Planning a
vacation with your grown-up siblings or extended family can be an interesting
process. You quickly find out that even though you’re family, you probably
disagree about all kinds of vacation details.
Some people
want to hit all of the tourist hotspots. The larger the crowds, the better,
because crowds mean energy and liveliness. Other people want to get away from
it all. They’d rather find a cabin out in Montana and spend a week with no
Internet and no cell phone reception.
Some people
like to pinch every penny when they’re on vacation. It’s like a personal
challenge for them to beat the system! They want to take all their own food,
and they know that if everyone gets 2 ½ pieces of bread each day, they can
stretch three loaves over the entire trip. Other people like to live it up when
they’re on vacation. They want to see what it feels like to be Warren Buffet,
so their credit card never leaves their hand.
But despite
these differences, you realize that at the end of the day, you’re still family.
You can live with differences like this because they’re not the core of what
really makes you a family, anyway.
Today, as
we continue through our church’s Statement of Faith, we come to an issue on
which there is some disagreement within the Christian family. It’s disagreement
we can live with—we don’t need to denounce other churches over this issue, but
there is value to taking a clear position within our own church.
All
Christians believe that Jesus is going to return to this world someday because
he said he would. There is disagreement, though, about how he will return and
when he will return. The specific question is this – will the events that we
call the Rapture and the Second Coming happen at the same time in one event, or
will they happen at different times and thus be two separate events?
Our church
believes and teaches that the Rapture and the Second Coming will be two
separate events. Thus, our Statement of Faith refers to phases (plural) of the
Lord’s Second Coming. It says:
We believe in the Blessed Hope (Titus 2:13), the personal,
imminent, pre-tribulation and pre-millennial, bodily coming of the Lord Jesus
Christ for His Church; and in His subsequent return to Earth with His saints to
establish His Millennial kingdom. (John 14:3; Acts 1:11; 1 Thess 1:10; 1 Thess
4:13-18; 2 Thess 1:7-9; Rev 3:10; 19:11-16; Zech 14:4-11)
You see a long list of verses there, and I’d like to read
just a few of them – two of the main passages on the Rapture, and one of the
main passages on the Second Coming [READ John 14:1-3; 1 Thess 4:13-18; Rev
19:11-16].
Why Do We Believe That The Rapture and The Second Coming
Will Be Separate Events?
All of
these passages describe Jesus returning to this earth. Why do we believe that
they refer to two separate events instead of just one? I’ll focus today on just
three reasons.
1. The stated purpose for Christ’s return is different in
different passages
In John 14,
Jesus said that he was leaving to prepare a place for his disciples and that he
would come back for them so they could all live in that place together. That is
a rather different purpose from Revelation 19, which describes Jesus coming to
strike down the nations and to tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of
God.
Now, this
point all by itself does not make a slam-dunk case for the idea of separate
events. After all, one event can certainly serve several purposes. Think of a
wedding, for example. A wedding serves as a time for celebration, an
opportunity for spiritual dedication as a couple takes vows before the Lord,
and it marks the beginning of a legal contract between a husband and wife that
is acknowledged by the government. So one event can fulfill several purposes,
but recognizing different purposes in different passages at least opens the
door to the idea that there could be different phases to Christ’s return.
2. Christ’s return is said to be imminent, yet many events
are described that must happen before Christ returns
Passages
like James 5:7-9 teach us that Christ’s return could take place at any moment
[READ James 5:7-9]. This passage pictures Jesus as being ready to step into our
world right now. And yet, the Book of Revelation describes seven years’ worth
of events that must take place before Christ can return. How can both of these
ideas be true?
That
question is a real conundrum for Christians who believe that the Rapture and
Second Coming are one event. The tension is resolved, however, when we view
these happenings as two separate events. In this point of view, the Rapture is
imminent, with the Second Coming then taking place seven years later.
So the
Rapture could happen at any moment, wherein the Lord will descend into the
skies to take us out of the world to live with him in heaven. Then, seven years
later, Jesus will return to the world with all of us in tow in order to
establish his kingdom of peace on this planet.
3. The Apostle Paul calls the transformation of living
Christians a “mystery”
1
Thessalonians 4 spoke of living Christians being caught up into the clouds to
meet the Lord and thus being instantly transformed in that moment. In 1
Corinthians 15, the Apostle Paul referred to that truth as a “mystery” [READ 1
Cor 15:51-52].
Paul uses
that word “mystery” a few times in his writings, and when he does, he uses it
to refer to truths that had not previously been revealed to mankind. In other
words, he’s saying, “I’m going to let you in on a secret,” or “I’m going to
tell you something you’ve never heard before.”
That’s
significant for this discussion because Christ’s coming to defeat his enemies
and establish his kingdom was clearly foretold in the Old Testament. What we
read about in Revelation 19 had already been clearly predicted in passages like
Zechariah 14.
The point
is that Paul could not have referred to the Second Coming as a mystery since it
had already been revealed. So, when he talks about living believers being
instantly transformed and meeting the Lord in the air, he must be referring to
a different event than what had already been foretold in the Old Testament.
Monday Matters
So what
difference does it make for you in your daily life to know that there will be
two phases to Christ’s return – the Rapture and then the Second Coming? It
means that you can live with this confidence and assurance:
God has not destined you to taste his wrath.
Why will
Jesus rapture us out of this world seven years prior to his Second Coming?
Because the period of time between those two events will be a time of anguish
unlike anything this world has yet seen. Jesus said in Matthew 24 that it will
be a time of great trouble and tribulation, and that if God did not limit that
period to just a few years, no one at all would survive it.
But God
will take us out of the world prior to that time in order to spare us from it.
God has a history of protecting his people in moments when he expresses his
appropriate anger toward sin. He did it for Noah and his family when he flooded
the earth; he did it for Lot when he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah; he did it
for the children of Israel when the plagues ravaged Egypt but left them
unscathed. Apparently, he is going to do it for us before he sends judgments
upon the world for our rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
So God has
not destined you to taste his wrath. I think that truth should also influence
the way that we interpret the normal sufferings of life that we face here in a
fallen world. When we face hard, painful times, it is very common for us to
wonder, “Is God angry at me? Is that why this is happening? Am I facing his
anger for something?”
This truth
about the Rapture should remind us of the glorious deliverance and salvation
that we have through Jesus Christ. We are saved from the wrath of God through
him, so when we face the trials of life, we don’t need to jump to the
conclusion that God is angry with us. Since you are God’s child, his
fundamental outlook toward you is one of acceptance and love and mercy. The
gaze that looks down on you from heaven is always tender and compassionate,
never angry and stern.
We are
saved from the wrath of God, both now and in the future when God will express
his wrath toward mankind in the Tribulation. And so we look forward with great
anticipation to the moment when Jesus will come to take his children out of the
world to be with him in the place that he is preparing. And we will rejoice
greatly on the day when we come back from heaven with him to enjoy the kingdom
of peace that he will establish in this world.
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