 Listen, don't let anybody ever tell you that theology is boring. Theology is not boring. People are boring, but theology is not boring. And the truth that you just heard is like a big side of beef that God just... You're gonna be eating off that thing for a long, long time. Go back. I encourage you to go back and just drink in that truth. I'll tell you what. This is one of the most powerful presentations of the gospel and the substitutionary atonement and within the Godhead and what Christ took that I've ever heard in my life. And so praise God for that. Thank you so much, brother. Bill. All right. Well, real quickly, we're gonna get into our message here in just a second. I did want to tell you about the Resource God's Grand Finale, as Pastor Joey mentioned. This is a book that takes you through Revelation unless you see the attributes of God rising through this book. It's like a deep devotional guide, the one that you mentioned earlier, Global Reset. This takes you through what's going on in the world right now and how the global elites are really trying to put together a world, one world government and practically what you can do in the meantime. And then this third book I've listed here is called Interview with Antichrist. People want to know, was he nice? No, I didn't interview the Antichrist. This is an apocalyptic novel about a young Belgian journalist who is tasked with the responsibility of writing the memoirs of the newly elected world leader. And it'll take you all through the tribulation period. It is a non-cheesy Christian novel. And at the end of the book, I've got 30 of the most asked questions about Antichrist answered directly from Scripture. And then real quickly, a couple of things. My podcast, The Vintage Truth Podcast, is now up in well over 100 countries, but have a little Vintage Truth app that you can get for your phone. And there you can follow me on social media. You can get messages, book stuff from you, and all kinds of good stuff. So you just go to your phone there and you download that little app there called The Vintage Truth App. And it'll be a great resource for your Christian life. And then finally, I also have a podcast called The Prophecy Pros Podcast. This is with my good buddy, Todd Hampson, and a sponsor of a Harvest House Publishers. We're in our 11th season now. We've got well over a million downloads. It is the, in the top 1% of all podcasts in America. So God is doing that with this little podcast here. So it's a, and we have great theologians that we interview on there and prophecy experts and that type of thing. Now, today I want to talk to you about something that is God's next prophetic event on His calendar. You know, Bill did such a great job in telling us how to be active during these last days. And God wants us to be active. He wants us to be about His business. He wants first to do something in our own hearts as believers. He wants us to be preparing ourselves for the return of Jesus Christ. You know, in my pastoral career, I was a pastor about 35 years. And during that time, I performed about 80 or so weddings. And I always did premarital counseling to the couples when they came to me for, to do their wedding. And here's what I would say on the last session with them. I would tell the bride, I would say, look, you've spent all this time preparing. You've met with caterers and photographers and planners and providers of all kinds of food and all this other stuff. You bought a wedding dress. You went all over town swiping your daddy's credit card. Just burning it up, setting it on fire. You're ready for the guy over here. I tell him, wear a suit and have a pulse and I can get you through this wedding. Okay. But here's the thing. A woman prepares for her wedding really all her life. Really beginning when she's a little girl, waiting for her night in shining armor. And God says the bride must be prepared as well. And so we're going to talk about this thing called the rapture today. And the reason why this is so important is because the rapture doctrine right now is the most attacked in times doctrine of any other teaching. In fact, the pre-trib rapture doctrine is under attack today. I was speaking in Chattanooga, Tennessee here this spring and I was preaching on this very subject of the rapture and a man who had walked in as a visitor stood up in the middle of the congregation and began shouting and yelling at me and calling me a false prophet and calling the rapture a false doctrine. And I was looking at his hands the whole time for obvious reasons, wondering if he's about to take a shot at me. Soon security came along and they escorted him out. But I get the same kind of response through email. I get it through regular mail. I get people who will write me long letters about how please don't tell Christians about the rapture. Who do you think that's really coming from? You know? And yet I believe the rapture. I believe it comes straight from the Word of God. Now there are some books that have been published here against the rapture. Paul rather, first of all, wrote that we do not want you to be uninformed about those who are asleep. You see, Paul was very concerned that Christians not remain in ignorance. And here's why. Here's why this is so important that you heard what Bill said earlier. Is because when we are ignorant about theology, about Christian doctrine, then that opens us up to several things. One opens up to fear because we don't know. And secondly, it opens us up to false teaching and false doctrine. When you are taught the Word of God, then you have a template through which to read all types of beliefs, opinions, teachings, and you can test them against the Scripture. And so Paul said, I don't want you to be uninformed because what had happened was false teachers had crept into the Thessalonian church. And they were telling the Thessalonians, number one, that the day of the Lord had already come, and number two, that they had been left behind. And they were actually in the tribulation period. So Paul had to write first and second Thessalonians to correct that false doctrine. In fact, most of Paul's epistles were written to correct false doctrine. That tells you how quickly Satan infiltrates the church. He wants to come in and tell people lies, half truths, deceptions, delusions, so that you don't get the pure milk of the Word and the meat of the Word as well. Now some people have written some very interesting books. This book is called The Secret Rapture, so secret it can't be found in the Bible. This person really believes that. Another person said, how you can profit from the coming rapture getting ahead when you're left behind. And I think the small prince says something about capitalizing on the Antichrist regime. Now obviously, that book is written tongue in cheek. But here's one that isn't. This was written actually by a pastor. This book said, a vision of hope for the end times, why I want to be left behind. Now I don't know anybody in their right mind that would want to go through the awful judgments of the tribulation period. But this person, this pastor obviously wanted to, so I looked him up and turns out he passed away here this past year. Well, he understands exactly what God's going to do now because he's in heaven. I trust that he knows the Lord. But the rapture today is under attack. And you as believers, you cannot depend upon your pastor or speakers or authors or Christian leaders to do all the fighting out there. As Bill so appropriately pointed out, we have to be the foot soldiers in God's army to take the attack to the enemy. We take it out there in the culture, in the marketplace, and all of these very, very important critical moral events that are going on today with transgenderism and abortion and all that. We have to be the ones out there. But we also have to be the voice, the voice piece of God as well to speak the truth about what the Word of God says. So the rapture is under attack. Now I want to give you some arguments that people use against the rapture. These are the common arguments that you will hear when you tell people, I'm expecting Jesus Christ to come back at any moment. Here's the first argument. The word rapture is not in the Bible. This is the most often used argument against the rapture. Well, why would you as a Christian want to believe something that is not even in the Bible? That sounds sort of counterproductive, right? Well, how do you answer that question? Well, I'll answer, well, this is true. The English word rapture is nowhere found in your English Bible. In fact, no English words are found in the original manuscripts because the Bible was written in Hebrew, a little bit of Aramaic, and of course, Greek in the New Testament. So actually no words. But let me give you some other words that are also not found in the Bible. There are words like the word Trinity, the word missions, or the word Easter, or Christmas, or Great Commission, incarnation, and heresy. In fact, the word Bible is not even in the Bible, okay? So the real question is not is our modern day English word that we call a doctrine, is it found in the Bible? The question is, is the teaching found in the Bible? The teaching of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, how many would agree that's in the Bible? I do too. It's in the Bible. But the nowhere in the Bible doesn't say, now you want to call this the Trinity. We came up with that word. I think it was, Augustine came up with the word. We call it the Trinity or the triunity of God. It doesn't matter what we call the time around Christ's birth. I mean, there are Greek words and stuff, and there are things in the New Testament. We call it Christmas, don't we? We call it the incarnation, and yet that word's not in there. So we'll talk about how we got the word rapture here in just a little bit. So that's a bogus argument. Secondly, they say that the rapture is a recent doctrine. And this is a huge argument that people try to use against the rapture. They say, you're believing in something that didn't even exist until this guy named John Darby in the 1700s began to do teaching on the rapture. Well, I would answer that this is actually not true, that the rapture is not a recent doctrine. Here's why. You can trace back as far as the first century document called the Dedeke, or the teaching of the 12 apostles, where the idea of an imminent at any time return of Christ is taught in that first century. Also, many of the early church fathers often referred to eminency, or again, the fact that Christ could come back at any time. And then I just wrote, if the legitimacy of a particular doctrine is determined by the date in which it enjoyed popularity or prominence in the church, then many core doctrines are suspect. You saw in October 31st, 1517, that Martin Luther nailed his 95 grievances against the Catholic church. And he introduced to the world again the idea of salvation by grace through faith. That doctrine was very unpopular for about a thousand years in the Roman Catholic world, and they pretty much controlled Christianity. So you would say salvation by grace through faith was not a popular doctrine. In Martin Luther's day it was considered a recent doctrine. Guess what? It was in the Bible all along, and that's the point. Also, let me go back here a second, rapture is a recent doctrine, yeah. The second thing is that the doctrine of inerrancy is another one. In fact, in the early 1900s, there was a huge push against the Bible being the word of God. And so the seminaries began to go liberal, and churches began to go liberal. And then God raised up certain men, like men who founded Dallas Theological Seminary, where I went to seminary, men like Louis Ferry Chafer and Harry Einstein, great theologians. They came up and said, no, we need to teach the Bible again. And then also the idea of prophecy. And in times, in fact, the book of Revelation itself is enjoying a huge resurgence right now. You wouldn't say that Revelation is a recent doctrine. You would just say it's enjoying a resurgence of Christians being interested in it. So for that reason, we would reject this idea that the rapture is a recent doctrine. It's historically unsupportable. Now what's another argument? Here's one more argument here against the rapture, actually two more arguments here. And it's that the rapture is considered to be a convenient escape clause. In other words, you Christians want to believe in rapture because you don't want to go through hard times. You're just a bunch of weaklings. You're just a bunch of lazy people who don't want to get out of the hard times and don't want to go through things. Why is that such a big deal? Well, the rapture is an escape clause. I would respond this way, well, then so is the ark. Then so are the two angels that came to Sodom. If you came to Noah and you said, no, you're just building this boat because you want to escape divine judgment, Noah would go sign me up. That's me. Lot being drug out of Sodom and Gomorrah, hey, convenient escape clause? You better believe it. You know why? Because the judgment of Almighty God is about to fall. I want out of that. So yeah, that's okay. I'll take the escape clause thing. But here's the thing. Christians are never immune from hard times or persecution. We know that. Jesus said in John 16, he says, in the world, you're going to have persecution. You're going to have tribulation. You're going to go through hard times. But we have to make a distinction here between man's wrath and God's wrath. This is the line. You really must draw here and build such a beautiful job of helping us understand that it's God's wrath that fell on Jesus. We're still here taking man's wrath, right? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, man's wrath. Daniel, man's wrath. Paul, man's wrath. Stephen, man's wrath, right? But God's wrath was satisfied on Jesus at the cross. That's why I first, John 2, 2 says that he is the propitiation of our sins or the satisfaction of our sins. That's why there's no, not one drop of anger left for us. So we have to make a distinction between God's wrath and man's wrath between tribulation and the tribulation. One final argument against the rapture is that a belief, particularly in a pre-trib rapture, produces lazy Christians. Well, after Bill's message, I don't think it would be lazy Christians in this group, but people do say that. And my response to that is not really, but there are other rapture positions do or could produce a lazy Christian attitude. For example, if I knew exactly when Jesus was coming back, I'd just simply, maybe I could get lazy, maybe I get mediocre, maybe I get complacent, lethargic, and just wait until that date on the calendar till he comes back. If I knew he was coming back at the exact midpoint of the tribulation, I'd just count and set my watch for three and a half years and wait for Jesus. And I might not be as, you know, sitting on ready as they say. If I knew he was coming back at the very end of the tribulation, seven years into it, I could just simply look at my calendar and mark down, every day I get closer. And then as we get really close, I might get my life in order. But the belief in a pre-trib rapture is the belief in what we call eminency. It means that Christ could come back at any moment. The rapture is a signless event. Do you get that? It's a signless event. Now the second coming of Christ is preceded by many, many signs. We read about those in Matthew chapter 24 and Luke 21. But the rapture doctrine carries no signs leading up to it. There's not one single Bible prophecy that must be fulfilled in order for Jesus to come back. We're just simply waiting on God's timetable. So we always have to ask ourselves, what does the Bible really say? So again, if we knew the dates of the other rapture timings, then we could simply set our watch and get ready for it. Now what does the Bible say about the timing of the rapture? Well, it can't be a prophecy converse without at least one chart. Right Pastor, we got to have one chart. I don't have a big chart I can bring to you, but I want to show you this one chart that I do have here that I think will make a little bit of sense to you. Where are we on God's prophetic timeline? Now, right now, we're in what we call the church age, okay? And after that's followed by the seven-year tribulation, God's wrath, the Antichrist comes up after that, then comes the second coming of Christ, and then the Millennial Kingdom, and then, of course, the eternity future. Where are we? We're about right. I don't know, we're between the G and the E or right around the E. I don't know where we are. I just know we're very close to the end there. And these different positions that people have on the rapture, there's the post-trib rapture says we come at the end of the, or we go back to heaven at the end of the tribulation. Then there's the mid-trib rapture that happens at the middle point of the tribulation. And then there's finally the pre-trib rapture, which is the one that we hold to at the beginning of the tribulation or right before of it. Now, keep this in mind. The rapture does not begin the seven-year tribulation. It's the signing of the peace covenant that Antichrist makes with Israel, Daniel 9, 26, and 27, that marks the very beginning of that prophetic clock ticking once again. And so we have to make sure we understand that we're on God's timetable, not our own here. Now, Jeff, why do you believe in a pre-trib rapture? Then we're going to get into finally 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 here today. Just real quickly, we have the pattern of God's deliverance in Scripture. And I've already talked about God's pattern of delivering prior to divine judgment. You've got, of course, Enoch, you've got Noah, you've got Lot, and, of course, the bride of Christ. So God has a pattern of saying, I'm bringing judgment, but first I'm getting my family out. If you were going to demolish your home and just raise it to the ground before you built another one, wouldn't you get your family out first? You know, now the neighbor's kids, they can stay in, right? But it's your family, you want to make sure you take care of, especially those rowdy neighbor kids, right? But it's God's pattern of deliverance. The second thing is, is the portrayal of the church in Revelation. And this is really fascinating to me because as you look through Revelation, what you see is that the word church, Ecclesia that Bill just pointed out, occurs 20 times in Revelation. So they say, Jeff, where does it occur? Well, in chapters one through three, it occurs 19 times, chapters four through 18, zero times, but during the time of tribulation, excuse me, zero times, that's during the time of tribulation. But in chapter 22, we see it back again when we're in the new heavens and the new earth. So during the time that God is bringing His wrath down on the earth, the church is not mentioned one single time as being on the earth. Now keep this in mind, we need to make a distinction here eschatologically between the bride of Christ and tribulation saints. Tribulation saints are those people who are left behind at the rapture that suddenly realize that they've been left behind and that the gospel was true after all. How do they know this? They know this because you told them about it ahead of time. They're going to remember every word you say about the rapture and about the gospel when it happens. Secondly, they're going to be bibles left behind. They're going to be programs left behind. Maybe this conference will still be online, resources for people. There's going to be the preaching of the 144,000 Jewish witnesses that are going to tell the world about Jesus Christ. They'll be like 144,000 young Jewish Billy Grahams just set loose on the planet. Then there's going to be the preaching of the two witnesses who many believe to be Moses and Elijah come back again to reach the Jewish people. Moses representing the law, Elijah representing the prophets. Then there's going to be what I call the gospel encircling angel. He's going to preach the gospel all over the world as sort of God's last call for salvation. We know from the book of Job and Ezekiel that angels can fly at the speed of lightning. If that were true, then one angel could get around the earth in about four minutes. This gospel angel can circle the earth. God's going to make sure the whole world knows and that's what Jesus meant when he said Matthew 24, and then the gospel will be preached to the whole world and then the end will come. It's after this final call for the gospel. But these are tribulation saints and most of them are going to give their lives for the cause of Christ. They're going to have their head chopped off. Revelation chapter 20 verse 4 says they're going to be beheaded. And that word beheaded means to have your head sought off your body. That's what the word means. So it's going to be a brutal time for believers and but they're all going to stand up and the Bible tells us not one of them will deny Jesus. Isn't that great? But they're tribulation saints. But we're in the church age. We're a part of the bride of Christ. We are the ones that are going to be raptured up before them and they were absent on the earth during the tribulation. And then of course the geography or the place of the church in Revelation. Chapters 1 through 3 we're seen as being on earth. Chapters 4 through 18 we're in heaven during the tribulation. Then all of a sudden we reappear in chapter 19 during the second coming when Christ comes from heaven back to the earth. So if the rapture he comes for his saints at the second coming he comes back with his saints. And then of course in chapters 20 through 22 we have the millennial kingdom. Now there are many passages we could go to and talk about concerning the rapture but I want to land on 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 here in verses 13 through 18. We know Jesus made a promise to come back for his bride and by the way he keeps all his promises. Jesus is going to keep that promise. He's not going to leave you in the, you won't be left at the altar, you know. So that's the great news about that. Now let's go on to Paul's prophecy because I want to really dig down on the meat of what Paul is saying here. Paul in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 he tells us in verse 14, he's already told us he didn't want us to be uninformed but in verse 14 he tells us something about the rapture. I never really understood before until the last couple of years of really studying this passage. Verse 14 says this, he says, for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, stop. How many people believe Jesus died and rose again? Amen. Do you really believe that? Amen. Now watch this. If you believe that he says that in verse 14 he says even so he's making an equation here that the reality of what he's about to tell you is predicated on the reality of something that's already happened. He says here that even so God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. So here's what he's saying. The doctrinal credibility and reality of the rapture is predicated on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If you say there's no rapture then you must, according to Paul's logic, say there is no resurrection. Now if you believe in a resurrection you have to believe in a rapture because it's in the Bible and he says it right here. So first of all it's predicated on the resurrection itself and then it goes even further in verse 15. He says, for this we say to you by the word of the Lord. So he's saying not only is the rapture predicated on the resurrection but it is authenticated by the word of God. Now you don't go any higher than the word of an Almighty God, right? So he's saying that it's the word of God itself. He says that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. Now here's what Paul does now. Paul does what I call frame by frame analysis of the rapture. There are these guys on YouTube called the slow mo guys and they have these ultra high cameras. They can film like 25,000 frames a second. They'll shoot guns and they'll burst air balloons and all this other stuff. Well, they look at these events here frame by frame. This is exactly what Paul's doing with the rapture for you so that we can slow it down and understand piece by piece what's going to happen in our future. Here's the first thing. He says Jesus Christ is going to personally descend from heaven with a shout. Verse 16, for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout. Now what does this mean? Well here's what it means. It's that Jesus Christ in his earthly form has not been back to planet earth in 2000 years. And he's not going to touch ground at this moment because the Bible tells us in Zechariah that at his second coming his foot's going to touch the Mount of Olives and it's going to split in half. That's another amazing prophecy we could talk about. But he's going to come he says in the air but he's going to descend personally. Why personally? Because he's personally coming to get his own bride. That's why. And so he's going to come down from heaven but it says he comes with a shout. You say all right Jeff tell us what's he going to say? Everybody listen real closely. I don't know. I don't know. The Bible doesn't tell us what he says. Now maybe he'll say something like come forth like he said to Lazarus coming out of the grave. Maybe he'll say bride here I am. We don't know exactly what Jesus is going to say. But here's what we do know. It's going to be loud. It's going to be loud. It's going to be authoritative. The voice of God. It's going to be heard by every believer on the planet. They say wait a minute. Now I know that brothers so and so and sisters so and so they're living for God and they'll definitely hear that call. But what about these other Christians that are just kind of like they're not really living for God at the moment. Are they going to hear that call too? Yeah. They're going to hear that call. You know why? Because 1st Corinthians 1552 says we will all be changed. We will all be changed. Now look, you're not going to get in on a lot of blessings and a lot of reward if you're not living for the Lord at this time. But if you're a genuine believer, if God has truly regenerated your heart and you know Jesus Christ, you're going up in the rapture along with everybody else. And then finally it's going to be the summons of a bridegroom calling his bride to the wedding. So the very first thing that happens is you're going to hear a shout. Jesus said in John chapter 10 he says my sheep hear my voice and they know me and another they simply won't follow. You're not going to say to your, not one Christian on the planet is going to say who said that? Who said that? No, no. You're going to know that it's Jesus, you're going to recognize his voice. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that there's going to be the voice of the archangel. It says in verse 16 that there's going to be this voice of an archangel. And he said well who is the arch, what in the world is an archangel? Well it's a very special class of archangels. Angels have a hierarchical structure, demons do as well, almost like a military hierarchy. My oldest son went to West Point, West Point grad and a graduated second lieutenant went on to serve in the army, was in charge of a bunch of missile stuff. But in his chain of command there were people that answered to him. But there were also people that he answered to. And the angelic world is the same way. And this class of archangel appears to be a class here that possesses greater authority and responsibility among the angelic host. In fact the book of Daniel, in Daniel chapter 12 tells us that Michael, who's the only archangel named by the way, was in charge of watching out for Israel. And I believe he still is by the way. So Michael the archangel is watching out for Israel. But Daniel 10 verse 13 says that he was only one of the chief princes. Now I'm going to speculate for a moment, okay? This is not in the Bible. This is not something that God says. Is it possible there could be another archangel whose job is simply to watch out for the bride? Kind of like to be secret security, you know, special office security for the bride? I don't know. Maybe he's the bride's guardian angel. Maybe he's the one just make sure that the bride gets to the church on time, if you will. I don't know that for sure. But it's possible that it could be this other archangel. And he's going to also shout something. And we don't know what he's going to shout either. He may shout something like, behold the bridegroom, come out to meet him. We'll hear about in the parable of the 10 virgins in Matthew 25. But you're going to hear that. He's going to be that best man that's going to say, it's wedding time. Let's go. And so we're going to be called up at that moment. So there's the voice of the archangel. Next here comes the next one. It's the trumpet of God. It says here there's going to be a great trumpet that will sound in verse 16. Now I had a man one time come up to me at a prophecy conference, as people often do. And he came up close to me, and of course, again, I'm checking his hands to make sure he didn't have a dagger, one of those Makarias I talked about earlier, right? And so he comes up and he whispers something in my ear. Again, I never know what it's going to be. He whispers in my ear, Donald Trump. And I said, okay, yeah, he's our president. What about him? He said, then he leaned forward and he said, Donald Trump. I said, okay, what do you mean? He said, don't you understand? I said, no, I don't understand. Apparently I don't get it. He said, the Bible says that Jesus is coming back at the last Trump. I said, okay, well, listen, you know, I want to tell you, I support his policies and, you know, I think he's doing a great job. But I don't think that's what that verse is specifically talking about there. I said, you're probably reading out of the King James. I said, I hate to tell you this, but that word really is the word Trumpet. It's Trumpet. So unless we have a president named Donald Trumpet, I don't know that we can find him right here in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. And then undeterred, he leaned forward again. He said, you're not getting it. I was like, no, I'm not. And he said, don't you know what his middle name is? I said, I don't, but I have a sneaking suspicion. You're about to tell me. So he leaned forward again. He says, his name's John. And I went, and he said, don't you know who came before Jesus? John the Baptist, you know, right? So he had this thing all figured out, you know, of Donald Trump and that kind of thing. So unless, unless he changes his name to Trumpet, I don't know that that's a legitimate interpretation. But, but in biblical culture, there were two ways that Trumpets were used. In the Old Testament, there was a shofar that was blown that would tell people it's time for the people of God to do what? To gather up. It was a gathering thing. Now, some of you in this audience are old enough to remember on Sunday mornings, church bells would ring. Remember that time? That's kind of a pleasant, you know, thing on Sunday morning, but it's also kind of like the double-edged sword because it's also a way to say, you know, get your lazy quister out of bed and come to church. You know, I was really, really what those church bells were trying to say, right? But now it's like the gathering, right? But the second way in New Testament culture that the trumpet was used was to sound the arrival of a dignitary or say a general coming back from war from the Roman wars. And I think here it really has both meanings here. The idea of this trumpet sounds that arrest your attention. There's something very regal, very majestic. And also, isn't it great to know there are going to be musical instruments in heaven? Isn't that great? I mean, thank God we're not singing acapella together because I've heard some of you sing. You know, I just, it sounds like a calf dying in a hailstorm. You know what I'm saying? I mean, sometimes some people, but you know what, you're going to get perfect pitch in heaven. Isn't that great to know that? Amen. Some of you have been wanting to sing all your life, you're going to be able to do that in heaven. But there's going to be great musical instruments in heaven and great music in heaven as well. It's going to be incredible. But it says that this last trumpet is going to sound, the last trumpet, they're signifying the end, that's the last part, of the church age. And at that point, the Bible says we're going to be extracted from this earth. So what do we have so far? We've got Jesus shouting, the archangel announcing, the trumpet of God blasting, literally to this point, it's the most dramatic moment in human history. And every person on the earth is going to know that it's happened, but that's not all. Paul goes on and says something else is going to happen. He says, Jesus Christ is going to perform a mid-air miracle. Look at verse 17, or verse 16. And the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. So here's what's going to happen. All of those people who have died in Jesus, beginning with Stephen, who is the first Christian martyr, Stephen's dusty body somewhere out there is going to be resurrected. You say, Jeff, what about the people who have been blown up in war or burned alive or sent to the oceans and they've been eaten by the animals in the oceans? I've got news for you. God knows where all the molecules are. He knows where every atom of your body is, and even better than that, He can recreate something from nothing. God can recreate something from nothing. So God's going to take all those molecules, He's going to reconstitute them into a glorified body like Jesus Christ had, and we're going to come bursting up out of the grave if you've been gone with the Lord. Now your spirit's going to be coming from the air at that time. These are all the people that have passed on. You say, wait a minute, how do we know that? Well, 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 8 says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. And that gives you good news, friends, because that tells you there are no waiting rooms for heaven. There's no purgatory. There's no place to go and time out before you get to heaven to get good enough. You go straight to be with Jesus Christ. So the moment you breathe your last breath here, you take in heaven's air in heaven. And so we have that comfort. But those bodies will be reunited with their spirits, and they'll be complete, they'll be whole. Again, we who are still here will also be changed. The Bible says here, it says we'll be caught up in the air to be there with the Lord. Now here's where we get our word rapture. You say, how do we get rapture here from caught up? Well, it's the Greek word harpodzo, which sounds like an Italian dish I confess. And this is why we don't call it the harpodzo, okay? It just wouldn't make sense to people. You say, what about, how do we get rapture though? Okay, hang on. So when Jerome was translating the Latin Vulgate, the Latin Bible from Greek to Latin in the fourth century, he came to this word harpodzo. Now the word harpodzo means to seize, to snatch, to arrest, to gather up quickly. It's a word that has great action to it. And he came to this word, he was trying to think, what Latin word do we have that is the best equivalent of this word harpodzo? And he came up with a Latin word called rapie, rapie. And a form of rapie came to be known as rapturo. And so when they transliterated the Latin over into English, because many Bible translations use Latin manuscripts, they came to this word rapture, and it just became known as the rapture. So when people say the rapture is not in the Bible, well, the English word isn't, but the teaching is, and we can trace it all the way back to the Greek language there. And this word rapture is an amazing word, it's the same word used to describe how Philip was suddenly snatched away in Acts chapter 8, he disappeared and reappeared somewhere else. It's the word that Paul uses in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, when he talks about, I was caught up to the third heaven. It's actually the same word used in Revelation chapter 12, describing the ascension of Jesus Christ. It says that Jesus on the Mount of Olives was harpodzoned up, he was caught up, he was raptured up. It's not an exciting word, you say, so yeah, we caught the rapture. But there are other words that the New Testament uses for this very same event. It calls it the blessed appearing of our Lord. It calls it the blessed hope. In fact, over in this same passage in verse 15, Paul uses the word the coming of the Lord. And anytime you talk about the coming of the Lord, you could be talking about the second coming, or you could be talking about the rapture. And this Greek word, a perusea, means presence or arrival. And the word is used about 24 times in the New Testament, sometimes it refers to the second coming, sometimes it refers to the rapture. How do you know? Context will tell you every time. So that's why we have to do Bible study when we study these kind of passages. It's an exciting word. What a great word that God uses here. Now, what else can we know about this rapture here? Well, he tells us that the rapture is sudden. The word harpazo tells us that it's a sudden event. But when we compare scripture to scripture, and we go over to 1 Corinthians chapter 15, we find out that Paul describes it this way. It says it happens in a moment in the twinkling of an eye. So how fast is that? Well, the twinkling of an eye is about three hundredths of a second. It's the amount of time it takes for the light in this room to refract off of your eye. That's how fast it happens. He uses another word in the same passage as the word moment, which is the Greek word, automo, A-T-O-M-O. What word, English word do you see in there? Adam, exactly. It's the only time in the whole Bible that word is used. And it refers to, the definition is that which is indivisible or that which cannot be divided. That's the amount of time that the rapture takes to take place. For example, if you want to divide twenty and a half, you'll have what? Ten. If you want to divide ten and a half, you'll have what? If you want to divide five and a half, you have what? Two and a half. And that's where my fifth grade math ends right there, okay? But if you keep going, you're going to go all the way down to, you can't chop it in half anymore. You're going to get down to infinity. That's the word that Paul uses, that this rapture takes place so suddenly, faster than thought. By the time you think that it's happened, it's already happened. That's how fast we're going to be changed. Use only one time in the Scriptures. And then also, we know that the rapture is an imminent doctrine because we know throughout the whole New Testament that the early church, now watch this, the early church believed that Jesus could come back at any moment. Do you know that? They didn't believe that Christ was going to come back in two thousand years. They didn't understand all the prophecy. In fact, these Thessalonians didn't have the book of Revelation yet. They didn't have the first John yet. They didn't have a lot of the books of the Bible. But they did know he could come back at any time. In fact, in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 or chapter 16, Paul actually uses the word, he coins a word in Aramaic that talks about this. It's the word Maranatha, Maranatha. And the word simply means this, oh, Lord come, oh, Lord come. And we believe historians say that this may have been how the church greeted one another when they came to church at someone's house and how they said goodbye to one another. So instead of saying, hey, how about them tigers, man? They would say, Maranatha, and I'll see you next week, Maranatha, may the Lord come. In fact, I went through and did a study of the New Testament trying to find this spirit of expectancy, this idea of believing that Jesus Christ could come back at any moment, this whole idea. And I couldn't find a single verse in the New Testament. Oh, wait a minute. Maybe there's, maybe there's a couple there. Okay. Okay. There's a few. Okay. There's a couple of verses there that talk about how the early church eagerly anticipated, eagerly anticipated. It's like you do on Saturday when you go watch SEC football, right? You sit down, you've got your food, you got your drink, you're ready, you're, it's like a bride looking forward to the wedding. Eagerly anticipating. Where is that spirit of anticipation today? Where is it in our churches? We snail in and we snail out of churches. Man, we ought to be so pumped every week to say it could be today. It could be today. God wants us to know this. So there's so many verses that we could look at here and many of them are there for you there. And here's the last thing that Paul says. As a result of this teaching of this pre-trib rapture, here's, here's the application for you guys, therefore scare each other to death with these words, right? Is that what he says? No, he says in verse 18, therefore comfort, comfort one another with these words. No believer should ever be scared by the rapture. Who gets scared about their wedding day, right? Maybe a little nervous, maybe some, you know, butterflies in your stomach, but guess what? You're looking forward to that. Comfort. It's the same word here as used to describe the Holy Spirit being our comforter. This doctrine of the rapture ought to be the best news you hear your entire Christian life outside of the gospel itself, because the Lord is coming back for you. It's not just the blessed hope, it's your blessed hope. We have to make it personal. Only believers will experience this, and all believers will experience this. And I just wrote, only God could orchestrate such a spectacular supernatural scenario. You know, I love weddings. I used to love weddings more than I do now, because now I'm an old man, I just go, do we have to go, sweetie? There's a game coming on, you know? And so I've gotten kind of, you know, crotchety in my old age and stuff, but guess what? Love weddings, but you know what's even more fun? The wedding is the wedding reception. And you know, in the Jewish world, once the man came to the girl and said, hey, will you be my bride? And he handed her a cup of wine, and she drank the wine. She was accepting the wedding proposal. And then the man would say to the girl, I'm going to go back to my father's house. We're going to add on a section there, and I'm going to go wait for you. And then at an unannounced time, I'm going to come back for you. Now she knew a general time period, because wedding engagements were about 12 months in those days. But as it got closer, she got more and more and more excited. And he promised to come back. And so when he did come back, he would snatch her up, and he would take her away to the father's house. And after they consummated the wedding, they partied for seven days. That's my kind of wedding right there. I thought, unlimited food, there's dancing, Jews know how to dance, okay? And they know how to celebrate. And God says there's going to be a celebration of the wedding of the Lamb up in heaven, because the bride has made herself ready. Nothing so sensational, nothing so wondrous, nothing so joyous. More exciting than a last second touchdown, more emotional than a soldier coming home for more. My friend is more happy feeling than a baby being born. Nothing in your life will ever fill your heart with more joy than seeing Jesus Christ in the sky. So don't you want to be a part of this amazing, precious bride? And if today, if you don't know for sure, I'm talking about 100% sure that if you walked out of that door and got hit by a bus, you'd go to heaven. If you don't know that for sure, you need to make sure today. Because you get in on the greatest deal of the century, the greatest deal of eternity in knowing Jesus Christ. Listen, when this event happens, you and I are going to realize how imperfect our vision of Christ really was. We're going to realize that guys like me didn't do a good enough job explaining how wonderful Jesus really is. He's more beautiful and glorious than we ever could imagine, and is in that moment that we will realize why Paul wrote the words, every knee shall bow, every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. You know there are no prophetic signs that have to take place before the rapture occurs. We're not told to look for signs, we're told to look for the Lord Himself. We're never told to look for antichrist, but we are told to look for the Christ. So Jeff, what in the world is Jesus waiting on? You want to know what he's waiting on? Two things. Number one, he's waiting for the stage to be set for revelation, which is happening before our very eyes, and he's waiting for the lost to be saved. There will be a last person to be saved in the church age. Who is that person? I don't know. Will it be a 13-year-old girl at youth camp who gave her life to Christ? Will it be a man in drug rehab who's come to the end of his road? Will it be a guy like George who finally gives his life to Christ after being in prison? Who's it going to be? We don't know. Maybe it's one of you today. We don't know, but God sure does. I want to close with a story here. Years ago, there was a man by the name of Sir Ernest Shackleton. He was a great British explorer. In 1914, he put an ad in a London newspaper that said this, Men wanted for hazardous journey, long hours, bitter cold, months without light, safe return doubtful, reward in case of success. Shackleton thought that maybe five or ten men would respond to the ad, but he was so overwhelmed to learn that over 500 men responded because they wanted to accompany the knighted explorer to be the first to cross the Arctic, the Antarctic continent, rather, on foot and write themselves into the history books. Shackleton finally settled on a crew of 28 men. Each of them were a specialist in their own area of expertise. There were doctors, cooks, carpenter, season sailors, all men filled with anticipation upon accompanying Shackleton on the Great Voyage. And they set out to sail, sailing to Antarctica on their ship called the Endurance. Soon after the Endurance became stuck in the thick ice, and her crew worked feverishly to free her from the impending frozen death, but despite their efforts, the gradual movement of the megaton ice flows crushed in on the hull of the ship and crushed its timber like mack sticks. Shackleton gave the orders to abandon ship and the men began to camp on the ice flows for over two months, braving the bitter subzero cold. But then the flows were breaking up and drifting in unfriendly directions, so Shackleton and his men began the slow trek toward the open sea. Then launching their three tiny lifeboats, they began sailing on April 19th, 1916. They began rowing for Elephant Island 100 miles away. Can you imagine a rowboat going 100 miles? Finally after a perilous journey, they reached their goal, an uninhabited cold rock located now, they were now 800 miles from any civilization. This is in 1916. Before Shackleton, with his options narrowing, he began to make some serious decisions. He decided that he would re-rig one of his lifeboats. He would take his captain, Captain Worsley, and four other men that they were climbing to this re-rig lightboat and set sail for South Georgia Island 800 miles away. But before Shackleton left, he gathered his men on the beach in subzero weather and he looked them in the eye, each of them, and promised each of them that he would return for them. With the odds exponentially stacked against them, the men waved goodbye to their beloved captain whom they affectionately called the boss. They climbed into the lifeboat and they saw them sail away, and if Shackleton would fail in his mission to reach South Georgia 800 miles away, there would be no hope of rescue for his men ever. No one even knew they were there and no one even cared. World War I had begun. The men then camped for some five months under their lifeboats, eating whatever food they could scrounge up. Miraculously, they didn't know this, but after only 16 days of sailing in wild and furious weather, Shackleton and his small crew sighted land 800 miles in 16 days. Arriving on South Georgia Island, they were dismayed to discover they had landed on the wrong side of the island. Now they had to trek across the entire island in waist-deep snow. When they finally arrived there at the village, they looked so harrowed and so terrifying that people ran from them thinking they were ghosts or some sort of monsters. Finally Shackleton convinced a boat to launch and to go look for his lost men, but the ice floes kept the whaling boats from leaving the harbor there. Five times over five months, Shackleton tried to get out. He was able to get a Chilean vessel and get to his men who were there on the beach. When he got to the island, he didn't know if any of them would be alive or if one of them would be alive. But sailing through Gale Force winds, he finally got to the island. Upon sighting the beach, there he saw his men, ready and waiting. Captain Worldsley took out his binoculars and he looked on the beach and did a head count and he turned to his boss and said, they're all alive, Skipper. They're all coming home. You lost not a one of them. Contemplating their narrow escape, they jumped into the lifeboat, got onto the ship and sailed away and just then the ice floes closed up behind them, but they were on their way back home. Contemplating this escape, Shackleton remarked to his men, he said this. He said it was fortunate that you were all packed and ready to go. And one of them looked at him and said, we never gave up hope. Whenever the sea was clear of ice, we all rolled up our sleeping bags and we reminded one another, the boss may come today. The boss may come today.