The Jewish Final Solution to the World's Problem - Introduction to the Rapture - Concluding Remarks - Part 7

[0:00] This passage is entitled, Concluding Remarks About the Rapture. And this morning we have two passages we'll be looking at.

[0:13] Please turn to the book of Titus, kind of around Hebrews and Philemon.

[0:24] And we'll be looking at Titus, chapter 2, verses 11 through 15.

[0:38] For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires, and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds.

[1:29] These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you.

[1:41] Then please turn back a couple books to the book of Philippians. And we'll be looking at Philippians, chapter 3, verses 20 and 21.

[2:03] For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly await for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of his glory, by the exertion of the power that he has even to subject all things to himself.

[2:36] Thank you. Let's pray together. Father, we are grateful for the glorious truths that have been shared with us from your word.

[2:49] Thank you for building them into the text as you have. Thank you for the comfort and stability that they provide for saints worldwide and have done so for centuries.

[3:00] We are grateful, most of all, for the revelation you've been pleased to give regarding that of your son, including the incarnation and all that transpired as a result of it.

[3:13] And how grateful we are that even now he is seated at your own right hand, awaiting that time when he will return for his beloved church. We consider ourselves blessed beyond measure simply to have this hope.

[3:28] And we pray that as we once again delve into the subject and attempt to understand it better, that you will use it to stimulate our spiritual man to the end that we might be edified in this most holy faith.

[3:42] We bless you for it all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. We have been giving consideration somewhat extensive to the subject of the translation of the church.

[4:02] It is by no manner of means exhaustive. I've studied the word of God long enough to know that there is no possibility of exhausting it. Every phrase and every line is just bottomless because of the God who gave it.

[4:17] But we do want to understand it sufficiently so that we can be encouraged by it, strengthened by it, and so that we can continue in the work of the Lord, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.

[4:33] Paul concluded the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians with that thought. And it was designed, having explained the rapture and what it is about and how and when it's going to take place, the apostle used the words to encourage believers that their labor is to continue and that it is not for nothing that we serve the Lord, but that there is a glorious reward awaiting us.

[5:02] And then, when he closed out the same theme in 1 Thessalonians 4, he talked about, wherefore, comfort one another with these words.

[5:13] After having just explained to them again what the rapture is and who it is going to involve, he reminds them that it is to be a basis for their comforting one another, especially in light of those who have gone on to be with the Lord.

[5:29] So that time is coming. It is not classified, the rapture of the church is not classified as prophecy, but mystery.

[5:41] Yet, it is prophecy as found in the New Testament, even though not in the Old. Because it is not kingdom truth, but church truth, it concerns not the Jew exclusively, but Jew and Gentile.

[5:59] Because this rapture is for the body of Christ, all believers, all over the earth, regardless of language, color, or anything else.

[6:10] If they have personal faith and trust in Jesus Christ, they are a member of the spiritual body of Christ. And that includes Jew and Gentile. Because it is information that God has provided through Jews, nonetheless, we still consider it a valid part of the Jewish final solution to the world's problem.

[6:40] Paul the apostle was every bit Jewish and is used of God in his epistles to update the plan and program of God from that given by Christ to the twelve apostles at his ascension in Matthew 28, 19 and 20, and in Acts chapter 1.

[7:00] And this is a really important point. Let me dwell on this for just a moment. Because I, like many of you, labored under a wrong assumption for a long, long time.

[7:11] And I cannot tell you how many times I heard this preached in chapel and school and so on. But it simply is not correct. And that is, the final words of Christ to his believers before he ascended to heaven was Matthew 28, 19 and 20, Go ye therefore into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature, baptizing them.

[7:35] That's the last word that Christ gave to the church. It's wrong on two counts. That was never given to the church. It was given to the twelve apostles.

[7:47] And secondly, it is not the final word of Christ because the apostle Paul received a later word from Christ when he was en route to Damascus to capture and bring back as prisoners Jewish believers who had come to faith in Christ.

[8:09] And the risen Christ, this is well after his ascension, the risen Christ appeared to Saul of Tarsus, communicated to him, told him that he was raising him up to be the apostle to the Gentiles.

[8:27] An entirely new concept, never before imagined by anybody. This was going to incorporate Jew and Gentile into one body, a concept that was previously unthinkable.

[8:42] So, what we are saying is the words that Paul communicates through his epistles constitute an update that Christ is giving to what he said as he closed out Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and even the first chapter of the book of Acts.

[9:01] There is a later word. The gospels do not constitute Christ's final word. The final word, actually, the final word communicated was communicated to the apostle John and he was instructed to write the book of the Revelation.

[9:19] That's the final word. We aren't there yet, but we are moving in that direction. And what is going to speed up that process will be what we are talking about right now, the rapture of the church or the translation of the saints.

[9:35] This is found numerous times in scripture, chiefest of which are 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Thessalonians 4, and then the passages just read from Titus and from the book of Philemon, and there are numerous other references as well.

[9:52] And we're going to put all of these together along with the distinctions between the second coming and the rapture, and perhaps we'll issue that as a bulletin insert next week so you'll be able to keep it as a permanent record.

[10:07] There are huge, huge differences between the second coming and the rapture of the church, but many tend to confuse them or meld them together, and they are not to be there.

[10:18] They are absolutely separate and distinct. Part and only part of this update that God gave to Paul includes this rapture of the church heretofore completely unknown.

[10:33] And let me just insert another word here, if I may, about Paul being the recipient of additional information. That was something that was looked upon somewhat skeptical by many in the early church.

[10:48] There were those who challenged Paul's apostleship. There were those believers who thought that Paul probably wasn't really a bona fide apostle at all because, after all, Jesus chose the original twelve, and they are identified there in Matthew chapter 10, and this man, Saul of Tarsus, is completely out of that picture and out of date, and we're not even sure that he is a real apostle.

[11:16] And you know, sad to say, there are obviously some who take that position today. But the Word of God makes it quite clear in Acts chapter 9, when God called Saul of Tarsus, that he was appointing him, the apostle to the Gentiles, and that he was going to send him to Gentiles, or nations, and kings, and princes, and governors, and to the children of Israel.

[11:46] So, Paul had a varied scope, a wide scope of ministry. His apostleship really stood quite alone and quite different from the twelve.

[11:59] And this is why the meeting in Galatians chapter 1 was necessary when Paul went there, and we'll not take time to go there, we've looked at it before, but Paul met with the apostles, the twelve apostles, and he explained to them his ministry, and how God had called him, and they gave him the right hand of fellowship.

[12:19] They authenticated and vindicated Paul's ministry, acknowledged its legitimacy, and they said, well, it is obvious, it is obvious to us that as God has raised us up to be ministers to the circumcision, who's that?

[12:38] The Jew. Even so, Paul is raised up of God to be the minister to the uncircumcision. Frankly, that's everybody else, because everybody else who is not a Jew is a Gentile.

[12:56] This is Paul's new mission field. It's the world. That's why he made the missionary journeys that he did going all the way over into Europe was to carry out his ministry.

[13:09] And in Romans, I believe it is, Paul said, he admits that he is less than the least of all the apostles, and to me is this grace given that I should be chosen to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.

[13:22] Paul never got over that. Never got over the fact that God chose him to do that. He was just blown away by it. And then he also said, while I am less than the least of all the apostles, nonetheless, I magnify my ministry.

[13:43] Now, make a careful distinction there. Paul isn't saying, I magnify myself, or I magnify my calling, or my personhood, or my apostles.

[13:56] He's saying, I magnify my office. It's the office that counted, not the man. Because in that office, he was to communicate all that God had revealed to him.

[14:10] And all of these things are referred to as mystery. That means it was information that Paul was given that God had never before revealed to anybody.

[14:25] And he gave it to Paul. and Paul is referred to as the pattern. He is the pattern, the original.

[14:41] And he is to multiply himself through this gospel of the grace of God in the dispensation of the grace of God, which too is a mystery.

[14:53] And it just hit like a bombshell. we'll see more of the implications of that later on. We briefly revealed the absence of the rapture in the four gospels, insisting that these references in Matthew 24 and John 14 were in fact relating to the second coming, not the rapture, and they were of a judgment theme, not rescue.

[15:20] coincidentally, the books we have been enthusiastically recommending to you, and they are on the table back there. You'll recall the little white binding, double binding books.

[15:33] One is called Amazing Grace, the other is called Amazing Puzzle. Both of those books deal with these themes that we are talking about now.

[15:44] and if you really want to get a handle on this thing called the mystery and the secret, the rapture, and all that goes along with it, you will find excellent explanations and chapter references given in those two books.

[15:57] In fact, as we were studying this subject from the gospels and insisting that the rapture is not in the gospels, it was just a few days earlier that Marie and I and our morning devotions came across those very same subjects, those themes in the books that we were mentioning, particularly in the one that was dated because it was just about two weeks ago that we had that for Sunday morning right after breakfast and it was just a beautiful timing because it was exactly what we were dealing with at the time so we were able to meld all of that together and if you don't have those books in your home, you are unnecessarily depriving yourself of a lot of really good enlightenment.

[16:44] I mean, the content in those two books will help you connect dots and put things together like nothing else I know of and it's just a page at a time, it's not lengthy or laborious reading, it's very good, so please consider that if you don't have them, make sure that you get them.

[17:05] all of these truths that we have been testing and treating for the past year plus as the Jewish final solution to the world's problem are accompanied by a great irony and this is just really remarkable, it's hard for me to get my arms around this, the irony of this, these truths that we are talking about that are being provided to us, the body of Christ, by God's chosen people, the Jew, who are very strategic and very instrumental in it and the irony of it is, they themselves don't have a clue.

[17:53] Isn't that amazing? They are the primary providers of this information. This mystery comes through Paul.

[18:04] Well, who is Paul? I barely am a man that am a Jew. Circumcised the eighth day of the tribe of Benjamin, Hebrew of the Hebrews. You couldn't get more Jewish than what Paul was.

[18:17] And he is providing this information and it is available for all in the body of Christ. But the Jewish people through whom our scriptures have come, through whom all of these prophecies are originating.

[18:35] They are clueless. They don't have the slightest idea of what is involved here. They are almost completely unaware of it. Certainly, this is true of the average Jew throughout the world.

[18:50] Jews who are the exception are the tiny minority who study and seriously regard their own scriptures, scriptures, even though the Jews would limit their scriptures to the Old Testament alone.

[19:05] Yet, even in the confines of the Old Testament prophets, there are literally scores of references linking Israel and the Jewish people to the strategic outworking of the future plan and program of God.

[19:23] But you will not find the rapture. None of the Old Testament prophets mention anything about the rapture. It's completely hidden in the mind of God, never revealed until the Apostle Paul came on the scene.

[19:41] Same thing could be said about other items that are referred to as mysteries. One is Christ in you, the hope of glory. That's not revealed in the Old Testament. The baptism by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ, that's not revealed.

[19:56] That too is a mystery. In the Gospels we have the baptism that John preached when he said repent and be baptized and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and they did on the day of Pentecost but that's completely different from being baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ.

[20:16] That's the mystery aspect. You'll not find that anywhere in the Old Testament because it isn't supposed to be there. God had not yet revealed it. And you know there are other things that are secret to the mind and heart of God that are not yet revealed.

[20:34] That will be revealed in his good time. And we live on the threshold of that. God has not yet heard in his heart. It is this rapture of the church that becomes the trigger for once again placing the nation of Israel back on the world stage front and center.

[21:03] We have described the rapture of the church to be perhaps the most dramatic and sweeping event to have occurred since the flood of Noah's day.

[21:21] Now think about that. Is that an overstatement? Give it some thought.

[21:33] I know you don't have a lot of warning about it but I just want you to mentally process that a little bit. Am I overstating it? I am suggesting the rapture of the church will be perhaps the most dramatic and sweeping event to have occurred since the flood in Noah's day.

[21:54] Now I take the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ and put that in an entirely different venue. And I say that because when the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ occurred, there weren't very many people who were actually aware of it.

[22:13] Only those in and around Jerusalem even knew what had taken place. And even they did not begin to understand the significance of it, of what really happened when Christ was on that cross.

[22:28] In fact, the scriptures reveal anything. It reveals that people were not able to make the connection until after the resurrection.

[22:41] So in talking about terms, events, crises, situations that happen, that everyone is aware of, and that everyone is impacted by, I can't think of anything that compares with what the translation of the church is going to be, other than thinking in terms of the flood of Noah's day.

[23:11] Now let me ask you another question. Who was aware of that? There wasn't anybody that wasn't aware of it. The eight who escaped it were fully aware of it.

[23:25] and the multitude that perished was probably painfully aware of it. What is going to happen when that rapture takes place is going to be so confusing and so confounding and so chaotic and so disturbing and so upsetting and so dramatic and so terrifying people are going to have difficulty keeping their wits about them.

[23:59] Can you imagine millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of people from all over the earth just disappearing in a flash, leaving behind whatever they're wearing?

[24:11] That's it. Gone. what? What happened to these people? Where did they go? Are they dead?

[24:22] Where's their body? What's going on here anyway? It is going to be a time of unparalleled frenzy and confusion. you don't have to have much imagination to realize that there are going to be believers engaged in all kinds of things just like business as usual and gone just like that.

[24:47] Gone. Disappear. What? No, I'm fully aware. It doesn't sound real. I agree.

[24:57] It doesn't sound real at all. It doesn't mean it isn't. And we talked about the imminence of this.

[25:09] And that's a word that you really need to be familiar with. And we talk about the imminence of the rapture. That simply means there is nothing that has to take place or be fulfilled before this translation or this rapture can take place.

[25:28] It can take place before I finish the next sentence. it can take place 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 15 minutes from now. We have no idea. And out of all of the different possibilities have been presented, the three positions, actually four counting the one added just recently, pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation, post-tribulation, and historically, the pre-wrath position, which insists that the church will be here for all of the tribulation except for the very last part, and that's the part for which God himself is personally responsible, and God does not pour out his wrath upon his own people, but he delivers them, he rescues them, and that is what is referred to as the pre-wrath rapture.

[26:17] Pre-tribulation rapture is the only position that allows for the imminence of the rapture. Any of the others put the date of the rapture virtually on a calendar.

[26:33] You can only have imminence, that is the any moment return of Christ, you can only have imminence with a pre-rapture or a pre-tribulation position, and that's the one that we hold, and it has been historically held, by a number of the church fathers, and we shared that with you from as early as the second century.

[26:54] All of these different positions are held by sincere believers. These don't affect anyone's salvation, doesn't affect anyone's love for the Lord, or anything of the kind, it just happens to be different ways that honest and sincere people interpret the scriptures, and the tendency is to come to the scriptures with preconceived ideas and we're all guilty of that from time.

[27:20] We need to try and divorce ourselves from it as much as we can, and instead of bringing our positions and our convictions to the scriptures and finding verses that fit it, we need to use the scriptures to formulate our positions and our doctrine, rather than bring preconceived ideas to it.

[27:40] But it's so easy to do that, because we all are familiar with the mantra, but this is what I've always believed, or this is what I've always been taught, or I've never believed that.

[27:54] Therefore, we tend to think that anything new can't be right, and we need to give serious consideration to a real study of the scriptures and let the Bible determine what our doctrine is to be, rather than bring our doctrine to the scriptures and try to find verses to support it, which is all too often happening.

[28:19] Eminence, that is, any second, any moment return of Christ, is divinely designed, we believe, to impact living godly in an ungodly world.

[28:32] And this is what John is talking about when he says, Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

[28:50] And then he says, and everyone that has this hope in him purifies himself. That means we keep short accounts with God.

[29:04] That means we give serious consideration to our lifestyle, to our motives, to our agenda, to our objectives, we take seriously this business of being a believer in Jesus Christ, and we recognize that there is going to be a time of accountability, and we must all stand before the Bema seat, the award throne of Christ.

[29:27] And I do not know for sure exactly when that's going to happen. I have a suspicion. I think it will be shortly after the rapture occurs, but it is not identified specifically as to exactly when.

[29:40] That's just a Wiseman opinion. It could be true and it could be that it is not. Philippians 3 tells us that our citizenship is in heaven.

[29:52] That means our place of permanent residence. We are just strangers and pilgrims here. We're just passing through. This world is not our home and we are not to live with attachments to the world like this is permanent.

[30:05] Interesting verse that is used in the Revelation a number of times in John writing and he uses this phrase a number of times and he says, thus and so and thus and so, thus and so, to them that dwell upon the earth.

[30:26] Well, what does that mean? It is simply a way of expressing a group of people which at that time will be general humanity, a group of people for whom this world is their only thing and their everything.

[30:46] This world is all they have and it is all they care about and it is all they want and they are referred to as them that dwell upon this world, this earth, as opposed to those whose citizenship is in heaven.

[31:03] And if ye therefore be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God, Paul tells us in Ephesians, or in Colossians chapter 3.

[31:13] so that time is going to be recognized and it will be the most significant event worldwide that will not escape the notice of anyone living on the planet when this rapture occurs.

[31:33] I do not think it is an overstatement to say the most significant, wide-reaching, impacting event that will have happened in the history of mankind since the flood of Noah's day.

[31:50] We talked briefly about our glorified bodies and what they are going to be like, time and space, and I want to leave you with this thought because it's probably, you know, it's probably closer for all of us, one way or another, whether the Lord comes for us and we meet him in the air or whether we go to be with him.

[32:13] It's going to be if we go to meet the Lord in the air, if we go, if we go, if we exit these bodies the way possibly most of us will, which is just by way of death, our spirit leaves the body, the body goes to the ground or the crematorium or the ocean if you're buried at sea or whatever, but the essence, the real essence of who you are is your intangible self.

[32:45] That's where your personality is, that's where the real you lives, it is in that human spirit and you are going to be a disembodied spirit.

[33:00] It is a divorce between the body and the spirit. my understanding is your human spirit plus your human body constitutes your soul.

[33:15] That soul is the totality of your being and your being and personhood is disrupted at death. There is a separation that takes place and the spirit leaves the body and goes to be with the Lord.

[33:32] This is what Paul meant when he said absent from the body and present with the Lord. Now, what is that presence with the Lord like? I've given a lot of thought to that.

[33:47] people who have been going to go to heaven and back kind of stories.

[33:59] Some of them, I think, are probably fabrications designed by people who just want to sell books and they're sensationalists and for some of them, they've made quite a killing at it.

[34:11] But there are too many instances that have been documented by reputable people and I'm talking about physicians, I'm talking about emergency room personnel and people like that.

[34:26] I'm talking about people who insist that they were somehow above their body in an out-of-the-body experience, looking down on their body while technicians and doctors are working on their body and they could hear the conversation that was taking place and even music that was playing in the background and even name the song.

[34:54] And they were witnessing these things and this little boy, some of you have read the story about heaven is for real, about this little almost four-year-old child that said when he was in heaven, he could look down and see his father in the chapel of the hospital and his father was in the hospital chapel praying.

[35:17] He saw his mother in the hallway talking on the telephone, in a public telephone, and things that would be absolutely impossible. This little boy talked about when he was in heaven, he met his little sister sister, and he wasn't told that he had a sister because she died either in childbirth or before she was born, and he was never told about it, and he met his little sister in it, and he met his grandfather in heaven.

[35:54] And the thing that struck me the most about what this boy, four years old, was telling, now you know kids can have really super imaginations. I mean, they can get carried away and imagine all kinds of things, but there were too many things here that fit, and people were trying to put this together, and he talked about heaven as he experienced it as a very personal thing, and I got to thinking about that.

[36:17] Now, wait a minute, a personal thing. Seeing family members, little sister they never knew he had, and his grandfather who died before he was born, never met his grandfather, and he could pick him out in a family picture, and he would say, that's him, that's who I saw him, and it was very personal.

[36:43] Now, I want you to think for just a moment with me about this. Okay, you die. James tells us that the body without the spirit is dead.

[36:55] The spirit goes to be with the Lord, absent from the body, present with the Lord. God's death. So, when you get there, what is this?

[37:09] What's taking place? How many people are there? Do you have any idea how many people have died? How many Christians have died over the last couple of thousand years?

[37:24] How many millions? What do you do? Just show up, and you add yourself to this aggregate of millions of souls that are there? And what do disembodied spirits, disembodied souls, what do they look like?

[37:42] Do you arrive in heaven to find millions and millions of people there, and you just take your place at the end of the line, or the outskirts of the perimeter? What is this like?

[37:53] And as this little four-year-old described this, it was a very personal thing. What would all of those people mean, all of whom would be absolute strangers to you, what would they, but those with whom you were familiar when you were here on earth, or those who were of your family, maybe that would make it a kind of a personal heaven.

[38:19] I've given a lot of thought to this, especially as I become more and more familiar with my aging and my own mortality, kind of wonder about these things. What's that going to be like?

[38:29] And is that going to be eternity? The only time the Bible mentions that I think is in Isaiah something like 57, where God is referred to as the one who inhabits eternity.

[38:42] Eternity has no time and no space. Are we going to be dwelling in eternity? Because if you are in a bodiless existence, if you are a spirit being, you don't need space or time to occupy.

[39:00] In fact, that which is immaterial doesn't occupy time or space. What would that be like? Can't wait to find out.

[39:13] I wish I could send word back, but I don't think it would be possible. somebody else would have done that. Remember the great Houdini?

[39:29] The escape artist? They'd put him in trunks and put locks on him and chains and everything and drop him in a tank of water and he'd miraculously escape. Well, right before he died, he made mention of the fact that when the time comes that he dies, he's going to seek to escape from wherever he is and you'll be the first to know if he's able to make it back.

[39:54] So far, nobody's heard from Harry. We suspect that he's been preoccupied in the other world, whatever that involves. So, the rapture is something that is the hope.

[40:11] It's referred to as the blessed hope of the church and it ought to affect our attitude and actions because the Lord is at hand.

[40:28] Maranatha, our Lord cometh. We need to live our lives in such a way that we will not be embarrassed or fearful at his coming.

[40:41] This is to be a sobering thing. This is for believers who take their Christianity seriously as opposed to flippantly like so many do.

[40:55] And if you do take it seriously, it matters a whole lot to you how you live your life and how you honor Christ who has given you that life.

[41:07] There's so much more to be said about the rapture that we'll not go into in further studies because I'm eager to get into the 70 weeks of Daniel and the prophetic things that lie ahead.

[41:18] But for now this will have to suffice and yet I do reserve the right to revisit the rapture at some time in the future. So have you a Q&A? Anybody? In the back, is there a microphone back there?

[41:29] Terry has a comment or question. In 1 Timothy 1 12-14, I thank Christ Jesus, this is Paul talking, I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has strengthened me because he considered me faithful, putting me into service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor.

[41:53] Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant with faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus.

[42:03] So Paul clearly had heard the message that Jesus Christ was in fact Jesus Christ. But he was a blasphemer, he acted ignorantly according to this, yet Christ chose him.

[42:19] When the rapture occurs, those who have chosen not to believe by grace or you say through faith, are they given a second chance?

[42:31] And how does that work? if they acted ignorantly in unbelief? Well, there is no indication that there is a second chance for anyone.

[42:41] I know that some people like to hold out that hope because especially in light of the fact that some people have loved ones who have passed on and they knew or had reason to believe by their own testimony that they were not believers and they would hope that afterwards there would be a second chance.

[42:59] And there have been a number of books written about that. that set forth that premise and universalism is something that has always been afloat.

[43:11] It has flourished at times, sometimes more than others. Universalism is simply the idea that God is a God of love and he would not be able to bear the idea of anyone being separated from him for eternity.

[43:27] so after men have been punished adequately for their sins and after they have suffered enough, and this is partly Roman Catholic doctrine, the doctrine of purgatory which believes that when you die, you die in your sins, you go to hell and there you are, you go to purgatory and there you are purged.

[43:47] You are tortured or tormented, if you will, until you are purified and you confess and acknowledge your sins and so on and then you are released. But there isn't a shred of evidence in scripture to support that belief at all.

[44:04] It is, this is one reason why it is so absolutely imperative that no one delay for one moment placing their personal faith and trust in Jesus Christ as their savior because you have no idea what the next moment is going to bring forth and there will be no do overs.

[44:31] Yes. Here's the issue. Those who are alive at the moment of the rapture, they're going to carry over.

[44:44] Those who aren't taken up are going to be here on earth and I understand that there will be people who are alive at that point that will be saved during that seven year period before the second coming.

[44:56] Yeah. So how is that not a do-over because they acted ignorantly? How is that not a second chance? You're suggesting then that the rapture itself would give them a second chance?

[45:12] No, what I'm saying is everybody's alive right now. Okay? Everybody in this room is alive. At the rapture, some of us are going to be taken away.

[45:23] Yeah. And we're going to go and be with the Lord Jesus Christ. There will be those who even though they're in church today who don't have that personal relationship will still be here and they'll be alive.

[45:34] Now, that seven year period of time is going to occur and I understand that there will be people who are alive during that seven years who are going to be saved.

[45:47] Is that not true? Yeah. And if that is the case, they were alive before the rapture, they're alive after the rapture, which means that they chose poorly, they're now saved, how is that not a second chance?

[46:02] Well, in that sense it is, but there is no second chance after death. That's the point that I'm making. That while we are alive, while we are alive, there are second chances and third chances and fourth chances and for some people 50th chances and 60th chances, but you never know when those chances are going.

[46:20] As long as you are alive, you are a candidate for salvation, but when you're dead, then there is no second chance, and that's the sense in which I'm talking about there being no second chance.

[46:36] I think there are probably very, very few people ever receive Christ as their Savior the first time they hear the plan of salvation.

[46:48] Most of those who do were children. Children tend to be more trusting, more innocent, more believing, and they are more susceptible at a younger age than someone who is older and is more worldly and more experienced and so on.

[47:09] And this is a major reason why a lot of people came to faith as a child, at their mother's knee, or through their father's instruction as a child.

[47:22] I think statistics bear out that the older someone is, the less likely they are to put their faith in Christ. And there are a number of reasons for that, you know, psychologically and emotionally, et cetera, that we're not prepared to go into.

[47:39] But every time the gospel is proclaimed, it's another chance for those who are hearing it. And for some, it may be the second chance, for some, it may be the hundredth chance.

[47:51] But it's not the kind of thing that anyone should turn deaf ear to. Good question. So the point to be made is, there is no second chance once you die. That's it.

[48:02] Others? Holly? Holly? The hymn is in our hymn book, 73, which is coming. I think that's a different hymn.

[48:17] Oh. Isn't it? I don't do it. And that's okay. We can do that, but it's not, I don't think, I think it's a different hymn.

[48:32] Isn't it? Is it? Okay, well, I stand corrected. All right, let's do it then. what number is it? 7-53.

[48:43] 7-53? 7-53? 7-53? And we'll need to stand.

[49:06] Need to stand and get ready to leave. All right, through the ceiling. Okay? Number 7-53. Okay. Marvelous message we bring, glorious carol we sing, wonderful word of the King.

[49:40] Jesus is coming again, coming again, coming again.

[49:53] Maybe morning, maybe noon, maybe evening, and maybe soon, coming again, coming again.

[50:08] Oh, what a wonderful day it will be. Jesus is coming again.

[50:19] starship tandem, is June won, מ hopefully might because they make a SECRET Whoa long é ll great Appear ahead to heaven, mul Amen.

[51:16] Amen. Amen.