Eternal life resides in Jesus and in Him alone. No one else! This is true now and will also be the case after Jesus removes His true church from the earth.
In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
What do people need the most? The answer remains the same as it’s always been: A clear understanding of the Gospel. By this I mean that people need Jesus, not the one that so many today create in their mind but but the One revealed on the pages of Scripture.
As we saw in our last signpost, the false report informing the Thessalonians that the day of the Lord had already begun put these new believers in a state of severe panic (see signpost #6). In response,
This brings us to the next word on our signposts: “Restrainer.” Why is this word so significant? A key event at the start of the tribulation, the revealing of the antichrist, cannot happen until God removes the Restrainer who is currently holding back his unveiling to the world.
No, you have not taken a wrong turn on our journey toward establishing a biblical basis for the pretribulation rapture. The word “panic,” our next signpost, confirms that the Thessalonian saints expected the Lord to come for them before the start of the day of the Lord,
First, let’s back up a bit and set the stage for Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians. With the ink scarcely dry on the parchment of the apostle’s first letter to them, false teachers forged a message to these new believers telling them the day of the Lord had already begun.
Dwight L. Moody once gave the following illustration during a sermon to demonstrate that our salvation is all of grace and not of works . . . .
Each and every one of our good works as believers results from our regeneration that occurs at the moment of our rebirth. Works contribute absolutely nothing to our salvation nor do they keep us saved. It’s all of grace from beginning to end.
A news story about a burglar in Rochelle Park, New Jersey recently caught my attention. In the process of robbing a home, the thief woke up the couple who lived there. Not wanting the owners to catch him, the robber climbed out a window and fled from the scene of the crime.
Sticking with his escape plan, he ran down the street and quickly hopped into the backseat of a car. Unfortunately for him, he soon discovered he had gotten into a police car, which made his ensuing arrest rather easy.
In 1 Thessalonians 5;2, Paul compares the arrival of the day of the Lord to the surprise of discovering a intruder in one’s home. He likely had a more competent thief in mind than the bungling burglar in New Jersey.
My fingers raced to the book of Habakkuk early this morning.
Why would I seek the wisdom of an ancient prophet to ease my troubled mind? His opening complaint, written 2,650 years ago, captures the cry of my heart.
I so often cry out to the Lord to stop the senseless murder of children as well as the killing of those precious little ones who survive the horrific evil of abortion.
A common response to those like me who believe we live in the last days is this: “The world has seen violence and wickedness all through its history. What’s so different about today?”
I fully understand that question especially when one considers the world wars of the previous century. Seventy-five years ago many Christians thought Hitler was the antichrist based on his hatred of the Jews and his efforts to establish a worldwide socialist empire. This was truly a terrible time in world history, but it was not the prelude to the tribulation.
I could not have written this article several months ago. Although I had no doubts about the biblical truth of premillennialism, I did not fully comprehend the perils of denying Jesus’ thousand year’ reign over the nations of the world as described in Revelation 20:1-10 and Zechariah 14. The denial of Jesus’ rule over a restored Israel is known as amillennialism.
When I heard a popular prophecy preacher refer to amillennialism as a “false teaching” and a “doctrine of demons” (Tim. 4:1), I shuddered; I was not sure I agreed with him. Now I know he was correct.
I know a great many believers, like me, have struggled with issues related to anxiety either in the past or are doing so now. My battle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was long, much longer than necessary because of my slowness in learning how to combat the anxieties and wounds from my past.
I will not go into the circumstances that led to my PTSD; I did that in another post.
These are not steps to healing, but rather biblical truths and lessons I gleaned along the rugged path to my healing from PTSD.
I was terrified! I had wondered away from my parents and now I could not see them. For a brief moment, I wondered if they had left me behind. Maybe my parents thought I was with my older sister. Maybe each thought I was with the other. Where were they? I had looked away just for just a moment and now I did not see them!
The unfamiliar surroundings made the situation more frightful.We were visiting my sister in Southern California and after spending the day sightseeing we went to Chinatown for supper and shopping, where I became distracted looking at toys and lost sight of my parents.
If you are like me, you find it difficult to maintain your sanity as you watch the growing apostasy in the church and look on as the world descends deeper into wickedness and violence seemingly every day.
One morning this week I read the story in Luke 9:51-56 about a Samaritan village that would not accept the presence of Jesus. In response to the city’s rejection of Jesus, James and John said “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” There are days, I confess, when I have sentiments that are far too similar to these two disciples than not.
At some level, all believers share in the sufferings of Jesus. We may not face torture and martyrdom for our faith as many of our brothers and sisters in Christ experience throughout the world. But nonetheless, we know the pain of rejection and ridicule as a result of our love for Jesus and His Word.
Just as we share in Jesus’ suffering we will also someday share in His triumph. Now we endure the ridicule and persecution of those who reject the Savior; in the future we will reign with Jesus.
Today, many Bible-believing pastors ascribe to replacement theology, which asserts that God has replaced Israel with the church. They preach that Israel no longer has a place in God’s prophetic program for the future.
Is this true? No! This doctrine contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture in so many places! In Romans 11:1-2, Paul leaves no doubt as to the continuing place of Israel in prophecy, “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. . . .”
I know “courageous hope” sounds like an oxymoron. After all, does it really require courage to hope for a sunny day, a successful job interview, or a speedy recovery from an illness?
Biblical hope, however, differs radically from what typically comes to our minds when we hear the word “hope.” For those of us in Christ, Jesus’ resurrection provides absolute confidence that His promises for our tomorrows will not fail.
Although our desire for the weather to cooperate with our plans may not happen, we can trust the words of Jesus regarding our future.
It’s becoming increasingly popular in Bible-believing churches to believe that God rejected the nation of Israel after the first century Jews rejected Jesus. Those who hold this view believe that the Lord has replaced Israel with the church. As a result, the church now inherits the kingdom promises of the Old Testament in a “spiritual” sense.
This teaching often goes by the name of “replacement theology” or “amillennialism.” I have many problems with such teaching starting the words of Paul in Romans 11:2, “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.” I am not sure how some get around Paul’s clear assertion in this text that God has not rejected Israel, but many do.
We hear so many differing viewpoints today regarding our hope of forever. Some reject the notion that anything physical can be spiritual or godly and on that basis deny our hope of reigning with Christ in a physical kingdom. The Bible, however, flatly rejects such thinking.
As believers seeking God’s wisdom, what does the Bible say about our future? What are the basics that can place us on firm footing amidst the myriad of false teaching that surrounds us today?
Below I list five items that I believe are the rock bottom basics of our biblical hope. For each, I start with the words of Jesus and then provide support from what He also revealed about our future from other places in Scripture.
Those who oppose our beliefs in a pretribulation rapture fill up social media and the Internet with stories mocking the rapture as something no one believed until the nineteenth century. They discredit it based on its recent appearance in the life of the church.
So, is our belief in the rapture relatively new in church history? No, absolutely not! As will see in the following sections, saints in the early days of the church looked for Jesus’ appearing to take away His church ahead of a time of tribulation on the earth. The doctrine existed long before people began calling it “the rapture” during the 1800’s.
Through all the ups and downs of my life, these words from Lamentations 3:22-25 have remained dear to my heart, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. . . . The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.”
The Hebrew word for “steadfast love” is chesed. You might see it translated “lovingkindness” or just “kindness” in other versions. It’s difficult for one English word or phrase to capture its total meaning in the original. In Scripture,
He was perhaps the most joyous and Spirit-filled believer I had seen up to that point in my life. Though it was decades ago, I remember the joy that beamed from Paul Lundgren’s face as he sang.
I also recall the sight of Paul, bound to his wheelchair, sitting on the platform at my church. A traffic accident while delivering a piano had left him paralyzed from waist down. This did not deter him, however, from singing and talking about his expectation of walking on streets of gold.
When John the Baptist saw Jesus he exclaimed, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Indeed, Jesus was the ultimate Passover Lamb whose sacrifice paid the debt of our sins.
Peter put it this way, “knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Pet. 1:18-19).
But who ever heard of “The Wrath of the Lamb?” Does this not sound like the strangest oxymoron you have ever heard? Although unusual, we do see this description of Jesus in the Bible.
On September 28, 2018, many residents of Palu, Indonesia gathered on the beach to celebrate the town’s anniversary. Despite the rumblings of earthquakes, it seemed like a normal day to the people joining in the happy festivities.
Due to a failure in the tsunami warning system, the people on the beach were unaware that a tidal wave at least ten feet high was headed their direction at a speed of 500 miles per hour.
Jesus compared His appearing to the days of Noah and issued this warning along with that, “and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man” (Matt. 24:39). Do you see why the tsunami is an apt picture of Jesus’ words about the last days?
