What Is the Rapture?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Well, Advent is a season for waiting.
00:00:07.000 | Of course, we are not waiting for the birth of Christ any longer, but we are awaiting the second Advent of Christ, his return to Earth.
00:00:15.000 | And those two Advents are not far removed from one another, nor should they be.
00:00:19.000 | Christmas is a very fitting time to dwell on the return of Christ.
00:00:24.000 | But will Christ return in the future one more time or two more times?
00:00:29.000 | That's a good question from a listener named Nick.
00:00:31.000 | Pastor John, thanks for this podcast.
00:00:33.000 | I know this is a huge debate, but I would love your thoughts.
00:00:36.000 | How many times is Jesus coming back?
00:00:39.000 | Is he coming back in the Rapture, according to 1 Thessalonians 4, 16-17,
00:00:44.000 | and then returning a second time to defeat Satan, according to Revelation 19, 11-21?
00:00:50.000 | Pastor John, is Christ returning one more time or two more times?
00:00:55.000 | My understanding of the New Testament is that Jesus promised he would return,
00:01:02.000 | and that in this returning, he would do a final rescue for those who are trusting him,
00:01:14.000 | and a final judgment to those who are not believing in him.
00:01:21.000 | I don't think there are two comings of Christ in the future, but only one.
00:01:29.000 | Most of those who believe that Christ will come twice believe that the first return,
00:01:36.000 | the first of the two, is the coming of the Lord to snatch away the Church out of the world,
00:01:47.000 | the Rapture in the question, to snatch away the Church back to heaven for seven years, usually,
00:01:55.000 | while the Great Tribulation happens on earth, and then a final,
00:02:01.000 | this is kind of the second stage, return of the Lord to establish his kingdom.
00:02:07.000 | Now, I grew up in a home and a church that believed that view,
00:02:12.000 | called the Pre-Tribulation Rapture view, because there is a coming of Christ pre- or before the Tribulation,
00:02:23.000 | so that the Church is taken out and spared that time of great suffering from the Lord at the end of the age.
00:02:32.000 | But the more I studied this for myself, even as a teenager I can remember thinking about this,
00:02:39.000 | I just could not find two comings in the future for the Christian Church.
00:02:47.000 | I asked once a very reputable Old Testament scholar, really scholarly Old Testament scholar,
00:02:55.000 | I asked him once, who believed this view,
00:02:59.000 | what's the most important text that persuades you that before Christ comes in judgment,
00:03:08.000 | he will come earlier to take the Church out of the world and then only return in judgment years later,
00:03:17.000 | seven years later, or three and a half, maybe?
00:03:20.000 | His answer was unhesitating.
00:03:23.000 | He said, Revelation 3.10, which says this, "Because you have kept my word," Jesus is talking to the Church,
00:03:31.000 | "Because you have kept my word about patient endurance,
00:03:36.000 | I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world to try those who dwell on the earth."
00:03:47.000 | In other words, he thought that that verse taught that Christians would be taken out of the world
00:03:56.000 | before God brought a great trial or tribulation on the world.
00:04:02.000 | But does it?
00:04:05.000 | God's promise to keep us from the hour of trial probably doesn't mean that we are taken out of the world,
00:04:15.000 | but rather that God will keep us from the faith-destroying effects of the hour of trial.
00:04:23.000 | He will guard us; he will protect our faith.
00:04:26.000 | In fact, 1 Peter says, "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial that comes upon you
00:04:33.000 | to test you as though something strange were happening to you."
00:04:37.000 | I don't think it's a New Testament teaching that God rescues his people from trial but protects them through trial.
00:04:48.000 | Now, that's not a good enough answer to the view.
00:04:51.000 | The passages that settled the matter for me were 2 Thessalonians 1 and 2 Thessalonians 2,
00:05:00.000 | and both of these chapters talk about the coming of the Lord, the second coming,
00:05:07.000 | in a way that makes two comings, one to rescue and one to judge, extremely unlikely,
00:05:16.000 | if not impossible, in view of what these verses say.
00:05:20.000 | So here's 2 Thessalonians 1, verses 6 through 8.
00:05:24.000 | Now listen for how Paul treats the coming to give relief to Christians
00:05:31.000 | and the coming to give affliction to unbelievers as one coming,
00:05:37.000 | both relief for us and affliction at the same time.
00:05:42.000 | Here's what it says. I'll read it.
00:05:44.000 | Verses 6 of 2 Thessalonians 1.
00:05:47.000 | "God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you."
00:05:57.000 | So there's the two things that are going to happen.
00:06:00.000 | He regards it as just to repay with affliction those who afflict you
00:06:05.000 | and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us
00:06:10.000 | when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels inflaming fire,
00:06:18.000 | inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God
00:06:22.000 | and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
00:06:26.000 | Now I think that's very clear and teaches that Christ is coming again,
00:06:31.000 | and when he comes, he will repay unbelievers with affliction,
00:06:37.000 | and he will grant relief to believers.
00:06:41.000 | And he says these two things happen "when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven."
00:06:49.000 | So this is one coming, not two. That's the first text that persuaded me.
00:06:54.000 | Then the next chapter goes like this. This is chapter 2 of 2 Thessalonians 1.
00:07:00.000 | "Now concerning the coming of the Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ,
00:07:05.000 | and our being gathered together to meet him," or gathered to him,
00:07:11.000 | "we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed
00:07:16.000 | either by a spirit or a spoken word or a letter seeming to be from us
00:07:22.000 | to the effect that the day of the Lord has come already."
00:07:26.000 | So someone had said to these Christians that the day of the Lord has already come,
00:07:34.000 | and Paul is arguing that can't be.
00:07:37.000 | Now how easy it would have been for him to say, "It can't be because I'm still here.
00:07:45.000 | I haven't been raptured away." He didn't say that. That's not what he said.
00:07:51.000 | He said—this is verse 3 now—"Let no one deceive you in this way,
00:07:56.000 | for that day," the Lord's day that he just referred to,
00:08:00.000 | "that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first
00:08:07.000 | and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction," verse 8,
00:08:13.000 | "whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth
00:08:20.000 | and bring to nothing by his appearance and his coming."
00:08:24.000 | So just like chapter 1, there is one coming,
00:08:28.000 | and Paul says it hasn't happened yet because the man of lawlessness,
00:08:33.000 | that is, the Antichrist, has not been revealed.
00:08:37.000 | And when that happens, then he said the second coming will happen,
00:08:42.000 | and it won't be to snatch Christians away, but to kill the lawless one
00:08:47.000 | with the breath of his mouth and the appearance of his coming.
00:08:50.000 | Now Nick refers to the rapture in 1 Thessalonians 4,
00:08:55.000 | wondering if that refers to a first of two more comings
00:09:02.000 | followed by a later one.
00:09:04.000 | Here's the key verse, verses 16 and 17,
00:09:08.000 | "The Lord himself will descend from heaven with the cry of command,
00:09:11.000 | with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God,
00:09:14.000 | and the dead in Christ will rise first.
00:09:17.000 | Then we who are alive, who are left, will be," here's the key phrase,
00:09:21.000 | "caught up," this is the rapture, "will be caught up together with them
00:09:26.000 | in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air."
00:09:30.000 | That is sometimes called the rapture, and that's no problem.
00:09:34.000 | I got no problem calling it a rapture.
00:09:36.000 | "And so we will always be with the Lord."
00:09:39.000 | Now my understanding of these verses, and I don't see any reason to think otherwise,
00:09:44.000 | is that yes, indeed, we will rise to meet the Lord in the air.
00:09:49.000 | That's what it says.
00:09:51.000 | "Like a great welcoming crowd, and then we will descend with him
00:09:57.000 | in his triumphant arrival."
00:10:00.000 | And I recall how stunned I was when I was, I think, 23 years old, maybe 22,
00:10:06.000 | how stunned I was when I first saw that the word "meet,"
00:10:12.000 | "caught up to meet the Lord in the air,"
00:10:15.000 | is used two other times in the New Testament, Matthew 25, 6, and Acts 28, 15,
00:10:23.000 | and in both of these places.
00:10:25.000 | It is a group of people going out to meet someone and accompanying them back
00:10:32.000 | into the place you just went out from.
00:10:35.000 | So all my thoughts about this being a rising to meet the Lord in the air
00:10:41.000 | and then returning to heaven for seven years evaporated.
00:10:45.000 | That is not the intention of that verse.
00:10:48.000 | It's a rapture in the sense that we rise to meet the Lord in the air,
00:10:52.000 | and then like a great band of welcoming, we come back with him
00:10:57.000 | for his established judgment and rule.
00:11:00.000 | So my answer is that there is one great, glorious, second coming of the Lord
00:11:08.000 | in our future. He will come once more to give relief to his church
00:11:13.000 | and judgment to his adversaries and to establish his kingdom.
00:11:18.000 | And I say, and I'm sure we all do, with the early church,
00:11:25.000 | the next to last verse of the Bible, "Come, Lord Jesus."
00:11:30.000 | Amen. That is our prayer as we look ahead to 2019.
00:11:34.000 | "Come, Lord Jesus." And such a desire is not far removed from the Christmas season,
00:11:39.000 | which is a perfect time to focus on the coming of our glorious Christ,
00:11:42.000 | for whom we wait as well.
00:11:45.000 | I know it's in those quiet moments in the season when I settle my heart
00:11:49.000 | and fix my eyes on God that I feel what it's like to live inside of a long wait.
00:11:54.000 | Now for the second advent of Christ's return.
00:11:57.000 | It's a great way to celebrate the first advent of Christ in Bethlehem.
00:12:00.000 | Well, speaking of the season, December is a big month for us here at Desiring God.
00:12:05.000 | Nearly 40% of our annual budget comes to us in December alone.
00:12:10.000 | 40% from our generous ministry partners.
00:12:13.000 | 40% of the funds for our year-round work arrives in this last month of the year.
00:12:18.000 | And if you are blessed by the many resources we offer free of charge,
00:12:21.000 | like the Ask Pastor John podcast, would you consider donating this month?
00:12:25.000 | You can do so at DesiringGod.org/give.
00:12:30.000 | Thank you so much.
00:12:31.000 | And I know a high proportion of our financial partners listen to the podcast every day,
00:12:35.000 | so let me just say thank you to each of you for making this podcast
00:12:39.000 | and the ministry of Desiring God possible.
00:12:42.000 | And again, to become a financial partner, you can do that at DesiringGod.org/give.
00:12:48.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you next week. Bye until then.
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