Rapture of the Church, Part 1

All you gotta do is look at what happens with plans to understand that God knows how to bury something and bring something bigger and better than what He buried out of what was buried. Dr. Tony Evans talks about the changes that will take place when God calls His people home. The dead in Christ will be resurrected with new glorified bodies.

Celebrating 40 years of faithfulness, this is the alternative with Dr. Tony Evans. Author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative. Christians have been arguing about the rapture for centuries. Today, Dr. Evans takes an in-depth look at what the Bible has to say about this event, which may not be as far off as we think.

Let's join him. The word rapture means to seize, grasp, or grab, and it refers to Christ's coming to retrieve His church, believers who have accepted Him as Savior. That is the next event on the prophetic calendar. Jesus had told His disciples, I'm leaving. He's getting ready to die on the cross, rise from the dead, and ascend back to heaven. And He told them, you can't come with me now, but don't worry, I'm gonna come get you.

I'm gonna come get you. When the disciples heard this, they were traumatized, because for three years, Jesus had been their leader, their teacher, their provider. He had been their guide. He had been their help. He had been their deliverer. He had been their whole world for three years. And now, He says, I'm leaving, and I'm coming back.

In fact, here's what He told them in John chapter 14, verses 1 to 3. Do not let your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. That is the first specific reference to the rapture.

I'm coming to receive you back to Me. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, Paul gives detailed explanation for this event called the catching up or the rapture. He begins in verse 13 of 1 Thessalonians 4. He says, but we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren. We don't want you not to understand this. We don't want you to be unclear about this. So Paul is saying, let me explain this to you.

Don't be uninformed. Now, let me give you the reasons why this event that he's getting ready to explain is going to happen. He tells you the first reason in verse 13. I don't want you to be uninformed about those who are asleep.

Why does he use the word sleep? Because for a Christian, when you die, it's nap time. And so they're concerned, well, wait a minute, if we're waiting for Jesus to come back and some of our folks have died, will they miss His return? Because they're not alive like we are.

Well, that leads to another question. Suppose I die. Am I going to miss out on the rapture? So the question was, are folks who died missing out on this promise?

Paul says, I don't want you to be uninformed about that. So one of the reasons he discusses the rapture is to inform them about how this thing will work with folks who are already dead. Another reason, which you'll see later on in the scripture I'll give you, is because flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven.

1 Corinthians 15 verse 15. It can't inherit the kingdom of heaven. In other words, you can't go to heaven like you are now because that environment does not fit your makeup, flesh and blood. In the same way, an astronaut cannot function on the moon without a spacesuit, because in his natural being, he cannot function in that environment.

He would die. So it is, you can't function like you are in heaven as flesh and blood. So a change has got to occur. Another reason why this rapture is important is to remove you before all hell breaks loose on earth. Look at 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 10. And to wait for his son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come.

Now he's not talking about hell. He's talking about the tribulation period. So before all hell breaks loose, wrath to come, he's going to come to retrieve his people before the wrath breaks loose. There are numbers of illustrations of this in the Bible.

Remember? He retrieved Lot out of Sodom and Gomorrah before he rained down fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah. He retrieved Noah and his family into the ark before he flooded the world.

He retrieved Rahab and her family into their house before the walls of Jericho collapsed. In other words, he kept them from the judgment to come by retrieving them. Well, that's exactly what Jesus is going to do for all Christians, all who make up his church. He will retrieve us before the tribulation comes when all hell breaks loose on earth. So that's the concept of the rapture or the reasons for it.

He introduces a word in verse 13 that he's going to speak and say something about a number of times concerning those who are asleep, because he gives another reason why you need to know about the rapture. So that, verse 13, you do not grieve as those who have no hope. It affects your emotional well-being. See, there are two kinds of grieving, hopeless grieving and hopeful grieving. Hopeless grieving is, I'm never going to see this person again. Hopeful grieving is, I am going to see this person again. Both are grieving, but they're grieving differently. One is grieving without hope, one is grieving with hope. So, I want you not to be hopeless in your sorrow when you lose loved ones who are part of the family of God. Paul said it this way in Philippians chapter 1, verses 21 to 23.

He said, I like being here with y'all, but to go to be with Christ is far better. Second Corinthians 5, verse 8, put it this way, absence from the body is to be present with the Lord. So let me explain what happens when you fall asleep, that die. The moment you die, fall asleep, your soul exits the body. Your soul leaves because your soul is you. The soul is your personhood, your consciousness. The reason you know that you're here today is not because you have a body. All the body is doing is what the soul is telling it.

When you expire, the life principle that God breathes in, soul, slithers in some invisible way out of the body, so the body can no longer function because the soul has departed it. And that soul, for the believer, goes immediately into the presence of God. It would not comfort me, I don't know about you, to know that I'm in the grave, my soul's in the grave, and I'm still better off, especially when I don't know when He coming. Man, if He coming tomorrow, I can wait a day, but if He not coming for, you know, a hundred years, and I'm stuck in the ground, that's not comforting with these words.

No, no, let me explain. You are the only one who will not be at your funeral. Because immediately, for the believer, at the time of death, the soul exits, which is why Christ can bring you with Him, because you are with Him. So at the time of the rapture, when Jesus Christ descends to seize believers, He is coming with you, the you that left you when you went to sleep. You should be comforted simply, number one, to know that the real you does not die.

The real you keeps on living, and it immediately keeps on living with the Lord. For this we say, verse 15, 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. He says, those who are living when Jesus returns, not only do you not have to worry about the folks who've already died, they gonna beat you to the punch. Because when the Lord comes for the rapture, the taking away of the saints, He says, we who are alive, if you were to come back in the next five minutes, everybody in here who's alive will have to take second place to the folks who've already died. We will not precede them.

You not gonna beat them to heaven, even though they are dead, sleep, and you're alive. Dr. Evans will come back in a moment with a look at what's next, including what it really means to be caught up to meet the Lord and when we might expect it to happen. First, though, don't miss your chance to get a copy of Tony's current series, Prophecy and Our World.

It's a look at God's prophetic plan for our planet, focusing on the difference it makes in our lives today. Along with the 12 full-length CDs or digital downloads included in this two-volume collection, we'll also send you the luxury edition of Tony's book, Prayers for Victory in Spiritual Warfare, packed with principles about productive prayer and real-life examples about how to connect with God when you need His power and protection the most. Over 100,000 people have been helped by this powerful resource, and we want to offer that same help to you. Just make a contribution toward Tony's ministry, and we'll send you the CDs and book as our thank you gift. Again, that's tonyevans.org, or call us at 1-800-800-3222, where our friendly resource team members are standing by 24-7 to help you. That's 1-800-800-3222. I'll repeat that contact information for you after Part 2 of today's message.

Here's Dr. Evans. He says, here's how this works. Verse 16, for the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout. So at the point of the rapture, Jesus is going to leave heaven, and there's going to be a shout, i.e., get up. There's going to be a call with the voice of the archangel. Now, the archangel is chief angel in charge.

He manages all the other angels. Every believer has been assigned an angel. At the shout of Jesus Christ, they are coming to pick up their assigned people, because everybody has been assigned an angel.

So you've got an angel who's a personal assistant, who's been assigned to you by God, Hebrews 1.14. The archangel is over the angels, so he's coming to collect God's people at the point of the shout of Jesus. And then it says, with the trump of God. When trumps were born in the Bible, it was a call to movement. It was time to move.

Military move or the people of Israel move, it was a call to movement. So three things are going to happen. Jesus is going to come and say, get up. Angels are going to come to collect. And the trump of God is going to come for the whole group to move forward. So those things will happen at the same time.

Now, stay with me here, because this is get ready, get deep. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Because remember, the living won't precede the dead. The dead are going to precede the living, because they're going to rise first.

But wait a minute. I thought I was in heaven, because I'm coming back with him. So if I'm in heaven, coming back with him, exactly what's rising?

Okay? Well, you are going to be buried, but not your soul, because your soul left. The soul left at the point of death. You are going to be buried. When you are buried, most of us will be put in a casket.

That's sealed. That's under six feet of dirt. But there are other people who've died who don't get buried. Some people died in the sea. Some people died and their bodies weren't put in the casket.

They were just buried in the ground. You're going to become worm food. So therefore, in order to get your soul coming down, its new house to live in, there has got to be a reconstruction of you. You have to be stitched back together. You have to be resurrected in some supernatural way, so your soul that's coming back with Jesus has someplace to hang out. So while you are coming back with Christ, because your soul went to him when you died, the dead in Christ shall rise first. That's not your soul. Now we're talking about your body. You have to have a reconstructed body for your old redeemed soul, a body that can live in heaven and still function on earth. So when Jesus returns for the rapture and the shout of God is made, there is going to be a raising of reconstruction of your humanity so that you and your soul can hook up again. So you got you coming and a body rising. Now, I know I'm in the sci-fi realm now. I understand that, that you're saying it sounds a little strange.

But let's see how strange this is. When God created Adam, he took dirt. Dirt, dirt.

The Bible says he grabbed some dirt and made man. Dirt. On your best day, you're worth about $9.50 worth of dirt. That's why you can so easily go back to dust to dust and ashes to ashes, because that's where you're from. So no matter how high you get, you're still pretty cheap. That's why you can't get but so prideful, because you ain't worth that much.

About $9.95 last time I checked. Now, God took dirt, and He created man. So if God can take dirt— Look, there are plastic surgeons today that can do some miraculous stuff. I mean, there are some plastic surgeons that can make you look brand new. Now, you don't want to get a bad one, because they can make you look worse.

But I mean, that plastic surgery today with all the technology can do some amazing thing with people who are born with cleft lips and people who are born with infirmities and the way they can reconstruct noses, and they can make you look impeccably better. And that's a man. The God who just took dirt.

No scalpel, none of that, all that. He just took dirt. So if He took dirt then, He can take dirt again to reframe you for your soul so the dead in Christ will rise.

Paul says this ought not surprise you. And he says this in 1 Corinthians 15, but he said this ought not surprise you because he says when a seed dies— Now, let's take a watermelon seed, and you plant it. You bury the seed.

See, little teeny thing. All of a sudden, out of the ground comes this huge watermelon. You plant some corn, and all of a sudden, out of the ground comes ten ears on one stalk of corn. You plant an apple seed, and then you got an apple tree.

He says it's just like that. You die, and something greater comes out of it. So he said all you got to do is look at what happens with the plants to understand that God knows how to bury something and break it open and bring something bigger and better than what He buried out of what was buried. So as he says, it's the exact same principle of planting a tree or planting fruit.

You bury it to get something bigger and better out of it. So the dead in Christ will be resurrected with new, spiritual, glorified bodies. But that's how you will be resurrected. He talks about people—I love the end of verse 14— who fall asleep in Jesus. That's what he calls it, dying as a Christian, falling asleep in Jesus. So the assumption is that you have accepted Christ.

If that assumption is true, then when you die, you will fall asleep in Jesus. The picture here is of a mother rocking a baby until the baby falls asleep. You know what causes that rocking a lot of times? A frustrated baby. So the baby's crying, and the mother is rocking the baby, patting the baby, maybe the baby is frustrated, and so it's rocking until it goes to sleep.

Okay? So here's what God does for many of us. He lets this life become very uncomfortable. So we're crying. We're crying at the cancer, we're crying at the aneurysm, we're crying at the—whatever it is that's causing us pain.

And He will let us cry so hard because we're so uncomfortable that then we begin saying, I'd rather He take me. Because when we get to the point where this life recedes and the life to come becomes bigger, then we're ready to go to sleep. See, some of us, we aren't ready to go to sleep.

So we're going to fuss because we ain't ready to go to sleep yet. But if we're not ready and God is ready, He allows the discomfort to get worse until we are ready. So the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up—that's rapture— caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Dr. Tony Evans with the first part of a lesson called The Rapture of the Church.

And if you want to make sure you're included in that group, it all begins with a personal relationship with the Savior. Visit tonyevans.org right now and follow the link that simply says Jesus. There, Tony will tell you all about what it means to be a Christian and walk you through everything you need to know to start your brand-new life.

Check it out today. And while you're there, consider taking advantage of our special double offer. Tony's current two-volume series, Prophecy and Our World, is a 12-lesson collection focusing on terms that everyone in the church hears but may not fully understand—subjects like the rapture, the tribulation, and many more.

This series digs deep into their meaning, not just for the future, but for the way we live from day to day. And as I mentioned earlier, it's yours as our thank-you gift when you support Tony's ministry with your contribution, along with the luxury edition of his powerful book, Prayers for Victory in Spiritual Warfare. This special double offer won't be around for long, and we don't want you to miss out. So visit tonyevans.org to make the arrangements today. That's tonyevans.org. Or get some in-person help from our resource team by calling 1-800-800-3222 day or night.

That's 1-800-800-3222. How and when it will happen have been matters of debate since the beginning. And as we've been learning, Jesus is coming back for His church. When He does, things are going to change, starting with us. So be sure to join us tomorrow as Dr. Evans takes us even deeper into understanding the rapture of the church. The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by the Urban Alternative and is celebrating 40 years of faithfulness thanks to the generous contributions of listeners like you.