Untitled Sermon (15)

Read the text:

Pilate in John chapter 18 asked Jesus famously when he was questing Him ... what is Truth?

God has given us two avenues of Truth. The general revelation of Creation and the special revelation he has given us in His Word. And as Evangelicals we believe the Word of God is inspired and infallible meaning that it has no mistakes in the original.

2 Tim 3:16 says,”All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for [a]instruction in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

It is because of this that we can put our faith in His Word.. we know and believe it contains absolute Truth. The absolute Truth of who God is and what salvation is and how to obtain it.

Pastor said it on Saturday we can test the Bible in every way you could think of scientifically, historically, prophetically and you will never be disappointed because it the active living word of God.

So the methods in which we use to interrupt the Bible are going to have an effect on what we ultimately believe about God and His word. So, are we going to take God at His word and have a consistent approach to our understanding of scripture? Are we going to view scripture through the same lens that Jesus Himself saw it with?

Jesus had a very high view of scripture Matthew 5:17,18

Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one [b]jot or one [c]tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.

The Law and the prophets are the two main divisions of the old testament, and here Jesus affirms both the Law and the Prophets authoritative Word of God. He quotes from no less than 14 individual books of the old testament.

So when we are maybe reading something that is questions the Bible or maybe it is questing who wrote a certain book just remember that our savior affirmed the entire old testament and its authors as the word of God.. In John 10:35 Jesus says, If He called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken)”

In the Old Testament there are at least 1,845 references to Christ’s physical rule on earth.

So Jesus clearly affirms scripture as the word of God, and as a side note our Lord Jesus considers His own Words to be the Word of God also because in Matt 24:35 Jesus says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.”

So we take a very literal view of scripture and when we read verses like Isa 9:7 , Of the increase of His government and peace There will be no end, Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, To order it and establish it with judgment and justice From that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.”

We take that this and other such scriptures such as 2 Sam 7:11 the actual Davidic convent to mean that Christ will one day physically rule from the throne of David. We have a literal understanding of scripture, but that is not to say that we don’t understand figurative language is used all throughout scripture.

However, we do not take passages that are clearly meant to be read literally and apply a figurative or spiritual meaning. It is interesting how we have arrived in a world where no small part of Christianity says there either is no millennium which is amillennialism or some others believe in what is called postmillennialism which both views deny a literal 1,000 rein of Christ. And then the third group believe in a pre mill or a literal 1,000 year reign of Christ on the throne of David..I will be going over some of the scriptures for premill in just a few minutes.

But first I want to look at Amill and post mill Time won’t allow me to detail all the differences between a mill post mill I will try to hit the high points

Both views believe that there is no longer any distinction between Israel and the Church, that the rapture and the second coming are the same event and that the tribulation already happened they also believe that we are in the non literal 1,000 mill reign of Christ, so they allegorize all the Millennium passages.

So you have A and post mill and there is a third view which is premill and that view teaches, and rightly so that there is a distinction between Israel and the Church… premill also says there is a literal 1,000 rein of Christ, and that the rapture and second coming are two separate events. Out of the three views the premill is the only view that uses a consistent method of interpreting all scripture.

How could we be so split on what the correct method is? Thereby finding the Truth that God has for us..To really understand we have to step back and look back on the last 20 centuries of Christianity to understand why there is such division today…??

For the first couple of hundred years of church history Rome persecuted Christians..I think we have talked about Nero and some of those nasty emperors before..well Rome’s view of the Church changed in the fourth century…Just like in Revelation chapter two the church at Pergamos which was a compromising church so to was the church of the fourth century that began a marriage with the world that would end with the Church at Rome being a major persecutor of bible believing Christians for centuries.

And it all started when Constantine gave the proclamation, or the Edict of Milan in ad 313 which brought religious tolerance to Rome, Christians were no longer persecuted… Christianity was decriminalized which sounds absolutely awesome but what could be the problem with mixing church and state especially when the state has absolute power?

So the men in power didn’t care to let the masses have their God, and your neighbor could have his god, he could pray to whatever idol he would like and you could worship Christ as much as you would like with a couple of exceptions..

They would sometimes try to make Christians pinch incense in honor of creaser, but we don’t have time to get into that tonight..Tonight I want to think about Rome’s aversion to a literal second coming of Christ and how that has affected the interpterion of certain passages of scripture.

Today there are those in the church good brothers and sisters who hold to the a and post mill views and they will claim that premill and esp. pre tribulation believers are believing teachings that didn’t come about until the 1800’s and therefore we should not believe them…and arguments like these have tricked many bible believing Christians into believing that there will be no 1,000 physical rein of Christ.. and to believe there is no millennium is to believe a lie

Let me give you an example Justin Martyr the man credited with being one of the first Christian apologists, or defenders of the faith who lived roughly 100ad-165ad said of the Millennium in ,”A Dialogue of Justin with Trypho, a Jew” which is a collection of conversations between the two men Martyr said,

“I am not so miserable a fellow, Trypho, as to say one thing and think another. Moreover, I pointed out to you that some who are called Christians, but are godless, impious heretics, teach doctrines that are in every way blasphemous, atheistic, and foolish. For I choose to follow not men or men’s doctrines, but God and the doctrines [delivered] by Him. But I and others, who are right-minded Christians on all points, are assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be built, adorned, and enlarged, [as] the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and others declare.”

So we clearly see that a literal 1,000 year rein was the orthodox view. What changed?

John says of Jesus in Revelation 19, He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 14 The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. 15 Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.”[a] He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:king of kings and lord of lords.”

As you can imagine verses like this one in Revelation did not sit well with Roman emperors like Constantine and the Roman Catholic Popes that would come after the emperors. So, late in the fourth century about 62 years after Constantine’s death in about 396ad came Augustine of Hippo, who on the shoulders of Origen found a way around Christ’s literally reining by saying that He was reining from and in the believer’s heart.

Can you imagine getting up and preaching to the emperor of Rome that one day soon Jesus was coming back and He was going to take possession of the entire earth and that Jesus the King of Kings was going to rule with a rod of iron? Well Augustine didn’t like the idea of saying they things from a Roman pulpit, so he allegorized all the scriptures that teach and actual Rapture, tribulation, and 1,000 reign.

So, the interruption was from then on widely accepted and flourished due to the egos of the powerful men who ran the church and the fear of the church at that time.

Then starting with Wycliff in the 14th century, and men like Martin Luther, Calvin, and Tydell in the 16th century or 1500’s these guys are known as the Reformers because they reformed the teachings of the Roman Catholic church about salvation.

They knew the only way man can know Truth is through God’s word and they were strongly against the transmutation of the bread and the wine of communion and the works-based salvation of the RC church.

The Reformers were great and they believed in scripture alone, in faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone,,all of this rightly so, but they when the reformers read scriptures like 1 John 2:18,” Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour.”

They saw the Pope of the Roman church as the antichrist and It is easy to see how they could see the Pope as the very anti Christ’s spoken of here and other places in scripture…so the reformers had reformed their soteriology which is the study of and the teaching of salvation

but they keep their eschatology or the study of end times basically the same. They continued to be amillennial and postmillennial and to this day most of the churches that have come out of the reformation the Lutherans, Presbyterians, Anglican ect all still hold to those same end time teachings.

Taking the 1,000 year reign of Christ on the throne of David to be figuratively fulfilled in the heart of the believer and traditionally they applied all the antichrist passages to the church at Rome.

If they had reformed all the doctrine of the Catholic church there would be no amill or postmill Christians today because the reformers take the same literal reading of scripture that we do. Except when it comes to the study of end times.

However, Rome and the Popes were so bad concerning the persecution of bible believing Christians that it is understandable that all they could see was Rome and her hands stained red with the blood of the murdered saints she had killed in the name of God.

But this is why there is such a split when it comes to end times teaching in protestant Christianity because it wasn’t until the 19th century that men like John Nelson Darby and Scofield in the late 1800 and early 1900’s who applied the literal reading to all of scripture from Genesis to Revelation and rediscovered the doctrine that Justin Martyr considered to be an essential doctrine. Although, Darby actual took his understanding to an extreme that ended in error at least they were moving in the right direction by taking a literal understanding of the entirety of scripture.

Today, I think there has been so much history and misinformation that a person understanding of these issues is not essential their salvation but they are essential to getting the most out of your relationship with the Lord and living the most fulfilling life possible. It is essential to understanding the Truth of the times we are living in today.

The a and post mill believers say the world is going to continue to get better until Jesus comes back which as of lately I kind of wonder what the popular leaders of that movement are saying? How they explain the clear decline and obvious fulfillment of scripture.

How do they reconcile their allegorization of scripture with the realties in front of their eyes, not the least of which would be the reformation of Israel in 1948 from the four corners of the earth…

Four corners of the earth which that language is used in a prophecy from Isaiah 11:12. Sometimes when we take a stand on the literal understanding of scripture we are accused of being a letterist which would be someone that takes every word as literal, and they don’t recognize figures of speech and this type of extreme will also end in error also..you may have heard of the flat earthers, well they are being letterists.

So, when we come across langue like the four corners of the earth we don’t take this to mean the earth has physical corners but rather bringing people from the four corners would be to bring them from every part of the earth.

But on the other hand, when we read scripture like the disciples’ prayer in Matthew 6 when Jesus tells us when we pray to ask, Our[a] Father [b]in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. ]Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven We do understand that the Lord is telling us to pray for an actual physical Kingdom to be set up here on earth.

And because we know the Truth we need to be aware that indeed there are many antichrists in the world and they will continue until the final antichrist comes, but we don’t need to be spending all of our time watching the news and trying to figure out who the antichrist is..they will be made manifest in due time.

We need to be watching for the Bridegroom to come get His bride and I believe that is what scriptures teach us...

Titus 2:11-13 says, For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, 12 teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, 13 looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,

This is the anointing that John is talking about in vs 20 of 1 John 2..it is when we submit ourselves to the Truth of God’s Word that His anointing will come onto you teaching you by His grace to be Holy and set apart.

A model that we in the west usually miss is the Jewish wedding..remember last week we kind of spoke about types and shadow different things that actually happened in the Old Testament that are also a picture of some other Truth of scripture.

In the Jewish wedding model you have the Ketubah or the betrothal which would be like an engagement in our culture and that is the stage of the marriage Mary and Joseph were in when Mary became Pregnant by the Holy Spirit. On the initiative of the bridegroom He would establish a marriage convent the betrothal..

So in the betrothal period the convent is established 1 Corinthians 11:25 says, In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”

So that is the new convent being established or the betrothal of the Church and because of time I am only going to give the scripture that apply to Christ and the Church and not the original wedding practices scriptures which are all over the Old Testament..I can get those scripture for anyone that is interested.

The Next step in the Jewish wedding was that the Bridegroom would pay a purchase price to the brides father aside..In 1 Cor 6:19-20 Paul says, Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body [g]and in your spirit, which are God’s.”

Christ has purchased you with His own blood..you are His!

From that point on the Bride was set apart, just as we are a bride set apart Eph 5:25-27 says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, 26 that He might [a]sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, 27 that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.”

Next the groom goes back to His Father’s house and build a room addition which I am sure may remind you of in John 14:1-4 when Jesus is talking to the reaming 11 disciples since Judas had already left the upper room in order to betray Jesus who stands and says to those remaining, “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. 2 In My Father’s house are many [a]mansions; if it were not so, [b]I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. 4 And where I go you know, and the way you know.”

So, the Bridegroom would go away and the bride would prepare for his imminent return.

Imminence spelled Imminence means: about to happen

Not to be confused with the word eminence which means an important or influential person which is spelled eminence

How long the bridegroom will be gone is purposefully unknown by the espoused or betrothed Bride so that she would always be watching for his return but Philippians 3:20 says,”For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,”

So the last step was the Bridegroom was to come with an escort to take His Bride back to His father’s house with Him..she would be awaiting His return at an unknown hour that sounds a lot like that sounds a lot like 1 Thess 4:16-17, 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. 17 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.”

What are you watching and waiting for? Are we watching the news waiting for the corona-virus to go away, waiting for the protests to stop and life to return to normal? Waiting and watching for work to pick back up and for the stock market to perk back up...

It is ok to be concerned with some of these things but don’t let them..the worries and cares of this world take your focus away from the Bridegroom that is coming for you. Prophetically there is nothing left to happen for Christ to come and get His bride...

And when we have this hope in Him which we will be able to look closer at this in chapter three but 1 John 3:3 John says, And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

This hope is that He will come back to get us and when He does we will be made like Him and when we have this hope it causes us to want to live as a Bride that was purchased by the blood of our Lord and savior