Resurrection

00:01 All right. Good morning. I want to greet each one in the name of Jesus this morning. And it's good to be in the house of the Lord. Welcome to each one. I want to invite you this morning to turn in your copies of the Scriptures to 1 Thessalonians 4. And you can take that down for now until I'm ready for it. 00:21 It'll be a little bit until I'm ready for it. So we want to talk this morning and continue on the subject of the resurrection and talk to you about this is a follow-up from the message three weeks ago on the Feast of First Fruits, speaking of the resurrection of our Lord. 00:41 This message is not wanting to step on Brother Trevor's messages from the book of Revelation, although it may overlap a little bit. 00:52 But I'm doing some study on a message that I'm preparing for Calvary Chapel next Sunday night and for you Sunday in some time on where are we at really in relation to the signs of the Lord's coming and where are things at currently in relation to that. 01:12 And let me just say it like this: that I don't believe that there has ever been a time where things are lining up as vividly and as forcefully as what we're seeing right now in the world around us. I know we've said that through the years, 01:32 that the signs are there, that there's nothing that can hinder the Lord from returning. And that's true. And it's been true. But it just seems like the Lord just keeps lining things up even more and more. 01:45 So that at one point maybe it may have been a bit of a stretch maybe to kind of have to imagine how things could line up. But today you don't even have to imagine it. It is so in your face. It is so close. 02:03 It is so up front and center that we are literally on the verge of one of the greatest things to happen in human history aside from the death and resurrection of Christ. And that is the resurrection of the saints, the coming of the Lord in power and great glory. 02:22 And so this morning I wanted to walk us through 1 Thessalonians 4:13. "But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, 02:42 even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, 03:02 and with 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. 03:19 Therefore, comfort one another with these words." Why don't you read that last verse with me? "Therefore, comfort one another with these words." The goal here of this message is really laid out in this passage, verse 13. "I do not want you to be ignorant, 03:38 brethren." And so he's writing so that people would not be ignorant. The word ignorant there would be to be unacquainted with something or to err by committing faults from a lack of discernment, knowledge, or insight. And so this ignorance sometimes is a lack of information. 03:58 And sometimes the ignorance is not applying the information that is available. And so he says, "I don't want you to be ignorant, brethren. 04:06 And I don't want you to err by failing to discern, understand, and have insight into this fact that those who have fallen asleep in Jesus will not miss out on this glorious event." Now the fear was in the Thessalonian church was that somehow those who had died would miss out on the return of the Lord. 04:27 And he said, "Don't worry about that, folks. That those who have died will not miss out. In fact, they'll be the first in the line of action. They will be the ones who actually get activated first." And I don't know. I don't put a lot of stock in dreams and things like that. 04:47 But I did have a dream about this some time ago. It was rather an interesting dream. I was asleep, of course. And I saw the clouds open. And I saw people just kind of floating up into the sky. And I remember being on the ground just temporarily. And then I got transformed. 05:08 And I don't remember what happened after that because the dream ended. But I remember seeing these people floating in the sky. 05:14 I wondered, "What's that about?" But it's true. The only difference between that and my dream is they're not going to be floating. They're going to be jerked out. And that's what the word means when he says they will be caught up. We'll talk about that as we go on. But here this morning we have a promise. 05:35 We have a promise that when the Lord makes a promise, He intends to keep it and to fulfill it in such a way that we know that He did it. You see, this teaching here this morning from 1 Thessalonians means God has put Himself on the line here to let us know that something's going to happen. 05:54 Something's going to happen. And He doesn't want us to be ignorant about it. He doesn't want us to err in relationship. He wants us to give hope and encouragement. So that's the first thing: is to inform. The second thing about this message is that it is to comfort. 06:10 Verse 18: "The word comfort means here is to call alongside for comfort, for aid, for help, for encouragement, for consolation, and summons, to invoke." It means to come alongside and encourage. Encourage each other. 06:30 Encourage each other to hold on, to keep going, that the end is near, that it is coming, the Lord is coming again, that there is a day. There is a day when that which we have hoped for, dreamed of, and anticipated throughout all the last 2,000 years of church history will happen. 06:50 It will happen just like Jesus said, the angel said in Acts 2, that this same Jesus... excuse me, Acts 1... this same Jesus who went away from you into heaven will return in like manner and receive you to Himself. And so this is a promise. It's a promise that Satan hates. 07:10 This passage of Scripture is maligned by the enemy. And it is maligned even by some professing Christians. Unbelievers scoff at it. You guys just want a way out of here. You don't want to solve the problems of the world. You want to escape the problems. You're escapists. And the unbelievers scoff at this teaching. 07:31 And believers even scoff at this teaching. Some have accused us of pie in the sky theology. You just want your pie in the sky. You don't care about the world that we live in. And others have said it's an outdated doctrine. It's not for us. 07:52 We understand things differently today. Some would say that the term rapture... you say it's not in the Bible. We're talking about the rapture of the church here. And we say that the rapture is not in the Bible. Well, it is in the Bible, actually. The term is used in the Latin Vulgate, which, by the way, was translated before the King James Version and was translated into Latin, 08:14 is the word rapio or raptus, which is in relationship into this concept of being snatched away, caught up. Some people call us dispensationalists. And that's a bad word in Anabaptist circles. Other people put this rapture event sometime in the distant future. 08:34 It couldn't happen today. And then there's what I refer to as the Western Christian guilt. 08:47 And that is that, well, we can't be raptured until we experience persecution. And there's kind of a guilt that people think that the church all across the world has to experience persecution before the Lord comes back. And if we don't experience persecution, then the Lord isn't coming back until we get some persecution. 09:08 And that may be the case. But let me tell you what. If you're a true Christian, a true believer, there are opposition to that message. And we're getting it more and more in the culture around us. And we won't spend much time discussing that. 09:22 But the fact remains that there will be an event sometime as it is described in 1 Thessalonians 4. And there will be an event that's described in 1 Thessalonians 4 where people will not die. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says, "Behold, I tell you a mystery. 09:43 We shall not all sleep." So there is a generation that will not die that will be translated by rapture rather than death. 09:58 And it is part of that resurrection that we have seen in the first fruits of our Lord Jesus Christ. So we want to look at this passage here this morning a little bit in detail. He said, "I don't want you to be ignorant concerning those who have fallen asleep. You don't have to sorrow as others who have no hope. 10:17 Thank the Lord for that." Think of Gary and Sharina and the family and Brother Cleo and that family that has just lost, lost. We say we lose someone. But we don't actually lose someone when you know where they are. They're in the presence of the Lord. But their spirit is there. 10:37 But something happens to their body in this event. So you don't have to worry that your loved one is going to miss out on this great event because they're going to be a part of it. And so he says, "I show you a mystery in 1 Corinthians 15 that we shall not all sleep. 10:57 It is something that was hidden in the past and now is revealed." He said, "I'm revealing to you that mystery of the return of the Lord." He said, "We believe in Jesus that Jesus died and rose again." There's the participants of who are going to be a part of this event, 11:17 those who believe that Jesus died and rose again. And that hopefully is each and every one of us here this morning. And then we see that the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout. The word shout there has the idea of a stimulating cry, 11:39 a command, an order. The word shout is also used for soldiers charging their enemies. So if you're a soldier and you are waiting for the shout, charge. That's the kind of shout. It's a command. It's an order to move forward. 11:59 And this shout of the Lord and the voice of the archangel will be a command to come forth, to come forth. And I don't know why that's so hard for us to believe because that similar thing happened to Lazarus. Now he wasn't resurrected. He was resuscitated. 12:18 But he said, "Lazarus, come forth." What happened? Lazarus came forth. Enoch was one who did not die. He was taken up to meet the Lord. Elijah did not die. He was taken up in that chariot of fire. 12:37 Why is it so hard for us to believe that there will be a group of people that will not die but will be caught up? They will be caught up. It's just not one person here and there, but a massive resurrection. 12:50 This is why the first fruits, the Feast of First Fruits, is so important because it was an offering that was a little bit that assured that there was a whole bunch going to follow, going to come with that harvest, with that resurrection. And so it is with our Lord. 13:10 His resurrection qualifies those who believe in Jesus that He died and rose again that they are now qualified to participate in this great event. Now the term here to be caught up, caught up together with Him in the air, 13:29 in the clouds, is the word harpazo, harpazo, which means to strip or to spoil or to snatch. And it is a snatching, not in a secret snatching, but in an open act of violence. Now some people refer to this... 13:48 those naysayers would refer to this as what we call the rapture of the church as a secret rapture. That it's going to be a secret rapture, a secret kind of a sneaking away. No, there's a word for that in the Greek, a secret thing. This is not that. 14:07 This is an open act of violence, really. A surge of power that will not go unnoticed. It's not secret. It will be known. 14:23 And the tense of the verb is the future passive tense where the subject receives the action. 14:31 And so the action, the surge of power, is going to infuse the subject and transform and glorify that body instantaneously without any hesitation, without any action on the subject's part. 14:53 The action is done to the subject. And the subject is those who believe that Jesus died and rose again, those who are saved, those who are ready and waiting for His appearing. Now those who are asleep in Jesus will go forth, will go first. 15:13 And the word sleep there has the idea of those who have died. This does not mean that their soul is sleeping. This means that their body is, as it were, sleeping. And so their soul is very much in the presence of the Lord, very much conscious. How do we know this? We know that from Luke 16, 15:33 that the dead are conscious of their surroundings and their environment. The unrighteous dead, the rich man, Lazarus, the unrighteous dead, very much conscious in his torment, in a place of torment, and implying then that the righteous dead of Abraham's bosom are also conscious in the presence of the Lord. 15:55 The Apostle Paul said to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord in a conscious state. There are those who believe that the soul kind of slumbers and sleeps. And it may not be entirely active where they're dancing around and they don't have a body to dance. But they will have a body to dance, okay? 16:15 They will have a body to dance. Now their soul and spirit may be energized. And they are fully conscious. 16:21 But we're talking about a coming together of the spirit which is with the Lord and the body which is being transformed and glorified instantaneously where they meet the Lord in the air and those spirits join those resurrected bodies. 16:42 Now I want to ask you the question this morning. When will this occur? And we don't know. We don't know. The Bible says we don't know the day nor the hour. We cannot know the day nor the hour. But we can know the season, the season. Jesus said, 17:00 "When you see the fig tree begin to bloom, when you see these signs lining up," He said, "then you know that spring and summer is near." We can know the time period possibly, but not the day nor the hour. 17:16 We can know this, that the return of Christ will take place when everything is lined up as God wants it lined up. Now the Bible says in Galatians 4:4 that God, in the fullness of time, sent His Son, born of a woman, made unto the law. 17:35 And so in the fullness of time, what did that look like? Well, everything was just right politically, economically, religiously, socially, everything God had brought together. 17:48 Even the prosperity of the Roman era where all the nations of the then-known world were kind of brought together under Rome so that the gospel could quickly disseminate out into the empire and touch many, if not all, nations. 18:09 And so God had everything religiously, socially, politically, economically, just where He wanted it to be. Would it not be the same when our Lord returns to receive His bride? That everything will be just right from God's perspective. And of course, 18:27 we don't know what that is as far as the date nor the hour. But He did give us signs to see how they align with current events with Scripture, to warn the people that the return of the Lord is near even at the door. And so we're looking for what those signs are. 18:49 And even the Lord has maybe told us more than what we think when we initially do just a 18:58 casual reading of the Scriptures. And that's what I want to show you this morning. If I can get... go ahead and pull that up there, guys. Because I want to show us the periods of human history, the periods of human history. And for us to answer this question, I want you to go back to the book of Daniel. 19:20 So we're going to look at Daniel 9. 19:23 And this is exciting to me because Daniel gave us a lot of information. Daniel 9, or God gave us a lot of information through Daniel about when Christ would come. But before we get to Daniel 9, 19:43 I want to give you just kind of an overview of the periods of human history, biblical history, from Genesis to Revelation. First of all, we have what is called... and this is just simply a way of marking time. 19:58 This is a way of evaluating human history that is not inspired... the Scriptures inspire. But this is kind of a way of categorizing it to give us something to think about where we are in relation to human history. 20:18 First of all, we have Adam and Eve who were in the garden and that we would call the age of innocence. They were in the garden. They were innocent. They were faced with a decision. And that decision was whether to follow God or not. And when they chose to reject God, they were expelled from the garden. And there was a judgment on their sin. 20:40 Read about it in Genesis 3. So the age of innocence came to a close when Adam and Eve sinned and God judged them and expelled them from the garden. Then you go into the age of conscience. And the age of conscience was from Adam's sin to the time of Noah. If you read about that, 21:00 there's a very little said about human government. But the age of conscience where man is responding to God on a personal level and God is calling people to Himself on a personal level through their conscience. 21:16 Not a lot of revelation, very little revelation other than the natural revelation from nature and what was being passed on orally from Genesis or from Adam and Eve through the line of Seth primarily. At the end of that, there was a judgment. There was a judgment called the global flood. 21:35 In Genesis 6:7, "I will destroy man whom I have created." Though you have the global flood, no question about that being a judgment on the ancient world. 21:47 Then out of that, there is what is called the Noahic Covenant where God begins to lay out some things about how man should treat each other and the role of governments. And governments begin to emerge from the Noahic Covenant and beyond. And that was judged at the Tower of Babel. 22:07 Interesting, something that the Lord brought to my attention here just recently as I was studying on some of the signs in relationship to technology and in relationship, dare I say this, to vaccines and what's on the horizon for vaccines in the future and how that relates to end-time prophecy and so on. 22:29 And Genesis 11:6-7, this is what it says, "This is what they begin to do, to build the tower." This is God speaking to God, God speaking to Himself within the Trinity. "Now nothing that they purposed to do will be withheld from them. 22:48 Now let us go down there and confuse their language, confuse their language." Why did God come down and confuse the language? Well, they were being disobedient. They weren't spreading out like He told them to. 23:02 But there was another reason, that nothing was going to be withheld from them once they got together in this global community. 23:12 Did you realize this morning that it is now possible for mankind, because of the influence of global science, for man to mess with the actual DNA structure of the human body and the human being? 23:34 And we'll maybe talk more about that some other time. But the new types of vaccines that are coming are actually messing with DNA. I read an article in Time Magazine. 23:45 This is the pagans talking about the pagans where they say that in the future, the wave of the future is to manipulate DNA so that you can cause... well, they're already doing it with designer babies. You can manipulate and eliminate disease. 24:03 The goal is to form man in our image so that we can eliminate disease, bring about a utopia, have heaven on earth, eliminate the curse without God. And we are very close. At what point does God say, "You know what? 24:20 These humans down there have crossed the line where they are now tampering with the very stuff of life." Is it possible? I ask you the question, that God is saying today that it's time to intervene or nothing will be withheld from them? I ask a question. 24:40 So that's what happened at the Tower of Babel. And we are very interesting correlations with that. Now the next age then was the age of promise. Things began to change. God began to reveal Himself in more personal covenants, Abraham and the patriarchs. 25:01 And Abraham and the patriarchs would take from the call of Abraham down through the judgment of Egypt, "Against all the gods of Egypt, 25:09 I will execute judgment." What I'm trying to help us to see is that there's a period of time where God interacts with people and then judges and initiates another period of time with almost a different system or way of operating. 25:28 Then you have the age of the law following the patriarchs. You have Moses and the nation of Israel. Obviously, God now calling a nation to Himself, God saying, "I want a group of people, not just individuals, but I want a group of people that are mine." And so He lays out then the Mosaic law, the covenant with Israel. 25:50 And then He judges them for their unfaithfulness. Every state along the way God has called, man has failed and judgment has resulted. And so then you have the judgment on Israel, judgment on Judah, and the judgment on sin at the cross, which was a judgment on Satan. 26:12 John 16:11, "The ruler of this world is judged." Again, these are just ways of thinking about human history and categorizing human history. Now we live in the age of grace. After the judgment on the cross, we are now living in what we know as the church age, the age of grace. 26:33 God definitely switched systems, as it were. It's all part of the whole, but He switched to a new covenant. And the church age is what we're in now. At the end of the church age then, there will be a tribulation and the glorious appearing of our Lord. 26:55 Jude 14:15, "Behold, the Lord comes with 10,000 of His saints to what? Execute judgment." Judgment coming upon the world at the end of the church age. Then this is the seventh era that we anticipate. And we'll have more to talk about this when we get into the Feast of Tabernacles, 27:16 the Feast of Tabernacles, the age of the visible kingdom. John the Revelator saw it as a 1,000-year reign where Christ reigns over the nations. And we rule and reign with Christ. At the end of that period, again, man will have failed and judgment will occur, that great white throne judgment. 27:35 You read about it in Revelation 20. "And anyone not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." 2 Peter 3:10, "The heavens will pass away with a great noise and the elements will melt with fervent heat. Both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up." Now some people will look at that and say, 27:59 "We only have two periods of human history." That is the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. That's called covenant theology. There's many good things about that. But nevertheless, to look at what is coming, where are we in this? I believe we are in the age of grace, the church age. 28:18 We're looking forward to the judgment on this world. Now how does that relate to the rapture? Go to Daniel 9:24. Daniel refers to 70 weeks, 70 weeks. 28:39 Daniel was told that there are 70 weeks, verse 24, that are determined for your people and for your holy city to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. 29:02 "Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and 62 weeks. The street shall be built again and the wall even in troublesome times. And after the 62 weeks, Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself. 29:23 And the people of the Prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. To the end of it, or the end of it shall be with a flood until the end of the war. Desolations are determined. Then He shall confirm a covenant with many for one week. But in the middle of the week, He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering. 29:42 And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate even until the consummation, which is determined, is poured out on the desolate." A lot of there, a lot that's in there. And we won't unpack it all. 29:55 But Jesus referred to this passage when He talked about the abomination of desolation or the the the man of sin setting himself up in the temple of God as God. Now what does this have to do with the rapture? 30:14 Let's look at it like this: the end of the Gentile age. When is the end of the Gentile age? And what is the end of the Gentile age? Jesus referred to it in Luke 21:24, "And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled." What's He talking about? Well, 30:33 we don't have all the answers to all these questions. But the Gentile age is, I believe, that church age, that church age, which is for a Gentile bride, bride for the Lord Himself. Looking at Joseph as a picture of that, having a Gentile bride, Jesus, Joseph being a picture, a type of Jesus. 30:55 But not the Jews aren't in the church, but they come in through Christ. And the church of the last 2,000 years has been primarily a Gentile church. Now what does this mean? Sometime in relation to the end of the age, let's explain it like this: Daniel talks about these 70 weeks. In the Hebrew, 31:15 it is 70 weeks of seven, 70 weeks of seven or 77 weeks of years, 70 weeks of years. 31:27 And if you look at this as a week being seven years, which would be similar to the Hebrew calendar or not the calendar. The Hebrew calendar is about a 360-day calendar. 31:42 But the Hebrew week, Jacob served his wife for one week, but it was seven years. So the year of Jubilee, the Sabbath system was built on a seven-year week. 32:03 You tilled the land for six years, then you let the land rest for one year. That is considered a Jewish week in prophetic scriptures. And so then you had seven sevens or 49 years. And the 50th year was what? Somebody? 32:21 Year of Jubilee. 32:22 Year of Jubilee. Year of Jubilee. When all the debts were canceled and everything went back, reverted, all the property reverted back to its family ownership. And all the debts were canceled and you started over. You erased the debts and you erased the social order and started over. 32:41 And so seven weeks, 70 years, 49 years, it all has prophetic implications. Now what He's saying here is in verse 24, "70 weeks are determined for your people." In other words, we're dealing with a 70-week prophecy, 33:03 which would be 490 years, 70 times seven. Well, let's look at it. Daniel's 70th week, Hebrew 77s or weeks of years. The Hebrew calendar was built around sevens, seven sevens. Then after 49 years was the year of Jubilee. 33:23 And another thing to remember is that the ancient Hebrew calendar was based on a 360-day year. And when we calculate things, that's important to remember. The going forth of the decree is what started the 70 years or the 70 weeks of years. The decree what? 33:42 To rebuild Jerusalem. 33:46 "Know therefore," verse 25, "and understand that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem." That's the starting date. That happened. You read about it in Nehemiah 2. I think it's the first verse where it started in 445. It's historically verified, 445 BC. 34:08 In Nehemiah 2, it was in the month of Nisan. Interesting. Remember what month the Passover, unleavened bread, and First Roots takes place in? Nisan, the month of Nisan. 34:26 445 BC minus seven sevens equals 49 years. You do the math, you end up with 396 BC, 396 to 397, depending on how you calculate that 50th, the 49th year. 34:48 If you include the year or if you don't include the year in your calculations, you end up with 396 BC. What happened at 396 BC? The end of the Old Testament era, the end of the prophets. God stopped speaking. But He didn't stop the clock. 35:07 And so 396 minus another 62 sevens equals 434 years or 38 AD. 35:19 So 69 sevens, 69 sevens, 349 or 430 years plus the 49, you can do the math, takes us to 38 AD. This is what Daniel predicted. 35:40 He prophesied. He said, "There's going to be these weeks and years until Messiah comes." This brings us up. Now if you add in the 360-day week, which Daniel defines in the other parts of the book of Daniel, 36:00 where he talks about half of the week and so on, if you add those 306 years, you add in those 360-day year versus the 365-day year, and add that back in, you actually get to about 31 or 32 BC or AD, 36:20 which is the time when Messiah was cut off, not for Himself, but for the people. Don't fall for the thought that the people didn't know when He was coming or couldn't have known. They could have known. He told them when He was coming the first time. 36:41 He told them when Messiah would be cut off. And that comes out to about 31, 32 AD. And those who were really looking for it knew that. In fact, how could... His name leaves me right now. Anna and... 37:02 Simeon, Simeon. How could Simeon and Anna have known that they were living right at the time when Messiah was going to come? They were studying the scriptures. They were studying the scriptures. Daniel told them when Messiah, the Prince, would be cut off. They could do the math. Now this is a little bit complicated. 37:22 You can do the math. You can do the study yourself. The clock stopped ticking when Messiah was cut off. 49 or 69 weeks. There's a 70th week that has to happen. 37:39 70th week, "He shall confirm the covenant with many for one week." Now the end of the Gentile age, when will the start, the clock start ticking again to fulfill the 70th week? The early church recognized the 70th week to be at the end of the age. 37:56 In other words, there's a gap between 69 when Messiah was cut off and 70 when God once again turns to the people of Israel to restore them. 69 weeks, 70th week. Was that chronologically or was there a gap? Irenaeus, 38:15 one of the early church leaders, places the appearance of Antichrist at the end of the age in the last week, in the last week. 38:24 Hippolytus states that Daniel, "indicates the showing forth of the seven years which shall be in the last times." The early church recognized that those weeks of Daniel hit a pause and the clock starts ticking again at the end of the church age. 38:45 God will then turn His attention to the full restoration of the people of Israel. I want to bring this to a close this morning. 38:55 Why is it necessary for there to be a rapture? And I would believe and maintain, even though I'm open to other ideas on all of this, but I would maintain that there needs to be a pre-tribulation rapture for a couple of reasons. 39:16 One is that it will be necessary for God to turn His attention from the church to the people of Israel and restore His wife. Remember in the Old Testament, Israel is the wife of God. And He told them that, 39:34 "If my wife returns, if she repents, I will take her back." Jeremiah 3, I think it is. God will switch. And that switch will be made according to that 60th or 70th week. However, there are other reasons. 39:54 2 Thessalonians talks about the removing of the restrainer, that Antichrist cannot be revealed until the restrainer is removed. Who's the restrainer? Oh, we haven't even got to that passage this morning. The restrainer is the Holy Spirit through the church, embodied in the church. 40:14 You take the church out of the equation of this world and the Holy Spirit. In the body of Christ, and you have the makings of chaos and judgment. 40:29 And another reason why I would maintain a pre-tribulation rapture would be that if you have a mid-tribulation rapture, then there's something got to happen before the rapture. You got to have some of the tribulation. Whereas if with a pre-tribulation, there's nothing that has to happen. I mean, it is looking for the return of Jesus Christ, 40:50 period. We're not looking for the Antichrist. We're not looking for the tribulation. We're not looking for this or that. We're looking for the return of Jesus Christ. If you place the rapture somewhere else, God bless you. I think, and I'll step on Trevor's territory here a little bit, which is biblical territory, so it's fair game. 41:12 And that is in chapter 4, verse 1 of the book of Revelation, where the church has been the focus of chapter 1, 2, and 3. All of a sudden, the church disappears until chapter 22. Where is it? 41:27 Why would a book that has to do so much with the church in the first three chapters all of a sudden not mention the church for the rest of the book till the end? Well, it could be. And you don't make theological decisions, determinations based on silence. 41:45 But they do help confirm other things that you see in scripture, that the church goes off the air in chapter 4, verse 1, when Jesus says to John, "Come up here." It goes off the air because it went up in the air. 42:03 The end of the Gentile age, there must be a removing of the restraining presence of the Holy Spirit in the church so that the man of sin may be revealed, chapter 2 of 2 Thessalonians. This may all be a bit confusing. It has to do with the timing. Basically, let me just summarize it and say, God's time schedule is right on time. 42:23 We don't know exactly the day or the hour. But as we look at the things that are happening and you put scripture together and piece scripture after scripture after scripture and look at it through the lens of the whole, you cannot help but think and know that the return of Jesus Christ is very, very close. 42:46 Now maybe you can't say amen to everything that was given this morning. But can you say amen to the fact that the return of Jesus Christ is very, very close? Amen? 43:02 One more reason for this passage in 1 Thessalonians 4, and I'll close with this. He says, "Comfort one another with these words." Encourage. 43:15 Overcome ignorance, our ignorance, our errors. But also the word comfort can mean to call or to summons. It's an invitation. It's an invitation. It's a summons to consider this passage and act on it. 43:36 And I believe that that is the third and final reason this morning why this message is on my heart this morning. And that is to call the church and individuals to repentance, to holiness, to faith, to faithful service, faithful ministry, 43:57 watchfulness, anticipation, readiness to call us to preparation. If you go back to Matthew 24 and you see what Jesus said about the end of the age and the return of the Lord, over and over and over and over, it is readiness, 44:16 readiness, preparation, faithfulness, service, readiness, preparation, faithfulness, service. Don't quit. Don't give up. Don't throw in the towel. 44:30 Get ready, stay ready, be faithful, serve, have your lamps all trimmed and burning when the Lord returns. Let's pray. Father, thank you for these prophetic scriptures. Oh, we're anticipating this great harvest. 44:52 Lord, we want to see a harvest of souls, but the greatest harvest of souls will be when the harvest comes in and the raptured, redeemed souls of the dead and living in Christ will be gathered together into your household, Lord. 45:10 So exciting to see that coming to pass. Lord, let us not be so concerned with the signs. Let's put them in their proper place, but let's listen for the sound, the sound of the voice of the trump, the archangel, 45:29 the voice of Christ, the voice of God saying, "Come, come." And the spirit and the bride say, "Come." They call out right now, "Come, come and take the water of life freely." And so we come in Jesus' name. Amen.