The End Times

John 14:1–3 (NIV)

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.

My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

Introduction

Growing up in the church I was terrified about the End Times.

I grew up in a Pentecostal Holiness Church, and getting saved was HARD. I mean, you had to really, really love Jesus if you wanted to get saved.

So, about once a year, the church was good for an End Time Revival type service. How many of you remember those? This is when the Evangelist would come and he would preach the hell out of you.

I mean that.

He would come and he would talk about the End Times, the Rapture, and the Second Coming of Jesus and he would scare all of the church into getting saved.

It all started the with flyer. The church didn’t believe in no Halloween, but man those End Time Flyers were just as scary as ANYTHING the world put out there. I’d get scared just looking at the End Time Revival flyer. It set a tone. And it was stapled to the church bulletin board in the lobby.

How many of you remember the church bulletin boards in the lobby? If you went to a church with one of those, you are saved saved.

But those flyers, boy they set the tone.

Then, the preacher would talk about the Anti Christ, the mark of the beast, Christians being beheaded, he would blast AC/DC songs in reverse to let us hear the cries of hell, he would play sounds of exorcisms, and if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d cup the mic and say something real scary like, “the horse man are coming! the horseman are coming! the horseman are coming!”

How many of you were a victim of that?

I remember one night after one of those types of services we had 26 people get water baptized that night. I don’t think anyone of them really loved Jesus, they just did not want to go to hell. That’s it… they just did NOT want anything to do with the devil.

Transition

And I’m not hear to condemn that approach to End Time teaching. It has it’s place. I mean, a little bit of scared never hurt anyone.

But you can’t help and read John 14 and not see that the End Times is not a horror story, but it is a love story.

The Rapture of the Church

In the scriptures we read that there will be a rapture of the church.

John 14:3 (NIV)

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

The word rapture is our best word to describe “to be snatched away.” Jesus is going to snatch his church away to be together with his bride .

Acts 1:9–11 (NIV)

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them.

“Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

Here at the Mt. Olives, Jesus has spoke his last words to the disciples, and he ascends up to the heavens, and two angels remind the disciples of what Jesus had already told them.

He is going to come back for you.

1 Thessalonians 4:15–18 (NIV)

According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Paul writes to the church about these events and tells them more about the rapture of the church. The dead in Christ will be the first to rise, but then those who are still alive are going to meet the Lord to be with him .

The rapture of the church is to spare us from the wrath (tribulation) to come.

1 Thessalonians 5:1–2 (NIV)

Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you,

for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

1 Thessalonians 5:9 (NIV)

For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Tribulation

The rapture of the church precedes the tribulation and we point to this verse.

The tribulation will be God’s judgment on the earth.

Now, let me pause and just say that the tribulation to come is debated among scholars and if the church would have to go through this period of tribulation. There are words like pre, mid or post-tribulaton theology.

Let me just say that it’s up for debate, but it’s not up for dividing. It’s not salvific.

To quote on of my favorite preachers Veron Ashe, he said it this way, “You trib, I trib, they trib, we all gonna trib!”

But I personally believe that we will be spared from that wrath, and so I lean in the direction of pre-tribulation theology and that’s what I am teaching you from today.

Let’s talk about what happens during this time of tribulation, and after the rapture of the church.

2 Thessalonians 2:3–7 (NIV)

Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.

He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.

Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things?

And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time.

For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way.

The tribulation will be marked by the emergence of the Anti Christ.

Paul calls the Anti Christ the man of lawlessness.

Paul says that the Anti Christ will be held back. Now there is debate as to what is the power that is holding the Anti Christ back, but many believe, and I believe that it is the Holy Spirit in the Church.

The Church is filled with the Spirit of God, but when God raptures his church, then there will be a void here on this Earth of the Holy Spirit, and that’s when the Anti Christ will reveal himself.

Earlier I said that the tribulation will be God’s judgment here on earth, but another way to look at is the tribulation is the absence of the Holy Spirit here on earth.

The Anti Christ will present himself as a person of peace, and he will execute a peace deal in the middle east that will last for 3 1/2 years, but after that, the Anti Christ will turn on this world, and the second half of the tribulation will be filled with his lies, and the wrath that we read about in 1 Thessalonians 5.

Here is how Paul writes about it.

2 Thessalonians 2:8–11 (NIV)

And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.

The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie,

and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.

For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie

Now in this scripture, we get another marker of the End Times, and that is Second Coming of Jesus.

The tribulation will end with the second coming of Jesus.

The Second Coming of Jesus

Revelation 19:11–16 (NIV)

I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war.

His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself.

He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God.

The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean.

Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.” He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.

On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: king of kings and lord of lords.

After the Rapture of the Church, and after the Seven Years of Tribulation, Jesus returns to overthrow the Anti Christ, Satan and the Beast.

Listen to me church… this is the promised victory that we have in Jesus!

When Jesus comes back again, he is coming back again to restore what He created. God created the heavens and the earth. God created humanity. We were in relationship with him. But becuase of sin, we were separated from Him.

When Jesus comes back again, he’s not just going to deal with the sin problem, he already did that at the cross. He’s coming back to put an end to Satan, the Beast and the Anti Christ.

A New Heaven and a New Earth

And so what happens next, at the end of the tribulation?

Well, we get a picture of that here in Revelation 21.

Revelation 21:1–4 (NIV)

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.

I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.

‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Lean in church, because what I am about to teach is both in the Bible, and completely misunderstood by many in the church.

There will be a new heaven, and a new earth. Meaning, the heaven and earth that exist now, will be remade. Meaning, we won’t live in heaven forever, but we will return to earth and this is where we will spend eternity.

So much theology about heaven now is that we die and go to heaven. That is life after death.

The writer John Mark Comer puts it this way, “there will be life after life after death.”

Isaiah wrote about it. Peter wrote about it. And John the Revelator wrote about it.

We will live in this redeemed earth that will be put back to the original state that God created it in. He will take earth down to its studs and rebuild it according to his intended glory, for his honor and glory!

When Will This Happen? (Conclusion)

As I close, there is one question that I get asked repeatedly, and I will not answer that the way that you want for me to answer. And, here’s the question.

“Are we living in the last days?”

We ask this question because we want to know when all of this is going to happen so that we know when to get ourselves together...

Church, that’s the wrong way to look at it. That’s not the right way to treat our relationship with a loving God.

So when you ask, “Are we living in the last days?” my reply is, “you are living in your only days.”

You will never have today back. You only get one today. So what are you going to do with today? What are you going to do with the gift of today that God has given you? Tomorrow is not promised.

Just two weeks ago, on a Sunday, a Pastor friend of mine was getting ready for Sunday services. He event sent out the usual Sunday morning, “Hey Church! Can’t wait to see you today! Get there and bring somebody!” And as he was getting dressed, he suffered a major heart attack and passed away. 44 years young.

I don’t say this to scare you, I already told you that’s not my angle. I say this because it was a sober reminder to me, as a Pastor, seeing someone just two years my older, on his way to do what God created him to do, and now he is gone.

I am living in my last days. And I want to make my days count.

[Pray for someone to receive Christ]