A Thief in the Night: The Plot Thickens
(I Thessalonians 5:1-4)
1. Intro: The dreaded words every English or Math teacher hears are also dreaded by Pastors who teach the whole counsel of God. We don’t want to hear you ask, "What do I need this for?"
2. The Christian life is a life that is meant to be devoted to Bible study. The coming again of Jesus Christ and the end of the age occupies some 1,845 Scriptural verses. —John Wesley White
3. If it is in the Bible, it is worth studying. (repeat) If you do not have this conviction, I hope you will develop it. And the Second Coming of Christ is all over the Bible.
4. The ladies did a Bible study with Beth Moore via DVD. Before digging deeply into the prophetic sections of Daniel, a section very difficult to understand, Beth said, "When we’re done, you won’t be any dumber."
5. That seemed to satisfy the ladies. They were willing to think deeply and work hard at understanding for Beth.
6. And that’s what it takes to understand end time prophecy.
7. Some people are like the pre-Reformation church: they want others to do the thinking and they will simply blindly trust the opinions of their spiritual leaders. The Reformers said no to that. Every Christian is responsible to study the Bible, think, and reach conclusions.
8. So today we are going to look at a variety of viewpoints -- held by godly people who are not dummies -- about the rapture and its relationship to the Tribulation.
The Rapture is what we studied last week, when Christ comes to the Clouds, the dead in Christ have their bodies resurrected and living believers are transformed as they are whisked away to heaven.
The Tribulation is a 7 year period of misery, plague, and disaster on the face of the earth -- sort of like the Plagues of Egypt. The latter half of this 7 year period is so bad that it is sometimes called "The Great Tribulation."
The Millennium is a 1,000 year Kingdom on the Earth in which Christ reigns from Jerusalem over some of the survivors of the Tribulation.
9. What I am afraid of this morning is TMI: Too Much Information. So I am not going to mention all significant End Time events, just enough to help us get the picture. If you have never been exposed to End Time prophecy, this will be TMI. Take in what you can.
A. View One: Believers do not know when the Rapture will occur (imminent)
This is where I stand; I believe the Scriptures teach Christ can come at any moment; I am open to both of these two positions in the category, though I lean toward the Pre-trib view.
(1) Pre-trib Position [Left Behind, Ryrie Study Bible, Moody, Dallas; common]
Christ can come at any moment, but before the Tribulation.
(2) Agnostic Position
Christ can come at any moment, either before the Tribulation or anytime during it.
B. View Two: End-time believers will know when the Rapture will occur
(1) Mid-trib
Christ will come in the very middle of the Tribulation, before it’s second half (the last three and a half years are known as the Great Tribulation)
(2) Pre-wrath (Pre-Armageddon)
Christ will come before Armageddon, near to the end of the Tribulation (but not the very end).
(3) Post-trib
Christ will come after the Tribulation; resurrected believers go up to meet Christ in the air and shortly come down to help Him reign during the Millennial Kingdom.
As we look at the text, please pay attention to the pronouns "them" and "you;" them in this context refers to unbelievers, you to believers.
When it says Christ delivers us from "the wrath to come" (I Thess. 1:10), different positions interpret "wrath" in different manners.
Post-Trib: wrath = Great White Throne/Lake of Fire
Pre-Wrath: wrath = Armageddon
Mid-Trib: wrath = The Great Tribulation (last three and a half years)
Agnostic: wrath = any or all of the above
Pretrib: wrath = the entire 7 year Tribulation
Main Idea: Although Christians might disagree as to when the rapture takes place, there are three truths about the coming Day of the Lord that no Bible-believing Christian can deny.
I. The DAY of the Lord Will Come Unexpectedly -- At Least for Unbelievers (1-2)
A. The Day of the Lord
• Lots of Old Testament imagery; but what does this mean?
The Day of the LORD is a time of great wrath and judgment followed by a time of blessing.
So I understand this to be the Tribulation (aka, Daniel’s 70th week) and Millennium. But others would say the last half of the Tribulation and the Millennium, or Aramgeddon and the Millennium.
"The Term the Day of the Lord occurs 25 times in 23 verses, including the books of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Zephaniah, Zechariah, Malachi, Acts, I & II Thessalonians, and II Peter."
Isaiah 13:9-11 "See, the day of the LORD is coming—a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger—to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it. The stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light. The rising sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light. I will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins. I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty and will humble the pride of the ruthless."
B. Like a Thief
1. Jesus compared His coming as being "Like a Thief in the Night;" He urged us to be ready at all times because we could not know when He would come (Matthew 24:43, "Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming."
2. Many of us have concluded that Christ’s coming is "imminent;" Webster defines imminent as, "about to occur at any moment; impending."
3. Only the Pretrib and Agnostic positions acknowledge imminency as defined by Jesus words.
4. A thief comes unannounced. Could you imagine receiving an email: tomorrow at 3a.m., I plan to break into your house and steel your valuables. Sincerely, U. Ben Took
5. The Rapture will come like a thief. The Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. Could the Rapture then, start the Day of the Lord? Or are these two separate imminent events?
C. Generations of Christians have lived and died, yet Jesus has not yet returned. When I was saved in early 1974, the book Late Great Planet Earth was the rage. At that time, none of us thought that we would still be here in 2007. But realizing how quickly things CAN change is an advantage in life.
1. We learn to live with uncertainty and open-endedness
2. Some people are obsessed with avoiding uncertainty, so they develop a long list of rules to give them a sense of control (even though they do not follow them all).
3. Through faith, God’s people learn to accept change and live in uncertainty; the same skills that prepare us for a sudden, unforeseen rapture also prepare us to cope with life.
II. The Day of the Lord Will Come When Things Seem SAFE (3)
A. The world will be thinking it is experiencing a time of peace
1. Dr. Constable writes, "Evidently the occasion for the false sense of security felt then will be the Antichrist’s signing of a covenant with Israel (cf. Dan. 9:27)."
2. Or it could be that the rapture itself ushers in an era of destruction. When Jesus returns, life in normal (see Matt. 24 -- eating, drinking, marrying). Non-Christians will be anticipating an era of peace (because of the rise of the antichrist), not an era of plagues and destructions.
B. Brothers and sisters, we need to understand that the world is rarely at peace, and then only for a short time.
1. Some of you might remember a song from the Imperials "Sail On" album: "There will never be any peace, until God is seated at the conference table." The song is right.
2. During the early 1980’s, a retired British couple feared that a nuclear holocaust was imminent. They determined they would find the most reasonable place to live on earth, one with a high standard of living, freedom, and unlikely to be a nuclear target. After they found their secluded nest, they sent a post card to their pastor, telling them how happy and secure they felt. When the clergyman received the card, he could not believe where they had moved: the Falkland Islands. That very day, newspapers around the world carried the story: England and Argentina were at war over the Falkland Islands!
III. The Day of the Lord Will NOT SHOCK Godly Christians (4)
A. Because they are ready for Jesus’ return?
1. Children of light are not shocked by the Day’s brightness, since they live during the Day
2. A thief in the night to the unprepared, a burst of daylight to those who know Christ
B. Or because they are forewarned?
A thief comes suddenly, but also when people are not prepared.
This could, then, refer to believers being prepared for the Tribulation
C. Or both?
By being ready to Christ’s return, they are also ready for the Day of the Lord because that return is the first event in the "Day of the Lord."
D. When you live for the Lord, you experience life like everyone else, but you are also prepared for life’s end. You can face the uncertainties of life because you have a personal relationship with the Creator of Life.
Do you have such a relationship?
