R1572 What is the Rapture

We all could use some encouragement, and we'll find it together today in the Bible-based preaching of Dr. Don Wilton about What is the Rapture? We'll head to 1 Thessalonians in just a moment, but as we open God's Word, know that we're available for you on our website, TEWOnline.org, a great place to follow Dr. Wilton on his socials and connect in other ways.

That's TEWOnline.org. And now, Dr. Don Wilton. I'm going to do something somewhat unusual, no different in the way I approach it, but I'm going to be answering some of the literally hundreds of questions that I get and that we get about end times. The fact of the matter is Jesus is coming again. That's the bottom line is that the Lord Jesus is coming back. There are a lot of bottom lines in this, and it all has to do with the Lord Jesus. And today I'm going to answer three questions essentially about the same subject, and I have at least 20, 30, 40 questions all related to this subject.

Here are the questions on. Number one, what is the rapture? What is the rapture? Question number two, what does this mean to me as a Christian? And the third question is what does this mean to those who are not? There they are.

Got them down? Number one, what is the rapture? Where do we get that from? Number two, what does this mean to me as a believer, as a Christian? Number three, what does this mean to those who are not believers, to my best friend who doesn't know Jesus, to my daughter who has not accepted Christ, to my brother who rejects Christ?

What does that mean to them? I want you to turn with me to begin with in your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. 1 Thessalonians and chapter 4.

You need to see this in the Word of God. Now there are a number of passages in the Bible that speak specifically to the subject of the rapture. The word rapture itself doesn't appear in the scriptures, the word rapture.

It is a transliteration of the meaning of the word. The word rapture means to be snatched, to be suddenly taken, to be just suddenly moved. That's the word to be raptured.

It's an English transliteration of a biblical understanding of a word, and I'm going to show you where that is in the scriptures. We're about to read one of those passages right now. We're going to begin with 1 Thessalonians, which is a core passage to an understanding of the rapture, the rapture. Remember our first question, what is the rapture? Let me read to you 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 and beginning at verse 13. We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep.

Can I just stop there for a second? The word asleep, those who are asleep, is the biblical term that you'll find right throughout scripture that is used for those who are believers who die. It's a beautiful picture, and we're going to get an understanding of that as we read about the rapture.

So listen carefully now when I read this. We do not want you to be ignorant or uninformed, fellow believers, brothers and sisters, about those who have fallen asleep, that you may not grieve as others who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus, God will bring with Jesus those who have already died. Verse 15, for we declare to you by the word of the Lord Jesus that we who are alive and who are left until the coming of the Lord Jesus will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with the cry of command and with the voice of an archangel and with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

Everybody look at me. All right. The dead in Christ. I thought the dead in Christ were already in heaven.

They are. I'm going to save this for another time. You're going to hear this again, but I've got to help you understand something. When you die, according to the scriptures, and we'll address this, the Bible says that until Jesus comes at the time of the rapture, our bodies are going to, those of us who are believers, are going to remain in the ground where they go back to dust. At the time of the coming of Jesus in the rapture, which we're explaining this morning, bodies are going to be reunited with the souls, but not like the body I was looking at of precious Miss Burt who sat back there for years and years and years, or your mother, my mother and father and friends and loved ones.

No, with our resurrected bodies, a perfect body. And that's another question. I'm going to show you that the Bible tells us what we're going to look like too.

Okay. We're going to answer that question. Big question. How do we know what we're going to look like and how do we know we're going to know each other? How do we know that? Does the Bible teach us that?

Yes. I'm going to take you and show you that. All right, now I want to just, I'm showing you a lot of things here. We're in verse 15. For this we declare to you by God's word, this is from the Lord, that we who are alive and left until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. They're already with Jesus. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry command with the voice of an archangel, sound of the trumpet and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and who are left remain on this earth. We will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord.

Where does it say? Where are we going to meet the Lord? In thee? It doesn't say in heaven. We've already seen the word heaven. We're not meeting him in heaven. We're meeting him in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord from that moment on.

Therefore encourage one another with these words. So what is the rapture? The rapture, it is the time when four things will happen. Here's what will happen at the rapture. Where there is just a suddenness. What is the rapture?

It's a sudden taking out. It is the time, number one, when Jesus will come down from heaven. That's what verse 16 tells us. Now why will Jesus come down from heaven? Because he right now is up in heaven. Heaven is up. Heaven is not down.

And we know heaven is up. When Jesus stood on the Mount of Olives, after he had risen from the dead and he rose, went to the Mount of Olives and then he ascended up into heaven. And God sent an angel, interesting, sent an angel and said to those that were standing there looking up, he was taken up into heaven. And the angel said, men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking up into heaven? The same Jesus that went up into heaven is going to come back down from heaven. The rapture, according to the scriptures, is the time when Jesus will come down from heaven. God is going to instruct Jesus, the son, to leave heaven, the throne, where God is one. And he's going to say, son, it's time again.

Why? Because God instructed Jesus to come down to the earth when Jesus was born. And Jesus in full obedience to God the father came down. And in that case, he came down to this earth and he was born in Bethlehem as a baby. Then he went back up into heaven where he is seated at the right hand of the father. Right now, that's where Jesus is. And the Bible says the rapture is the time when God is going to send Jesus down from heaven.

That's the first thing. The second thing about the rapture is that a loud command will be given. I wish I could explain to you the meaning of the loud command, excepting the Bible says every eye will see and every eye will know. We will hear it. We'll know. God is going to command this.

This is not going to be sneaking up on us in the sense that, well, where did Jesus come from? We're going to hear the command. And it's going to be accompanied in the third instant by the trumpet sound, by the trumpet sound. A trumpet is going to blow. You might say to today, well, pastor, why does God use a trumpet?

I don't know. But the Bible says he's going to sound the trumpet. Okay, watch this. So there's going to be a loud command. A trumpet is going to sound and Jesus is going to be sent by God out of heaven down towards this earth.

I'm going to get into the rest of it in a minute. And everybody's going to know it. Everyone's going to know it. But he's going to stop in the clouds. There is no mention of Jesus landing on this earth. This is not the second coming of Jesus. This precedes the second coming. And what we're going to discover is when we talk about the actual second coming, which is Jesus landing on this earth, when he lands on the Mount of Olives and rivers of living water flow out of him and he marches down the Mount of Olives and living water flows down the Kidron Valley over the opening of hell in the Valley of Gehenna, takes a left turn, goes into the Dead Sea and the Dead Sea comes back to life and Jesus marches on to the Temple Mount and he reclaims his throne from the seat of Satan on Mount Moriah. Jesus never leaves the earth after that. This rapture, this sudden happening, none of that language, none of that description takes place when we are taught about the second coming.

So this event stands all by itself. The sudden taking out of people, the sudden appearance of Jesus. And Jesus is going to come, loud command, trumpet will sound, everybody will know and Jesus comes, but he stops in the clouds.

He's going to stop in the clouds. That's the rapture. You're listening to Dr. Don Wilton, our teacher here on The Encouraging Word, and he'll be back in just a moment to complete this message on what is the rapture, so don't go away. But Dr. Don wants me to remind you we're here for you. We're connecting right now on our website at TEWonline.org. That's TEWonline.org. And also the other end of this phone number.

Jot it down, store it in your cell. As Dr. Don would say, we'd be happy to be one of your 2 a.m. friends at 866-899-WORD. Anytime, day or night, you'll reach one of us happy to talk or listen or pray or connect with resources at 866-899-9673. Now let's dive back into today's teaching, What is the Rapture?

with Dr. Don Wilton. Not coming to this earth. So question number one is what is the rapture? That's the rapture.

Question number two is going to help define the rapture. What does this mean to me as a Christian? So I'm a Christian. I'm a believer. I've given my heart to Jesus. I confessed my sin to him, and by faith I received Jesus into my heart and life. So how does this affect me or you as a believer?

Well, you've got to answer that in two ways. First of all, if you are dead at the time of the rapture, if you are dead, you have died. Now let me use the biblical term. If you have fallen asleep before Jesus comes in the clouds, you will accompany Jesus coming out of heaven because if you are a believer and you die before Jesus comes in the clouds, you've already gone to be with him. If you are alive when he comes, if we're still alive, if Jesus were to come in the clouds tonight or in the next few minutes, you and I will be caught up into heaven.

That's what he tells us right there. Those of us who are alive and remain will be caught up. Remember the word rapture? Sudden translation, snatching out.

So I'm standing here. If Jesus were to come right now, every one of us listening, whether you're sitting, standing, driving a bus, serving at a restaurant, putting out a fire, on vacation, on a ship, plane, every believer, if you know Jesus, you will just suddenly, boom, just be caught up. And it's in a flash. Paul teaches that in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, it's in a flash twinkling of an eye. The rapture is like snap. It's quicker than the blink of an eye. We look at it from our human disposition, don't we?

We time everything in our human understanding of that, and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that, but not God. God's eternal. And what he does is he's going to gather all believers from everywhere across the entire world, the four winds, every expression of the earth. He's going to gather, gather all believers. He's going to pick them all up to himself.

He's going to pick them all up to himself. I was coming into our, into the church a couple of days ago and just saw a picture, just warmed my heart. And it was a, it was a little, little girl coming down one of our thousand corridors in our church and saw mom, saw mommy. And it was just short, you know, from here to the edge of the thing. And she looked up and saw her mommy and she just took off.

I mean, and just flung herself into her arms. You know how that warms our, this is the picture that we have. It's of Jesus just gathering us up into his arms. So what is the rapture? It's the time when Jesus comes in the clouds.

It's trumpet sound, the announcement he's going to stop in the clouds. How does this affect me as a believer? If I've already passed away, I've already fallen asleep, you and I, we're going to come with Jesus out of heaven in the clouds. If we're still alive, he's going to just gather us all up together to meet him in the clouds. And then he's going to take all of us back into heaven. We're going back into heaven because the Bible tells us that that moment signals the third question. And the third question that we have, and we all have this, is what happens to my friend who's not a believer? What happens to my father? I love my dad, but he's not a believer.

What happens to my best friend at school? Not a believer. Well, the Bible tells us two things. First of all, if your friend, your loved one, this is not easy to talk about, but it's what the Bible teaches.

If that person who's not a believer is already dead, the rapture has no bearing on them because they're already in hell. They already separated. Jesus told us that. He told us that in Luke chapter 16.

He said there were two people. One was a believer and one was not. When the believer died, he went immediately into heaven. When the unbeliever died, he went into hell. And he never got out of there.

There's no interlude. So the rapture has no bearing on those who are unbelievers who've already died. Now, unbelievers who are alive, like all the believers who will be alive at the time of Jesus coming in the clouds, the rapture. If a person is an unbeliever, they are not gathered up because they're not God's children.

They don't belong to God. They don't call him father. You have to know him as father for him to gather you to himself.

You have to be one of his family. Otherwise, you get left behind. Now, what does it mean to be left behind? When Jesus comes in the clouds, all believers are caught up and every unbeliever is going to be left right here on this earth. And that immediately begins one of the worst periods of time known to mankind.

It's another whole subject. The Bible then begins to tell us after all the believers have been taken out of this world, the rest of the world continues to function and to live for another seven years. Seven years. Only seven years.

And it's after the next seven years. Now, remember all believers, we're all, if you love the Lord, where are you now? You've been taken back into heaven. And for the next seven years, God unleashes his judgment on all those who have said no.

We'll talk about that. So here's my final question. Three questions. What is the rapture? What does that mean to me as a Christian?

What does that mean to those who are not? Here's the fourth one. So what can I do about it today? Three things. Three things that you can do today. Number one, be encouraged. Jesus is coming. Be encouraged. As a believer, whether you die first or whether you're still alive, you win because Christ has won.

He's victorious. Be encouraged. That's what he says here in this great chapter in verse 18. Therefore, encourage one another with these words. As a believer, you have nothing to fear. I want you to just think about it. Now folks, there are a lot of things I would love to do.

I think God intended us to be happy. I love my church. I love you and I love my family and there are things I'd love to do. I still got a lot of places I want to see and go and be in. I love all of it. But you know, if Jesus were to come this afternoon at two o'clock, we're going to heaven.

That begins all time in eternity. So be encouraged. Number two, be sharing. Be sharing. Share that. Now you know, share that, but share it in love.

Share it with others. I'll tell you, I had people come to me often and say, please pray for me. Could we really pray for my brother? I really love my brother, but he doesn't know Jesus. That's a beautiful prayer, you know. Could we pray for my son? He grew up in my home and he grew up and he did this and he even went on prison ministries in our, but he today doesn't know the Lord. No time for the things of God. That's a beautiful prayer. Share, ask, witness, invite. You know, at the very least, this is at the very least, I'm just suggesting this to you and it's got nothing to do with me. Sometimes it'd be pretty tough.

I know it can be nerve wracking and all the rest of it. It's much easier to ask somebody to go and eat somewhere with you than ask them to give their heart to Jesus. At the very least, would you consider inviting them to come and sit with you in church?

I'll tell them. Someone is here today hearing that God loves them. At the very least.

At the very least. And number three, be saved. Make sure you saved yourself.

What a powerful question. Perhaps as you've been hearing Dr. Wilton preach from the pulpit, the Lord has been stirring your heart. And now as he comes into the studio for these final 60 seconds together, I pray you'd open your heart to what he has to say next. Are you ready to give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ? Why don't you pray this prayer with me right now? Dear God, I know that I'm a sinner and I know that Jesus died for me on the cross. Today, I repent of my sin and by faith, I receive you into my heart in Jesus' name. My friend, I welcome you today into the family of God.

This is exciting news. I believe some of you have said yes to Jesus Christ. You just prayed. And as you prayed in your heart with Dr. Wilton to give your life to Christ or rededicate your life, I pray you would let us walk with you in the next steps. You need to tell someone.

Why not tell us? Call us right now at 866-899-WORD. That's 866-899-9673. And let us put some resources in your hands that Dr. Don has chosen just for you if you gave your life to Christ or rededicate your life today. The number again is 866-899-9673.

Or meet us online at T-E-W online.org where you'll discover great resources like this. Discovering the paradoxical peace and joy of surrendering your will and giving God control. In this four-part study, Laura uses her own story to explain why giving up is important, whom we are submitting to, how to go about doing it, and the effects of this decision on the lives of the people around us. I Give Up! The Secret Joy of a Surrendered Life by Laura Storey is available for your gift of $18 and support to The Encouraging Word this month.

Limited quantities available. The Encouraging Word is a viewer and listener supported ministry. Thank you for listening today. It is a wonderful resource and Laura Storey is close to us as a team here. She grew up in our church under the leadership of Dr. Wilton, and you will be blessed as you discover more online at T-E-W online.org about that resource and more things available again online at T-E-W online.org.