What Happens to Christians Who Die?, Part 2 B

The rapture always appears shrouded in mystery because it is seen always from the pastoral viewpoint as the great comfort of the believer that Jesus is coming for His own. Don't worry about the ones that die. Don't worry about the ones that are alive. We'll all be there when He comes.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. It makes good sense to do what you can to plan for your future by getting life insurance and setting up a retirement plan and saving for your kids' college education. But imagine if you had to plan for the next hundred years or, incredibly, for all eternity. Well, today on Grace to You, John MacArthur shows you that if you're a Christian, those plans are already taken care of. It's part of John's compelling study from 1 Thessalonians called The Rapture and the Day of the Lord, and now here's John with today's lesson.

Please open your Bible to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, and I want to draw your attention again to verses 13 through 18. We've titled this message, What Happens to Christians Who Die Before Jesus Comes? The intent of the Apostle Paul is not to give a front-to-back, top-to-bottom, reasoned detail, eschatological explanation of the rapture, but to comfort troubled, grieving, sorrowing hearts. It is not a pedantic question, what happens to Christians who die before the Lord returns.

It's a painful question on their hearts because they're suffering grief for fear that their loved ones who have died are going to miss that great event. Now as Paul then unfolds to them the rapture, remember, his purpose is not to cover everything that could be said about this event. His purpose is to cover a specific issue to bring comfort to their troubled hearts. Four features sum up his teaching in this text on the rapture. The pillars of the rapture, the participants of the rapture, the plan of the rapture, and the prophet of the rapture.

P-R-O-F-I-T, the benefit. The pillars of the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, hold up the doctrine of the rapture. The third one is the revelation of Christ, the revelation of Christ. Paul says in verse 15, This we say to you, this teaching about the rapture, by the word of the Lord.

What he's saying is not only is the rapture built on the death and resurrection of Christ, but on direct revelation from Christ. This we say to you has the tone of an inspired writer who has revealed what God has disclosed to him. That phrase, by the word of the Lord, means a divine utterance. Paul was literally giving to the Thessalonians what came from the Lord. This is divine revelation. Now let's turn to the word of the Lord.

What did the Lord say to Paul about this event? That takes us to the second point, the participants of the rapture. The participants of the rapture. Verse 15, he says, For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, and here are the two participants, that we who are alive and remain. And then the end of the verse, those who have fallen asleep.

There are the two participants. There are only two kinds of people at the rapture. The people who are alive and remain and the people who are dead.

That is a very simple contrast. And that's all he's talking about. He's using the we because at the time, he was one of the ones alive and remaining. And if Jesus had come, he would have been in that group. So he conveys to the Thessalonians his own heart of anticipation. And I believe that's why they were waiting for his Son from heaven, chapter 1, verse 10. That's why the grief. They were so excited about the return of Christ because of what Paul had told them, so sure it could happen in their lifetime, that that's why they grieved. And if that wasn't the case, if that's not what drove them, then the whole context of the passage is pointless. If they thought it was going to be 2,000 or 3,000 years away, then they wouldn't have been grieving because they would have known not to expect it. But Paul had anticipation of it and so did they. And what does he say then? We who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, the parousia, when he comes for his own, shall not precede.

What does that mean? Go before, gain an advantage over those who have fallen asleep. Now that's what they wanted to hear. The people who are alive on the earth when Jesus comes aren't going to have any advantage over the ones who have died. That's a simple point. The living will not go before the dead.

They will not gain an advantage. And that sums up all their questions. Would they be lesser saints? Would they be eternally disembodied spirits? Would they miss the rapture?

Would they be tagons? No. All Christians, alive and dead, when Jesus comes, will be at the rapture. Nobody will be left out.

Nobody. That takes us to his third point, the plan of the rapture. Verse 16, here he goes through the details. Follow them quickly. First thing that happens, detail by detail. For the Lord himself.

And I want to stop at that point. Not an angel, not a lot of angels, not a substitute. The Lord emphatically in the Greek, himself. He is coming for his bride. He is the bridegroom coming to take his bride. This again in contrast to Mark 13, 26 and 27 where the gathering of the elect saints is done by the angels. This is Christ himself coming for his bride, the church. And it's himself, emphatically. Now notice the second element. He will descend from heaven.

Why? Because that's where he's been. When he ascended, he went to the right hand of the Father. In Hebrews chapter 1, it's very, very clear in verse 3 that he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. And the writer of Hebrews says he's seated on the right hand of God from which point he advocates for us, intercedes for our sins, functions as a high priest, and he's in heaven. Back to 1 10 again, it says to wait for his Son from heaven. He's there. He's waiting to descend. And that's precisely what he will do.

Notice how he does it. Verse 16, the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a kaluzma, a shout. It's a word of command. It's a military term.

It's as if the troops are all at ease. And the command is, fall in. Luther translated the word, Feldgrashrei, which means stand up, a call to the church to stand up. The church has been in repose. The bodies of the saints have been in the graves. And there's coming a time when Jesus comes descending out of heaven and He shouts for those bodies to stand up. And they fall into rank. They fall into line.

They fall into order from being at ease in repose to filling up the ranks, taking their stand. It says in Psalm 47 5, God goes up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of the trumpet. But here He comes down with a shout and the trumpet. And so, this is the fulfillment of John 5 25, just a general prophecy regarding resurrection, but listen to what John 5 25 said, the words of Jesus. Truly, truly I say to you, an hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear shall live. And the first group that are going to hear are the redeemed with their bodies in the grave.

The voice cries. The bodies are composed again into glorious form, rise out of the graves to meet the spirits coming back with God and Christ to that meeting place. Notice what He says then, the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout with the voice of an archangel, or the archangel. There's no definite article there, so technically it's the voice of an archangel.

This is really a unique statement. The only mention of an archangel is here and in Jude 9. In Jude 9, the archangel is designated as Michael, and it could well be that he's the only archangel. The Jews used to believe there were seven archangels.

Their names all ended with EL, which is the term for God in Hebrew. But we don't know that for sure that was their tradition, Gabriel, Michael, Ariel, and others. But all we know is there's an archangel here could well be Michael because in Daniel 12, when it's time for the resurrection there that Daniel speaks of, spoken to Israel, Michael is there at the resurrection of Israel. So it well could be that Michael the archangel is associated somehow with this great event. And as Jesus comes down and makes this command for resurrection, Michael is there as well with the Lord's command. It is also attended by the trumpet of God.

What does this mean? Trumpets are all over the Bible. They have all different kinds of meanings, but we know there's a trumpet at the rapture.

1 Corinthians 15, 52 says, the trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise, the trump of God. So there is a trumpet at the rapture. Trumpets were used in Israel for all kinds of things. They were used for festivals, celebrations, convocations, judgments.

They were used for triumphs. They were used any time anybody wanted to get a crowd together to say anything to them, for public announcements, proclamations. But in Exodus 19, verses 16 to 19, a trumpet called the people out of the camp to meet God. It was a trumpet of assembly and it called them out of the camp to meet God.

I believe this is a trumpet of assembly. In Zephaniah 1 16 and Zechariah 9 14, a trumpet was used as a signal of the Lord's coming to rescue His people from wicked oppression. It was a deliverance trumpet. And I believe the trumpet on that day is an assembly trumpet and a deliverance trumpet. I believe when the trumpet blows, it is to assemble the saints who have been called out of the graves to life with the living saints, and it is also to call them out, to rescue them out from among those who oppress them, men and demons. There are many other trumpets associated with the end times. They tend to be trumpets of judgment, primarily as in Revelation 8 through 11. Then it happens, back to our verse 16.

At the sound of the voice of the Lord, the voice of the archangel, the trump of God, the dead in Christ shall rise, not last, but what? First. Somebody said that's because they have six feet further to go. But I think that's a rather shallow perspective. The point that Paul is trying to make here is that they're not going to lag behind. They're not second-class citizens.

Not at all. In fact, your dear loved ones who have died are going to go first. Boy, that's such a great truth, such an encouraging thing. The dead in Christ rise first. I love that phrase, the dead in Christ. If you're ever in Christ, you're always in Christ, whether you're alive or dead. And when you die and that body goes into the grave, that body reposes in Christ.

That belongs to Him. That is His personal and eternal possession, and He will reclaim it from its decomposed dust. Paul says in Romans 8 that neither death nor life nor anything else should be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.

Death can't do it. You live in Christ, you die in Christ, you're dead in Christ. You stay in Christ, you'll live again in Christ. 1 Corinthians 15, 23 calls the resurrected those who are Christ's.

That's the key point in the passage. And so the dead Christians rise first. What good hope, good news that is. There will be a reunion. That beloved wife, that beloved husband, that beloved son, daughter, that beloved friend, that dear pastor, that neighbor who meant so much in my life, who's gone. Should I live for the rapture, that great event, they'll not miss it. In fact, they'll rise first.

There will be a reunion. And what rises out of that grave is a glorified body to meet an already glorified Spirit, to become that eternal person in the image of Christ like Him because they see Him as He is. Then the next sequence in verse 17, then we who are alive and remain, the ones who live, the ones who survived, the ones who are still alive, living Christians.

And again, he uses the word we because he believes he could be a part of that group. We who are alive and remain should be caught up together with them in the clouds, snatched up by irresistible force, plucked out of this world. And that word caught up is used, for example, in Matthew 11, 12, referring to the kingdom taken by force. It's used in John 10, 12 of the wolf snatching the sheep. It's used in John 10, 28, and 29 when Jesus says, No man can snatch you out of My Father's hand, a violent act. It's used in 2 Corinthians 12, 2 and 4 of Paul being caught up into the third heaven. Acts 8, 39, Philip caught up. Remember when he was caught up and the eunuch saw him no more and the Spirit of God just transported him supernaturally?

It's a snatching. It's at that moment that the transformation takes place. We who are alive and remain are here and all of a sudden we're snatched in the moment in the twinkling of an eye. And having been snatched, we're instantly transformed. Philippians 3 describes it. Verse 21, when He comes, He will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory by the exertion of His power. In a moment, we're transformed into a glorified body like the resurrected body of Christ, snatched from the grasp of Satan, snatched from the fallen world in the decaying and decayed flesh, snatched out of the grave, snatched away from the coming wrath of God. It's a rescue operation together with them.

What does that mean? We'll all be there. Everybody will be there. We'll all have a part in the gathering together.

The church triumphant joins the church militant to become the church glorified. And which way do we go when we're snatched? We're caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. We've got to go through there quick because who is the prince of the power of the air?

Satan. We're snatched out of graves. We're snatched out of this fallen world.

And we're literally rocketed through faster than the speed of light, rocketed through the air. And no doubt there will be effort made on the part of the adversary and his demons who control the air to stop what could never be stopped. And our movement is heavenward.

And so shall we ever be with the Lord. Clouds are often associated with divine appearances. The divine glory of God is often spoken of as a cloud of glory, the Shekinah brightness. God is often associated with clouds. When God came down on Sinai in Exodus 19, there were clouds. When God came into the tabernacle, it was filled with a cloud. When He came into the temple, it was filled with a cloud. At the transfiguration, the Bible talks about clouds that were there and then Jesus' Shekinah glory blazed out from within Him. The cloud of glory again mingling with clouds. At the ascension, Jesus was taken up into heaven in clouds. No doubt the literal clouds mingling with the glory of the presence of Christ and the presence of glorified saints. And we meet the Lord in the air. The word meet there is a beautiful word, a magnificent word. It's often used to suggest the meeting of a dignitary or king, a famous person, people rushing to meet Him.

Some commentators have pushed the point extremely far. They say that word was used when a king came back to his city, a ruler came back to his city as a conquering hero. When they'd see him coming down the road, the city would run out to him and escort him the last part of the distance. At a wedding, the wedding party would run out and escort the bride or the bridegroom back to the wedding. A visitor coming to a city like in Acts 28, we see some people running out to escort that visitor into the city. And some have taken that and said, well, what happens here is we go out to meet the Lord in the air and we come back to the earth for the kingdom and that defends a post-tribulational rapture. We just go in the air, come right back, set up the kingdom.

But such an analogy is arbitrary because that word is not restricted to just meaning that. All it means is to meet the Lord. It doesn't mean that we meet Him somewhere and come down here. In fact, what's the point of going up in the air if we're coming back here? We might as well wait until He gets here. We're not just going up and down. We're going up and up. Why bother to meet in the air if we're coming back?

And what in the world was Jesus saying in John 14? And if I go, I shall come again to receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be. If we're coming down, it's where you are, I may be. He's not coming where we are, friend. He's rescuing us out to go where He is.

That's the Father's house. He's been getting ready for 2,000 years. I imagine we're going to have some significant visit there. A better way to see the picture would be that King Jesus is coming, but He's not coming to a welcoming earth. He's coming to an earth not ready to receive Him at all. He's coming to a hostile earth under the control of Satan, a rival ruler. And He's coming to snatch His people out, to rescue His people, and take them to a safe place in the Father's house. And He'll come back later and take the earth by force. Once we reach heaven, verse 17 says, Thus we shall always be with the Lord, always, always, always, never again to be separated from Him, always in His presence.

Why? Because He purified for Himself a people for His own possession, His eternal possession, Titus 2.14. The pillars, the participants, and the plan of the rapture. Finally, the prophet.

What's the benefit of this? Verse 18, Therefore, do what? Comfort one another with these words. He doesn't say, Therefore, would you please write out a large eschatological chart?

No. He just says, Comfort each other. This is a comfort passage, friend, exactly like John 14 was.

The rapture always appears shrouded in mystery because it is seen always from the pastoral viewpoint as the great comfort of the believer, that Jesus is coming for His own. Don't worry about the ones that died. Don't worry about the ones that are alive. We'll all be there when He comes. The God of all comfort will send Christ, and we are thus comforted. No need to grieve.

No need to sorrow. What happens to Christians who die before Jesus gets here? They rise first, and they'll be there at the gathering together when He snatches us out of this hostile world to take us to the place He spent 2,000 years already preparing for us.

That's our great hope. And so, as I said last time, Christians never say a final goodbye. Let's bow together in prayer. Death is such a fearful thing, Father, when it is shrouded in ignorance. It is such a frightening thing when there is no faith, when there is no word from You, and we ache for those in our world who have no hope and who live with the frightening despair of final partings and hopelessness. And yet on the contrary, here we are as Christians filled with hope for a glorious reunion in that day when Jesus comes and all who make up His bride are gathered together to Him to meet Him in the air and be taken to the Father's house. Father, thank You for that great hope. And should there be some dear one who has not that hope, who lives in the fear of death, is in bondage to that fear, may this day be the day they see Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, turn to Him for the forgiveness of sin and the hope of eternal life and the anticipation of His blessed coming. Father, we would cry with all our hearts as John did, even so come, Lord Jesus, as Paul did, Maranatha, O Lord, come.

But there's a bitterness there because so many don't know our Christ. May this be a day when they embrace Him. And may this be a day when our hearts are comforted who have lost those we love temporarily as they sleep, as they are at ease until the Commander calls them to ranks. And may we hope for that glorious day and live in the light of such hope with joy and thanksgiving. All this we ask in Jesus' name.

Amen. You've been listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, continuing his end-time series called The Rapture and the Day of the Lord. John, you made the point today that God will gather believers to Himself at the rapture, including those who have already died, the ones whom the Bible calls the dead in Christ. The thought of that massive reunion raises an important question for believing parents who've lost little ones, and it's simply this. When those moms and dads are caught up into the clouds to be with Jesus, will those babies be there too? Absolutely they will be there because the Lord gathered them into His arms there, just as He did in the 10th chapter of Mark when He was here on earth, and blessed them.

I have written a book, I think one of the most necessary and helpful books of all the books that we've been able to do through the years, called Safe in the Arms of God. It is a book basically reporting to you, really reporting, what the Bible says about babies that die, children that die, or even retarded folks who die without coming to any kind of mature understanding. Throughout the history of the world, look, billions of people died in infancy and in childhood. Where are these billions of people? They are eternal, because anyone who is created by God, any real person, and that starts in the womb, lives forever.

Where are they? The Bible gives the answer. Whether a child dies as a part of a Christian family, let's say a sprinkled infant in the Roman Catholic Church, or some other church that does infant sprinkling, whether a child of a pagan never heard about the Bible, knows nothing about it, whether a child of atheists, unbelievers, they all, I'm convinced, from Scripture, go to heaven. Safe in the Arms of God. It's a hardback book. Can't put it down when you start reading it. That's right, and if you've faced the death of a child or wondered how best to comfort a mom or dad who has lost a little one, John's book, Safe in the Arms of God, provides the biblical answers you need. To order a copy, contact us today. It's available in hardcover for $16 and shipping is free. To order, call toll-free 800-55-GRACE or visit our website, gty.org. The book's title again, Safe in the Arms of God. Pick up a copy for yourself and a few to encourage friends and loved ones when you call us at 800-55-GRACE or see us online at gty.org. And when you get in touch, make sure you let us know how you're listening, whether it's by local radio or online or through the Grace to You app. And of course, we'd also love to hear how John's verse-by-verse teaching has encouraged you. If you have a story like that, email us today at letters at gty.org.

That's letters at gty.org. Or you can drop a note to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. And now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making this broadcast part of your day and join us tomorrow when John looks at the Christian's great hope, the day Christ returns for his church. John will be continuing his series on the rapture and the day of the Lord with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.