Did you ever heard or thought that doctrines are not so important? All we need is Jesus… We don’t need that extra stuff. As Christians, how many doctrines we got so far? Muslims got 5.
1. Allah Akbar – Allah is one.
2. Mohamed is his prophet.
3. Give to the poor.
4. Fast at the end of Ramadan.
5. Try to go to Mecca if you can
People can keep up with them. We got five times more… Too many? Because, as we heard so many times – “all we need to focus is Jesus”… I thought a lot about this. Is like I am telling my wife: “OK we got married 20 years ago, oh… what is your name? … That’s doctrines, that’s detail… no need to charge my memory with such things… I love you – that’s all that matter. And when is our anniversary?”
We can get lost in details, that’s for sure, but I will like to share with you today something - That the separation of Jesus from doctrine is unbiblical, harmful to ministry, and possibly the first sigh of the shaking. I didn’t grow up here, but just recently I noticed that we are developing here in US two churches.
How many of you did you use 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 in your devotional reading? And how many did you hear this text during funerals? Yes, you know the text… Let me walk along this Bible with you…
Let me confess first: I have an addiction. I cannot stop myself from buying Bibles… My wife and my daughter are exasperated by this. I have 17 Bibles so far, different translation (not counting the virtual ones on CD and the on-line stuff). And they are not cheap… But I noticed that some of you read only King James only – and let me tell you how surprise I was when somebody even told me that all others translations except KJV are corrupted. We should not use them, she said, because they are all corrupted, negative. And I was caught NIV positive.
1 Thessalonians 4:13 - "I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren"…
1 Thessalonians is Paul first letter that he wrote - we don’t have the book of the Bible in chronological order neither in OT nor in NT. Galatians and 1 Thessalonians are the earliest of Paul’s writings. And one of the reasons why we don’t concentrate sometimes to capture the essence of the message from those two books is because they are somehow aggressive and confrontational… After the story of Jesus and the apostles in the Gospels and the book of Acts, we discover Paul’s personality in shaping and shaking…
Take a look at 1 Thess. Every single chapter here ends with the Second Coming. Paul is addressing several issues such as morality, call to ministry, church as an evangelistic tool, he is talking about this, about that, but he keeps coming back to the SC of Jesus Christ. And, 10 times or more Paul says: ”you already know this, you already know that… I don’t need to tell you about this, and I don’t need to tell you about that,”… And then he comes to verse 13, chapter 4 - read it again.
He knows why he is saying it: as one more topic that you must understand as a church - and now comes the shock… Should I read it one more time? Read it… “But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, and how he is underlining this” - lest you sorrow – and here it comes the shocker – as others who have no hope”.
Do you know what Paul is saying? Elders, deacons, Bible teachers and members, listen to what the inspired Paul is saying here! An uneducated church that is not clear about the vital doctrines of God is on the same level as the pagans, out there in the world. Wow…
If you are ignorant in regarding the state of the dead, you are any better than pork eating-pot inhaling type of 21 first century neo-pagan society. I don’t want you to be ignorant, Paul is saying. That means that every church member should be able to be a teacher, to teach others about the truth, the whole truth.
Verse 14: For if we believe – and now we have a little problem with that translation that I was talking about.
Do you thing English is easy and I should talk as one of you, after 9 years here? (by the way, I spend the first 7 of them here among Spanish, Romanians, Mongolians and other nationalities)… Well, try Greek. In Greek they are 4 different ways to say “IF”, using 4 different words and changing the verb place in the sentence. We have an ‘if”, conditional, they have 4 different “if”… Four options…
1. If it rains tonight – and then it will – it is not an hypothetical scenario – if it rains tonight, we will get wet. That means that condition is assumed to be true. If it rains – and it looks like it will, we will get wet. 100%... That’s one option to use the conditional in Greek.
2. The second option. If it rains tonight – but is not going to – we would get wet. But is not going to rain, the weather is gorgeous, so it won’t rain. But if, hypothetical, we will get wet. The condition is assumed not to be true.
3. The third option is 50%-50%... If it rains tonight – and it might – I saw some clouds, 50% chanche, it will be nice to have some rain but not sure… So it may rain or may not rain…
4. And the fourth option, called the optative - I wish to rain tonight. Because I have a little garden and is nothing better for it than a little rain. I know it not going to happen, I wish to, but no chance…
Four options… Do you remember all those four by now? I am sure you will forget about by tomorrow, but at least for now. Which option is Paul using here? If, maybe, I wish to be true but, 50% yes… Which if is he using in 1 Thes 4: 14? Option 1. He is saying: IF we believe – and we believe it – and the audience will say by them Amen – this is it!
Please, follow the inner logic of the next statement: Even so – this is the methodological conclusion – we believe then without any doubt – that God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. By the way, that’s the way we get the words “cemetery” and “coma” cemetery – from the Greek Koima, and Koimaterio. Dormitory… and koima = coma, a deep sleep in ICU the most…
ILL. I was visiting my home town in RO when one of my neighbors died. I was attending the visitation. Usually the family and relatives are taking care of the funeral – the body stays in the living room of the house for three days, until the burial. But if they live in a condo or blockhouse, they have to move the body to the cemetery where at the entrance is a building kind of little church. They watch the body 24/7 over there until the burial. So I went there. The guy died in a car wreck and it was so bad crushed that they close the casket. A heavy oak casket sealed. It was could, but the room window was wide open. They leave the window open or at least cracked for 3 days, while the dead still in there before the burial. Not for ventilation but guess for what? So that the soul can escape, can find the way out to heaven… Now don’t ask me how the soul gets trough 2 inches tick solid oak casket and not trough the window… I don’t know…Pagan superstitions/traditions…
ILL. I was about six years old, first grade student… And half of the school facilities were under construction, remodeling the classrooms. So they put all the grades, from 1 to 8 on a condensed schedule. Grades 5- 8 in the morning, from 7:00 to 1:00 PM, and grades 1 to 4, afternoon, from 2:00 to 6:00 PM. The school is right by the cemetery, and by 6:00 PM is pretty dark outside. Imagine the fear of all my colleagues, and mine, leaving the school… All kinds of scary stories with gosts and dead bodies chasing the living ones… It looked like something going on in that cemetery and around – this was the idea. Kids love those stories and are afraid of those stories… very strange mixture… I was closing my eyes and run as fast as I could, until the cemetery was far back…
No sleeping in that Koimeterios, cemetery/Dormitory, but buzzing of activity. That was the feeling. I grew up with this until one day, a year or two later; I was wise enough to pay attention to a Sabbath School teacher who told me and other Adventist kids, from the Bible, the sleeping thing…But for my other colleagues, death was and still a mysterious, spooky, scary, dark territory… No sleeping in Jesus, but a freaking dark mystery.
The logic of the space-time field of verse 14… If we believe that Jesus died and rose again… said Paul.
Now I attended recently a funeral, and the pastor was preaching a rousing sermon based on Psalm 23, describing how our dear brother John, passed by the Valley of the shadow of death… That was the theme. Passing through the valley of the shadow of death… He did not mention that he should be “in the presence of the enemies”, as the Psalm states. Ha… So he passed that Valley, praise God… And is now in the presence of the Lord. And pastor jumped from Ps.23 directly to 1 Thes 4:14, to the conclusion saying that, after passing through that Valley, God send our brother’s soul from here in heaven, to be with God, being refreshed by green pastures.
After that, we went from the church to the graveside service, and the same pastor says: And in the resurrection morning, our brother John will rise from the death. Notice this spatial dimension: First he is already in heaven; but then he rises from the death. Well?
Verse 14 – what is Paul’s argument here? What happened to Jesus? If we believe that Jesus died… What happened to Jesus? He walked on the planet Earth and he went down into the tomb – spatial dimension. From earth, into the grave, and after that He rose again… Even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. Is a pattern here, a template Paul is saying. It happened to Jesus and it will happen to us, if we believe. We walk on earth for 60, 70 years, we go down in the grave, and then we rise from the dead as He did.
Simple isn’t? How fortunate we are to know that… How about our church? How about a church who seems to be dead?
Verse 15. Notice the claim of Paul. Paul, I love this man. He lived in hard times: no Internet, no email, no chain emails with dancing angels and replay to 10 people to be blessed by them, no electronic concordance, just the Bible… And an audacious claim:
For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord. Wow. He has a solid rock, doctrinal rock and he is sure about he is saying. Foundation. He did not make this up, he did not originate, coming up with some ideas about the death. He was not meditating by the lake and bang, Eurika, an idea like the Isaac Newton apple falling down. Aha, the dead are just asleep. NO. The word of the Lord.
Now scholars debate what this is about the word of the Lord : John 14, John 6, John 8… Matthew 24… Is that something Jesus said and we don’t have it recorded? Is that by revelation, a vision that Paul have it? We don’t know. But regardless, Paul is saying clear: what I am telling you here is based on the Word of the Lord.
And Paul continue: we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. That is automatically cancel the Rapture stuff… But Rapture is a different topic, and we don’t have time to go into this. Just a logical argument: if you turn that around it means that if we don’t precede to heaven those who fall asleep, that means those who fall asleep are not in heaven either. Clear.
Verse 16 – Now Paul is saying: now I will tell you the mechanism, how this will happen… He is saying: not a representative, not an angel, but who? The Lord Himself is going to take care of it. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Notice the spatial dimension: the dead in Christ will not come down from heaven, but they will rise to heaven. They will rise out of the grave.
Now scholars have traced those three elements:
- shout, - voice (or voice of an archangel), - trumpet (of God).
And they found this sequence in secular Greek literature. Outside the Bible. There is a shout, and a voice, and then a trumpet call… They found this in a navigational document, a papyrus 2000 years old… A sea captain, after two weeks out on the sea, tired of the water, was anxious to get somewhere. And a guy up-there, saying “land!”. And the captain giving a shout “Land!” and a trumpet call, specific, to head the bout to the shore.
And scholars found another document regarding horse racing. Sea-Biscuit. The jockey riding the horses neck to neck, and who is going to be the winner? And one jockey – and we have it in writing – giving out a shout, and after that saying something loud with his voice, and it’s a trumpet call from his team supporters. Guess what? It dashes over the finish line, first. Nice winning picture…
And then they founds another parallel: let me sing it for you… “Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, Jericho”… In Joshua, we have a shout, we have a voice, and we have a trumpet call… We have here testimonies of scholars who don’t care about Adventist doctrine, saying that Paul was using something familiar to his audience. But we have this biblical parallelism and I am sure, that Paul used the Jericho experience, to describe, under inspiration, the conquer of the most terrifying enemy: the death.
Which means that this is the language used when the great controversy will end. The shout, the voice of the archangel and the trumpet… One day, soon, is gonna be over. Is nothing secret about this rapture at the second coming: shout, voice, and trumpet. No secret, but …
And the dead in Christ will rise first. Now watch how anxious is God to get this over. We are preaching this message as church, for more than a century, but now, for the first time in history, we can notice how the end of this world is approaching. The rumblings, the economy, the unrest in the third world, the terrorism escalading, seeking a home-made atomic bomb, Middle East , and the Gospel being preached live or on-line… Signs… The time is now… I have no doubt. My parents cound not claim that, but I can…
17. Then we which are alive and remain shall be… and then it comes the word “rapture”… caught up, rapture, snatched… This is a violent term. In Greek is the same word used in Acts 8 when Philip is snatched away. If is an emergency, somebody burning in the flames, he needs to be grabbed and pulled up. When Jesus is coming back, Paul is talking about an emergency. Is not like Jesus looking on the calendar, consulting his wrist watch and saying: well I guess is time to be down there. No, but is a desperate urgency is Jesus telling the angels: let’s get the humans out of the planet Earth before is tarred apart, now!
“My children, we been separated for to long, now, come on up”… Jesus will say. …Caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air… Where? In the air. According with …. Who is in charge with the air. Not Air Force 1, but the atmosphere, the surroundings, the air around this planet. Who? Ephesians 2:2… read… God has a sense of humor, let me tell you… He chose the enemy territory, for a meeting… All resurrected ones will be called there, in the air… The end of the great controversy where? There where Satan was in control from the fall of Adam.
… and so shall we ever be with the Lord. And thus, or even so… “Putos” in Greek. The same word used in John 3:16 – and God so much loved the world… In this way, how? Not by us dying but by Jesus coming down here, resurrection, we will be with the Lord…
Death does not produces the presence of God. The Second Coming does.
ILL. Big church and famous preacher - Texas, looking good on TV... Sermon title: “Why We Don’t Have to Be Afraid of Death”… And for about 20 minutes he was repeating this… we don’t have to be afraid, we don’t have… bla-bla… At the very end, as usual for those tele-preachers, he was keeping his best shot for the last… And he said, right when the music started to play in the background… “We don’t have to be afraid of death because… there is no death…”. Wow.
You and I are aware of somebody else saying this: Genesis 3:4 - "You shall not surely die". Satan deceiving Eve and Adam... Yes, you live, you live, until one day, heart attack but, bam, the next second you are with God. There is no death… Well?
According with 1 Thessalonians 4, yes: live, live… but in order to be with the Lord, it must be a Second Coming.
OK, this is DOCTRINE. are you sick and tired of doctrines? Careful here!
Now whatch Paul now and how he is using the doctrine. He turns doctrines into pastoral ministry. He could quit in verse 17… and we could still have the state of the dead doctrine, preach it and teaching from, for hours,… But watch Paul. He turns to his church and said: when you have the right belief, the right doctrine, you can actually better love and serve your fellows human beings…
Right now in our churches, we have a split of the two components.
1. We have a group of people saying: We have to have the right doctrine, forget about the people, we need to preach and teach the truth.
2.Then we have a large number now who says “well, as long as we love the people, we don’t need to bother them with the doctrines and stuff”.
You now what Paul does? He says: we have to do both, together… And he adds one more thing: Verse 18 – Therefore… And every time when the Bible says therefore, we know it something that follows. What is therefore there, for? It means, he is coming to a conclusion. Therefore comfort one another with these words.
Scholars discovered a Hallmark card (so to speak) 2,000 years old: one lady writes to another lady. The first one lost a husband and the other lady lost a son or a husband, we can’t tell, is not very clear… And she wrote an encouragement note to the second one. We have the note, in Greek off course. And is saying the following – listen carefully: “Irine to Philo, good comfort to you. I am sorry and weep over the departured one as I wept for Dilmas (her husband or son as I said), and I did everything with all others (and now she names all family members who helped her digging the grave)…, and Let me comfort you with this word. I such case (death) a person can do nothing. … Listen to this with both ears: “THEREFORE, comfort ye one another”. And this papyrus, the comfort note, ends here.
The exact same phrase. Regarding the death, a person can do nothing about it, therefore, comfort ye one another… she said. This don’t look like a comfort for me…
But you know what Paul says? Jesus is the one in charge and can do something about this terrible thing called “death”.; THREFEORE we can comfort one another… I mean this is the comfort we need, to be reassured one more time that Jesus, the Resurrected One, is in charce…
He is able to resurrect the dead.
He is will to resurrect the dead.
He will do it. Therefore comfort one another with this words…
(PS. Thank you Dr. Ingo Sorke!)
