He rose from the grave in His own power is the proof that He can raise us to glory when the time comes.
The Lord will descend from heaven with a shout. I’ve always wondered about that. It almost seems to undignified for God to shout out like an athlete or a warrior going into battle. It seems to me that the ones shouting may be all those who are coming with Him. All of the dead in Christ, whose spirits are in heaven now, will be coming back with Christ riding on white horses. My guess is they are the ones who will be shouting in triumph as they descend to conquer the earth.
There is also the voice of the archangel. Michael is the only archangel named, and is the first ranked angel in heaven. He will probably be leading the charge and the shout. And then there is the trump of God. Armies have used trumpets since ancient times to send signals to their troops. This was particularly true with the US Cavalry in the old west. But I wonder if in this case instead of blowing the charge, the trumpet might be playing the Hallelujah Chorus.
At that point the dead in Christ rise first. The remains of all those whose spirits are there in heaven are going to be resurrected to be reunited in the air. It doesn’t matter if they are broken and decayed bones or scattered ashes, God will reconstitute them, and you don’t have to worry about how you will look. You’ll be more perfectly beautiful than you ever have been before. It is then after the graves have been emptied, that we who are alive here on earth will be caught up to join them in the air.
Paul also writes about this moment in I Corinthians 15:51-52. At this moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we shall all be changed into a glorified, perfect, eternal body. This corruptible flesh will become incorruptible. No more sore muscles or aching bones. No more scrapes and bruises. No more thirst or hunger. No disease, no weakness or fatigue. Everything will be perfect.
Now there is still a controversy about when this will happen in light of the Tribulation period. Covenant theologians tend to dismiss the Rapture as an independent event. Some believe that if we are called out literally, that it will happen at the same time as the Second Coming. In other words, it is called a post-tribulational Rapture. There are also some who believe, based on Matthew 24:15, in a mid-tribulational Rapture. They believe we will go through the first half of the Tribulation, and then be called out at about the same time as the Abomination of Desolation.
The correct view, however, is a pre-tribulational Rapture, and I’ll show you why. When Paul wrote this first letter to the Thessalonians, a lot of people became concerned that this Rapture was going to happen immediately and they had many questions. Paul wrote the second letter to answer those concerns. In the second chapter he gives a clue as to the timing of the Rapture in comparison with the seven-year Tribulation period.
In verses 6-7 reference is made to the Holy Spirit and His work as the “Restrainer.” It is the Holy Spirit in verse 6 that keeps the antichrist from rising to power before his time, but in verse 7 the Holy Spirit is taken out of the way. The only reason that the world today is not already in complete chaos is because of the work of the Holy Spirit holding it back. The only real and lasting good in the world is the result of Christian influence.
Where is the Holy Spirit today? He dwells in the hearts of believers who He has sealed for eternity (Ephesians 4:30). When the Rapture takes place, the Christians are removed. Since we are the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, He also is removed. It is only then in verse 8 that the Wicked, Lawless One, the man of sin, the son of perdition (v. 3) will be revealed. The antichrist will not come onto the scene as a world leader until after we are gone, so the only scriptural conclusion we can make is a pre-tribulational Rapture.
Conclusion:
I remember back in the 60s and 70s hearing preachers talking about current events and wondering at all the earthquakes, hurricanes, famines, and other calamities how much it sounded like this description given by Christ in Matthew 24. But we have seen as the years have passed that these things are still happening with more and more frequency. We see an increase in persecution against Christians and Muslim nations openly threatening to destroy Israel. This deal with Iran over nuclear power, if the US Senate passes it, offers no hope for any peaceful resolution to world affairs. I think we can see more clearly now than ever that the Rapture is imminent.
At the same time, we are not down to the last man yet, like Noah. As morally wicked as our cultures have become we still do not have entire cities or countries of gays wearying themselves to have relationships with every stranger in their borders. As difficult as it is becoming in some places, we still have freedom in much of the world to preach the Gospel.
What does this tell us? Simply this: we need to be ready and watching because the shout and the trump could come at any moment, but until it does we have to occupy until He comes. We have to continue to engage people with the Gospel. We need to continue to be involved in our governments and current affairs to influence our leaders in a godly way. We can’t sit down and wait like the woman at the frame shop. We must continue to serve the Lord until the day He comes and calls us out.
Are you ready for that day to come?
No comments:
Post a Comment