Revelation: Part 11

Have you ever seen a march formed and a big committee formed against death?

We’ve had marches and parades and everything against everything else, but you’ve never seen one against death. Why? Because they know it’s futile. We’re all gonna die, unless the Rapture happens first.

But for the believer, death should have no fear. It should not have any fear for us. We know where we’re going. 2 Corinthians 5 says, to be absent from the body is to be face-to-face with the Lord.

So if we die before the Rapture, hey, my dad died in my arms. He was 95 years old. You know, he’d lived a full life. And he really died with a smile.

And right now my mother, too, they’re up there and they’re looking at the Lord face-to-face. Now, they’re in a spiritual existence, but they’re very much alive, very much conscious, and they’re with the Lord. What’s bad about that? Sometimes I think the Rapture may be the worse of the two because no telling what condition he may find us in when suddenly he says, come up here.

Then all of a sudden, oh, my Lord.

I didn’t mean what I was doing.

But here’s what it says in John 14:1. Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my father’s house are many mansions or dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you; for 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; so that where I am, there you may be also. So what’s Jesus doing right now? He’s in a building program. And he’s preparing a place for everyone who believes in him as Savior.

And he says I’m not building all of these places to be unoccupied. So he says, and if I build them, first-class condition, if, and I am, I will come again for you. And when he comes, what’s he gonna do? Take us to be where he is, instantly.

All right, now keep all of these things cataloged in your minds, because there’s a lot of -and, you know, there are a lot of honest disagreements. I have friends like dr. Walter martin, before he died. Walter and I were good friends, always.

We would argue. He said, you know, Jesus can’t come for the Church until after the Tribulation. We’re gonna go through it. And I said, no, he’s gonna come before.

And so we would get into this big argument and then after which we’d say, oh, let’s go have dinner. And we would. We were good friends and we stayed good friends all the way through. So what I’m saying is, there are good men, good theologians who disagree on this point.

And I respect them, but I have very definite views and very definite biblical reasons for why I say Jesus is going to come for you and me, the Church, before that awful seven years of Tribulation begins. And one of the reasons is, if you study closely what it says in Matthew 25, when Jesus comes back to the earth, the first thing he does is what? What does it say in Matthew 25? It says immediately after those days, he comes back and he gathers what?

All ta ethne. Translated, nations. But it means Gentiles. Because you can’t judge nations for eternal destiny.

Because within nations are individuals who may believe in Jesus or not believe in Jesus. So in this context, ta ethne means the Gentiles. He gathers together before him all Gentiles. He gathers the Israelites in another place.

It’s a segregation, which is another reason why the Church couldn’t be here. Because if the Church were here, there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile today, is there, as far as God’s salvation is concerned? But there it says in Matthew 25, he gathers all Gentiles before him, and he divides them as a shepherd divides sheep and goats. The sheep go on the right hand.

The goats on the left. Guess who the goats are? They’re unbelievers.

The sheep are believers. The sheep go into as mortal, not transformed but mortal believers. They go into the next age in the history of this world called the kingdom age, which will last a thousand years. And they repopulate the earth because they’re still mortal people.

The unbelievers, the goats, are immediately cast off the earth in judgment. Now, try to fit that in with what’s said here. When Jesus comes here, what does he do? What does he do with believers?

He takes us to where he is. Where is he now? In heaven. He doesn’t keep us here on earth.

He doesn’t divide us as sheep and goats. Because let me tell you something. If you’re in the great snatch, you’re already a sheep, or you wouldn’t be there. And when he snatches out every living believer, what’s left on earth?

Unbelievers. Goats, if you please. So therefore, this could only refer to what? John 14.

It can only refer to believers. And the only time he could come and take only believers out of the world would be before the Tribulation. Follow me? Okay.

Now let’s look at another passage. Look with me at 1 Corinthians 15. Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. Now, remember, in the Scripture, the word sleep is a word for christian death of the body.

The body sleeps, as far as God is concerned. Not your soul and spirit, which is the real you, and the conscious person you are. That goes in 2 Corinthians 5 to be face-to-face, consciously with the Lord, but your body sleeps. The resurrection only applies to the body.

Did you know that? The moment you believe in Jesus Christ, your soul is resurrected in that moment. Because you’re born again and given a new divine spiritual nature. That’s what the new birth is.

The Holy Spirit puts God’s kind of life in you. And your soul is resurrected then. The resurrection only applies to your physical body. God is going to raise your body into an eternal state.

And everybody will be good-looking.

So he says, behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, literally, or die, but we shall all be changed. You see, what’s the mystery? Hey, in the Old Testament, they talked about resurrection, didn’t they?

Yeah, they talked about it a lot. So resurrection wasn’t something new, wasn’t a mystery. That was the hope of the believers in the Old Testament, that though they died. Remember what job said?

He said, though I die, and skin worms eat this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. See, he knew there was gonna be a bodily resurrection. And do you know job was a contemporary of Abraham? One of the earliest writers of the Bible.

Now, resurrection was no mystery. What is the mystery? The mystery is that there’s some who would not die but be changed without death. So he goes on to explain it.

He says in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. And that would be best transposed today, I guess, to a nanosecond. In other words -actually, do you know what word is used for twinkling of an eye here? Atomos.

Can you spot what new english word today we have from that? Atom, right. Atom bomb. Because it means something so small, it can’t be divided.

That’s the word atom, which comes from the Greek word, atomos. In other words, in a blink of time that is so short, it can’t be measured. We’re going to, it says, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. That’s the mystery.

We who are alive will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, this mortal must put on immorality, but when this perishable will have put on imperishable, and this mortal will have put on the immorality, then will come about the saying that is written death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?

You know, there’s one thing you can’t get away from. And that is, we all are born with a basic fear of death. Now, we cover it up many ways. And many people say, well, look at the daredevils who defied death.

They don’t fear death. Hey, do you know something? Psychologically, they’re the ones that fear death the most. Guys like evel knievel think like that.

Why do they do what they do? They’re pushing the envelope to find out what is this thing that I fear? So death is that unspoken reality that we all face underneath. And whether we want to admit it or not, it’s scary.

But the wonderful thing is, the sting of death has really been removed from the believer, if you, I mean -it is, but the more you learn about what you have in Christ, the more you understand you don’t have to fear death. And that’s one of the most wonderful byproducts of being a believer in Jesus Christ. You don’t have to fear death. Whether you die before Jesus comes or whether you’re here and he snatches you up without physical death, you don’t have to fear.

Where is its sting? Like it says here in verse 56, the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. You see, sin is -the sin that broke our relationship with God in the beginning, is what brought about the fear of death, that’s what brought death. Adam and Eve had never seen anything die until God killed an animal in order to get its skin to cover them.

In that simple move, they saw that the consequences of their sin caused the death of an innocent substitute. And it was a substitute of God’s choice. And they saw that now there was death, although they’d never seen it before. And their sin had brought it.

And we inherit that basic fear of death because we know, whether we ever admit it, that sin brings judgment. But Jesus Christ willingly climbed up on that cross and died in your place and mine, because he took the penalty of every sin you’ll ever commit, and died in your place. And he did it when he knew that most the world would never thank him for it, acknowledge him, or even receive the gift that he gave his life to give them. It says that herein is love, that even when we were enemies, God died for us.

Now, the reason I brought up these passages is, as you look at Revelation 4:1-2, you see the wording of those verses. They parallel the thinking of these verses. Because it says that John was instantly transposed from being on this earth to being in heaven. And that happened when he heard a voice from heaven like a trumpet, saying, come up here.

Now, it says here, the trumpet would sound, so you see the parallel there. The fact that this is instantaneous, you see the parallel there. Look with me at 1 thessalonians now. 1 Thessalonians 4, and with this we’ll close.

1 Thessalonians 4:15. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord. In other words, this is something that the Lord Jesus himself promised Paul. This is what we say to you by the word of the Lord, it’s a personal word.

That we who are alive, and remain until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, and with a voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. The dead in Christ shall rise first. Now, that’s why I say the episcopals will be the first up.

Because it says the dead in Christ shall rise first.

I’m only teasing, you know that. 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. And I hope that comforts you.

Because let me tell you something. I think that the United States is headed for some very hard times. Something big. I just feel it.

Something big is about to happen. It’s imminent. And only those who have faith in God’s word and find their reality in the promises of God, not in your human viewpoint, not in your dependence on everything except God, only those who depend on the Word of God. That’s why I wrote that book, faith for earth’s final hour.

It teaches you how to claim the promises of God and how to see that what God says is more real than what you see with your eyes and what you hear with your ears. And that you can count on the Lord in the most chaotic, catastrophic events. And there’s a lot of weakness in the Church believers’ faith today that makes me fear more about that than anything else. Because unless we learn to believe the promises of God now, you won’t be able to do it in a crash course then.

You have to learn to believe God on a daily basis, to develop your faith, to develop your sense of depending on him. That’s why God gives us these glorious opportunities to learn to believe him by letting little things happen to us. But we need to develop that faith. Because I believe that something is going to really shake America.

And, look, hey, you say, well, is the Church under persecution? Yeah, in most of the world, except here. And what’s gonna keep God from judging here? As billy graham said, if he doesn’t judge America, he’ll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.

So it’s time to take seriously what God has promised. I believe John, in chapter 4, verses 1 and 2, and we’ll really go into this next week, John was brought into the immediate presence of God, and he saw things so that he could tell us what we’re going to experience when God calls us all up to meet him. And it’s wonderful beyond description. We don’t have to live in fear today.

No matter what happens, we don’t have to be afraid. Because God’s promises will be kept if the world turns upside down. What we need to learn is the only source of true reality, is what God has promised. And we need to get away from the thing that we developed a habit of from childhood of going by our emotions, going by our human viewpoint, and I mean by that, going by our ability to cope with the problems we meet.

And instead, looking at things from God’s viewpoint, and facing them in the light of believing God, and facing them and dealing with them with God’s power, not ours and that changes everything. Everything. Crack the faith barrier. That’s what it is.

You have to crack through from looking at everything as you always have, from your ability to cope with them, from the human viewpoint, and learn to look at things in life from the standpoint of God’s ability to cope with them every time we believe that he will. It’s been my experience he has dealt with things I couldn’t have possibly coped with every time I’ve believed him. And when I screwed up and didn’t believe him, I went to the divine woodshed. And it’s really scary.

And I got out of there as fast as I could. Well, I hope this introduces you to the great snatch. It’s there. It’s coming.

It’s soon. And it’s gonna cheat death for most of us. Let’s pray. Father, I pray in Jesus’ name that these words will be applied and taught by the power of the Holy Spirit who alone can teach.

And I pray that this will bring a great new hope and a constant daily awareness of how much we need you in everything. And to learn to respond by believing your promises, and looking at everything in the light of your ability to deal with it, and trusting you to do it. In Jesus’ name, amen.

If you have the guts to be a real revolutionary, come forward right now and accept Jesus Christ as your real revolutionary, and he’ll make a revolutionary that will change lives.

As I prepared for this week’s program, I was again struck by the speed with which events are moving into the scenario the prophets predicted for the end times. I believe we’re there. People on the street are talking about what all of these things mean. Folks that wouldn’t darken the door of a Church or pick up a Bible are now very curious.

This may be our greatest opportunity, maybe even our last opportunity, to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ before we’re silenced by political correctness. The message that God has given me is more important now than it’s ever been, for the Church and for the nation.