This morning, we will look at our 15th and our 16th Articles of Faith. This will conclude our series on the Articles of Faith for the Church of the Nazarene. We will start with the 15th article, which is:
XV. The Second Coming of Christ
A minister waited in line to have his car filled with gas just before a long holiday weekend. The attendant worked quickly, but there were many cars ahead of him in front of the service station. Finally, the attendant motioned him toward a vacant pump. "Reverend," said the young man, "sorry about the delay. It seems as if everyone waits until the last minute to get ready for a long trip." The minister chuckled, "I know what you mean. It’s the same in my business."
Here is the description of this 15th tenet of our faith:
We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ will come again; that we who are alive at His coming shall not precede them that are asleep in Christ Jesus; but that, if we are abiding in Him, we shall be caught up with the risen saints to meet the Lord in the air, so that we shall ever be with the Lord.
These last two articles are easily the most popular subjects in the Bible. There is a natural worldwide fascination with ‘the future.’ People want to know what happens next. It is also one of the singular most important questions that mankind consistently asks themselves. What happens at the end? Many people are asking what happens when we die or when the world ends. Is there life after death? There are hundreds of books on the subject. These articles attempt answer those questions for the people of the Church of the Nazarene.
The study of end-times theology is called eschatology and these two articles answer the basic factual beliefs that the Nazarene Church can state.
While it is important to understand what it says, it is just as important to notice what the statements do not say. What these statements do not say is when each of these things is going to happen. They don’t give explicits as to timing or order. Essentially, the writers of this statement were trying to make sure that people understood that we are in no way attempting to prophesy or predict. Many people have looked bad in the past, trying to identify exactly what happens in what order or even to predict when these things would take place.
Theologians like Charles Wesley and Harold Camping have all made statements that the world was going to end, only to have to eat their words later. The Jehovah’s Witness have missed it on at least six separate occasions. The Seventh Day Adventists missed it twice. The Church of the Nazarene stated its beliefs in a way that they would not have to adapt them when things didn’t work out as planned. The statement includes only biblical facts, not interpretation of those facts.
What we know for sure is that Jesus Christ is coming again. He tells us Himself in John 14:1-3
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
Jesus was quite plain as He spoke with His disciples. He is coming again, and when He does we will go with Him. He wouldn’t have prepared a place for us if we weren’t going to join Him. Immediately following Jesus’ ascension into heaven, as the disciples were still gazing heavenward, two ‘men’ appeared to them (Acts 1:11):
They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Jesus rose into the clouds and He will return in the same way. How about the part where we will not precede those that are asleep in Christ? The ones that are asleep in Christ are all those that have died prior to His return that have accepted Him as their Savior. Now, I want you to understand that we are not talking about their spirits. Their spirits are already with Christ. The Bible is specifically talking about the bodies of those that have died prior to His return. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 is a great passage. Next week, we will look at hope, and I will use this verse again:
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.
Those people that have died prior to the time when He comes for His saints, will rise into the air and then those that are still alive at that time will rise and meet them in the air. And we will all be with Him for all of eternity. What a great promise! That is what Christians call “the Rapture.” I told this to a few of you, but we heard an excerpt from a Christian comedian that said that he had put a bumper sticker on his car that said “In case of Rapture, watch out for the swerve as my mother-in-law takes the wheel.” There are many other verses that we could look at that describe this event further, but I will leave those for our End-times study that we will begin in late October during our Wednesday night Bible studies. I want to move to our last article:
XVI. Resurrection, Judgment, and Destiny
Here is the statement for our last Article of Faith:
We believe in the resurrection of the dead, that the bodies both of the just and of the unjust shall be raised to life and united with their spirits—“ they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”
We believe in future judgment in which every person shall appear before God to be judged according to his or her deeds in this life.
We believe that glorious and everlasting life is assured to all who savingly believe in, and obediently follow, Jesus Christ our Lord; and that the finally impenitent shall suffer eternally in hell.
The Apostle Paul, when appearing before the governor, said (Acts 24:15):
I have a hope in God—a hope that they themselves also accept—that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous.
During the NT time, there were two ruling parties of the Jewish religious leaders. They were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. When Paul says ‘they,’ he is referring to the Pharisees and he is purposely causing a split between his accusers. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, while the Pharisees did. So he divided his accusers.
In any case, he explicitly states that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous. Jesus spoke plainly regarding the resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous (John 5:28-29):
Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.
So, our Lord confirmed this part of our statement Himself. Everyone rises.
At some point following the rise of the bodies, everyone will face judgment. I will explain this part in greater detail during our End-times study, but the unrighteous will face a different judgment than the righteous. The unrighteous will appear before what is called “The Great White Throne Judgment.” This is found in Revelation 20:11-13
Then I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it; the earth and the heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books. And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done.
Why do I say that this judgment is specifically for the lost? First of all, we have been told that we are not judged by our works because it is not by our works that we are saved. It is by our faith in Christ Jesus. Also, this passage says nothing about what happens to those whose names are in the Book of Life. And Paul tells us in the book of Romans that there is now no condemnation for those that are in Christ, and this judgment is a judgment of condemnation.
Christians will have their own judgment, called the Judgment Seat of Christ. Paul, in his letters to the Romans and to Corinthians says that “we” will all stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ. It is here that we will be rewarded for the things we have done for Christ.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 25:46
And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Jesus was speaking of the unrighteous when He said “these.” While those of us that are in Christ are assured of eternal life with Christ, those that have rejected Him will endure eternal punishment. What is that punishment? The verses following our previous passage in Rev 20:14-15 says:
Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.
Those that have rejected our Lord will spend eternity in the lake of fire, called the second death because they will be eternally separated from the light of God’s Presence. The Apostle Paul tells us that we will not only live with Him eternally, we will reign with Him in glory. What a great promise of hope for the future!
We believe that Christ will one day return for us. We believe that we will rise with the saints to meet our Lord and at some point, the lost will also rise to be judged. We believe that all souls have a final destiny and a final destination. What is your going to be?...
(Invitation)
(Prayer)
That concludes our series on our Articles of Faith, so I’d like us to stand and sing The Creed…
*All scriptures are in NRSV unless otherwise stated.
* Humorous illustration from SermonCentral
