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Transcript 150A — The Rapture and the Millennium
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Yes. I need to ask a question about the Rapture. Will it take place before the Tribulation and the Mark of the Beast and the time of the antichrist? Do you think it will take place before that comes about? If I understand it right, Christ said, before He ascended to Heaven, that He would come back and receive us to Himself. And another thing I'd like to know about is the Millennium. Will that be before the judgment or after? I know that there's some connection through there. I think the Rapture takes place first, and then the Millennium. The Bible speaks of the earth being made new, and so on. Will that be before the judgment scene?
HC: Let's see if I can help you. You're raising a question concerning the Rapture. When will it take place? And then you're wondering how that relates to the Millennium.
Now we understand by the term Rapture (and we must define it because it's not found in the Bible) the time when those who are believers, who have not died, will be instantaneously given their resurrected bodies, and will be caught up in the air to be with Christ. And this will be at His coming.
Now in I Corinthians 15:51 and 52 God gives us a time clue as to when the Rapture will take place. There we read, "We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the sound of the last trumpet." In other words, it is just at the time of Judgment Day that the believers will be raptured. In other words, it's right at the end of time.
Now this is taught very clearly in Matthew 24, amongst many other passages. We read in Matthew 24, in verse 21, that there will be great tribulation, such as the world has never known. And then in verse 29 it says: "Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven." That means that the universe is beginning to collapse. It's the end of time. "And the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the tribes of the earth will mourn. And they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory."
And what will He do? "And He will set out His angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather His elect." The elect are the born again believers. They are the ones who have been chosen by God from before the foundations of the earth. "They will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other."
And so here it teaches that the Rapture is right at the end. This is what the Rapture is all about, when it talks about sending out His angels with a loud trumpet call. Now this of course is the same time that our bodies are resurrected if we had previously died. We find in I Thessalonians 4 that it talks about the resurrection of believers, and at the same time the rapture of believers takes place. And in that context, in I Thessalonians 4, it says the same thing as Matthew 24, that Christ will come with "a shout of command, and the voice of the archangel, and the sound of the trumpet." And you see the same characteristics that we find in Matthew 24. We find the trumpet, we have the archangel's call, we have the angels, and the gathering of the elect, and the coming of Christ, all the same elements that we find in Matthew 24.
And we know from John 6:40 and 44 and 54 that the resurrection of believers is on the Last Day. The Bible says so very emphatically. And so if the resurrection of believers is on the Last Day, the Rapture is on the Last Day.
Now in Revelation 20 we have this puzzling chapter where, 5 or 6 times, in a few verses, it speaks about a thousand years. And many many people stub their toes on that passage. They read there that the time will come, or has come, whatever it may be, that Satan has been bound so that he cannot deceive the nations. And then, at the end of the thousand years, he will be loosed. He will be bound for a thousand years, and at the end of a thousand years he will be loosed. And he will come against the believers, and then he will be judged and cast into the lake of fire.
And many immediately box themselves in with Revelation 20. Immediately they envision that this thousand years has got to be a literal thousand years. And since they don't know of any time in the past when a literal thousand years occurred, when this could have happened, they believe that it is in the future.
Now in the Bible the number 1000 can be a literal number, or it can be a symbolical number. It can be used in either way. And we don't know when we read Revelation 20 whether it's used symbolically or whether it's used literally. We've got to discover when it begins and when it ends, and see how long a period there is in between. If it's more or less than a thousand years, it's to be understood symbolically. If it's exactly a thousand years, then it's to be understood literally.
Now there are many places in the Bible where a thousand or a hundred or ten are used symbolically. The Bible says in Psalm 105 that God's love continues for a thousand generations. No one would understand that in a literal fashion. There it means for the completeness of God's plan. Christ spoke of the hundred sheep, not a literal number but the completeness of all believers, and so on.
Now how is it used in Revelation 20? Well, when we study Revelation 20 carefully, we find that Satan was bound at the cross. We can go through the Bible and find all the verses that could possibly relate to a change in the fortunes of Satan, past, present or future, and we find that they focus on the cross. Then he was bound so that he could not deceive the nations any longer.
Up until the time of the cross, all the nations of the world were in spiritual bondage. There were hardly any believers, in any nation. But once Christ went to the cross and the Holy Spirit was poured out, back there in AD 33, something changed in the fortunes of Satan, in his ability to hold people, in his dominion. We find that Peter preaches one sermon, on Pentecost afternoon, and 3000 are saved. Ever since then people have come from every nation of the world into the body of Christ. Satan has been bound so that he can't deceive the nations. Christ said, "I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
Now the end of the thousand years is just before Judgment Day. The language of Revelation 20 shows that. And so therefore we know that it cannot be a literal period of time. It's got to be a symbolical period of time, because more than a thousand years have passed since the cross. And that millennium, therefore, is the whole New Testament period.
Now it doesn't mean that Satan has been taken out of the way. Right in verse 4 of Revelation 20 it speaks about the martyrs, those who have been beheaded. Satan still goes about as a roaring lion. But he doesn't win. It looks like they have been vanquished, but he doesn't really win, because in that vision John sees them as disembodied souls. "I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded." And they're living and reigning with Christ a thousand years.
So when we die, in our souls we go to be with Christ in Heaven. And so the Rapture occurs at the end of the millennium, to be very specific. The Rapture occurs at the end of the millennium, which is the exact point when Judgment Day is. It's the end of time. It's when everything connected with this world has been completed.
And we are very near to this. The millennium has been going on now since AD 33, and we're living in a time when sin is magnified. Satan has been loosed. And as we see sin growing in every phase of life, every department of life, in every nation, we sense very clearly that Satan has been loosed, and we can expect that wickedness will continue to multiply until Judgment Day comes.
Well, thank you for that question.