Insight for Living

Bill Meyer: Thieves don't announce their arrival. They slip in when we least expect them. But Jesus says if we knew when the thief was coming, we'd keep watch and not let our houses be overtaken. So here's the question: Are you prepared? Are you alert to the signs?

Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll explores the crucial difference between two coming biblical events. In this study, we'll discover why Christ's return brings relief for believers, but the Day of the Lord will come unexpectedly for those who are not prepared.

Chuck Swindoll: Within each one of us is an insatiable curiosity to know the future. What will happen to the economy? Will our children grow up healthy and strong and stable? Will my job prove to be all I hoped it would be? Oh, to be able to pull back the curtain of time and take a peek into the mysteries of tomorrow.

Because that curiosity is so powerful, we're often drawn to prophecy passages, like the ones in 1 Thessalonians. And we are intrigued by modern-day prophets who link current events with scriptures and then cry out with conviction, "Behold the future!" This is not new, as we will see from the passage we're studying today. So if you have your Bible handy, please turn with me to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, and let's read together verses 1 through 11.

I'll begin reading here at 1 Thessalonians 5:1: "Now as to the times and the epochs, brethren, you have no need of anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. While they are saying, 'Peace and safety!' then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape.

But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief; for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness; so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober. For those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night.

But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we will live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing."

Bill Meyer: You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into 1 Thessalonians on your own, be sure to purchase our Searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook by going to insight.org/offer. Chuck titled today's message ". . . Like a Thief in the Night".

Chuck Swindoll: Fresh out of seminary, I decided that the Lord was really leading me to work alongside a man under whom I had studied for the previous four years. And I remained on at the little church in North Dallas for an extended period of time working with a man whose name is a familiar name in many theological circles, and certainly in the realm of the prophetic word: Dwight Pentecost.

It was my privilege to be his assistant for two and a half years full-time, and even prior to that to be under his ministry in the church as well as at Dallas Seminary where I studied for the four years. And I learned to respect the way he handled the Scriptures and certainly have thought on many occasion how much I do admire his style, his scholarship, and his incredible gift with the subject of prophecy.

But being his assistant allowed me to work behind the scenes. And as the staff of a church often has the privilege of doing, I was able to ask tough questions and to probe a little into some subjects that were of great concern to me as a young minister, and to also ask about his feelings on certain things.

For example, I watched the church in which we pastored together grow, and I watched the crowds swell when he would announce a prophetic series. And then I would watch the same congregation decrease in size as we would get to other subjects of equal and, in my estimation, on occasion of even greater significance than what had been preached on, and yet the crowd was not there.

I asked him, "Dr. Pentecost, how does it feel to know that obviously people are coming to hear about prophecy, and yet on other occasions the interest is not as great?" He said, "Chuck, it concerns me a lot." He says, "For example, when I am a guest preacher in another part of the country and I'm there for a half a week, I can announce a subject on a Monday that would be of what one would call a sensational nature, such as, 'Will the church go through the tribulation?' or 'The Coming World Dictator,' or 'The United States in Prophecy,' or 'Who is Antichrist?' or just the one-word title, 'Armageddon.'"

And he says, "I'll tell you they'll come early, and the place will be full. You can almost predict it. But if I announce on that night that tomorrow night I'll speak on the lordship of Jesus Christ, or the love and mercy of God," he says, "you can almost hear your echo in the place. Troubles me a lot."

He's right. There's something within all of us that longs to know about the future. We have what I call a curiosity itch concerning tomorrow. And the public invariably responds to the prophetic themes. Even when one does not wish to be sensational, there's something about the subject of prophecy that causes the itch inside of us to be scratched.

However, the public doesn't want to be duped. Prophets have the public's respect until the public discovers that he's a phony. I thought about that and smiled, in fact, when I read this notice that appeared in a local newspaper some time ago: "Due to unforeseen circumstances, no clairvoyant meeting tonight until further notice."

I thought now, whoever followed that group would have every reason not to follow it any longer if they don't know what's coming up. A sensible and accurate study of prophecy is one thing; fakery is something else. That helps no one. We as Christians are to be informed and stable in our knowledge of the future.

But to become extreme and dogmatic at every point, I think not. I'm grateful for the balanced training I received from that fine man. You see, the interest in the future is nothing new. Babylonians and Egyptians and Romans and Greeks alike all had their seers, their priests of prophecy.

They all had those people around them, those leaders who could tell them, or at least convince them, that they knew the future. People will pay great sums of money to read about their tomorrow, even in the horoscope charts that appear in about 1,300 of our 1,800 daily newspapers in America.

These charts appear. Did you know that 30 years ago, it would be hard to find a hundred such columns in these newspapers of ours? James Montgomery Boice says that if you think it's big in America, you ought to go to Europe. He writes according to one estimate there is a fortune teller for every 120 citizens in Paris.

There are over 2,000 mediums in the city of Zurich, Switzerland alone. That's a good one for Trivial Pursuit, by the way, if you need that sometime. Now, some of it remains a mystery. This is a very important point. Do not allow your curiosity about the future to force you into areas that are to remain a mystery.

Be just as comfortable with great gaps of uncertainty as you are with absolute realms of certainty. I have a little motto that I live by when it comes to prophecy, having trained under that very capable man: Those who leave little room for mystery, leave a lot of room for mistakes.

But for some reason, we're troubled by mystery. The mystery of it all heightens my curiosity all the more. I find myself very comfortable when I come to passages of Scripture that don't answer everything. Look, for example, at Matthew 24, beginning at verse 3. Jesus is on the Mount of Olives.

He is with his group of disciples. And as usual, they're asking questions. He has been dropping little tidbits of information about tomorrow, and it's just enough to scratch their itches. And so they get alone with him, Matthew 24:3, and they say privately to him, "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of your coming? And what of the end of the age?"

Isn't that interesting? Here were the men who served Christ faithfully, who sat at his feet, who learned from him as his assistant, who discovered great chunks of information, new vistas of truth, who at the end or toward the end of his ministry were still saying, "Tell us more. Could you give us a hint about the end of the age?"

I think they were really hoping he would set a date. My wife was listening to a radio program some time ago and she said, "To my surprise, this rather faithful man," I say *rather* faithful because of what she just found out on the air. She says, "Up until this point, I'd had such great respect for him, but then he virtually set a date concerning Christ's coming, and I immediately got concerned."

You don't have to set dates to be a prophetic student. In fact, if you set dates, you prove you're a poor one. At the very end of Jesus' time on earth, just seconds before he was whisked off the earth and taken back to heaven in bodily form, Acts chapter 1, verse 6, he made a statement to this same group of disciples.

Verse 6, chapter 1: "When they had come together, they were asking him, 'Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel?'" There they are again. "Is this the time? Is it going to happen now?" Next verse, I hope you have your pencil ready: He said to them, mark it, "It is not for you to know the times or the epochs."

Put in today's vernacular: Don't set dates. He may not come for a hundred years; he may come in the next 100 seconds. We believe in his imminent return. We believe it could be at any moment, but it may not be for dozens of years. It is not for us to know those times which the Father has fixed by his own authority.

However, we can't help being curious. The reason for that is what is revealed, you don't need to turn to it, I'll quote it for you, it's revealed in Ecclesiastes 3:11: "God has put eternity in our hearts." That distinguishes us from animals, from the fowls of the air and the fish of the sea.

None of them have eternity in their hearts. But in our hearts is an itch to know about tomorrow. We want to know about God's plan. We want to have light come from the vertical onto our world. We want to see where we're going, and we want it as specific as we can get it. I do too. I would love to know the future.

The older my children get, the more I wish I knew the future. I would love to see ahead of them the pitfalls and prepare them all the more for the pitfalls. I would love to know my day of death so that I could live it up every day until it happens. Since I don't know it, I'm going to do that, and that's just the way I solve that problem.

But not everyone has that kind of bright tomorrow. For some, there is dreadful destruction on the horizon. That isn't a sensational statement; that's a biblical statement. For some, there is a time of terrible tribulation. Turn from Acts 1 to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5.

Allow me for a moment to set the stage. Last time, we saw something very bright and beautiful. We saw in 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 13 to 18, truth concerning Christ's coming for his own. It was great. We all felt like cheering. If you were like me, you sang all the way back to your house.

You were thrilled to read: "The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus shall we ever be with the Lord. Comfort one another with these words."

Let those words put their arms around you and encourage you when you're in the valley. Those words will put a mountain in your valley. They'll give you a reason to go on. Ultimately, we face a very bright tomorrow. Christ is coming. That's a marvelous truth, and we count on it, and it's comforting to us.

The Thessalonian believers were concerned about a couple of things, however. Not only were they concerned about their dead Christian friends and family members being missed when Christ came back, but they were concerned about whether they might be going into a period of tribulation because suffering had begun to happen.

Now, 1 Thessalonians 4 answers the first concern; 1 Thessalonians 5 answers the second. And Paul is about to show them that that Day of the Lord, which is different from the Day of Christ as I understand the Scriptures. The Day of Christ is a relief; the Day of the Lord is a dread.

The Day of Christ is a removal from this earth and all its toil; the Day of the Lord is, in fact, an inescapable time of horrible affliction, catastrophic judgment. Now, if all the saints are taken off the earth, it doesn't take a graduate degree to know who's left on the earth. And the unsaved that are left that people this earth will be plunged into a time of dreadful judgment.

My position is the church will not go through this tribulation. There are some very fine men and women who don't agree with that and teach that we will go through the tribulation. They're wrong, but that's fine. It's interesting to think right now they're saying the same thing about me. He's wrong, but I want to tell you the other side.

Passages like this give me hope and help in believing like I do. The Day of the Lord is coming, verses 1 and 2. The Day of the Lord relates to the unbeliever, verse 3. And the Day of the Lord has some things to say to the believer, verses 4 through 11. Look at the coming of the day.

"Not to worry," says Paul. "Now as to the times and the epochs, brethren, you have no need of anything to be written to you." I take it that he says that because when he was with them, he covered the bases sufficiently. He said to them while he was among them, "Here is God's plan," and he spelled it out for them to understand it.

And they grasped it as best they could in his brief ministry among them. Then he left, and he's told them all that he knew to tell them, and they had heard all that he had to say. So he says, "For me to write this to you really is superfluous. I've covered the bases." Verse 2: "You already know this, that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night."

Right away, I know I've come across something different than chapter 4. "Like a thief in the night"? Well, toward the end of chapter 4 we read, verse 16: "The Lord himself will descend with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God." Does that sound like a thief in the night?

I've never heard of a thief getting in a van, putting speakers on top of the van, putting his brother in there with him and going into the neighborhood in bright daylight saying over the loudspeaker, "You people that live at 1414 Elm, we're going to rip you off at 10:00 tonight. My brother's going to blow a trumpet, my sister's going to scream, and I'm going to come inside your house and take your goods."

Are you kidding? Thieves don't do that. Thieves come when you least expect them. No announcement, no trumpet, no screams. They slide in and out just like a thief. No announcement. We have friends in our church, several of them, and I'm thinking of one particular couple that happened to be away for a period of time, and while away, they were invaded by thieves.

Their bedroom was a shambles as this or these people invaded and tore the place up, getting their belongings that were precious to them, some of them irreplaceable. And, of course, along with the feeling of rage that comes over you is this horrible feeling of shock. Why? Because it's not expected.

You, even if you have been invaded by a thief, you will never forget the shock of finding that they actually chose your home to rob. There's no knowledge of it. Chapter 4, verses 13 to 18, there is an awareness, there is a knowledge, there is a foretelling along with a foretelling. It's coming.

You will hear and you will see and it will be for you, my child. Count on it, it's comforting. But verse 3, "While they," note the pronoun, different from "you," verse 4, "But you." Now, "while they are saying, 'Peace, safety,' then destruction will come upon them suddenly."

I was listening to KABC talk show, one of our radio programs here in the Los Angeles basin, and I was interested to hear the police chief of Los Angeles being interviewed. I missed the previous interview with the fire department chief in Los Angeles. Interestingly, both of them had the same subject; it was preparing for an earthquake.

And both of them, I heard the chief of police say it, I hadn't heard the fireman say it, but both of them apparently had said the same thing: The toughest thing in the world is to convince people in Los Angeles that we are facing it. It's coming. Now, that's not the best news in the world to share with you at this moment, but it's coming.

And he said if we could just convince people that it's coming, we could make great strides in getting ready for it. But he says you wouldn't believe the people who have lived through them and tell all their horror stories about them still to this day yawning as if, "Who, us? Worried about something like that?"

This is the scene, not an earthquake, but a catastrophic judgment. "Shalom! Peace, man. Relax. We've got this world where we want it. Christians are gone. Finally, we've got things like we want it. We've got the Answer Man on the throne. Take it easy." And then destruction.

Bob Thomas writes: "At the moment that tranquility seemingly reaches its peak, destruction will come on them suddenly. The word means utter and hopeless ruin, a loss of everything worthwhile," quoting from Milligan, "causing the victims to despair of life itself. Without being totally annihilated, they are assigned to wrath. Pain is certainly involved."

Bill Meyer: It'll be a scary moment when the world is depleted of goodness and nothing but hopeless ruin remains. You're listening to Insight for Living. Chuck Swindoll is teaching from 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. He titled today's message ". . . Like a Thief in the Night". If you'd like to listen to Chuck's sermon again, you can find it on our convenient mobile app.

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Bill Meyer: I'm Bill Meyer. Join us when Chuck Swindoll warns us against two dangerous extremes for those awaiting the return of Christ. Friday on Insight for Living.

The preceding message, ". . . Like a Thief in the Night," was copyrighted in 1984, 1985, 1993, 2003, and 2024, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2024 by Charles R. Swindoll, Incorporated. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.