Session 8: The End
Hickory Corners Bible Church Basics • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 40:35
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· 13 viewsKnowing what it is we here at Hickory Corners Bible Church believe and how it is we operate is important. HCBC Basics is a condensed class to look at our statement of faith, and how it is we apply what we believe to our church life. This session will focus on the doctrines related to the end times.
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If you recall, in Session 4, when introducing our ecclesiology, or the study and doctrines related to the church, I took great care to lay out our understanding that the church was something entirely new, thinking in terms of Colossians 1:26–27, “that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” We saw that before His death, burial, and resurrection in Matthew 16:18 our Lord Jesus Christ stated “upon this rock [the confession made by Peter that Jesus was the Son of God], I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.” We saw in Acts 11 that Peter pointed to the events of Pentecost described in Acts 2 as “the beginning” of the church.
And one of the reasons why it is so very important that we understand that the church is different and separate from Israel, is in how we understand the prophecies made regarding the end times. If they are the same thing, then the promises and prophecies, the curses and blessings, which were made to Israel all apply equally to the church. But on the other hand, if they are different and have different beginnings, then they can have different ends. And as I have studied this carefully over the last several months, I have come to conclude that the majority of people who I think go wrong in their understanding of the end, go wrong in their comprehension of this one difference: Israel is not the church, and the church is not Israel, they are different.
And one of those critical points is in our eschatology, our doctrines related to the end times.
So, let’s pray before we begin in earnest.
O Lord our God, our Saviour and our Redeemer, we thank and praise You for the sending of Your precious Son Jesus, the joy of our salvation who strides forth the Victor, the eternal Conqueror over sin and death. For if we died with Him, we will also live with Him; if we endure, we will also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He will also deny us; if we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. Our holy Father, we long to be with Him, to see Him just as He is that we would be like Him. We pray, Father, that we would have this hope fixed before our eyes, that we would purify our selves, just as He is pure; that we would bring glory and honor to Your blessed Son. Amen!
The Rapture and the Second Coming
The Rapture and the Second Coming
When we begin thinking about the end times, there are really 2 major elements which we believe are inextricably linked, and yet really must be considered as 2 entirely separate events.
So although I think it would be somewhat fair to consider the question of the second coming of Christ Jesus more as a first-order doctrine, something definitional to being a Christian, the doctrine of the rapture is more of a second-order sort of question, something that we do believe is important and vital to how we live our lives in Christ, and yet we will wholeheartedly agree that belief in the rapture is not necessary for a person to become a Christian.
However, at the same time we also understand that there are so many implications to our theology here in our faith and practice that it would be exceedingly difficult for us to worship together in the unity and order called for in Scripture if we should differ too greatly, so it is right and proper that these doctrines before us today be considered foundational for our church.
And, as I said, the point of deviation really begins a few steps earlier, when you consider the question of whether the church is a replacement for Israel and thus subject to Israel’s blessings and curses (or worse, thinking that Israel gets the curses and the church gets the blessings), or, as we believe, it is altogether something new and different.
So now, keeping that in mind, I want you to turn in your bibles to Acts 1. Here, we read starting in verse 1
Acts 1:1–5
The first account, O Theophilus, I composed, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when He was taken up to heaven, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen, to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over forty days and speaking about the things concerning the kingdom of God.
And gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, “Which,” He said, “you heard of from Me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
Now, notice their expectation in verse 6:
So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?”
Why did they ask this?
Because the promise to Israel was that of a kingdom, Daniel 2:44 declaring “And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will cause a kingdom to rise up which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself stand forever.”, and yet later in Daniel 9:25 it is made lear that the Messiah was the Prince of that kingdom, and more than 50 times throughout the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Jesus continually referred and pointed them to “the kingdom of God”, such as in Luke 19:11, after Jesus had ate at the home of Zaccheus the tax collector, and just before his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we read “Now while they [the crowd] were listening to these things, Jesus went on to tell a parable, because He was near Jerusalem, and they thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately.”
Israel was primed and ready for a triumphal king, and the apostles at this point were no different, after all Jesus had told them just prior to his death as recorded in Mathew, in Mark, and in Luke 22:18 “For I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes.”
Throughout Scripture, both Old and New Testaments, we read of a clear and certain time of trial and tribulation. Jeremiah 30:7 declared “‘Alas! For that day is great, There is none like it; And it is the time of Jacob’s distress, But he will be saved from it.” or Zechariah 13:9, “And I will bring the third part through the fire And refine them as silver is refined And test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, And I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are My people,’ And they will say, ‘Yahweh is my God.’” Even Moses spoke of this as far back as in Deuteronomy 4:30, “When you are in distress and all these things have come upon you, in the last days you will return to Yahweh your God and listen to His voice.”
In other words, tribulation – the great tribulation – and the glorious, triumphant, exalted end of that tribulation in the coming of Messiah with “many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgement upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way” as Jude 14 and 15 remind us, going back to the prophecy of Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam, this coming was well known and well attested, being fully understood by those apostles who now understood what Peter proclaimed to the crowd in Acts 3:18, that “the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled.” A suffering that Jews even today don’t accept, on account of their looking for an earthly kingdom with its ever-living Prince, the Messiah.
But what the apostles came to understand, was that there was a mystery, something secret and hidden. Paul wrote of this mystery often, but let us consider just a few critical passages, beginning with Romans 11:25,
For I do not want you, brothers, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in;
There is a mystery here, something real and true which had been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to Christ’s saints: There is a distinction between the church and Israel. From the time of Abraham, it had been clear that the blessings of God would come from his line, eventually identified as being in the line of Jacob, but after the nation of Israel rejected and murdered their Messiah at the hands of lawless men, and after they again rejected Him after learning of His resurrection by God at the testimony of the Apostles before the sanhedrin in Acts 4 and 5, this mystery Paul speaks of here in Romans 11 became clear, Colossians 1:27 calling it “this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
But there is yet another, new mystery which Paul wrote of in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52,
Behold, I tell you a mystery: we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed.
Resurrection was not a mystery – Isaiah 26:19 had already declared that to be a certain reality, saying “Your dead will live; Their corpses will rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and shout for joy, For your dew is as the dew of the dawn, And the earth will give birth to the departed spirits.” Martha, in John 11:24 had said to Jesus, “I know that he [Lazarus] will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Resurrection was known.
What was not known, the mystery that was being revealed, was the rapture. And this word comes to us from the Latin rootword rapiō, as used in the Latin translation of 1 Thessalonians 4:17
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.
This word comes to us from the root-word rapiō, used to translate the Greek ἁρπαγησόμεθα, which our English bibles translate as “caught up together”. That Latin rapiō became the medieval Latin raptura, then the French rapture, which was then transliterated into the English “rapture” we are familiar with.
So, let’s look at this critical mystery as recorded in 1 Thessalonians, for that church had much confusion and fear because they felt the return of Christ was so imminent, that they were concerned that those of their church who had died had missed their opportunity to be united with Christ forever, and so Paul sought throughout his letters to them to allay their fears,
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.
For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
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. Therefore comfort one another with these words.
But, not stopping there, Paul goes on to talk about the timing of this event,
Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need of anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night.
But this is written to the church, not Israel.
However, God is not yet done with Israel, for Paul had gone on from our verse in Romans 11, saying,
and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, “THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION, HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB.” “AND THIS IS MY COVENANT WITH THEM, WHEN I TAKE AWAY THEIR SINS.”
Going on to say,
From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
We reject the notion that God is done with Israel, and has replaced her with the Church, because God’s calling of even Israel is irrevocable.
So, here is how we explain it from a doctrinal perspective:
We believe that the world will not be converted during this present dispensation, but is fast ripening for judgment; however, we believe that our Lord Jesus Christ is coming in the air from heaven to rapture the Church. This is personal, imminent, and will take place before the tribulation period. This is the blessed hope that is set forth in the Word of God. We further recognize the premillennial coming of the Lord Jesus Christ with His redeemed ones to earth to establish His millennial kingdom over Israel and the nations of the Earth. Jeremiah 30:18-24; 31:31-37; Zechariah 14:1-4; Matthew 24:29-30; Luke 17:26-30; John 14:3; Acts 1:9-11; I Corinthians 15:51-54; Philippians 3:20-21; I Thessalonians 4:13-18; 5:9; II Thessalonians 1:7-8; 2:1-4; II Peter 3:3-4; Revelation 19:11-16; 20:1-6.
Questions:
Read Matthew 16:18, Colossians 1:27, and 1 Thessalonians 4:17. Considering the nature of the church, why is it that Israel does not understand the concept of the rapture?
Compare 1 Thessalonians 5:1-10 and Matthew 24:29-31. Do these verses describe the same event? Why or why not?
Consider this teaching of the rapture in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11, especially 4:17, as compared to the tribulation described in Jeremiah 30:7, Zechariah 13:9, and Romans 11:26-27. Who is the time of tribulation for? What is its purpose? Do you think on this basis that gentiles (non-Jews) will be saved during the tribulation?
The Eternal State
The Eternal State
The question, then, is that after this rapture of the Church, what happens to everyone who remains? This returns to the promises and prophecies outside of the mystery of the church.
The Resurrection of All
The Resurrection of All
Now first, we have to affirm that there is a resurrection of all men and women everywhere. And we already touched on this idea in the prophecy of Isaiah 26, but in case you begin to think that it’s only the righteous or Israel that will be resurrected, we read in the prophecies of Daniel,
“And many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to reproach and everlasting contempt.
Everyone – each and every person ever conceived – will be resurrected in a bodily form. Now be careful to note what this says – “many of those” will be to everlasting life, but all of the others to everlasting contempt. There are not only no exceptions and no exclusions to this resurrection, but there are only two possible ends – everlasting life, or everlasting contempt.
And just in case you may get to thinking that this is simply some Old Testament thing that has changed, just consider the words of our Lord in John 5:24
“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.
Again – eternal life, or eternal judgement. And saving belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, not merely some acknowledgement or mental assent to the idea that He existed or was a good teacher, is what determines which of these two eternities a person will experience for all eternity.
Here’s how we say it in a doctrinal sense:
We believe in the bodily resurrection of all men, the saved to eternal life, and the unsaved to judgment and everlasting punishment. Daniel 12:2; Matthew 13:41-43; 25:46; Mark 9:43-48; Luke 16:19-31; John 3:16-18; 5:24
Questions
Read John 5:28-29 and then John 3:16-18. Define what is meant in John 5 by “good deeds” and by “evil deeds”.
Read Luke 16:19-31. Explain why we read in 2 Corinthians 6:2 that “today is the day of salvation” in light of this passage in Luke. How should that impact the life of we who are now in Christ Jesus?
The Saved
The Saved
So let’s consider for a few moments the first of these two groups, those who are saved to eternal life.
We believe that the souls of the redeemed are, at death, absent from the body and present with the Lord, where in conscious bliss they await the first resurrection, when body and soul are reunited to stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ and to be glorified forever with the Lord in the new heaven, the new earth and the new Jerusalem. Daniel 7:18; Matthew 25:46; Luke 23:43; John 5:28-29; II Corinthians 5:8-10; Philippians 3:20-21; Revelation 20:4-6; 21:1-27
When the apostle Paul was imprisoned and facing his likely death, he wrote several letters that we call his “prison letters”. One of those, written to the Philippian believers, reveals to us a great deal about that time between our physical dead and this resurrection of our bodies we’ve already discussed, saying in Philippians 1:21-24
For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me; and I do not know what I will choose. But I am hard-pressed between the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better, yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.
And then he spoke even more plainly in 2 Corinthians 5:6-8,
Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight— we are of good courage and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.
Our goal and our purpose, our calling then is yes to be with Christ, but even more important to be pleasing to Him regardless of where He has placed us, whether with Him and away from our bodies, or in our bodies and away from Him. He is always the point for those who are in Him, and actively pleasing Him is always our purpose, and our pleasing Him is something He is able to cause us to do regardless of which side of the grave our bodies happen to be. So, although we long to be absent from our bodies and with Him, we are content to please Him until God calls us home to be with Him. For the believer, our physical death is not nearly so much a change as our salvation.
Questions:
Read Romans 6:12-13, 1 John 3:1-3, and Revelation 21:1-27. Why is holiness necessary in the life of the believer in Jesus Christ? What awaits us?
Read 2 Corinthians 5:8-10. When should we take joy in our relationship with Christ Jesus? Why is trying to hasten our death contrary to God’s will? How should we greet our physical death?
The Lost
The Lost
But this happy and joyous prospect is not shared by everyone. Remember back to our verse in Daniel 12:2, ““And many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to reproach and everlasting contempt.”
God has already provided an example for us of this eternal punishment in Sodom and Gomorrah, Jude explains it clearly for us so that we don’t miss the message:
just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, having indulged in the same way as these in gross sexual immorality and having gone after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
Those cities and their surrounding countryside, once lush and green and brimming with life, the choice land chosen by Lot when he separated from Abraham, were utterly destroyed, utterly ruined, and remain a ruin to this day. They stand as a warning to all, an exposition of the coming judgement of God upon all who do not repent of their sin and turn to God. Since we already mentioned it earlier, let’s remind ourselves of the prophecy of Enoch, also recorded in Jude 14-15
But Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, also prophesied about these men, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”
At the final, great judgement of all who ever lived, we read this in Revelation 20, starting in verse 12:
Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sits upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. Then I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them, and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.
And then, finally, we read this last, terrible promise:
And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
Here’s how we put this in a doctrinal sense:
We believe that the souls of the unbelievers remain, after death, in conscious misery until the final judgment, when with body and soul reunited they shall appear at the Great White Throne Judgment, at the close of the millennium, and shall be cast into the Lake of Fire, not to be annihilated, but to suffer everlasting conscious punishment. Matthew 25:46; John 5:28-29; I Thessalonians 4:13-18; II Thessalonians 1:5-9; Jude 6-7; Revelation 20:11-15, 21:8.
There is a coming day of judgement, its date is fixed and determined by the Father, and known by no one but Him, not even by the Son. Friends, we do not know what that day is that these things related to the End will begin, but we do know that all of the apostles were clear that we are now in the last days.
Questions:
Read Matthew 13:40-43 and Mark 9:43-48. What is the everlasting punishment and judgement for those who are not saved?
Read 2 Corinthians 6:2 and Romans 10:9-17. Are you saved? Remember the regulative principle – defend your answer according to Scripture.
But now – today – you may yet be saved. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 6:2 “for He says, “AT THE ACCEPTABLE TIME I LISTENED TO YOU, AND ON THE DAY OF SALVATION I HELPED YOU.” Behold, now is “THE ACCEPTABLE TIME,” behold, now is “THE DAY OF SALVATION”—”. All of this teaching regarding the end of time only serves to further condemn you if you do not turn to Christ Jesus and place all of your faith and trust in Him.
And I can think of no greater appeal at the end of this eight and final teaching session for Hickory Corners Bible Church Basics, than that you repent of your sin and turn to Christ Jesus.
For eternity is coming, and holds only 2 possible experiences.
Let us pray!