Today on Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. You know all the talk these days about end times is a very hot topic. Books, movies, internet sites—they all spout this information about predictions and the end of the world.
Well, what's the truth? How do we know what's really going to happen? Is there a clear word about prophecy in the Scripture?
Well, you bet there is, and stick around—we're going to look at it together. Welcome to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Whatever your view on prophecy, chances are you know somebody who's genuinely anxious about it, or somebody who's grieving a loss and wondering what comes next.
Well, today Chip turns to First Thessalonians chapter four to answer questions believers have been asking for two thousand years. It's part of our series Building Authentic Community: How to Lift Up Those You Love. And remember, you can always revisit or share these messages by going online to LivingOnTheEdge.org.
Well, now here is Chip with today's message: How to give hope to the fearful and help to the fearless. From the beginning of mankind, right to today, we have been fascinated and desperate to know about the future. And you say, "Well, wait a second. Where do you get that?" There is people that would never think of making a major decision, or never think of going throughout their day until they read their horoscope in the morning. There is other people who regularly will see a palm reader and try and discern, you know, what's the future and what's God have for me, or what's going to happen.
You know, we live in a world that is really enamored, and we long to know what's the future going to hold. And the teaching of the Lord Jesus in the New Testament, Old Testament, it is filled. The core teaching it's filled with prophecy. When the Bible was written, one fourth of all Old and New Testament passages speak to the issue of prophecy. One out of every five verses of the Apostle Paul relate to prophecy.
In this book in First Thessalonians, which is one of the earliest books, so it's a foundational doctrine. How does Paul end chapter one, the Lord's return? How does he end chapter two, the Lord's return? How does he end chapter three, the Lord's return?
Now in chapter four, he's going to broaden it and really give some teaching about the return of the Lord with regard to believers and the return of Christ with regard to how we relate to the world around us. And so, when you bring up the return of Christ and the end of the world, you often have a number of what I think are predictable responses. If you want to pull out your teaching notes, let me highlight two or three, just by way of remembrance. When you bring up the end times, I find there's one group that has what I call an unhealthy preoccupation with it. They're the fanatics, the date setters, the predictors.
These are the group of people that are so heavenly minded. They're really not much earthly good. The second group you have is what I call the fearless skeptics. These are people that say, "Hey, the world's never going to change. It's been bad.
It's been good." Christ isn't going to return. It's a myth.
Someone made it up. This whole idea about Jesus returning, about another world, about an afterlife, is just a crutch that weak people need because the world is hard, and they just don't buy. Third group is what I call the fearfully confused. They've heard words like rapture, tribulation, second coming, great white throne, and they just have all these things blowing around in their mind, and they really don't have a clue of how it all works, and so it produces confusion and really sometimes some fear. And isn't it interesting that really times haven't changed much?
The apostle Paul, in one of his earliest books, is going to write to a group of people, and he addresses all three of those groups. Remember the group that had an unhealthy preoccupation with the Lord's return. In fact, they got so focused on the Lord's return they quit their job, started you know bumming around, mooching, and loafing off the church, and that's all they could think or talk about. And they were busybodies. The Apostle Paul said, "Hey, wait a second.
A proper understanding of the return of Christ means you get a job, you mind your own business, you support yourself, and you have a sterling testimony in your work." For the sake of Christ.
Now, what he's going to do is address the other two groups. If you want just a little preview, in chapter four, verses thirteen to eighteen, he's going to give hope to those that are fearful and confused, and he's going to speak to the church. He's going to say, "You've gotten some bad information about the return of Christ. Let me clear up for you." Some important data with regard to the Lord's return, and he will introduce the clearest teaching in all of the New Testament on what's called the rapture, and we'll look at it. Then he's going to shift, and he makes a real break.
Chapter five, verse one. He's going to say, "But there's some other information that I've already taught you about about the Lord's return." You know it from the Old Testament. You know it from the teachings of Jesus. You know it when I was with you. Remember, he's writing this document about eighteen to twenty-four months later after he visited with them, and he's going to talk about the day of the Lord and prophecy in general, and he's going to give us as believers a manual, if you will, about how to respond to people that we're going to need to warn them and to win them in a very winsome way.
Let's look at how he gives hope to the fearful. First Thessalonians four thirteen through seventeen. You may want to open up your Bibles and follow along. And really, as you analyze and study this passage, there's three major questions that come up, and He's going to ask and answer them in this passage. The first question they have is, what happens to a believer when he or she dies?
The answer is going to be out of verses thirteen and fourteen, that the certainty of a believer's resurrection is based on the fact of Christ's resurrection. See, they got some bad information, and they're getting a little fearful, and they're saying, "Now, now, what happens when someone actually dies?" Beginning at verse thirteen, please take a pen if you have it and jot down, if you will, the word "but" before the word "brothers." The NIV doesn't have it, but it's important because he's giving a contrast. He says, "But brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men who have no hope." And then add the little phrase "for if." Because it's a it's a conditional. It's called a first class condition, assumed to be true. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, then is the idea we believe that God will bring with Jesus or through Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him.
And so He's answered the first question, and basically it's just to arrest their fears. He said, "You can know with one hundred percent bank on it accuracy that we know Jesus rose from the dead. We have eyewitnesses, over five hundred of them. The fact that He rose from the dead, you can know that when a believer dies, that believer, man or woman, will be raised also." Second question that pops up: Okay, Paul, we got it for us, but what about our loved ones? What about the mom, the dad, the child that died?
Before us, his answer is going to be that the Christian dead will rise first and share in the kingdom. Look at verse fifteen. For according to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, when He comes, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. And so his teaching is going to be: Hey, you have a mom, dad, brother, sister, friend who's died already. You don't have to be uptight and think that they're not going to get in on the resurrection.
Well, then the third question pops up. Notice now in verses 16 and 17, the answer is going to be the rapture of the church. He's going to teach more clearly here than anywhere in the New Testament. About the rapture of the church, and in about five minutes, you understand if you are thinking the rapture of the church. What's that mean?
You'll find out. Verse sixteen: For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven. It's the return of Christ. Notice He doesn't send a messenger boy. The Lord Himself will come down from heaven.
Now, notice how He does it. There is three characteristics of His return. First. With a loud command, second with the voice of the archangel, and third with the trumpet call of God. And then what will happen?
And the dead in Christ will rise first. Who's going to be resurrected? Anyone who's ever believed in God? Does it say that? No.
Who's going to be resurrected? The dead in Christ. Those people who've trusted in Christ from the birth of the church, Acts chapter two, to the present. When He's speaking, He says something's going to happen. The Lord's going to come back.
Okay, you got that. Got that. How's it going to happen? It's going to start out with a shout or a loud command. The word in classical Greek gave reference to an authority or a general giving a command to superiors that must be carried out.
God is commanding.
Okay, now it's time. This command is going to be announced. Literally, it's an archangel. We know that Michael is an archangel. We know there's other archangels.
So we don't know exactly which archangel it is, but it's going to be announced by an archangel. Then, after the announcement, there's going to be a boo kind of that shofar horn, and it's not going to sound anything like that. But there's going to be the blowing of a trumpet, and when there's this blowing of the trumpet, then the action is going to take place, and those who died in Christ are going to be resurrected. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and we'll continue today's message in just a moment. Quick reminder: Do you have the Chip Ingram app on your phone yet?
It puts Chip's daily teaching, along with years of past series, daily guided Bible studies, and tons of other faith-building tools, right in your pocket. It's completely free, and it only takes a minute to download. Wherever you get your apps, check it out today.
Now back to our message.
Now jot down First Corinthians chapter fifteen, verse fifty-one through fifty-four, because we're going to pick up right there. The commentary on this event. Listen carefully. The Apostle Paul writes about this event. Listen, I tell you a mystery.
And by the way, any time the Apostle Paul uses the word mystery, it's not a secret. But he uses the word mystery to say, I'm giving you information that hasn't been revealed before. God's revealed it. It's a mystery. In other words, other people in times past don't know about this.
This is a new teaching from God. What's He say? Listen, I tell you a mystery, and here's the mystery. Not the resurrection. We all knew about that.
Here's the mystery: we will not all sleep or die, but we will all be changed. Ooh. But Paul, can you run that by us again? Yeah, yeah. We will not all sleep.
Everyone in the world won't necessarily die. It's the same word for sleep. A Christian who's died, but we will all be changed or transformed.
Now listen, and he gives it to us. How? In a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
Now listen to this. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed or transformed. The moment a believer dies, their spirit or the immaterial part, spirit and soul, is immediately with God. That comes with Christ. Those Believers in Christ are resurrected, and then after that, it means immediately following.
It's kind of like a race, and those of us who may happen to be alive at the rapture will lose by a hair. It'll go zop zop.
Okay, those people who've died zop. Those who haven't zop. We're right behind them. After that, we who are still alive and who are left. Will be caught up together with them.
Who's them? Those resurrected saints in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Where are we going to go? What we going to do?
Well, next line. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
Now, the little word "caught up." Circle in your notes, will you? It literally means to seize, to carry off, or to snatch away suddenly. It's reference to the transport of a person from one place to another. It's used twelve times in the New Testament. Let me give you two other examples so you get the idea that this rapture.
Now you're thinking to yourself, "No, it says caught up. Where where do people get this rapture stuff?" It means caught up, seized, or snatched. When it was translated in Latin, the Latin word for this word here is rapturo. And so, as you know, Latin was a very common language, and so the word "rapturo" came into being, and people called it the rapture. But see, what the Bible clearly teaches is that those of us who may be alive at the time of the rapture will not precede those who've died in Christ, but they will be resurrected, and then after that, we will be right behind them, and then we'll have a reunion.
And notice the reunion, as we'll see and recognize one another, and we'll be with the Lord, and then we'll all head out to heaven. Charles Ryrie gives a very brief, succinct overview of the rapture that I found very helpful. And under five aspects of the rapture, let me just highlight what he's put there, and also a chart because some of you are just about at the point where. You know, I think I got an idea what this passage is talking about. But what about the tribulation and what about the second coming and how does all this fit together?
So let me do a brief review, but I think I'll put the pieces of the puzzle in place. First, the five aspects of the rapture. One, you have the return of Jesus for His church. That was in verse sixteen, the first portion. The key word to write under that is the word eminent, eminent.
The word "eminent" literally means something hanging over your head that could fall at any time. The rapture requires no other prophetic event to occur on the calendar of God's timetable. It could happen today at twelve oh five. It could happen tomorrow at eleven fifty seven. It could happen next week, next month.
Nothing has to happen in Israel. Nothing has to happen anywhere. The rapture can occur any time. And and when you understand that, it will change how you live, how you believe, and how you behave. First John tells us that a proper study of prophecy causes us to fix our eyes on the person of Christ, and as we do, it is the hope of His return and the lack of awareness of when it exactly will be that purifies us.
Because we live thinking moment by moment, maybe today. Ryrie goes on to say that not only then is the return of Christ that is imminent. There's the resurrection of the dead. This is the first resurrection; it's of the church, and we'll talk later. And I'll give you some information about how you can discover the resurrection of Jewish believers and Gentile believers.
Third, there's the actual rapture of the church. Where we meet Jesus in the air, and meet our loved ones who've died. Then there's the reunion of believers with Christ and with each other. What what a great thought! People that you love, the people that are in Christ, you know, death isn't forever for believers.
That's why he said, "I don't want you to be ignorant, brethren. I don't want you to grieve like those who don't have hope. You grieve, but not like those who don't have hope." In fact, notice he says there's reassurance, the reassurance of hope in the face of death. Can you say that? Can you say that for you, and can you say that for the people you care most about?
Finally, at the bottom, you see a brief picture that I'm just going to allude to because many of you are going to get excited, and I'm glad. And you're going to think, you know what? I've got to start reading about prophecy, and I want to learn about this. And what you're going to do is you're going to go home, and you're thinking prophecy. Let's see Revelation.
I'm going to read Revelation, and you're going to get to about chapter eight, and then you're going to say, "Man, this is nuts! I don't understand any of this." So let me give you the cliff notes. Let me just give you the cliff notes of the book of Revelation and prophecy. And there's much, much more, but here's the cliff notes. You have Christ's death and resurrection.
That was prophesied. And then we have the church time, where we are here, and then what we've just talked about. Jesus will come. There'll be the rapture. Notice he doesn't come to the earth.
We meet him in the clouds, and then immediately after the rapture, a series of events will happen very quickly. There will be a peace accord signed in the Middle East that will blow people's mind. The emergence of the Antichrist will come, and there will be such chaos. He'll promise hope and peace, and people will say, "Hey, yeah, let's give this guy the ball." He'll have supernatural powers, and for the first three and a half years of the tribulation, it'll be like, "Hey, this is great." The church will have been raptured out, and that will be done in a secret or in a corner. People will make up all kind of bizarre stories to talk about what happened to those people and why.
Many people will be like people, maybe even some of you in this room, who understand the story, who said, "I'll wait till later." And the rapture will occur, and they will go through the tribulation, and they will trust in Christ during that time. God says He will send 144,000 evangelists, Jewish evangelists, because He's going to go after His people and love them and draw them back. And then the second half of the three and a half years will be chaos, judgment, wrath—like you cannot imagine.
So, in the little section where there is the tribulation between the rapture and Christ's return, write Revelation R.E.V. period six through eighteen. And as you read through that, you'll know. Oh, that's what's occurring here. Then Christ's return—that's chapter nineteen.
That's the battle. Literally, it's a war of Armageddon. And then chapter twenty, we'll talk about the literal thousand-year reign.
Well, Christ is coming back. And he will fulfill every promise that he made to the nation of Israel. At the end of that time, there will be one last sort of hoopla, and you can read about that. And there'll be final judgment, and then there'll be a new heaven and a new earth. Revelation twenty tells you about that thousand year reign, and then eternity, the new heaven, new earth, is described in chapter twenty one and twenty two.
So you've got the cliff notes, and so as you read through, that'll give you some understanding.
Now you'll still find significant confusion, but this little book—one I like it because it's thin. There's a high correlation between thin books and and what gets read. Second, it's very brief and clear. It's called "Come Quickly, Lord Jesus." What You Should Know About the Rapture by Dr. Charles Ryrie.
Now, those of you that have been around the block, questions have popped up in your mind. Don't some people believe differently about the rapture in mid, mid, and post? Absolutely, all those are covered here. I can't cover all that. They're covered clearly.
Fairly well. What about the millennial kingdom and how's that populated? Covered here. What about that passage in Revelation three? Covered here.
So that's the cliff notes. You're listening to Living on the Edge with a message titled "How to Give Hope to the Fearful and Help to the Fearless," part of our series Building Authentic Community. If you've lost someone you love who trusted in Christ, or if you simply needed reassurance about what's ahead, I hope today gave you some real hope. You can revisit this teaching or catch up on the rest of the series any time at livingontheedge.org. The hope Chip describes today, the confidence that death doesn't have the final word for those who trust in Christ, is really just one more expression of God's own love for us.
A love Chip unpacks fully in his book, "I Choose Love." Chip shows that this agape love isn't a feeling you wait around for. It's a decision to give, serve, and put somebody else's best interest ahead of your own. Get your copy of "I Choose Love" at a special price today. Add. LivingOnTheEdge.org/offers.
You know, none of this reaches anyone without listeners who believe it's worth funding. As one listener, David, wrote to us recently, Chip has been there to encourage me for so many years. When fear is stalking at our door during these scary times, I turn to biblical teaching that I know is sound. Praying for Chip and the ministry. Please keep teaching and speaking truth.
Well, if today's teaching gave you that same kind of hope, we invite you to become a monthly partner and help this ministry keep going strong. Just go online to livingontheedge.org, or sign up over the phone by dialing triple eight three three three six zero zero three. You can also send a donation by mail to Living on the Edge, P. O. Box three thousand seven, Suwanee, Georgia three zero zero two four.
Well, now here is Chip Ingram. When you think about prophecy, what comes to your mind? I think there is about four major responses in our day, and I like to walk through them very briefly, and I like to ask you as I am speaking. Kind of put a check mark next to the one that most honestly reflects your attitude. The first attitude is an unhealthy preoccupation.
There are some people that it is all they think about, and this is obviously an unbiblical attitude. The second one is the other extreme. What I would call fearless skepticism. This is like you know what people been talking about the end of the world forever and Jesus and coming back. I don't buy any of that stuff.
I just don't buy in at all. That really neglects about one fifth of the biblical teaching, which revolves around the prophetic word. The third attitude is what I call fearful confusion. People hear about Armageddon, they hear about the rapture, they hear about oh this and that, and they go, oh gosh, I don't know what's going to happen, and I'm afraid, and and I read the Bible, and I'm all confused, and this teacher says that, and this teacher says that, and that teacher says this, and this book says this one thing, and you get the idea. And instead of it being something very Positive and hopeful, it becomes a source of alarm.
The fourth attitude, I think, is biblical. In fact, it's what the Bible says we should have. Prophecy is the blessed hope. It's the reality of heaven. There are certainly some different views, and we're going to walk through the specifics of some of those things in our next broadcast.
But the reality is, Jesus is coming back. The reality is, there is a heaven. The reality is, there's a day when there's going to be peace. I want to ask you a very specific question: What is your view of the afterlife, and what measure does that play in your everyday thinking? When is the last time you seriously thought about heaven?
See, the early biblical writers thought a lot about heaven, because if you don't, you start living for now. I remember just recently doing a burial of a man who had a a year with multiple sclerosis and then died, and he read a book in about the last six months of his life on heaven, and he read and read and read. In fact, his daughter came once a week and she would read to him. And it was an amazing thing to see how his perspective changed. He was a believer.
He loved God, but he told me, "You know, Chip, I've never done much thinking about heaven." And he said, "You know something? It's the anchor of my soul. There is more to life than right now." So let me encourage you: join us on our next broadcast when we examine what the Bible says about the return of Christ. I'm Dave Druing. We'll see you next time right here on Living on the Edge.
Today's program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge.
