A Thief In The Night Series

There are various theories on how this will happen…theories that are widely believed today:

Nuclear war, meteor, aliens, natural disasters, global warming, others say disease will wipe out the human race.

ILL - Warm August night 1980 Sunday night

A thief in the night, a distant thunder.

I remember lying awake at night too scared to fall asleep. I didn’t want to get beheaded; I didn’t want to face what I had seen in those movies. I wanted Jesus to save me from it all, so I talked to my mom about it, and I accepted Jesus Christ into my heart in a bathtub right then and there in August of 1980. I made Jesus my personal Lord and Savior because I was terrified of what my future might look like without Him in my life!

What does your future look like? Do you have Jesus in your heart, in your life?

That memory has driven me to study eschatology for years now. I have probably spent more time studying the end times than I have any other aspect of scripture.

I have taken seminary courses on it, I have outline endless books, I have debated people on their views and interpretations… I guess you could say that I am relatively knowledgeable on the timeline of events that take place according to Daniel and John. That being said…I can’t really be certain if I have put the timeline in its correct order. –HA

There is one element of the timeline that has sparked an enormous debate:

The Rapture - 1Thesselonians 4:17, the word ‘rapture’ come from a Latin verb, this is where we get the term describing Christ’s return.

The Rapture is when Jesus instantly seizes up all the Christians here on earth.

No one knows when exactly this will happen, they think they do!

Let me give you a brief, simple overview of the end time events, minus the rapture for the moment.

The Antichrist wins the trust of Israel and signs a false peace treaty with them to protect them. He wins the worlds trust as a leader, as conquest, war famine and death fall on mankind in various forms. The United States is nowhere to be found, the Antichrist reveals his true identity and is taken over by Satan, there are some judgments handed out by God, the wrath of God is unleashed through the sounding of trumpets and opening of scrolls, a partial comet named Wormwood strikes the earth, earthquakes ensue, the moon is turned blood red, God battles Satan and God throws him into the abyss forever, Armageddon proves to be the largest bloodiest battle in all of history and Jesus returns for the millennium, a reign of a thousand years with a select few people who survived the tribulation. After those thousand years we have the great white throne judgment where those who have not accepted Jesus will be judged and sentenced to hell forever.

Tell this to your neighbor across the backyard fence and you can almost guarantee your neighbor will never talk to you again. –HA

This may seem like science fiction! I can assure you, it is very real, it is very graphic and it is very important to study

IT WILL HAPPEN!!! Archeology is steadily proving the bible. We see the prophets in the bible are ALWAYS right, so it is with end times…

I wish we had time to get into all of this, but of course we don’t!

CLASS IN FALL!!! KEEP AN EYE ON THE ATC

Are you ready? Are you prepared to the return of our King?

ILL - Former job of mine, when the boss would come around, I was always worried that things wouldn’t be up to par, my work van would be a mess, my tools would take a while to find… this is never a good situation to be in!

You know what it’s like in your job…

I ask you these questions, are you prepared for the return of Jesus, if you are left behind, if you don’t know Jesus personally…if Christ’s return doesn’t happen until we are going through intense persecution, will you waiver in your resolution? Will you deny Him? Are your friends and family prepared? No one knows the day or the hour NO ONE.

One out of every 30 verses in the Bible mentions the return of Jesus Christ

There are over 300 references to the return of Christ in the NT alone

Only 4 of the NT books fail to mention His return

Man has made attempt after attempt to predict the exact date, to no avail. Jesus says that only God knows the time, yet we constantly try to pinpoint to arrival of these final events.

ILL - In 1988 a bible teacher Edgar C. Whisenwent went public with his own prediction.