The Watchman’s Call

Guest (Female): Standing at the intersection of the word and the world, there is a clear sound for uncertain times. Welcome to the Watchman’s Call. Join us as we stand on the ramparts of scripture to examine the intersection of biblical prophecy and modern culture. The headlines are changing, but the blueprint has already been written. Listen as Pastor Andy Woods uncovers the prophetic significance of the world we live in. The Watchman’s Call starts now.

Dr. Andy Woods: Howdy everybody, I want to welcome you back to our Watchman’s Call broadcast. We like to focus on cultural issues, prophetic issues, and today what we're going to do is launch a brand new series dealing with the chronology of end-time events. A lot of people hear a lot about different end-time events, but they really don't have a framework for putting the events together in chronological order. What I'm going to try to do in this series is take the ten most popular, most prominent end-time events that are described in scripture and put them into a linear chronology for you, a prophecy timeline, if you will.

These are ten events that are coming upon our world and humanity, and there's really nothing we can do to stop them. God has predicted that they will come. We can't do anything to somehow put them on some kind of reverse course. They're coming, ready or not. The only thing we can do is get on the right side of God so we can experience His best as these end-time events unfold. It's kind of like a freight train approaching. You can't do much to stop the freight train, but you can certainly do something to get out of its way. This relates to the wonderful subject of Bible prophecy, which we love to highlight and focus on our broadcast.

Jesus spoke in the upper room to His handpicked disciples in John 13:19. He said, "From now on, I am telling you before it comes to pass so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am He." That's part of the discourse that He gave His disciples in the upper room, sometimes called the Upper Room Discourse. Then one chapter later, He repeats Himself in John 14:29. He says, "Now I have told you before it happens so that when it happens you might believe." Prophecy is one of the great proofs that the Bible is God's word. God announces history in advance and He offers that as proof to the unsaved person that the Bible really is true, God really is all-knowing or omniscient, He knows the end from the beginning, and He announces history before it comes to pass.

The very first thing the Bible predicts prophetically is something that I believe is happening now. I would call it ongoing apostasy and societal deterioration. What do I mean by apostasy? Apostasy is a prediction that is basically dealing with the gradual drifting away from truth. Apostasy is actually a Greek word. It comes from two Greek words making up a single compound word. The first is the preposition *apo*, which means "away from," and then it comes also from the Greek noun *histemi*, which means "to stand." So, apostasy literally means to stand away from. It deals with the departure from known truth, and that is something that is predicted for our age.

Paul made this clear in his very last letter as he wrote to Timothy about AD 67. He gave a prophetic statement about our age and he said this to young Timothy: "But realize this, that in the last days, difficult times will come." He didn't predict some kind of worldwide revival prior to the rapture; he predicted that the church would gradually move more and more away from truth. In that same book, Paul made the following prediction in 2 Timothy 4:3-4. He said, "For the time will come when they—now in context, this is people within the church—will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, and will turn their ears away from the truth and will turn aside to myths." That Greek word for myth is *muthos*, fables. As we get closer to the end of the age, people will have less of an appetite for truth and will rather want to be entertained or have people come into their life that reinforce their pre-existing presuppositions or pre-understandings. They really won't be interested in the truth. Could you imagine going to a doctor's office and the doctor told you what you wanted to hear rather than what you needed to hear? If that happened, that doctor would be sued for malpractice quickly. Unfortunately, that type of mentality will dominate in the age of the church as we get closer and closer to the end.

In society, Jesus made this prediction in Matthew 24:36-39. He says, "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven nor the Son, but the Father alone. For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away. So it will be at the coming of the Son of Man." In prior broadcasts, we've done entire series on the days of Noah, comparing it to today. We saw in that series that Noah was a faithful preacher of righteousness for 120 years, yet the Bible tells us that Noah had no converts after 120 years of preaching. There could have been as many as seven billion people on planet Earth at that point, but Noah had no immediate converts outside of his immediate family. There were only eight souls in the ark. Jesus says it's going to be just like that in society when the Son of Man comes. In fact, Jesus in Luke 18 asked a question. He says, "When the Son of Man comes, will He even find faith upon the earth?" Then over in Luke 17:28-30, we see a similar prediction. Jesus says it was the same as happened in the days of Lot. They were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building. But on the day that Lot left Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just the same on the day that the Son of Man is revealed.

You take all of these predictions, whether they relate to society or whether they relate to the church, and you have a prediction in the Bible that as the church age winds down, don't expect to go out with a blaze of glory as many people incorrectly teach. There is going to be a gradual deterioration in society, and it will be just like it was in the days of Noah and Lot. Paul in 2 Timothy 3 talks about how evil men and impostors will wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. A lot of talk today is about revival. I sure hope it happens. I pray for it to happen. It could happen, but the reality of the situation is it's not promised. What is promised or predicted is ongoing apostasy and societal deterioration. I know a lot of you are thinking this is the most depressing broadcast I've ever listened to. Do you have any hope or optimism for us? You bet I do.

The second major event that lies ahead is the Rapture of the church. This era of degeneration will be interrupted with a glorious event called the Rapture of the church. Paul the Apostle speaks of the Rapture of the church in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. In verse 17, he says this: "Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord." When he uses that expression "caught up," that's a translation from the Greek word *harpazo*, which literally means to be seized or caught up by force. In fact, you might be interested to know this: the English word "harpoon" comes from that Greek word *harpazo*. What do you do with a harpoon? You spear a sea animal and you yank it toward yourself. That, in essence, is what the Rapture is. There is coming this glorious event, and we don't know when—we can't necessarily set dates for it—but it's a time period in which all Christians living on the earth at the end of the church age will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. That's the glorious event that will disrupt or interrupt this ongoing apostasy and societal deterioration that we see all around us.

Why is Jesus going to do this? Why is He going to take His church to heaven, to the Father's house, before the events of the tribulation period that we'll be detailing for you a little bit later? It's very simple: to keep a promise. This is something that Jesus promised to the church through Paul the Apostle in 1 Thessalonians 1:10. Paul writes, "to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come." That's what the tribulation period is; it's the wrath of God poured out on planet Earth. Jesus made the church a promise that before that wrath is poured out, He's coming to take us, His own, from the earth to the Father's house. We will not experience any of the wrath of God that will be poured out upon the earth during the seven-year tribulation period. This glorious event that we look forward to is really our blessed hope. What is our hope as Christians? Is it in seeing society turn around, or in seeing the right person or political party get elected to office? I'm not denying the importance of elections and things of that nature, but the truth of the matter is they are not our blessed hope. Our ultimate hope comes from the promise of God that at any moment, Jesus can return and take His own out of the world. In Titus 2:13, this glorious event called the Rapture of the church is called our blessed hope. Paul wrote to young Titus to give him hope as he was trying to pastor some very rebellious house churches. To give young Titus hope, Paul the Apostle writes this to him: "looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ." Titus, church, this is your hope, this promise that any moment Jesus can return and take us to the Father's house.

The third prophetic event that we can expect to transpire is something called the Bema seat judgment of Christ. This is something that will take place in heaven for the church following the Rapture of the church. We will be with Jesus in the Father's house. Jesus actually spoke of this in John 14:1-3 when He said, "In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. Behold, I go and prepare a place for you. And as I prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, you will be." That is part of these rapture promises that we have. Once we are in the Father's house, what can we expect to transpire? This third prophetic event, the Bema seat judgment of Christ, is not optional for the Christian. It's not something that you can opt out of. Paul spoke of this event as follows in 2 Corinthians 5:10. He says, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad." Notice the expression "must." We, the church, the believers in the Lord Jesus Christ from the day of Pentecost until the rapture, all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ.

What is this judgment for? Let's explain first what it is not for. It is not to judge sin because Jesus' final words prior to His death were "It is finished." The sin debt of the world has been paid for, and if we have trusted in Christ as Savior, we're not going to be in some position where God is penalizing us for sin. That sin debt was taken care of on the cross of Christ 2,000 years ago. Number two, it's not to determine whether you're saved or not. John 5:24 gives us the immediate assurance of salvation the moment we trust in Christ as our personal Savior. Jesus said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment but has passed out of death into life." "Passed out" is in the perfect tense, meaning a one-time action with ongoing results. That's one of the clearest verses we have in the New Testament about the 100 percent assurance that the believer can have from the promise of God that he or she is eternally secure the moment they trust Christ as Savior. Don't get the idea that this Bema seat judgment of Christ is some sort of way to determine whether you're a Christian or not; that issue got resolved the moment you trusted in Christ.

What is it there for? Simply put, it's there to determine rewards, to give or to not give rewards above and beyond salvation based on how the Christian allowed the Lord to express Himself through them during their pre-rapture earthly sojourn. Some are rewarded, some are not. It's not a heaven or hell issue; some receive greater rewards than others because they allowed the Lord to have His way in their Christian life. Sometimes in the Christian life, we waste our time quenching the Spirit, resisting the Spirit, grieving the Spirit, and all of that sort of comes out at this Bema seat judgment of rewards. It's kind of like a graduation ceremony. Everyone that's in the ceremony graduates, but some receive academic honors and accolades. At the end of the day, we're all happy that we graduated. That is what this Bema seat judgment of Christ is like.

At this Bema seat judgment of Christ, five crowns will either be given or not given to individual believers. The first one is the incorruptible crown described in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 for the believer that gains mastery over the flesh. That's not a sinless believer, but a believer that's sinning less as they're learning to draw upon the resources that God gave them at the point of faith alone in Christ alone for Christian living. Secondly, there is the crown of rejoicing for the soul winner. You'll see that described in 1 Thessalonians 2:19-20. Thirdly, there is the crown of life for the believer that endures trials. You'll find that crown described in James 1:12 and Revelation 2:10. Fourthly, there is the crown of glory for shepherding God's people. You'll see that described in 1 Peter 5:2-4. This is a believer that faithfully shepherds others. Then last but not least, number five, there's the crown of righteousness for the believer that is longing for the appearing of Jesus and has not grown complacent and comfortable in this world. You'll find that crown described in 2 Timothy 4:8.

What do we do with these crowns? If we are winners of these various crowns, is it kind of like you're in heaven sort of prideful and arrogant, strutting your stuff because you're in a BMW or a Mercedes and someone else is in something that's a little bit more run-of-the-mill? No, what we do with these crowns is we cast them at His feet every time He is worshipped. You'll find that described over in Revelation 4:10. It says the 24 elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne and will worship Him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne. Every time He is worshipped, and I would think that would be a lot in heaven, we take our crowns and cast them at His feet. I used to look at this as sort of a one-shot deal where you throw your crown at Christ's feet and it's over and done, but I don't think that's what the Bible teaches. I think what it teaches is every time He is worshipped, we take that crown and we cast it at His feet. Why would we do that? To pay Him back? You can't pay Him back. To earn salvation? You can't earn salvation. Then why would we be casting our crowns before His feet? It's just a way to glorify God in a greater way throughout all eternity. It's like one of the sisters in John 12 when she took that expensive Alabaster oil, broke the vase, and began pouring that expensive oil on Christ. Jesus makes a statement there that she loves much because she's forgiven much. In other words, she had something in her hand that she could pour upon Jesus to glorify Him. That's why these crowns should be of interest to us. They are not prideful, arrogant, merit-driven type things that we see today. In fact, in heaven at that time we'll be without a sin nature, so such pride will be impossible. They are just tools that God gives some believers to glorify Him to a greater degree than other unrewarded believers throughout eternity. I often think it would be somewhat embarrassing for everyone else to have a crown and there I am empty-handed. That's why I've given myself to studying this doctrine of rewards, and I find it to be a biblical topic.

So, we've dealt with three major prophetic events: apostasy, rapture, Bema seat, and we're going to pick it up right here next time as we give you ten prophetic events which give us a prophetic chronological time frame of the future. Thanks for joining in with us. We appreciate y'all, we love you, we pray for you, and Lord willing, we'll see you next time. God bless you.

Guest (Female): You've been listening to the Watchman’s Call, exploring the intersection of prophecy and culture. This program is a ministry of Sugar Land Bible Church, a place where the Bible is taught and the times are discerned. Visit this Sunday in person or connect with them anytime at slbc.org. That's slbc.org. Until next time, may the Lord give you a spirit of discernment in the week ahead.