In the Word

Pastor Mike Warren: Okay, and we'll dive into our last study on prophecy this year, our last update. It's interesting, before we pray, I'll just tell you this: there were years ago when it would take me maybe a half hour or 45 minutes, and I'd have to stretch it to do our prophecy updates because there just wasn't that much going on. But if you'll notice this year, this is our fifth or sixth Wednesday night to try to get it all covered. The things that are going on are amazing.

I'm personally convinced that we're the last generation. I think we're going to shut the lights out and lock the doors on this planet as far as the church is concerned. We're going home soon. Tonight's topic is the rapture. We've walked through the history from Daniel chapter two, looked at Ezekiel 38 and 39, and Psalms 83. We've studied all of those things. Now, we're going to take tonight and just look at the rapture and some of the confusion that has arisen in the church over the years.

If you want to be right in your eschatology, you'll believe in a pre-trib rapture. If you want to be wrong, you can believe in something else; it's okay. I have a scripture for those who believe in a mid-trib or post-trib: "As your faith is, so be it unto you," the Bible says. We'll pick you up on the way back. But my Bible tells me that I'm not appointed to wrath, and I'm not going through it. We'll see that tonight. I'm not pre-trouble, but I'm pre-trib. There's a difference. I think some very difficult times are coming for us.

Father, we thank you tonight, Lord. I pray for my back this evening. I put it out and I'm in a little bit of pain and discomfort, but Lord, don't let that affect our time in your word. In fact, Lord, I pray that you wouldn't let anything affect our time in your word. We'll just set aside the worries of today, tomorrow, or yesterday. We'll lay down the things we have to do and get done. For the next hour, Lord, as we open your word and study a very important topic that's going to affect everyone sitting in here very soon as you interrupt human history again to deal with the sin of this world like you did in the days of Noah, Lord, we need to understand. You call us to understand the day of our visitation. So, Lord, we pray this evening that you would speak deep things into our hearts and stir us. Stir up our pure minds unto remembrance, Lord, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

We're going to go through a lot of scripture tonight, and I want to try to dispel some of the false teaching around this subject called the rapture. There are five things we're going to look at tonight. Number one, we want to look at the promise that Jesus made to the church. I think that's very important because we need to look at that, especially in times of discouragement. We need to understand that we're moving toward an event, and I think rapidly so, toward the removal of the church where God begins to again deal with Israel in that last week of Daniel's 70-week vision.

It's called Jacob's trouble in Jeremiah, where God deals with Israel and with the world for the rejection of the Messiah. We're not going to be here because we have a promise, and we're going to look at that promise tonight. Secondly, we're going to look at the word "the rapture" because many will tell you it's not found in your English Bible, and they're correct. But I want to correct that misnomer that the rapture is not taught in the scripture just because the word is not there.

Thirdly, what will it look like when we're raptured? What will it feel like? What will that event be like? Fourthly, when will it happen? And isn't that what you're asking tonight? That's why you're here. When will it happen? I think soon, and we're going to look at the scripture and prove that point. Lastly, is the rapture and the second coming the same event? People get that confused, but they're not the same event. Some people think that the church is going to go all the way through the tribulation and we're not leaving here until Christ returns in the second advent. That's not so. We'll look at the chronology of that from the scripture.

Those are the five things before us this evening, and I hope we get done with them because we've been at this prophecy update for weeks. There's just so much to talk about and new stuff happening this week that I can't even bring up. If I do, then we're going to have to go through a whole other night just looking at these things. I'll save it for next year if we're here. I don't know; maybe we won't be.

Look at John chapter 14 tonight. If you're not quick on turning, they're going to put this stuff up on the screen for you so we can move rapidly through our study. This is week six? Okay, this is week six. You kind of lose track of time when you're dealing with these kinds of things. We're not going to try to make it seven or eight, so we're going to end it tonight, I hope. We'll see. But in John chapter 14, we have a precious promise. Jesus is ministering to his disciples, and we're his disciples. He's telling them that he has to go away and that he has a purpose and a plan for going away: that he might prepare a place for us in heaven.

When we get Jay to come here and do the biblical wedding—we've got a plan on one of these Wednesday nights—you're going to see there's so much application in Jesus coming and getting into this covenant relationship, betrothing us as his bride, going away to his father's house, preparing a place for us, and when it's done, coming for us. That's just what happens in a Jewish wedding.

Jesus said these words as he's telling his disciples that he has to go away: "Let not your hearts be troubled." I can only imagine their hearts were troubled. Jesus is telling them, after walking with them for three years, that he's leaving. They're probably wondering what they're going to do. Who's going to take care of us? Who's going to teach us? Who's going to protect us? Now, he's told them, "I'm not going to leave you comfortless; I'm going to send the Holy Spirit."

Thank God for the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. We are born again by the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of Truth lives in us. It empowers us, strengthens us, leads us, and guides us into all truth. It convicts us of sin, calls us to righteousness, and it reminds us of the judgment that is to come. But Jesus is telling his disciples that he's going away, and he says, "Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me because in my father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. And I go away to prepare a place for you."

He's been working on this place for about 2,000 years. It must be a terrific place. Paul got to visit it. He said, "Eye hath not seen and ear hath not heard, it's not entered the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for them that love him." So it's out of this world for sure, in many different facets and ways. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go, here's the promise: "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again. I'm going to come again and I'm going to receive you unto myself that where I am, you may be also."

That's the promise. Jesus made a promise to us that when he went away, he wasn't going to stay away, that he's coming again that he might receive us unto himself. Now, that promise completely encapsulates the rapture because when you study these two events that take place—one before the tribulation and one after the tribulation—the first one is that Jesus comes for us and we meet him in the air. The second event is we come back with him to establish his millennial reign, where he rules for a thousand years on the throne of David in Jerusalem, in the city of Jerusalem, with a rod of iron.

But he's going to come and remove us first as he promised. Then he's going to deal with that last 70-week vision, the 70th of the 70-week vision, with Israel and with the people that are on this planet. But we're going to watch this from the mezzanine. As we studied it last week, and we're going to look at it again this week, the rapture takes place before the tribulation begins. We'll see that in our studies this evening, but we're promised. We have a promise that has not yet been fulfilled, and God is a covenant-keeping God, and he's going to come back for you and me. I believe the time of his return is coming close.

Let's take a look secondly at this thing called the rapture. How many have talked to people about the rapture, and they say, "Well, that's not found in the Bible. You can't find that word in the Bible. It's not in the Bible. So why are you teaching a doctrine that's not in the Bible?" Well, it is in the Bible. It's in the Latin Vulgate. The word "rapture" is a word interpreted from our English Bible, and we're going to look at four places this evening where it's interpreted: "caught up."

The Greek word is *harpazo*. Let me give you the definition in the Greek for *harpazo*: it means to be snatched away. The sense of it in the Greek is that it can be a violent event. We're going to look at it tonight: "In a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, this mortal is going to put on immortality, this corruption's going to put on incorruption, and we're going to be caught away, caught up to meet the Lord in the air and so shall we be with him forever." It means to be snatched away, taken or seized, and to be carried off by force.

That's our word. It's in the context as we're going to see tonight, and in the Latin Vulgate, that phrase "caught up" is translated "rapture," and we've borrowed the theology from that. So when you see the word "caught up" in the Bible, that's our word for rapture. In fact, we read in Acts chapter eight, verse 39. This is Philip. You remember when God spoke to him when he was in the revival in Samaria and said, "I want you to go down to the less traveled way out into the desert, and I want you to just wait there."

He sees the Ethiopian eunuch and his wagon coming along, and the Lord, through the Spirit, says, "Join yourself to this guy." As he runs up and joins himself to the guy, he sees that he's reading from the scroll of Isaiah. He asks the guy the question, "Do you understand what you're reading?" He says, "Not really. I don't have anybody to show me." Philip asks if he can, and he says, "Come on up." So he expounds to him from the scroll of Isaiah that Jesus was the Messiah, the Savior of the world. The guy gets saved. He talks to him about baptism, and the eunuch says, "What withhold me?" He says, "Nothing. There's water right here." So they stop, and he gets down and baptizes him.

Then Philip is "translated" is the word we read there in the New Testament. We're going to see he's caught away, caught up. They find him later with his prophesying daughters 27 miles away. But watch what it says in Acts 8:39: "And when they had come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away"—there's our word, *harpazo*—"caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more, and he went on his way rejoicing." Can you imagine being in that scene?

You're standing there with the guy that just led you to Christ, your father in the faith. He baptizes you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You come up out of the water, and all of a sudden, he is beamed out. He is gone. The beautiful end of that story is that when Christianity finally reached Ethiopia, it found over 100,000 believers because of that one Ethiopian eunuch. Caught away.

In 2nd Corinthians chapter 12, verses two and four, Paul is talking about himself, but he's talking about himself not in the first person; he's talking about himself as though it were someone he knew. He says, "Listen, I knew a man in Christ about 14 years ago; whether in the body, I cannot tell; whether out of the body, I cannot tell. God knoweth." He had a consciousness when he was caught up to be before the Lord, but he didn't really realize if he was in a body or out of a body.

I don't know if that's the experience we're going to have. We're getting a new body; we know that. He said, "God knoweth, but such a one was caught up"—there's our word again, *harpazo*—"caught up into the third heaven." Verse four says, "How that he was caught up"—there's our word again, *harpazo*—"into paradise and he heard unspeakable words, which are not lawful for a man to utter." He saw things so incredible, he said it's not even lawful for someone to even mention those things because words don't describe them.

Words do not do them justice. So when Paul was caught up into the third heaven, the word *harpazo*, our word for rapture, it's an event where he was snatched out of this realm into the heavenly realm, and there he saw things that were incredible. We read in 1st Thessalonians chapter four, verse 17. This is going to be our experience. Paul, writing it, says, "Then we which are alive and remain." You see, the Thessalonians had written Paul because they were concerned.

Some were saying that the rapture had already happened and they were in the tribulation. They were concerned. If that happened, how come we're not raised from the dead? How come our loved ones who have died in the faith haven't been raised from the dead? There was a lot of confusion. Paul writes two letters to them to straighten out some of the confusion. He reminds them about the rapture, and he says, "Then we which are alive and remain"—that's to the coming of the Lord—"shall be caught up." *Harpazo*. That's our word for rapture. "We're going to be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

That event is coming soon. Can you imagine what that's going to be like? To be here one moment, and in the twinkling of an eye—one one-thousandth of a second—you're changed and you are snatched with great force to meet the Lord in the air. Now, how far up, I don't know. Out of the atmosphere? I don't know; the Bible doesn't say. But we'll meet the Lord in the air for him to escort us into the very throne room of God, where Jude tells us he's going to wrap his arms around us and present us to the Father.

One day, Jesus is going to walk us right into the very presence of God the Father seated on his throne and say, "God the Father, Mike Warren; Mike Warren, God the Father." He's going to present me faultless. That's amazing to me. Completely perfect, he will present me to the Father. You say, "How long is that going to take?" Time doesn't matter. There is no time when we get to heaven. Time is only something that exists here. We're going to step into eternity. We're going to be transcendent, as he is transcendent.

It doesn't matter if it takes a million years for him to introduce each one of us; it will seem but a moment. But each one of us are going to be ushered in by Jesus to the very presence of God the Father seated on the throne and introduced, and we're going to be perfect, without fault, without blemish. Amazing. Then we read in Revelation chapter 12. That's what happened when Jesus was caught up on the clouds. It says in Revelation 12, verse five: "And she brought forth a man child"—speaking of Israel—"who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron"—obviously Christ Jesus, our Messiah—"and her child was caught up"—there's our word again, *harpazo*—"unto God and to his throne."

So to say tonight that the word rapture is not found in the scripture is a false statement. It's found at least four times that I introduced to you tonight, and each one is connected to a person who was caught up to be in the heavens, or into the heavenlies, or before the throne of God. One of those events mentions you and me. One of these days, we're going to experience this thing called *harpazo*, caught away, caught up, rapture, whatever word you want to put to it. But the event is going to be: one moment you're going to be here in this earthly form, and the next moment you're going to be changed and you're going to be in the sky in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in a new body. It's going to happen rather quickly.

So that's important for us to understand. Now, we have looked at the promise. Secondly, we've looked at how it's a real event taught in the scripture; don't let anybody tell you it's not. But we want to look at what the rapture is. In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, we want to look at it. Several times, Paul writes that he doesn't want us to be ignorant. The first time he writes, he doesn't want us to be ignorant about Israel. There's a lot of ignorance that goes on about Israel in this replacement theology.

Listen, if you buy into replacement theology, you better be worrying about your own salvation. If God changes his mind about Israel and didn't fulfill his covenants to Israel, he might just change his mind about you. But one thing I know about my doctrine, one thing I know about my belief, is that God is immutable. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. He does not change. There's no shadow of turning in him. His promises are yes and amen, and he has not cast Israel away.

I had a person ask me to show them a verse. I said, "I'll show you chapters. Have you not read Romans chapters 9, 10, and 11?" God has not cast Israel away because he's a covenant-keeping God. They're on holiday right now, as it were. There's a parenthesis. When they rejected the Messiah, God did set Israel aside and opened wide this thing called the church. When the church is done with this plan and purpose that God has for us on earth, we will be whisked away to be with the Lord, and then God will deal with Israel again.

He didn't want us to be ignorant concerning Israel, and then he says, "I don't want you to be ignorant concerning spiritual gifts." There's a lot of ignorance about spiritual gifts. Over the years, I've had people try to interrupt while I'm teaching, standing up and saying, "Thus saith the Lord," prophesying or speaking in tongues. I've had to set them down. I've been accused of not being one who believes in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Not so. I believe in every gift of the Holy Spirit, but I believe they're done decently and in order.

The Holy Spirit doesn't interrupt himself. He's not like some of us; he's not beside himself. When the Holy Spirit is speaking through the word as the pastor's teaching, he won't interrupt himself by standing up and saying, "Thus saith the Lord" or speaking in tongues. Amen? So Paul had to straighten that ignorance out. The third thing he has to straighten out is this thing concerning the rapture.

There are three things that Paul gave great care to straighten out: God's covenant with Israel, the gifts of the Holy Spirit—and listen, we're no cessationists; we believe the Holy Spirit is alive and well in the church today. I'll freak some of you out; I'm probably like Paul: I speak in tongues more than you all. When I get to the point where I don't know how to pray for you, I have that gift, and I pray for you in a language I don't understand in my prayer room and in my prayer closet. But when we come here together, I'm going to teach with a language you know. I'm not going to blow away the weaker Christian or the unbeliever that comes in and hears me doing something they don't quite understand. I'm not going to do that. Let everything be done decently and in order.