Sermon Tone Analysis

I hope you have been able to follow along with what we have been talking about for the last couple of weeks.

The main thing that you need to understand is that Jesus is coming soon.

We do not know when but we do know it will be soon.

We all have to be ready and we have to proclaim the good news of Jesus.

Today, we want to begin looking at some events that haven’t happened yet.

These are events that we are anticipating.

How many of you like Christmas?

My most favorite time of the year is fall.

I look forward to fall.

I love when the leaves start changing.

I love the 60 and 70 degree weather.

I love football.

All of these things are associated with fall, but I love Christmas.

And I think that is also a reason why I like fall so much is because that is the season that precedes Christmas.

And it is during the fall that I begin to anticipate the coming of Christmas.

Looking forward to something really good can get you through some really bad times.

This may be why God tells us so much and so often what His coming back will be like.

The Bible says that on the day Jesus returns, all of us who know him are going to be all caught up in it.

That’s the phrase Paul uses to describe what happens to humans when Jesus returns: we get caught up.

Between now and then, we are going to go through days where it feels like things are getting tougher and tougher and days are going to get rougher.

But we have this moment of hope to look forward to.

And we can anticipate the day that Jesus returns to get his people.

Today I want to walk you through some events that I believe will happen after the rapture takes place.

We are going to take a little bit about the rapture.

I will also point out the different view points about the rapture.

In order to understand what the return of Christ will be like, it’s helpful to understand when His return will be.

We learned a few weeks ago that no one knows the day nor the hour.

But we can place the when within the timeframe of the three major time periods that will take place during the last days.

There are 3 major events that will take place after the rapture of the church happens.

Let’s walk through those briefly.

1.

The Tribulation

The Prophet Daniel first described the Tribulation period way back in 600 B.C. Go with me to the book of Daniel, chapter 9.

The word translated “sevens” means a unit of seven years.

Daniel is saying God is going to do some transforming work in the Jewish people for a period of seventy “sevens.”

Now look at verse 25.

It was during this time that God revealed to Daniel that 69 periods of sevens would occur between the time of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem and the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

If you take 69 and multiply it by 7, you get 483 years.

We believe that it began in 457 B.C., when Ezra returned and began rebuilding the city.

That would bring the 483 years to an end in A.D. 27, about the time Jesus began his ministry.

Let’s continue at verse 26.

After the “seven ‘sevens’” and after “the sixty-two ‘sevens,’” — a total of 69 “sevens” or 483 years—two things would happen: 1.

The Messiah would be “cut off,” referring to Jesus’ death on the cross.

2. The “people of the ruler who will come” would destroy Jerusalem and the temple.

The “people” are the Roman army, which destroyed Jerusalem in A.D. 70; the “ruler” refers to the end-time antichrist.

Notice that Jerusalem’s destruction did not come immediately after Christ’s crucifixion.

That means there is a gap, or interval of time, between the conclusion of the 69 “sevens” and the beginning 70th “seven.”

Many interpreters say that the church age, which began after Jesus left earth and sent the Holy Spirit to empower his followers and ending at the rapture of the church, when his followers will suddenly be taken from the world is the interval between the 69th and 70th “seven.”

Daniel speaks of the antichrist in Daniel 9:27

The making of a covenant between “the ruler who will come” and Israel will signal the beginning of the 70th “seven” —the final seven years of this age.

This is how we know the Tribulation will last seven years.

Daniel told us so 2,500 years ago.

When he says, “in the middle of the ‘seven’.

We know that he means half of the 7 years, which is 3 1/2.

So, the final seven years of planet Earth as we know it will be a time of Tribulation.

The second half of the Tribulation is known as the “Great Tribulation,” because at the 3 1/2 year mark, the Antichrist stops people from worshiping and desecrates the Temple.

We will go more in details next week.

Following these seven years of Tribulation will come a new era on the earth.

An era like none before.

It’s called...

2. The Millennium

Millennium is Latin for “1,000.”

When Jesus returns, He will rule on the Earth for 1,000 years.

Speaking of all the believers in history who died before Jesus’ second coming, Revelation 20 says,

At the climax of the Tribulation, Jesus will return from heaven, riding on a white horse, accompanied by the hosts of heaven, and He will end the war of Armageddon and bring peace to the world for 1,000 years.

The Millennium will be an incredible time to be alive.

We will look at it in two weeks.

And following this 1,000 year reign of Christ on the earth will come the final era, or what is called the “eternal state” of our universe.

3. The New Creation

At the end of Jesus’ 1,000 years on earth, He will release Satan from his temporary imprisonment and once more Satan will lead a rebellion, only this time, it will be with the unsaved sons of men.

At that point, God will decree that our planet has run its course and replace it with the New Creation.

We will cover the New Creation on the last week of this series.

So, now let’s look at the Rapture of the church.

One day Jesus is going to burst forth from the clouds in glory.

What will that be like for us?

There are 2 passages of scripture that talk about this event.

One is found in 1 Thessalonians 4.

God wants you to know about his return, and the moment of His return.

He doesn’t want you to be uninformed.

What will it be like?

Just prior to the rapture, as Christ is descending from heaven for his church, the resurrection of the “dead in Christ” will occur.

This is not the same resurrection described in Revelation 20:4, which is an event occuring after Christ returns to earth, destroys the forces of the antichrist and confines Satan to the bottomless pit.

The resurrection in Revelation 20:4 relates to those who turned to Christ and died for their faith in him during the tribulation.

At the same time as the dead in Christ rise, followers of Christ who are alive on earth will be transformed, their bodies becoming imperishable and immortal.

This will happen in an instant.

Both the resurrected Christians and those who are instantly transformed will be caught up together to meet Christ in the air.

They will be visibly united with Christ, taken to heaven and reunited with loved ones who have died knowing Christ.

They will be removed from all suffering and distress, from all persecution and oppression and from the entire realm of sin and death.

The rapture also rescues Jesus’ followers from “the coming wrath”—the great tribulation.

The other passage of scripture that talks about this event is found in 1 Corinthians 15:51-58

Paul says we will be changed.

In the twinkling of an eye, changed instantly.

Think about this for a moment, There is about an inch distance between the front of your iris to the back of your retina.

Light travels at 186,000 miles a second.

At that speed, it takes about a 64th of a nanosecond to travel 1 inch.

That’s how fast we will be changed.

One minute, the way you see yourself now.

The next, boom!

A resurrected body.

One minute, sad.

The next, our tears will be wiped away for good.