Welcome to Episode #186 of the Way of the Bible podcast. This is our second of eight episodes in our Twenty-Fourth mini-series entitled The Return of Jesus Christ [3]. On today’s episode, we will continue expanding upon the greatest news for the church, the Great Snatching Away, of the church before tribulation, the great tribulation and wrath, and the Day of the Lord.
Before we get started today, I want to add some additional context to our discussion to avoid confusion. There are several views on the events and timing of the events mentioned in scripture about Jesus’ return. The far majority of these views believe Jesus is going to bodily return. There is a view that his return will be merely spiritual; which we will not deal with here. But the other views regarding his bodily return, I must at least mention.
The view of eschatology (view of the end times) I am presenting here is called the premillennial pretribulation rapture view. It is the view taught by Jesus in the gospels and the book of Revelation and by the apostles in their letters and epistles. It teaches that believers are "harpazo’d or raptured" to heaven before Israel signs an agreement with its neighbors that begins a seven-year period of intense persecution of the Jews and an outpouring of the wrath of God called the tribulation. This tribulation ends in great tribulation on the Day of the Lord, when Jesus will return bodily to the earth with all the church saints to judge all mankind on the earth and to establish a literal 1,000-year (millennial) reign. This view has as its foundation the method of biblical interpretation that views prophecies as still unfulfilled and to occur in the future.
Our last episode we had an overview of the first phase of his return, which is aerial, for the purpose of snatching away the bride of Christ before the coming judgment of God. The judgment and wrath of God will be in tribulations, the great tribulation, and finally the Day of the Lord, when Jesus bodily returns in the second phase to save a remnant of Israel and judge the world in righteousness.
We spoke of how this first phase snatching away is not uncommon in the Scriptures, with two examples in the Old and five examples in the New Testament (Enoch, Elijah, Jesus, Philip, Paul, the body of Christ, and John). Paul says the Harpazo [Greek], the Rapio [Latin, from which we get Rapture] is a mystery. Are you unaware of this significant upcoming event in the church?
We noted on our last episode the basis for the harpazo/rapture was established in John 3. In this chapter, Jesus noted a significant difference between those who believe and gain eternal life and those who do not believe and remain condemned already. In John 14, Jesus provides some important details of the harpozo and ties them in prophetically (via pattern fulfillment) with the Jewish wedding ceremony. Jesus is the bridegroom, the church is the bride, and John the Baptist and all Old Testament saints are friends of the bridegroom. (John 3:27-36, John 14:1-14)
I mentioned last episode, and will continue emphasizing during this mini-series, that we have to understand with our heart, mind, and soul that heaven is a real place. A supernatural place beyond dimensionality where God dwells. We and all of creation and the cosmos with us, experience existence in a four-dimensional space-time reality. We observe and have been taught that our observations are fact: you live, you suffer, you die, and that’s it. Entropy, time, and chance rule: everything is subject to corruption and decay.
This teaching denies God, who is: Spirit, an unquenchable fire, who dwells in unapproachable light. Jesus, who is God in the person of the Son, came to earth to make a way for mankind to escape our enslavement to the devil in this four-dimensional prison of darkness, sin, and death. This escape is both for those who have died, now asleep in Christ and for us who believe.
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