The End is Near!! (right?) - Part Three

             Before we get started with sequencing the events that make up the total picture of the "last days" it will help us to try to give them some general definitions and list some of God’s purposes and plans behind these events.  These definitions are drawn from the Word using our chosen “Literal or Plain” hermeneutic.

There have been many before us who have spent their entire lives studying and sequencing these events.  Even so, there is tremendous disagreement between these people who have studied the same Word and drawn drastically different conclusions.  This is mostly due to their chosen hermeneutic.

THE RAPTURE

            The rapture is defined as the “catching up” of believers by Christ at the time of His return. The word came into use by way of the Latin rapio used to translate the Greek term of 1 Thessalonians 4:17, harpagesometha.

1 Thessalonians 4:17 (NIV)

After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

             Living believers are "caught up" to meet the Lord at His coming. Those of varying millennial views about end time events all hold firmly to the biblical truth of such a rapture. However, it is within the premillennial view that the teaching of the rapture finds major emphasis.

           

This view sees a tribulation period immediately before the second coming of Christ.

Pre-tribulationists see the rapture occurring prior to the tribulation. This approach places the church in heaven during the time of tribulation on earth.

           

Mid-tribulationists place the rapture at the mid-point of a seven-year tribulation period. The church remains on earth for the first half of the tribulation, but escapes the last half that is seen to be the time of intense or great tribulation. This view, along with the previous one, sees the second coming of Christ in two phases. The first phase will be a secret coming in clouds to rapture the church. The second will be His return with the church to reign on earth.

            Post-tribulationists hold the church will remain on earth during the tribulation period. While that time will be one of wrath upon the world system, the church will be protected from divine wrath although experiencing tribulation. This view avoids dividing the return of Christ into two phases

THE TRIBULATION

            Trouble or pressure of a general sort; in some passages a particular time of suffering associated with events of the end time. In this sense it is described as tribulation surpassing any trouble yet experienced in human history (Matt. 24:21).

Matthew 24:21 (NIV)

For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.

Revelation 7:14 (V)

…. I answered, “Sir, you know.” And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

           

        Reference to "the great tribulation" as Revelation 7:14 (NIV) refers to an end time period. Dispensational Pre-millennialism (MUCH MORE LATER) connects such a seven-year tribulation with the seventieth week of a prophetic framework taken from Daniel 9:24-27.

Daniel 9:24-27 (NIV)

“Seventy ‘sevens’ (weeks) are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish  (restrain) transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy. (Most Holy Place, or most holy One)  “Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree (word) to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens’, (weeks) and sixty-two ‘sevens’ (weeks). It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.   After the sixty-two ‘sevens’, (weeks) the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing (or off and will have no one, or off, but not for himself). The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.  He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven’ (week). In the middle of the ‘seven’ (week) he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on a wing of the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him (it). (additions mine)

            A distinction is sometimes made between the two halves of the seven years. The last half, often called the Great Tribulation, is measured variously as three and a half years (Dan. 9:27), forty-two months (Rev. 11:2; 13:5), 1,260 days (Rev. 11:3; 12:6), or "a time, and times, and half a time" (Rev. 12:14). Distinctive to this view is the teaching the church will be raptured at the beginning of the tribulation period.

THE SECOND COMING

            This is the biblical teaching on the return of Jesus to earth at the end of the Tribulation to establish His earthly Millennial Kingdom. In the latter portion of His ministry, Jesus told His followers that He would be leaving them but would return again to the earth. Jesus warned His followers that they should be prepared to welcome Him back

            Matthew 24 (NIV)

Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings.  “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; everyone will be thrown down.”

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you.   For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many.   You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.   Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.   All these are the beginning of birth pains.

 “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.   At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.   Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.  And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

 “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’  spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand—  then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.  Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house.  Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak.  How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers!  Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath.  For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.  If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.   At that time if anyone says to you, ‘look, here is the Christ!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it.  For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—if that were possible.  See, I have told you ahead of time.

 “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the desert,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it.  For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.  Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.  “Immediately after the distress of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’ 

 “At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory.  And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near.  Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door.

Jesus talks of His return placing it after the Tribulation.  Immediately after His Second Coming Jesus establishes his Millennial Rule on Earth.

            The differences between the Rapture and The Second Coming are clearer when we talk about timelines and sequencing and reasons that necessitate two separate events.  We will talk more about these things later.

THE MILLENNIUM

            A term not found in Scripture but taken from Latin to express the "thousand years" mentioned six times in Revelation 20:1-7.

Revelation 20:1-7 (NIV)

 And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain.  He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.  He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time.

 I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.

 When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison

            Dispensational Pre-millennialism takes the thousand years to be literal both as to fact and number. The millennium is seen to follow a seven-year tribulation period. At the beginning of the tribulation, the church will be taken out of the world. The rapture of the church is seen as the first phase of the second coming of Christ. During the millennium, Christ will reign on the earth with His saints while Satan is bound in the bottomless pit.   This rule is established suddenly through supernatural methods rather than gradually over a long period of time by means of the conversion of individuals.  The Jews will figure prominently in the future age because they will be converted in large numbers and will again have a prominent place in God's work.  Nature will have the curse removed from it, and even the desert will produce abundant crops.   Christ will restrain evil during the age by the use of authoritarian power.  Despite the ideal conditions of the golden age there is a final rebellion of wicked people against Christ and his saints.  This exposure of evil is crushed by God, the non-Christian dead are resurrected, the last judgment conducted, and the eternal states of heaven and hell established.

            Don’t let the different “ism’s” bother you.  We will hit them again later and then we will put them in their place.  Just try to remember the main events.

Till next time.