2026_09_13_Dispensationalism

Such wonderful fellowship here at Grace Bible Church.! Doesn't have to stop on Sunday. Give each other a call. Get together again this week. Continue to invest in one another.

That's what I love to see. Alright, so like I said, we are finishing up today a series on the topic of dispensationalism. And today we're going to be looking about how this framework of reading the Bible, called dispensationalism, looks at the end times, looks at the future.

Again, just to do a brief summary of what is dispensationalism. Dispensationalism is just an approach, a framework, if you will, to how we understand the Bible from a big picture perspective.

The Bible can be seen somewhat like a puzzle, and how do all these puzzle pieces fit together? The word dispensation is a biblical word. It means some kind of administration or an era.

And we have made the point that the Bible, not all of the Bible was written to us, but all of the Bible is written for us, for our learning, for our understanding.

But there are certain portions of Scripture that are written directly to us, in the age and era in which we live, and to the group of people that God identifies us as.

One of the major distinctions that we've looked at is between a people called Israel, God's chosen nation, and then another group of people called the body of Christ, or the church, which is his people that he identifies today, in this age, or dispensation of the grace of God.

That's how Paul calls it. He calls this the dispensation of the grace of God. We've looked at all kinds of different contrasts. When you read and understand the Bible this way, making these distinctions, the different promises for the body of Christ versus the promises to Israel.

Today, we're going to be looking at our future, and what God has in store for Israel versus what he has in store for the body of Christ.

How does this framework for studying and understanding the Bible impact our view of the end times? Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to move fairly quickly at the beginning of this message.

So, don't worry about trying to turn to all the passages that I mentioned. But we will kind of slow down when we get to some of the New Testament passages that really bring out the contrast.

That's going to be in 1 Thessalonians 4 and also 1 Corinthians 15. So, I will have you turn there when we get there. 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15.

You ready? All right, here we go. The first thing is we're talking about end times. Theologians call this eschatology. Eschatology, it's just the study of what happens in the end.

Eschatology can be a dizzyingly confusing topic. There are so many details to try to learn and understand. You've got words like eschaton and millennium and tribulation.

You've got all kinds of varieties of pre-mill, post-mill, amillennial, pre-trib, post-trib, mid-trib. What in the world do all those terms mean?

You'll actually see on the sheet that we handed you out. There's four different views that we're going to talk about. There's actually, you can divide that even further into subsections of a view within a view.

And it can get very, very complicated. We're just going to try to approach it from a high level just so that we can give a good understanding of where these differences come from and why Christians have these different views of the end times.

Most Christians, I think, find end times theology pretty confusing. And I want to say that's okay. And it's somewhat to be expected.

Many of the prophecies about the future that you'll find in the Bible are somewhat mysterious. And some of them, I think, are very, very important to understand, those details.

And others, I think, are less important for us to understand, at least now, but will be more important to understand when those things come to pass.

I think about, you know, we have the experience as Christians that there have been prophecies in the past that have actually come to pass in our past. So we can see both the prophecy and the fulfillment.

And one of the things that we find, for example, with Jesus coming in his first coming, is that there were many prophecies that the Jews did not understand.

But when those things happened, when Jesus was standing before them, when they saw that he was born in Bethlehem and was having a ministry in Galilee, and all these different details, that he was doing miracles, all of these prophecies that were foretold about the future, they all started to come together, the puzzle pieces started to come together, and they made sense.

That's one of the purposes of prophecy, I think, is to confirm to a future generation that this is that thing that the prophets spoke of. But today, here is our goal.

It's not to give a comprehensive detail about the end times. The end times, like I said, is a large subject. In fact, people have done kind of the math, and people say that about 25%, 25 to 30% of all scripture is related to future matters, things that will happen in the future.

So one message can barely scratch the surface of all of that scripture. But our goal is this, to just show how a dispensational view of scripture will form your understanding of the future.

Like I said, there are many pieces to this puzzle of end times theology. You've got things like, oh, the Messiah, and then the Antichrist, and the beast, and the false prophet, and the mark of the beast, and the horror of Babylon, and the abomination of desolation, and the bodily resurrection, and the judgment seat of Christ, and the great white throne judgment, and the lake of fire, and the new Jerusalem, and the new heavens, and the new earth.

And it goes on and on and on. All these pieces to try to fit together. Today, this morning, we're going to focus on just four things, four events, really, to look at the big picture.

The first thing we're going to look at is the second coming. When Jesus is going to come, when he's going to return. The second one is an event called the tribulation, referred to sometimes by some prophets as the time of Jacob's trial.

An event that will be a time of destruction, and violence, and doom. Darkness in the world. And then we're going to look, the third event we're going to look at is the kingdom.

An era in which there will be the reign of the king, the Messiah, on the earth for a thousand years. And then the last thing that we're going to look at is an event that dispensationalists call the rapture.

And this is the one that is going to be the most disputed among Christians. And is actually a fairly unique feature of dispensationalism among all those four major views.

And in your handout, you'll see all four of these events kind of laid out in those four different timelines. One thing to note about how the dispensational framework works.

If you view the Bible dispensationally, if you kind of take on that label, one of the big features is you take the Bible and scriptures generally more literally than others would.

And especially when it comes to prophecy about the future. We'll see that as we go along comparing the dispensational view of the end times with some of these other views.

that this view is more literal in how it interprets prophecy than the other views. The other views tend to take certain prophecies and turn them into metaphors or figures of speech in their fulfillment.

All right, the next thing is kind of just to remind us of some of the things we've talked about as far as differences in the Bible. Kind of the presuppositions that we're starting from.

One is that Israel and the body of Christ are two separate groups of people. Two separate peoples of God. God raised up Abraham to be the father of many nations, to be the father of Israel, and ultimately created this people for himself that he gave specific blessings and promises to.

And then later on, we see in the New Testament through Paul, as he writes and describes in Romans and Ephesians and elsewhere, that he has become the apostle to the Gentiles, and there's this new group of people called the church, the body of Christ, that includes both Jew and Gentile together.

And he says that middle wall of separation, the law given to the Jews was taken out of the way so that there could be this new group that doesn't have that middle wall separating Jew and Gentile.

The other part or foundational presupposition is that in the Bible, we see certain things, this timeline, this story being unfolded about what's going to happen in the future.

It's revealed by prophets over the ages. But then we see later on, specifically with Paul, that there's also, comes later, a mystery, he says, that was revealed only at that time, only during his time.

A mystery that was revealed. It was a hidden thing. It wasn't something that the prophets foretold. It was something that was hidden from them and later revealed. And it's these details about there being this new group of people called the body of Christ.

And there are other things that we'll see later that are part of that mystery. Then the other part that we need to keep in, keep in reference, keep in mind, is that there are different messengers for these two groups of people.

You have a messengers for Israel that included the Old Testament prophets. It actually includes Jesus himself who came.

He says, he himself said, he himself said, I have come only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. That's why I came, to come to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

And then even his original 12 apostles, he sent out, he said, don't go into any house except those of the people of Israel.

Don't go into the way of the Gentiles, he said. And so those were all messengers to the Jewish people. Whereas Paul says that God raised him up to be a light to the Gentiles.

Gentiles. And so we have messengers for Israel and then we have messengers for the body of Christ, this new group of people.

All right. So with all of that as a foundation, the next thing I want to do is look at what do the Old Testament prophets say about what's going to happen in the future?

Now there is, like I said, a ton of prophecy. And a lot of it is kind of little bits and pieces here from this prophet and another piece here from this prophet. And so it can be a challenge sometimes to put everything together in kind of a sensible, chronological story of what's going to happen in the future.

But there are some places where the timeline is actually made fairly clear. And here's what the timeline is. That someday there will be a day or a time period of wrath, of God's wrath, called the time of Jacob's trial, the time of Jacob's trouble, called the tribulation.

After that tribulation, the Messiah, the king, from David's lineage, will come and put an end to that period of trial and will at that time restore or bring back Israel's kingdom.

And it will be not like the kingdom before, it will be an even greater kingdom. That's like the big picture. Those are the big events that will take place.

The tribulation, a great day of misery, destruction, and doom. The Messiah coming would be a day of victory for Israel over all of her enemies. And then a kingdom which will be a time of peace, justice, gladness, and abundance with Israel, with Israel over all the nations of the world.

I'm going to, again, you don't need to turn there, but I'm going to start with Jeremiah, prophet Jeremiah in chapter 30.

The prophet Jeremiah chapter 30. There's a ton of prophecy in the scripture, but I'm going to look at some of the ones that kind of take this whole timeline that I just offered to you and kind of put it in a small passage.

Otherwise, it can be too challenging to try to put all these pieces together. So here's what Jeremiah says in chapter 30, verse 7. Alas, for that day is great so that none is like it, and it is the time of Jacob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.

There's going to be a time like no other in which Jacob will be in trouble, but he will be saved out of it. for it shall come to pass in that day, says the Lord of hosts, that I will break his yoke from your neck, so the yoke of the other nations oppressing Israel, and I will burst your bonds.

Foreigners shall no more enslave them, but they shall serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them. So a time of Jacob's trouble, they will be saved from it, and then ultimately they will serve this king who is named after David, David their king.

And so again, he starts, for that day is great. This tribulation period is many times by the prophets called the day of the Lord.

You might think, well, that's talking about a single day, but no, it's actually talking about a longer period of time, but it's many times referenced as the day of the Lord. Isaiah 13, 6 says this, Wail, for the day of the Lord is near, as destruction from the Almighty it will come.

Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel, in chapter 30, verse 3, says this, for the day is near. The day of the Lord is near. It will be a day of clouds, a time of doom for the nations.

Daniel is most famous, I think, for a detailed timeline of what is going to happen in the last days. And he summarizes kind of, you know, the timeline in this way.

Daniel chapter 7, verse 21. I was watching and the same horn, he's describing what's, all this trouble that's going on and there's this power that raises up and he refers to it as a horn.

Like the horn on an animal. He says, the same horn was making war against the saints and he was prevailing against them until the ancient of days came and a judgment was made in favor of the saints of the Most High and the time came for the saints to possess the kingdom.

Right there, in just two sentences is this timeline. There is this conflict, this great conflict and then the ancient of days comes. He's talking about God himself in the form of Jesus Christ, God the Son and then finally there is a kingdom to be possessed.

Daniel is also famous for his prophecy about the 70 weeks. He's saying from the time of this certain starting event until the time the Messiah comes is this many weeks and he's talking about periods of seven years and one of the things he talks about is the last of those weeks, the last seven years of that timeline, he calls a time of great tribulation, a time of great trouble.

Then we have Jesus himself. Jesus was not just our savior, he was also a prophet and he came to foretell things, mostly about himself.

And so towards the end of his ministry near, as we get near to his, pretty close to his crucifixion, he gives what we call the Olivet Discourse.

This is from the Mount of Olives. He gave this discourse to his own disciples to prepare them for what would happen in the future. This is in three of the Gospels.

I can't remember if it's in John or not. But three of the Gospels have this Olivet Discourse. But I'm going to be quoting from Matthew chapter 24. It's fairly lengthy, but you'll see that it matches what the Old Testament prophets foretold.

He says this in Matthew 24, 15. Therefore, when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place, so he's making a reference to what Daniel foretold.

there will be this event called the abomination of desolation. Daniel puts that right in the middle of that seven-week period. And it's an event in which the temple itself will be desecrated.

a few verses later on, verse 21 here, he says this, for then there will be great tribulation as has not been seen, as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time.

No, no, nor ever shall be. He's saying this time will be worse than at any time in the past or any time in the future. the violence, the destruction, the misery, worse than any time ever.

And he says this, and unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved. But for the elect's sake, these days will be shortened. Then he continues on, and a few verses later, he gets to the end of this tribulation period.

Verse 27, for as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For wherever the carcass is, there the eagle will be gathered together.

Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

And he will send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together his elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other. That's how the tribulation ends.

It ends with God gathering through the angels, gathering his elect, his elect, who is that referring to? Well, it could refer to one of two groups, the elect of Israel, they are the chosen seed of Abraham, or it could be the elect of the body of Christ.

Remember, who is Jesus speaking to? He is a prophet to the nation of Israel. Also, we have the book of Revelation.

If anybody thinks about the end times, usually they think, well, the book of Revelation, that's what it's all about. And the book of Revelation is actually the majority of the book is all about details of what's going to happen during that seven-year tribulation period.

Then, it's not until the very end, chapter 19, he talks about what happens at the end of the tribulation. Revelation 19, 11, Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.

His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God.

And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed him on white horses. Now out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, and with it, he should strike the nations, and he himself will rule them with a rod of iron.

He himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God, and he has on his robes and on his thigh a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Jesus will come at that end of the tribulation, he will quell all the violence, he will end it, and he will become the king of all the kings on the earth.

The Lord, of all the lords on the earth, and he will bring peace, justice, and righteousness. Later on in Revelation 24, it says this, that's actually the only place in all of scripture where it gives a specific length of time for this kingdom.

And for some people it's disputed. Some people say, well, it can't be a thousand years. It must be for just maybe a long period of time or something like that. But here is the one scripture where it gives a length of time.

They lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. But I want to remind us of something. We have kind of gone through all these things, and if you look at that illustration I gave you, what we've described so far matches that top illustration.

That there will be a time coming when there would be a great tribulation where Israel will be under great persecution. And then the Messiah will come and then there will be a kingdom established for a period of time.

but from a dispensational perspective, making a difference between Israel's program, them as a group of people, and then the body of Christ, this is a prophecy for what's going to happen specifically with the nation of Israel.

But remember that one of the things that we have been teaching is that Paul says that we live in the dispensation of the grace of God that was given to him for the Gentiles.

And that he calls this time a time of mystery, a secret era that was not revealed to the prophets but was later revealed to the prophets at that time, Paul and others.

We call this the age of grace. Paul calls it the time of the Gentiles. But this time of the Gentiles is a time period that was kind of inserted into the timeline that the prophets gave.

Inserted somewhat right in the middle of it. And here's the story that we've been telling or been sharing that we find from the Bible that Jesus came as the Messiah for his people in order to give them a kingdom.

He preached what he called and titled the gospel of the kingdom. And he said to Israel, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. But ultimately what we see in the Bible is that the Jewish people rejected their Messiah.

They rejected the chief cornerstone, the Bible tells us. And so, and this is all laid out fairly clearly in Romans 9, 10, and 11.

God turned away from Israel for a season, for a time, and he turned instead to the Gentiles. And one of the reasons Paul gives for God to do that was to make his people Israel jealous.

I'm going to read a few scriptures from that section from Romans 11. Romans 11. I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? He's talking about Israel. Certainly not, but through their fall to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles.

Now if their fall, the fall of Israel, is riches for the world and their failure, riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness? For I speak to you Gentiles, and as much as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry.

For if by any means I may provoke to jealousy those who are my flesh and save some of them, for if their being cast away is the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?

If their casting away is a blessing to us Gentiles, what happens when God restores them to the plan that he had for them, it will be even more incredible than we can imagine.

And then he tells us a little bit about how this time of the Gentiles ends. Romans 11 verse 12, now if their fall is riches for the world and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness?

forgiveness. For if they're being cast away is the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?

And so, sorry for repeating myself, but he hints here this idea that if you think that this whole grace for the Gentile thing is amazing, well you haven't seen nothing yet, wait until Israel is restored to what God has promised her.

And then he continues on in verse 25 and he says this kind of as a warning to Gentiles not to be puffed up, not to become proud that oh Israel's over here and they rejected their king and well we're God's people now.

He says don't be puffed up. Verse 25, for I do not desire brethren that you should be ignorant of this mystery lest you should be wise in your own opinion that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.

So this time, this time of the Gentiles started during the Acts period right after Jesus went off into heaven. Israel rejected their king and God turned to bless the Gentiles and cut off Israel for a season.

But then there's a time coming in the future when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in and God will return back to Israel.

This is what he says in the next verse, Romans 11 26, and so all Israel will be saved. As it is written, the deliverer will come out of Zion and he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob for this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.

Israel as a nation will be saved. The deliverer, Jesus will come. He will turn Jacob, that's talking about Israel, from ungodliness and he will establish again his promised covenant what the prophet Jeremiah called the new covenant.

He will establish that covenant with them. So then, with all of that in mind, what does this ending, what is this time of the Gentiles coming to an end, what does that look like?

This is where we're going to have you turn to let's start with 1 Corinthians chapter 15. 1 Corinthians 15. We're just going to look at a couple of verses starting with verse 51.

Dispensationalism is a framework for understanding the Bible that is widely known as teaching this concept called the rapture.

And the rapture is this whole concept that at some sudden point in the future all the believers in the world will be suddenly caught up or taken away out of the earth.

There have been movies made about it, book series written about it. This whole idea of the rapture became especially quite popular in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

But where does this idea of a rapture come from? Because of all the things that we read from the Old Testament prophets to the Olivet discourse that Jesus gave, and even in the book of Revelation, you don't really see this idea of a rapture.

God's God's God's plan and timeline for Israel.

But it's Paul himself who's the one who was raised up to give this dispensation of grace to the Gentile people as the apostle to the Gentiles, and he's the one who revealed how this era of grace began, and he's the one who reveals how it ends.

So he says this in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verse 51, behold, I tell you a mystery. Again, mystery means secret, something that was hidden in times past, not revealed by the prophets, but hidden from them.

We shall not all sleep, but we shall 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 shall be changed.

We shall be changed. And so there's this event happening in which believers will be changed in an instant. We raised from corruption to incorruption, from mortality to immortality.

turn to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. It gives a little bit more detail about this mystery. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, starting in verse 13.

But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, God will bring with him those who sleep 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 by no means precede those who are asleep.

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together, with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Thus we shall always be with the Lord. You know, in a lot of ways, this sounds like the second coming, when Jesus is going to come to the earth to establish his throne on the earth.

But that detail about Jesus establishing a kingdom on earth is missing from this passage. In fact, it talks about Jesus coming in the clouds, but when Jesus talked about his coming, he said that he would come from the clouds, but ultimately would land where?

On the Mount of Olives. And then he would send out his angels to gather the people of Israel from the four corners of the world to Israel, to come into the land of Israel, to establish his kingdom.

Those details are missing here, and I think that's because Paul is talking about a different event. Not when Jesus comes to establish a kingdom, but when Jesus comes to end the dispensation of the grace of God and pick up where he left off with Israel's timeline.

Moving on into the tribulation. And if we keep on reading, go ahead and go to chapter 5, verse 1, in 1 Thessalonians there.

But concerning the time and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night.

Remember that term day of the Lord? For when they say peace and safety, then sudden destruction comes upon them.

And as labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they shall not escape. That's talking about a day of doom and judgment coming. But notice who he references.

Notice who he points to. Does he say that suddenly destruction comes upon you, Thessalonians? No, he says that day will come upon them, a different group of people.

And then he says in the next sentence, verse 4, but you, brethren, are not in darkness so that this day should overtake you as a thief. You are a different group of people with a different destiny.

You are not them. That is what God plans for Israel, for the people of Israel, for the Jews. He says in verse 5, you are all sons of light and sons of the day.

We are not of the night nor of the darkness. He's making a contrast here, a distinction. We are sons of the light. We're not sons of the darkness. We're sons of the day, not sons of the night.

But you'll notice when this time of tribulation is described by the Old Testament prophets and even by Jesus himself, here's how he speaks of it. This is from Amos chapter 5, verse 18, talking specifically about this tribulation day, the day of the Lord, the day of God's wrath.

Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord. Why would you have the day of the Lord? It is darkness and not light. Verse 20, is not the day of the Lord darkness and not light and gloom with no brightness in it?

You see, the tribulation is a period of darkness and gloom and doom and heaviness. But Paul says, that day is not for you. You are sons of the light, not sons of the darkness.

Skip on down to verse 9 in 1 Thessalonians 5, 1 Thessalonians 5, 9, and he says this, for God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him.

You see, Israel's destiny, at least for a moment in time, a period of just years, a period of days in which if they were not shortened, no one would be saved, but a period nonetheless of tremendous violence and destruction and doom and darkness, a day in which the people of Israel will be tempted to abandon God.

God. But our destiny as the body of Christ is different. Paul says here in this verse that our destiny is to always be with the Lord.

You can imagine during that time of tribulation, people are going to be wondering, where is God? Where is he with all this happening to us? But for us in the body of Christ, God promises that he will always be with us, whether in life or in death.

So here's the zoomed out timelines. After the cross, you have Israel rejecting the Messiah at his first coming. Israel is cut off temporarily, their timeline put on hold, then an age of grace starts focused on salvation to the Gentile people.

Then someday, that time of the Gentiles will be complete and it will end with an event called the rapture in which all of these believers in the dispensation of grace, in the era of grace, will be suddenly caught up and taken out of the world.

Then Israel's timeline will pick up again. Then there will be that time of tribulation, the worst violence the world has ever seen. Then Jesus will return, will rescue his faithful people from their enemies and establish a kingdom that will last for a thousand years with faithful Jewish believers ruling and reigning with him.

So with all of that as the kind of the dispensational view, we can start to look at well what about these other views?

And I'm just going to go through these really quickly and you can look at them on that chart. One of the things that you'll find with these other views is that they do not, none of these other views make a distinction between Israel and the body of Christ.

These other views tend to see Israel and the body of Christ as the same group of people with the same promises and the same future. And that's where the differences lie.

Historic premillennialism is basically the view that the prophets gave. They take Israel's program very literally but they don't recognize that there's a different people called the church the body of Christ that are in an age of grace.

And so they see the church and Israel as the same group of people. And so they think well believers will go through the tribulation because that's what God said. That's what the prophet said.

Believers will go through the tribulation. If you're familiar with so on the Tucker Carlson show and we talked about Tucker Carlson and he is very much against dispensationalism and has brought many people on his show to speak out against it.

But one of them was a man named John Rich. He's a country singer. And this is his view. This is his view. And his big thing when he was on that show is Christians need to know you're going to go through the tribulation.

You got to be prepared. And so it's very important. It was very important to him. He despises this dispensational view because Christians are going to be found flat footed when the tribulation comes. He wants to make sure Christians are prepared.

The next view is the amillennial view. And this view really sees a lot of the fulfillment of what was prophesied that we would see future.

They see it as already happened in the past. And so the amillennial view, ah means none, millennium. And so it's kind of, they don't like that word because it doesn't really speak to, because they believe in a millennium, a kingdom, but it's amillennial because they don't believe it's a literal kingdom.

It's not Jesus on the earth. It's not a land. It's not governing on the earth. The amillennial view is that Jesus governs in the hearts of his people.

And that's it. There's no literal kingdom on the earth, no literal reign of Christ on the earth, no literal Jews being returned to their land. It's all, they just take what Paul talks, you know, they read the writings of Paul and Paul mostly talks about God's people being more of a spiritual people and having spiritual blessings.

But then they mix that with the promises to Israel, which have been given material promises, and they put those things together. And then the last view is called postmillennialism, kingdom.

And they do something similar, but they kind of make things a little bit more literal. They still see somewhat of a literal kingdom, but instead of Jesus ruling in the flesh on the earth, they see Jesus ruling in the hearts of Christians so that Christians will rise up and eventually take over the whole world.

And so they're more kind of, they tend to be kind of more militant. We need to win political elections and take over the culture and things like that. And it might take a thousand years, it might take 10,000 years, they might say.

But eventually, God's going to reign through Christians to conquer the entire world, not necessarily through violence, but through peaceful means.

There are some debates on that, but I think generally most of them would say through peaceful means to take dominion over the whole world. And then there will be a golden age that will finally arrive, and finally when that happens, then Jesus will return and kind of end everything.

I want to finish with this, finish with this, just kind of from a practical perspective. And I hope that was helpful, at least in, you know, there's a lot of things, there's a lot of detail, and a lot of things that Christians can disagree with, even dispensationalists among dispensationalists, or it can be very confusing.

But I hope this helps at least give a picture, an understanding of why there are these differences, and kind of the assumptions that are behind them. But what is the purpose of eschatology?

And we talked about this at the beginning. What is the purpose? Well, I think one, the purpose is to be a warning, a warning about the future, and also a confirmation.

And this is specifically for Israel. Israel. They need to be warned. Jesus said, take heed. See, I have told you beforehand. He said, take heed. Beware. This is coming. He said, see to it that you do not stumble.

That's a phrase from Jesus when he's talking about the end times. He says, do not be deceived. He said, there are people that are going to come, they're going to say that they're me, that they're the Christ.

He says, don't believe them. Here's exactly how I'm going to come back. You'll see me in the clouds. And I'm going to come down from the clouds. If he's not coming from the clouds, it's not me. Do not be deceived. And then he says, and he warns, and make sure that you endure to the end.

Have you ever heard that phrase in the Bible? That you must endure to the end? That is a phrase that talks about enduring through the tribulation to get to the end. Whether it's through death or faithfulness all through those seven years.

Endure to the end. And then you will be saved. The kingdom of Israel will be saved. The people of Israel as a whole will be saved. And then also confirmation.

You know, when you see the world falling apart, violence like you've never seen before or even heard of in your whole life, demonic signs and wonders, some man desecrating the Jewish temple, know that this is what the prophets foretold.

And you just need to hold on. Hold on. Stay true. And that's what prophecy is for. For the Jewish people to hold on. To know when it happens, this is that which was spoken by the prophets.

And then finally, for us, the body of Christ, we look forward to a rapture that will come without any kind of warning. We're not children of the night, but of the day.

We have not been appointed to wrath. So Paul's writings, when he writes about the future, is primarily to speak about our hope. Our hope. And to give us comfort. In fact, that's how he ends that passage in 1 Thessalonians about the rapture.

He says this, and thus, this is 1 Thessalonians 4, 18, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore, comfort one another with these words.

These are words of comfort. comfort. But is it only words of warning for Israel and words of comfort for the body of Christ? Well, no.

A day of comfort is coming for Israel too. When that time of refreshing comes, Isaiah says there will be a time when beauty will replace the ashes and the oil of joy will replace mourning.

There will be a king and a great kingdom. There will be righteousness and justice in the earth. There will be peace and safety all over the world. There will be glory and majesty. There will be joy and gladness. There will be abundance and prosperity.

That is God's plan for Israel. So there's hope all around. Regardless of your theology of the end time, by the way, they all are hopeful.

Regardless of whether you're a Jew or Gentile, we all look forward to the day when we will live with God forever. We will have an abundant life eternal with God.

A life with a physical body that never dies, that never ends. There will be no more pain and suffering. And by the way, these are all things that every Christian or almost every Christian believes, at least all four of these views.

when death will be swallowed up, when mortality will be replaced by immortality, and so that there will be a day coming when day after day after day, our whole of eternity will just be enjoying life as God meant it to be.

Enjoying each other and enjoying God, our creator. that's what God has for our future, both Jew and Gentile. The day in which we get to enjoy life every single day, enjoy each other, and enjoy him forever and ever.

That's how it all ends for the people of God. Amen? Everybody stand up on your feet. I'm going to end in a word of prayer, and then we'll sing the doxology together to end everything out.

Father, all this stuff can be very confusing. Help us, though, to understand those things that are most important, the things that we truly need to understand, the things that will comfort us and give us hope for a future.

You gave us your word to understand, not to confuse us, but for us to understand what you would have for us. Help us to understand it more and more each and every day as we open up the scriptures and read and study it for ourselves, and we thank you for doing that, and we thank you for the future that you have promised us in Christ, a life of blessing and abundance and of joy forever and ever with you.

Thank you. Amen. Amen.