Sugar Land Bible Church

Jeff Kinley: I am five years old, so you can do the math on that. I always like to point that out. It makes my wife look young, so it is always a good thing. It is a pleasure to be with you all here this morning. I know that we have many who are watching on live stream. I know we have some folks in Belgium that are watching this morning. Greetings, brothers and sisters in Belgium. We are going to talk today about the Rapture of the Church here in just a moment.

As brother mentioned, there are several ministries that I do out there. I do not know how I do all these things, but I just wake up every day and do my job. That is what I do. The Vintage Truth podcast, you can download the app and learn more about that. We are up to 550 episodes now, which is kind of cool. Most everything I do in my ministry is related to Bible prophecy, but the podcast here enables me to keep being a pastor. I teach through books of the Bible, Christian life, doctrine, and things like that. So, I always enjoy the Vintage Truth podcast.

Then as he mentioned, the "King is Coming" program. Some of you may know Dr. Ed Hindson, who ran this program for over 25 years. When Dr. Hindson passed, they approached me about coming and taking over his program there. Then there are a couple of books that are out there. One is called "The End of the World According to Jesus of Nazareth." That sounds like a real positive title, doesn't it? How to have a happy life and live your best life now. That is not what this book is about.

It is Matthew 24 and 25, the Olivet Discourse. You literally see the end of time through the very eyes of Jesus and His words. My latest book I wrote with one of my partners in ministry, Todd Hampson, is called "The Visual Guide to the End Times." We may have a copy or so back there. This is a big hardback book that visually captures all the people, places, events, theology, God, and all of the chronology of the end times. It is all in one book, visually captivating but theologically condensed. This became an instant bestseller when it came out.

There are a couple of things that we are doing right now. One is called the Prophecy Pros Academy. The Prophecy Pros Academy was founded to help bridge the gap between Sundays and seminary. Basically, a lot of people, unlike this church, do not get a lot of great teaching on Sunday mornings. You are very blessed because you are in the top one percent, or above the top one percent, of the teaching in America today, and really in the world today. Most Christians today suffer under mediocre teaching on Sunday mornings, and that is why there are so many mediocre Christians out there today. That is not true here.

In the Prophecy Pros Academy, we are bridging the gap between Sundays and seminary. It is basically a three-year curriculum. It is all online that we are doing right now. We are teaching through systematic theology with the third year being all about eschatology and Bible prophecy. You can find out more about that at prophecyprosacademy.com. The new semester opens August 11th.

One of the most exciting things going on right now that I am a part of is called Future Hope. A couple of years ago, my friend Jack Hibbs called and said, "We want to do a youth prophecy conference at our church." I said, "Wow, that is bold." He said, "Would you want to come out, you and Todd, and come out and teach with me on it?" I said, "Yeah, that would be great." We did not know if 10 kids would show up or 20 kids, but 900 teenagers showed up. Praise the Lord.

I am going to tell you something, they were dialed in from word one. Nobody was talking, nobody was looking around, and they were taking notes. Their Bibles were open. They were absolutely captivated. When it came time for Q&A, they were lined up 50 deep down every aisle asking the most substantive, incredible questions we have ever heard on Bible prophecy. So we said, "Gosh, let's do it again next year."

We did it again next year, and 1,100 students came. We saw over 200 students give their lives to Jesus Christ. Out of this conference that we have been doing with Jack grew a national ministry that we call Future Hope. Future Hope was founded by myself, Todd Hampson, and another ministry partner. Basically, it is a vision to take the message of hope that is found in Bible prophecy to teenagers all across America.

Our goal is to reach 100,000 teenagers and equip youth pastors as well to teach Bible prophecy in the next five years. We are going back to Chino Hills this fall. We have got a conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We are doing one up in Minneapolis. We have got one scheduled at Mark Hitchcock's church, Gary Hamrick's church, and we are coming here to Sugar Land next year. God is just exploding this thing. The main message that we have is you can know. You can understand the Bible and what is going to happen in the future.

I encourage you to pray for that and go to futurehope.now and find out more information about that. Now, regarding my books, I will say this quick little caveat here. You do not have to buy a book back there if you do not want to. If you don't, you are probably going to go through the Tribulation period, but you don't have to. There is absolutely no obligation to do that whatsoever.

Let's turn our attention to 1 Thessalonians today. As brother Ed read here, we have this verse in 1 Thessalonians chapter four, verse 13. "But we do not want you to be uninformed." Isn't that great about the Bible? God says, "I don't want you to be ignorant." There are so many, and I don't mean this derogatorily, but there are so many ignorant Christians today who don't know. They don't know what God says about the end times. But you are the only people group in the world that knows what is going to happen in the future if you know your Bible.

"Brethren, about those who are asleep, who have died, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope." There is a huge void of hope today in the world. People have no hope. They look at what is happening in Ukraine, they look at what is happening in Israel, and they look at what is happening in America and all over the world where things are so volatile, and they think, "Where is the hope?" Well, you have got it. Christ in you, the hope of glory.

We are going to talk about that hope today. I believe the next event on God's prophetic calendar is the Rapture. Here we are, we are traveling down through the tunnel of time through history, and the next sign is not the Twilight Zone. It is the Rapture of the Church. Right now, unlike perhaps any doctrine in Scripture, the Rapture is under attack.

What I am going to do this morning is basically two things. I want to equip you with some arguments to help you talk to people about why the Rapture is true because there are attacks on the Rapture today. I am going to talk about six attacks. Then I am going to give you seven clear reasons to believe in a pre-tribulational Rapture that I believe will really encourage you.

Here we go. These six arguments, common myths, begin with this first one: that the Rapture event will be secret and hidden. This is one of the things that people say sometimes. They say, "You believe in a secret Rapture." Well, how do you respond to that when people say that? "That is why I don't believe it because you believe it is a secret thing that is kind of hidden." My response is simply this. This is not true.

Why is it not true? Because the Bible nowhere says that the Rapture will be a secret event. In fact, just the opposite. When the Rapture occurs, everyone is going to know about it. Every human being on this planet is going to know about the Rapture. Do you know why? Because a lot of Christians are going to disappear. They say, "Jeff, how many Christians are there on the planet?" I do not know. Only God knows.

You can count church members, but we know that is not a great way to count how many Christians there are. You can count people in America who claim to be Christian, but that is not a great way. We do not know how many people are in the body of Christ. But however many there are, when they are raptured, everyone is going to know about it. It is not going to be hidden. It will be the most public, publicized, experienced, well-known event in all of human history. So when they say it is a secret Rapture, we come back to, "Nope, it is not going to be secret. We are going to know about it."

Argument number two: Jesus never spoke about the Rapture. People want to say, "Well, if Christ never spoke about it, then certainly it can't be true." How do we respond to that? Well, this is absolutely not true. First of all, Jesus introduced the Rapture promise in John chapter 14, verses one through three. We will look at that just briefly here in just a little bit.

But Paul describes both the Rapture and the Church as mysteries. A mystery in the Bible is not a who-done-it. It is not an Agatha Christie. A mystery is simply something that has been previously hidden that is now revealed. This is a part of what we call progressive revelation. Think about it. God wrote 66 books of the Bible. He did not write one book all at the same time. It was progressively revealed to us. Why? Because we have to assimilate and absorb the truth little by little. He did not even give it all to Moses at one time.

It is almost like the lights turning up that we get more light and more knowledge as God reveals. Over time, things were revealed. For example, prophecies regarding the Messiah. I mean, we did not know where the Messiah would be born until Micah chapter five, verse two, where it says the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. We did not know He would be born of a virgin until Isaiah 7:14, and how He would die and what He would say until Psalm 22.

Many things about Jesus and about the future were all revealed over time. That is the way God revealed His word. So, the idea of the Rapture was not introduced until John chapter 14, verses one through three. You say, "You mean it was not in the Old Testament?" No. Why not? Because the Church was a mystery as well. Paul talks about the mystery of the Church. So there are things that God uncovers as we go along, and one of those things is the Rapture.

How does this relate to Jesus? Well, number one, Jesus Himself would later be raptured after speaking those words in John chapter 14. You remember in Acts when Jesus Christ ascended? Have you ever wondered what that really looked like? Have you ever asked yourself the question, "How fast did He rise?" I have wondered that. And I wonder if we are going to rise with the same velocity and speed that Jesus did. I do not know the answer to that, I will be honest.

But we know in Revelation chapter 12, verse five, that when it speaks of the ascension of Christ, it uses the same word that we get our word Rapture from. So, Christ was raptured. Finally, I will respond this way. I say, "Listen, Jesus never spoke about a lot of things. He never told us about elders, roles of women in the church, the armor of God, slavery specifically, homosexuality, abortion, new heavens and the new earth, Antichrist's fatal wound, the number 666, and many, many other topics."

Why? Because of progressive revelation. Because Paul would come along after Jesus and the Holy Spirit would reveal things to him. Because John would come along after Paul and the Holy Spirit would reveal things to him on the Island of Patmos. I just wrote that the absence of a subject in Jesus' recorded teachings does not negate the rest of Scripture's written revelation. Just because Christ did not mention it, number one, does not mean that the rest of Scripture did not talk about it.

We only have the recorded words. In fact, John tells us that there are many things that Jesus said that we just can't write down. There aren't enough libraries in the world to hold them. So that is really a bogus argument here. I love this one here. It says the argument says the word "Rapture" is not in the Bible. It is just not in the Bible. "Now you Christians believe in a Rapture, but I have read my Bible from cover to cover. I can't find the word 'Rapture' anywhere in my Bible." How do you answer that?

Well, this is not technically true. Keep in mind that when the Bible was written, it was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and the New Testament was written primarily in Greek. I do not know if you know this or not, but there are no English words in the Greek language. Did you know that? Greek is a completely different language. It is like a friend of mine said, "I went to France one time, and those French have a different word for everything." Isn't that incredible? Amazing how that works out.

I studied foreign languages in college and won the foreign language award in my high school. I then studied Greek and Hebrew in seminary, and I still do not understand all of it. Hebrew is a really difficult language for me. But Christ spoke in Aramaic, and the New Testament was written in Greek, but there are no English words in the Bible. Here are some other English words you will not find anywhere in your Bible: Trinity. "Whoa, wait a minute, Jeff. You say you don't believe in the..." No, no. In the Bible, the word "Trinity" is not there. It was not invented until the 4th century.

Now, the teaching of Trinity is in the Bible, but the word "Trinity" is a word coined, I believe by Jerome, Church Father, to help us understand the triunity of God. How about incarnation or missions or Christmas? Not in the Bible, not that word. Easter, Great Commission. In fact, the word "Bible" is not in the Bible. Did you know that? How about this: the second coming. Those words are not in the Bible. Inerrancy, millennium, millennial kingdom, Christian music. That can be a little suspect. Worship service, accept Jesus. None of these phrases will you find in your English Bible.

The question to ask, though, is it found in Scripture? Is the teaching found in Scripture? You can call the Rapture anything you want to, and we will get to what the word is here in just a little bit, but the question we have to ask is: is it in the Word of God? That is the real question. So when people say the Rapture is not in the Bible, we respond by saying, "Now it's not technically true. We'll find out what the word is here in just a little bit."

Another argument is that the Rapture is a recent doctrine. This is the most common argument that we see today. There was a man that you may have heard his name by the name of Tucker Carlson. You probably never heard that guy's name before. But Tucker Carlson had a guy on his show. He was a cowboy, a country western singer, which I have nothing against country western music. But he had this country western singer on his show, and he had on a big black cowboy hat.

Of all the things they talked about together, they talked about the Rapture of the church. This country music singer said this. He said, "The Rapture was invented by a guy named John Nelson Darby back in 1830, and it's a completely made-up recent doctrine. It's not in the Bible, it's not found anywhere. It's just kind of a Johnny-come-lately kind of belief."

When I saw that interview, this thought popped into my head. I said, "You know what? I'm going to change my belief system because I should always get my theology from a country western singer with a black cowboy hat. That's the trusted voice. That's who I should believe." Not to say he's not correct on a lot of other things, I don't know the man. But the Rapture is not a recent doctrine.

How do we know this? Let me give you a couple of things to kind of think about. This well-worn claim that Darby invented the Rapture—he is the founder of the Brethren movement, by the way—it says that he was influenced by a 15-year-old demon-possessed girl named Margaret McDonald. After that, he formed the doctrine of the Rapture. Of course, there is zero evidence that John Nelson Darby ever did that or that he met anyone by this name. This has been debunked for decades.

I mean, decades of research has proven that John Nelson Darby did not invent the Rapture. It is like today you would say, "We now know that the moon is not made of green cheese." We know that now. Now, if you want to keep propagating that, you're welcome to, but it was not made of green cheese. And the earth is not flat. It's actually round or kind of an oval, you know, ovalish-round kind of shape. We know these things to be true. This has been such a debunked theory that anytime someone uses this argument, you know for a fact they haven't done their homework. That is what you know. You know they haven't really studied the subject.

On the contrary, the doctrine of the Rapture is a belief that can be traced back 2,000 years, not just about 200 or so years. We go back to something called the Didache, which is a first-century, early second-century document which reads this in 16:1. It says, "Watch for your life's sake. Be ready, for you know not the hour in which your Lord cometh." They believed in the first century—the Didache, by the way, was the compilation of the teaching of the 12 apostles. It's a non-biblical, extra-biblical book. But they said that the apostles believed that Christ could come back at any time. Well, that would be the Rapture, right? An imminent return of Jesus Christ.

And then we trace it back to the church fathers. Look at what some of the church fathers said. AD 90, Irenaeus, who was a disciple of Polycarp, who by the way was discipled by John himself, so he's got a good bloodline, a good credulous creed there. He says, "Therefore, when in the end the church shall be suddenly caught up..."—that's the idea of the Rapture from this—"...it shall be said there will be tribulation such as not has been since the beginning, neither shall be." So he wrote there's going to be a pre-tribulational Rapture. That's a few hundred years before Darby.

And then Cyprian, the Bishop of Carthage, said, "The Church will experience an early departure from the 'disaster' that is about to come, and that believers should greet the day which snatches us since." Then Ephrem of Edessa said, who is a preacher and poet, "For all the saints and elect of God are gathered prior to the tribulation that is to come and are taken to the Lord." So here's a summary of some of the other church fathers here. The idea is that we can trace this thing all the way back to the early church fathers and those who originally wrote about these future eschatological happenings here.

What's important for us to understand, though, as we think about the Rapture being a recent doctrine is this: that we do not calibrate the legitimacy of doctrine based upon when it was popular in church history. This is very important. Why? Because church history is a very messy story. It's a very erratic story. It's a story filled with a lot of error and even heresy. In fact, if the legitimacy of a particular doctrine is determined by the date in which it became popular or widely accepted in the church, then many core doctrines are suspect.

For example, salvation by grace through faith. For a thousand years, the church didn't believe in that. So if you would have said Martin Luther comes along and he says, "Hey, I think the only way to get to heaven is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ," you would have said, "That's a recent doctrine. You made that up. You're like John Nelson Darby one day. You just made up this doctrine of grace through faith." No, all Luther did was just read the Bible and find out what the Bible said.

Or about the doctrine of inerrancy. You know, by the late 18th century, early 19th century, or 20th century rather, the doctrine of inerrancy was under attack. Seminaries and churches were all going liberal and believing that because of higher criticism and because of the Enlightenment period left over, they believed that the Bible had errors in it. Along came men like Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer and others who came along and said, "You know what? We need to form a seminary that teaches men that the Word of God is inerrant and accurate and infallible." So that's a recent doctrine compared to some of the popular beliefs of the day.

And then today, we're experiencing really an uptick, an upsurge in prophecy and study of the end times itself. In fact, everywhere I go, people are interested in Bible prophecy. Isn't that amazing? And I think it's because people are looking around, they're seeing that our world is headed towards a conclusion, that we may be getting close to closing time here on planet earth. Every year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists puts forth their Doomsday Clock where they predict how close we are to an extinction event in the world today. I think we're about 90 seconds to midnight now.

And so they even believe that we're in an eschatological age. But church history or tradition is never our final authority on any doctrine. The only question that ultimately matters is: what does the Word of God teach? So when anyone tells you it's a recent doctrine, you can point them all the way back to the church fathers and, as we'll see in a few minutes, all the way back to Scripture itself.

Another popular argument is that the Rapture is a convenient escape clause. I love this argument because people say, "Look, you believe in the Rapture just because you want to get out of all that judgment and wrath and tribulation that's coming." And I go, "What's your question? Of course, I do. Don't you? Don't you want to escape?" If you're in a burning house, is it a convenient escape clause to want to get out of the house? I don't think so. You want to get out of that house.

Well, fortunately for us, we have Scripture to back it up. I also point out this fact: then so was the ark for Noah. Then so were the two angels for Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah. It's how convenient that God would send two angels to get you out of Sodom and Gomorrah before He turns it into a glass parking lot. Well, guess what? He did. It was a convenient escape clause for him. I have no problem with that.

Now, here's the other argument that they say underneath this is that you want to get out of all problems. Well, here's how we respond to that. Christians are never told in Scripture that we'll be immune from hard times, persecution, or thlipsis, or tribulation. Same word that's used in various contexts. We're never promised that we'll be safe from difficulty. There's no such thing as a prayer or a promise that gets us out of hard times.

There are people in this congregation this morning that are going through incredibly difficult times in their lives, in their marriage, with their health, with losing family members. We're nowhere promised that. But Jesus said, "Take courage, I have overcome the world," and that I will be with you to the end of the age. Secondly, God never promises to exempt us from hard times, but He does protect us from His wrath. So we make a distinction between man's wrath and God's wrath, and we'll talk more about that in just a second.

And then thirdly, we have to distinguish between tribulation, the Tribulation, and the Great Tribulation. Three English words, three Greek words, the same words but in the context used different ways. So we've got general tribulation that all of us go through, right? That's John 16:33. But then the seven-year Tribulation that Daniel talks about, that Jesus talked about, that's a seven-year period of time that we're not going to be a part of. And then half of that Jesus calls the Great Tribulation, as does Jeremiah and Daniel put a different spin on it, but it's the same period of time.

So, different kinds of tribulation that we go through. And just because one English word or one Greek word paints it this way, the context will tell you what the word actually means. So, three different kinds of tribulation: general tribulation, specific tribulation during the seven years, and then three and a half years of tribulation.

The sixth argument is this: that the pre-trib Rapture belief produces lazy Christians. Because you believe Jesus is going to come back to get you, you're just floating down the lazy river and you're just having a good old time and not worrying about it. Well, here's how I respond to that. I said, "No, not really. But other Rapture positions could." Now, you can hold any Rapture position you want to and be a lazy Christian. Let's be honest, right?

But I believe the pre-trib Rapture position produces more Christians that are on fire and alert and watchful than the other positions. Why? Well, here's why. If we knew precisely when Christ will appear, as the mid-trib view claims, as the post-trib view claims, and as the pre-wrath view claims, then we could be lazy and simply get ourselves ready right before His return.

In other words, if you know when the Tribulation begins and you count three and a half years, you know almost to the day when Christ is coming back. Simple math. Just look forward in your—put it on your phone, do a countdown, right? And get your life together right before Christ returns because you know exactly when He's coming back. But if you don't know when He's coming back, you better be ready at all times. And this pre-trib wrath view gives us that perspective.

It's like mailing your taxes in at midnight. How many of you guys have done that? Be honest. You know liars go to hell, right? Okay, good. Alright, so we've all done late things with our taxes. We're just a couple of minutes—I've got to get to the post office, got to get that thing stamped. Hey, listen, that's the way people sometimes react with God. They wait to the last minute. But if you think Christ could come back at any time, it produces a readiness, a preparedness in your life there.

So, there are many reasons why people believe why the Rapture doesn't exist, but I believe these are some solid reasons why we can believe in the pre-trib Rapture. Now let's talk about these seven reasons now where we can sort of drill down a little bit more on these things. Then we're going to get to 1 Thessalonians 4 here in just a minute.

Number one is the pattern of deliverance in Scripture. Notice what God has done in the past. He has delivered His people prior to divine judgment on unbelievers. You say when did that happen? Well, it happened with Enoch, it happened with Noah, it happened with Lot, and it's going to happen with you and I as well. But this is why. There is a theological reason why God delivers His people from His apocalyptic wrath.

Why? Because when Jesus Christ died upon that cross, He declared, "It is finished." And when He said that, it meant that God was propitiated, that God was satisfied, He was satiated. His righteous character and the just demands of His holiness were satisfied in the payment that Jesus Christ made on that cross. You say, "What does that mean?" Well, that means that when you appropriate that salvation through belief in Jesus Christ, that is applied to your account.

That's why 2 Corinthians chapter five, verse 21 says, "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that you and I might be the righteousness of God in Him." So you are now clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and God is never going to bring back His wrath on you. Why? Because He spent it on Jesus. And you are, it's paid in full, my friend. So the character of God is the first reason why we will not suffer His wrath.

Do you remember when the angels came to Lot in Genesis 18, and I believe I've got it here somewhere, yeah, 18:25? And Abraham said to the angel, he said, "Now, you're not going to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah if you find 50 righteous people in there, right?" What did God say? "I won't destroy it, I promise you." "How about if you find 40?" And here Abraham just starts dealing out, it's like he's dealing cards with God, right? Trying to make a deal with God. "How about 10, God?" "Okay, I won't do it for 10."

And this is what he said. He says, I'm paraphrasing, he says that it is unrighteous for You to judge the wicked and the righteous with Your same judgment. You can't do that, God. Why? Because You don't reward the righteous the same way You reward the wicked. It's out of Your character to do that. And in that narrative, God agreed with that. Well, when Jesus died on the cross, that's another illustration of God's character. That God is saying, "I will not punish you for the sins that I've already punished Christ for." I punished Him for your sins.

It's like I heard the story of a farmer out in West Texas beyond Lubbock, and he was with his sons one day and they were out on their property. And they looked in the distance and a brushfire was coming their way, and it was coming at such a speed they knew they couldn't get out of the way of the fire and they'd be consumed. So the father, thinking quickly, he took a box of matches out of his pocket and he lit it and he threw it to his left. All of a sudden, the fire engulfed that part of his land and began to go this way. So the father simply stepped onto the charred ground, and the fire burned out before it got to them.

And then the father turned to the sons and he said, "Sons, always remember this: the fire cannot come where the fire has already been." And the fire of God's wrath fell on Jesus Christ at the cross. And the fire of God's wrath will never fall on you if you are in Christ. And that's what He wants us to know. And that's why when we talk about this idea of the pattern of God's deliverance, it reflects His character, it reflects theology, and it reflects the satisfactory payment of Christ's substitutionary atonement. So we see the pattern of God's deliverance.

Secondly, the reason for the pre-trib Rapture is it doesn't fit the purposes of the seven-year Tribulation period. You say, "Jeff, what is the purpose of the Tribulation period?" Let me give you three main purposes here. Number one: to discipline and redeem national Israel. The Bible tells us in Romans 11:26 that all Israel will one day be saved. That there's a partial hardening on Israel right now, but that hardening is going to be lifted at the end of the Tribulation period. They're going to call upon the name of the Lord. Jesus says, "You will not see Me again until you call upon the name and say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.'" The Bible tells us they will look upon Him whom they pierced, they will mourn upon Him, Zechariah says, as one mourns for an only son. So national Israel is going to be saved. That's one of the purposes of the Tribulation period.

Secondly, is to bring judgment and wrath on rebellious humanity. As you study through the book of Revelation, you see this phrase "those who dwell upon the earth." It's mentioned some 11 times in the book of Revelation, and it refers to rebellious humanity that will not be saved during the Tribulation, upon which God will pour out the seal, the trumpet, and the bowl judgments on them.

And then thirdly, to end Satan's reign upon the earth and establish Christ's kingdom. Satan is called the god of this world in 2 Corinthians 4:4. Jesus called him the ruler of this world in John chapter 12. He's called the prince of the power of the air in Ephesians 2. He is currently ruling things right now. Satan is alive and well on planet earth. But one of the reasons of the Tribulation period is to give Satan a long leash to bring his satanic agenda to fruition through Antichrist in a one-world government. Then the Son of Man is going to come, as Daniel predicted in Daniel chapter two, and He's going to crush those feet, that ten-king kingdom, and He's going to bring about the reign of Messiah upon the earth.

So there's nothing in there that would talk about a Rapture. We're not even a part of the narrative of the seven-year Tribulation. Nowhere in Scripture do the purposes of the Tribulation involve the bride of Christ. We are never told in one verse to look for Antichrist. Not one. You would think if we're going to suffer under Antichrist and the mark of the beast, that God would say, "Now look, this is really important because you guys are going to suffer. Here's how you get through Antichrist's reign." Not a single Bible verse for that. No verse telling us to look for the global government or the 21 judgments of God. We are only told to look for the Christ, the Christ. That's our blessed hope.

Number three is the prevalence of the Church in Revelation—or really the lack of prevalence of the Church in Revelation. Where do we find the Church? We find the church word—the word "church" occurs 20 times in Revelation. In chapters one through three, where God is addressing the churches, we see it 19 times. We see it again in chapter 22, but during the time God is unleashing His judgment on the planet, not one mention of the church. Not one. Not one mention of the bride of Christ or the body of Christ, as we are called. Not one. Why? Because I don't believe that we're there.

And then also, Tribulation saints are never referred to as the church. You say, "Jeff, aren't there people that become Christians during the Tribulation?" Yes, a great number. In fact, the greatest revival in all of human history is going to take place during the Tribulation period. However, they're never referred to as the bride of Christ or the church.

And then there's the place of the church in Revelation. Where is she geographically portrayed as being? Well, that's easy to find out. Chapters one through three, she's on the earth, the seven churches. Chapters four through 18, she's portrayed as being in heaven, represented by the 24 elders. And then all of a sudden, in chapter 19, here comes the bride. And where is she coming from? She's coming from heaven. It says with Christ, from heaven come those who are clothed in fine linen and white garments, exactly as the church is described in Revelation chapter 19. And then of course, in chapters 20 through 22, the millennial kingdom and heaven, we're obviously with all the saints there with Christ and with God.

But keep in mind, Revelation is written to the church. And so, as we see us in eternity, we're in the narrative there as God portrays us. I know I'm moving very fast here, but I want to get to our passage here. So these are just some preliminary points there.

We see the promise of Jesus' return in John 14. We've mentioned that, and this all refers to the Jewish wedding custom. I won't go through this whole thing with you, but there's a lot of study here, a lot to learn about this. The idea is that when Jesus in the upper room on the night before He was crucified spoke to His disciples, and He told them, "Believe in God, believe also in Me. I go to prepare a place for you. Were it not so, would I not have told you? And if I go away, I will return again to receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also."

Now, you say, "Jeff, how did they get that?" Well, if I were to say to you this morning, "Next week I'm going to a very special event. That special event will involve a preacher, it'll involve bridesmaids, it'll involve a man in a suit and a woman in a white dress, it'll involve a caterer, it'll involve way too much money spent on food," and I just go into this whole thing. What am I talking—what's the clue I'm talking about? It's a wedding, right? You get that because that's your culture.

When Jesus talked about going away and preparing a place and then coming again and receiving, those guys knew exactly what He was talking about. "You're talking about a wedding. We're the bride in this scenario, and You're going to go away and come back at an unannounced time, by the way, which was their custom, to receive us to Yourself." So Christ gave them that promise. So that's when the Rapture teaching is first mentioned in the Bible there in John 14.

And then there's the perspective of imminency. Scripture portrays the Rapture as an imminent event. Now let's just talk for two minutes what imminency means. Imminency means constantly close at hand. Constantly close at hand. That's what it means. It means this: that other things may happen before an imminent event, but nothing else must take place before an imminent event. It means that—it doesn't mean that it could happen soon, but it does mean it could happen at any time. You see the nuance there?

The most asked question I get on radio and television programs is always this: "Jeff, how close are we?" You know what my response is? "Close." I say that because I don't know. And then they say, "Yeah, yeah, but come on now, how close? You sense it. It has to be in the next..." and they give a time period. And I go, "It doesn't. Doesn't have to be in the next whatever your time period is. But it could happen before you go eat lunch today." That's what imminency really means.

Imminency does not necessitate signs. People say the signs of the Rapture. There are no signs for the Rapture. It is a signless event. Now, what you and I are seeing right now are signs in formation that tell us about the Tribulation period and about the second coming of Christ. And you say, "Wait a minute, what does that mean for the Rapture?" Well, as Dr. John Walvoord used to always say, and I'm sure you've heard Dr. Woods say this, it's like when you're in the grocery store and you hear Christmas music playing, and you go, "Wait a minute, we haven't had Thanksgiving yet." What does that tell you about Thanksgiving? Soon. Soon.

And so that's what imminency means. It just simply means it could take place at any time, and there is no set period of time that we can look forward to. It's an imminent event. It's been imminent since the ascension. And He tells us that it could happen very soon. And so it's not a time-bound type of thing.

And then finally here, let's talk about more about the perspective of imminency. Only the pre-trib view embraces and preserves imminence, or the belief that Christ could come back at any time. The other views claim to know the timing of the Rapture. They say He's coming back at the midpoint of the Tribulation, or five-sixths of the way into it, or at the very end. But other views, think about this: if you believe in a mid-trib Rapture—and I'm not demonizing people that do, there are good people that believe that—but if you believe in a mid-trib Rapture, you literally are telling God on this Sunday, "Your Son cannot come back today. I forbid Him to come back because it has to be at least three and a half years into the Tribulation period. And we're not in the Tribulation period."

So you're telling God Christ can't come back for at least three and a half years. If you believe in a post-trib Rapture, you believe Christ can't come back for at least seven and a half years. So you know you've got at least seven and a half years. So you—or seven-plus years. You know you've got at least three and a half years if you believe in those other positions.

So people talk about, "Well, I'm afraid I'm not going to see my son graduate from high school, or I'm not going to get married, I'm not going to see this or see that," because of the imminency of the Rapture. But if you believe in a pre-trib or a post-trib Rapture, you've got at least seven years to work on, right? So those positions do not embrace the doctrine of imminency there. The pre-trib view, I believe, actually produces more preparedness, more urgency, and more purity.

And then I searched the New Testament, I just want to make a confession to you. I searched the New Testament to try to find one verse where it says that the early church believed that Jesus could come back at any time, the idea of imminency. And I'm sad to say, okay, I found a couple of them. I found a couple of them. These are some of the verses that talk about the fact that the early church believed that their Jesus, who had just ascended a few years earlier, was about to come back and get them.

In fact, Paul even coined a word in 1 Corinthians 16:22, Maranatha. It's an Aramaic word, just means, "Oh Lord, come." And we believe that the church greeted one another with that word when they came together at their house church. And they'd come together on Sunday night, which is when they typically met, and when they saw each other, they'd say, "Maranatha! Oh Lord, come." And when they left, they would say, "Maranatha!" Why? "Because I'm probably not going to see you again because the Rapture's probably going to come this week."

That's how anticipatory the spirit was in the early church. Brothers and sisters, we've lost that in the body of Christ today. We've lost the excitement for our wedding day, the excitement for our perfection day, the anticipation of the greatest moment and day of all of our lives. We don't talk about it. We don't live for it. We don't anticipate it. We don't pray for it. We don't prepare for it. I think we need to bring back the Maranatha spirit in the church today and to remind one another: Maranatha, Maranatha. So yes, the New Testament church believed. In fact, the last words Jesus ever said to us: "Behold, I'm coming quickly. I'm coming quickly."

Well, that brings us to final thoughts as we jump into 1 Thessalonians 4. So go to 1 Thessalonians 4 in your Bible here. And one thing we can know is that the pre-trib view embraces imminence. It's not a salvation issue. You don't have to believe in it to come to Christ, but it is important. The Rapture is undeniably in the Bible. And the timing of the Rapture is a major game changer because it determines whether or not you're going to suffer under Antichrist. Also, the Rapture is our blessed hope of being delivered, and I believe that it is the next prophetic event on God's calendar.

Now let's look at 1 Thessalonians 4 together. And this concludes the final point here on the prophecies of Paul here. What happens at the Rapture? Look at verse 13. He says, "I don't want you to be uninformed and that you may not grieve as those who have no hope." Now Paul didn't say that Christians don't grieve. If you've ever lost someone, you grieve, don't you? You should grieve. It's natural, it's human. But we don't grieve like the rest who have no hope of seeing them again. If you're an unbeliever and an unbeliever dies, you have no hope of seeing them again. But if you're a believer, we never say goodbye. We just say, "Until we meet again. And I'll see you soon."

That's what I said at the graveside of my father and the graveside of my mother, who both came to Christ virtually on their deathbeds. "I'll see you soon, Dad." I was at his grave last week. I flew to South Carolina to visit my family. Went to the grave of my mom and my dad, and I quoted this verse here: that we will see you again and we don't grieve as those who have no hope.

And so it goes on to say, "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again..." Now just a quick survey: how many people in this room believe that Jesus died and rose again? Anybody? Okay, great. Okay, now we're in the same boat. Now watch this. Watch what Paul says about you and me. "If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with those who have fallen asleep in Jesus." So here's what he's saying. Because there's a resurrection of Jesus, there will be a Rapture of the church. If there's no resurrection, there's no Rapture. If there's a resurrection, there's a Rapture. As sure as you are about the resurrection, just as sure you can be about the Rapture. There's our confidence in the Rapture right there, right?

So he predicates the doctrine of the Rapture on the historicity and certainty and surety of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So he marries the two together. One produces the other. That's the first thing. The second thing is he says, "For this we say to you by the word of the Lord." So unlike many so-called prophets today, Paul is speaking by the word of the Lord, by direct revelation from Jesus. And he says, "I tell you authoritatively this is going to happen." So this is not my personal theology, my opinion, something in a book I wrote. Paul says, "This is what God says. That we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord shall not precede those who have fallen asleep."

In other words, there's going to be an order to the Rapture. Let's find out what that order is. Number one, as you see on your screen, Jesus Christ descends with a shout. "For the Lord Himself will descend with a shout." Now people have said, "What's this shout going to be?" Is it going to be a shout like He said to Lazarus, "Come forth"? Is He going to say, "Bride, come forth"? We don't know. But here's what we do know: it's going to be loud. Why? Because it says it's a shout, right? It's going to be loud. It's going to be heard by every believer all over the entire planet.

You say, "Wait a minute, Jeff, I'm a little bit hard of hearing. Will I hear it?" Yes. "I'm deaf. Will I hear it?" Yes, you'll hear it. You know why? Jesus said in John 10, "My sheep hear My voice and they know it, and they follow Me." You're going to hear it. Thirdly, it's going to be authoritative, unquestionably the voice of God, a voice none of us have ever heard before. But we're going to hear it. And then finally, it's going to be the summons of a bridegroom calling his bride to the wedding. I can't wait to hear that voice. How about you?

So Christ descends with a shout. What happens next? It says, "Then the voice of the archangel." The voice of the archangel, he says, and later on the trumpet of God. Now you say, "Well, who is this archangel here?" Well, Scripture only reveals the name of one archangel. Anyone know what it is? Michael. That's right. Not Frank. Who said Frank? I'm just kidding. No, it's Michael.

And yet Daniel tells us in Daniel chapter 10 that he's only one of the chief princes. So presumably, there could be more than one archangel, though Scripture doesn't specifically say it, but he says one of the chief princes. And the Bible also tells us in Daniel 12 that Michael's job is to guard Israel, to watch over Israel. Do you think Michael's been busy lately? Listen, there's some miraculous things that have happened to preserve the nation of Israel in the past couple of years. I believe Michael's been working overtime, to be honest.

I don't know if this is Michael. I don't know if there's another archangel—and this is pure speculation—that there could be another archangel, an unnamed archangel whose job is to watch over the bride. And your job's to get her to the altar. Your job's to prepare the bride. Guess what God's doing right now? He's preparing His bride. Through times like this morning. Through every time that you gather as believers, He's preparing the bride. Every time we attend a prophecy conference, it's just another way to get that wedding dress prepared and to get our hearts ready for Him.

So it says the voice of the archangel. Now you say, "Well, what's this archangel going to say?" I usually ask people, "You know, I have inside information on what this archangel is going to say." But I don't. I don't have any idea what he's going to say. Maybe he's going to say something like, "Behold the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!" I don't know what it's going to be. But it's going to be like a best man at a wedding saying, "It's time. It's time for the wedding to begin."

And then it says in the next—the same verse, it says, "And the trumpet of God." The trumpet—aren't you glad that there's going to be musical instruments in heaven? And better than any music we've ever heard here on the planet. But it says "the trumpet of God." And there are many trumpets that are blown throughout Scripture and throughout the last days, but this is the trumpet of God. This is the trumpet Paul talked about in 1 Corinthians 15, where he called it the last trumpet really of the church age. And he's going to blow this incredible trumpet.

Now, trumpets in that day were used to announce the arrival of a king or perhaps a dignitary that would come along. But in Roman battle, it was used to gather the troops together. Sometimes the Roman trumpet would blow to tell them the battle's about to begin. Sometimes it would gather them together to muster them together. And other times they would blow a trumpet, a certain kind of trumpet, to tell them the battle's over. It's time to go home. Maybe that's what He's talking about here.

But it says in 1 Corinthians 15:52, "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead in Christ will be raised imperishable and we will all be changed." No partial Rapture there. Even baby Christians are going to be changed, right? We're all going to be changed.

Had a man come up to me at a conference one time, big man with a big bushy white beard, big overalls. And I was like, "Oh boy, I can't wait for this," you know? He comes up to my book table and he said, "One of these things?" I said, "Yes sir." He said, "I need to tell you something." I was like, "Lay it on me." He said, "Donald Trump." And I said, "What?" He said, "Donald Trump." And I said, "Yeah, he's our president. What do you mean?" He said, "Well, you know the Bible says that Jesus is going to come back at the last Trump." And I said, "Okay, really?"

And before I could answer him, he says, "Oh, and you know what his middle name is, right?" I was like, "I don't know his middle name, but I have a sneaking suspicion you're about to tell me." He said, "John." And who was the forerunner of Jesus Christ but John the Baptist? He just stood there like, "What do you think about that?"

My—I was thinking about, tell me what Donald means, you know? Does Donald Duck have something to do with the Rapture? I mean, kind of thing. And I said, "Sir, I applaud your passion and thank you so much for your excitement about the return of Christ, but I want you to know unequivocally that Donald Trump has nothing to do with the Rapture of Jesus Christ—the Rapture of the Church." And I said, "In fact, I know you're reading from the King James Bible, and it does say Trump there, but that word is actually trumpet." And I said, "Unless there's a president by the name of Donald Trumpet, I don't think you got a case here, buddy." And you know that sucker walked off mad, didn't even buy a book.

So, wherever you are out there, you know, God bless you. But the trumpet of God. So we've got Jesus shouting, the Archangel announcing, the trumpet of God blasting. But that's not all. The next thing that happens is Jesus performs a mid-air miracle. Look at what it says in verse 16, verse 17. It says, "And the dead in Christ shall rise first. 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."

So there's an order to the Rapture. Those who have died in Christ—and I find that many Christians as I speak across the country don't understand this principle. Even people who have been in church all their lives, they think somehow that they're still in the ground themselves all these years after they died. And I'm like, "No, no, you're not—you're not in the ground. Your body's in the ground."

Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:8, "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." The millisecond you die, you are in the presence of Jesus if you know Him as your Savior. And so Christ is going to come back, but the first thing He's going to do is He's going to raise the dead, their bodies, and give them new glorified bodies just like Christ has a glorified body. And their spirits are coming with Christ from heaven. Those two are going to come together and they're going to finally get their glorified body.

Then, chronologically, we who are alive, who are watching this happen, are going to be lifted up and caught up to be there with the Lord. And we're going to be given our glorified bodies at that time. You say, "Well, where do we get the idea of Rapture from this?" Well, in verse 17 it says we'll be caught up. This is a word you've probably heard before: Harpazo. Harpazo is a Greek word that means to seize, capture, carry off by force, or to claim for oneself, or to suddenly snatch away.

And the word is used throughout Scripture. It's used to talk about Philip being snatched away in Acts chapter eight, or Paul being caught up to the third heaven in 2 Corinthians 12, or even to Jesus, as I mentioned, in Revelation chapter 12. In the 14 times the word is used in the New Testament, five of those times it means to disappear or to be caught up to heaven.

Now, in earlier verses here, Paul uses the word "coming" in verse 15. So Paul uses several words to refer to the same event. You say, "Well, how do we get Rapture from Harpazo?" Well, when Jerome was translating out of Latin—or to Latin out of Greek in the 4th century, he came to this word Harpazo, which means to be caught up. And he looked at his language and thought, "Well, here's the word Rapere." It's the Latin verb that means to be caught up. And the noun version of Rapere, the verb Rapere, is Rapturo. When you transliterate that to English: Rapture.

So that's where the word comes from. We don't have to call it the Rapture. We can call it the Harpazo. We can call it the Great Catching Up. We can call it the coming of the Lord. We can call it the appearing of the Lord. In fact, that's what Paul does in verse 15. Parousia, or "coming," just means presence or arrival.

So it doesn't really matter what English word we put to it as long as we talk about the biblical concept. So yeah, call it the Rapture if you want to. That's fine. But it's an exciting word. You say, "Well, how fast is this all going to happen here?" Well, the Rapture's sudden, and when we look back at chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians, it says that we're actually changed "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye."

Now, the twinkling of an eye is about three-hundredths of a second. It's the amount of time that it takes light to refract off of your pupil, okay? It's really fast. But the word "moment" there that he uses is the Greek word A-T-O-M-O. What word do you see in there? Atom. It's the only time in the New Testament, it's called a hapax legomenon. It means it's the only time it's ever used in the New Testament.

And Paul chose that word because in the Greek that word means that which is indivisible or that which cannot be divided. What he's saying is this: on a timeline, you're not going to be able to divide how fastly you are changed at the Rapture. For example, if you take the number 20 and you divide it in half, you get—I'm sorry, what? 10. Thank you. Good, we all went to fifth grade, okay? We can do this. Alright, so you take 10, you divide it in half, you get five. You take five, divide it in half, and you get two and a half. And this is where the aerospace engineers come into play, alright?

So you just start dividing, and that's where we're going to stop. But you keep dividing those numbers and you get to a point where it's almost indivisible. It's so tiny. And Paul says, boom! That's how fast the Rapture's going to happen. That's how fast we'll be changed from the inside out. And we're all going to get the bodies that we've always wanted. Won't that be great?

I mean, some of you guys got up this morning, you went to the mirror, and you went, "Really? This—this is as good as it gets right here." Well, listen, it's really going to get better. And I don't know all of what these bodies are going to be like. I just know they're going to be imperishable. They're going to be without sickness, without disease. They're going to be able to do whatever Christ could do in His glorified body.

I love Dave Reagan was here a few weeks ago. Dave has said more than once, he said, "I've got parts of me that are artificial." He said, "I've got false teeth, I've got a pacemaker, I've got a couple of replaced knees." He said, "When the Rapture comes, more of me is going to be left behind than goes up." And maybe that's your story, I don't know. But it's going to be a great day when we're finally going to be—going to be perfected. We're going to be complete. We're going to be whole. And we're going to be those people that we've always longed to be. That sin nature's going to fall away. It's going to be just—just amazing.

As we've seen, the Rapture is imminent. We talked about the imminency of the Rapture. That's—that's the quickness in which it—it happens and the surety of its coming. And then finally, the Rapture is comforting. Look at what he says in verse 18. He said—verse 17, "Thus we shall always be with the Lord, and the conclusion of Bible prophecy is, therefore, comfort one another with these words."

Notice he didn't say, "Scare somebody into heaven with these words." You know, the Tribulation might be scary, and that's fine. And if it—if it's frightening to someone—we had a teenager at one of our conferences come up afterwards, said, "I want to give my life to Jesus Christ." I said, "Why?" "I don't want to go through the Tribulation." Good enough reason for me. Let's pray. And he was baptized the next day.

Listen, that's fine. But—but the teaching of the Rapture for believers is meant to comfort you. To know that your Jesus is going to make good on His promise to come back and get you. He's going to take you to heaven, and you're going to be with Him forever in a perfect body. And it just doesn't get any better than—than this. And it really boils down to the question: why does it matter, and what is God waiting on? Well, it matters because it gets you out of God's wrath.

But what is Jesus waiting on? I get this question a lot. I only have two answers. Number one, He's waiting for the stage to be set for Revelation, and He's waiting for the lost to be saved. You say, "God is waiting a long time." Well, that's what the verse says. He's long-suffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And I know, if you're like me, there are days when I just, "Please today. Let's do this. Let's get this over with, God. Come on, let's go." Because there's not a single problem anybody in this room has this morning that wouldn't be solved by the Rapture of the church. And yet, aren't you glad He's waited this long, that He waited for you to come to Him?

I love this story. It's of the famed British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. He placed an advert in a British newspaper that said this in London: "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Long hours, bitter cold, months without light, safe return doubtful, reward in case of success." And Shackleton had no idea how many men would sign up. He thought maybe five or 50. Over 500 men signed up to go with him on this journey. They wanted to accompany the famed explorer on his journey to cross the Antarctic on foot.

And so he settled on a crew of 28 men. Each of them a specialist in his own area. They were doctors and cooks and carpenters and seasoned sailors, all filled with anticipation of accompanying this knighted explorer on the great voyage. Sailing to the Antarctic on his ship the Endurance, it soon became stuck in ice. And though her crew worked feverishly to free her from impending frozen death, the ice floes crushed the hull and the ship began to sink.

And as the ship began to sink, they launched their tiny lifeboats and climbed in their small crafts and began rowing for Elephant Island, about 800 miles away. Now this is after camping on the ice floe for two months trying to figure out what to do. So in April 19th, 1916, they climbed into their small crafts and started literally rowing over 100 miles north. Finally, after a perilous journey, they landed on this rock called Elephant Island. It was 800 miles away from civilization.

And with their options narrowing by the hour, Sir Ernest Shackleton made a daring and risky decision. He would take Captain Worsley and four of his crew, and they rerigged a lifeboat, as you see there, and they gathered together on the beach. And Shackleton said, "I'm going to get help." But before he left, he gathered his men on the beach in sub-zero weather, and he looked each of them in the eye and promised them one by one, "I will return for you."

And so he sailed away. His men there waving goodbye to them, not knowing if he would ever return. Should Shackleton fail in his mission to South Georgia Island, there would be no hope of rescue for his men ever. No one back home knew where they were, and no one would care to look for them. World War I had broken out, no one cared.

But miraculously, after only 16 days of sailing in hurricane-force winds with 50-foot waves, Shackleton and his five crew members landed on Elephant Island. It was a miracle. But he found out that when he landed on the island, he had landed on the wrong side of the island. So he then had to trek in waist-deep snow across the entire island to go to the hub there or to the harbor there to try to get help.

Meanwhile, the men began to camp underneath the remaining lifeboats there, trying to survive in anyway that they could. Five different times over five months, Shackleton tried to get a boat out of the harbor, but every time the ice would come together and prevent them from leaving. Finally, the ice parted, and he secured a Chilean vessel and they sailed back the 800 miles to Elephant Island, not knowing if any of his men would ever be alive there.

Upon sighting the beach, Captain Worsley looked through his binoculars and did a head count. And he counted them one by one, and he came to 22 men. And he said, "They're all there, Skipper. They're all there, Skipper. You lost not a one." They were there, ready and waiting. They took some rowboats to the shore, they jumped into the boats, they made their way back to the mothership. And when they got on board, Shackleton looked at his men and said this. He said, "Curiously, it was a wonder to me that you were all packed and ready to go when I got there." And one of—one of them remarked, "We never gave up hope. Whenever the sea was clear of ice, we all rolled up our sleeping bags and reminded one another: the boss may come today."

My friends, the boss may come today. Are you ready? Is your sleeping bag rolled up? Are you ready to say goodbye to all the earthly possessions and earthly pursuits that nail us down here so often? But to remind ourselves today that our real citizenship is in heaven, from which we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray together.

Lord, we've discussed the glorious return of Your Son, and oh, what a day that's going to be. A day we do anticipate. Lord, sometimes down here on this rock, we're just surviving. We're just scrapping to get by. Other times we're sailing in smooth waters. But even our best days here don't equal our worst day in heaven. Lord, we long for, we look for, we lovingly anticipate the day we will hear the trump of God, the voice of the archangel, and the voice of our dear Savior Himself: "Bride, I've come to get you." And we pray, Maranatha, even so come, Lord Jesus. Amen.

Dr. Andy Woods: Praise the Lord. Let's give Jeff another hand. Thank you so much, Jeff. Praise the Lord for that message. And we always like to share the gospel in our church services. Jeff asked the question where he asked, "Raise your hand if—if you're a believer." And I didn't see what Jeff saw, but I raised my hand.

And if any of you out there, even online listening, are unsure of your relationship with God, with Jesus Christ, you can be a part. You can participate in this great event that we learned today called the Rapture. And he mentioned—Jeff mentioned the condition there in verse 14 of 1 Thessalonians 4: "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will come," right? And he said even as sure as the death and resurrection of Jesus is, He will come back. That is sure.

And I will take it even a step further. Paul said, "If we believe." Even sure as the promise of God to save us on faith in His Son, He will come back for us. Amen? So if you believe in His Son, then you can be saved. And that's it. That's the single condition of salvation. And we as believers want you to do that. We encourage you to do that. Jesus wants you to do that. That's why He came to die on that cross.

So I encourage you to do—to do that. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. And then we can wait for Him, right? All right. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace. Tell someone: Maranatha. God bless. You're dismissed.