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Transcript 249C — Understanding the Rapture and Millennium
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum
CALLER: I was interested in what you said about Christians, that they would have to go through the tribulation. And I was curious on how you got your information. I've studied Scripture, and I always got the impression that we would be raptured before. I thought out what you said, and I tried to look at Scripture in Revelation. And the Scriptures teach that there's a time of tribulation when the Holy Spirit will be taken away. And if the Christians are going to go through the tribulation, why would God take His Holy Spirit away?
HC: Your question is, if the Christians are going to go through the final tribulation, and if the Bible teaches that before Christ returns the Holy Spirit will be taken away, then how can it be that the Christians will go through that tribulation?
The verse you're referring to is II Thessalonians 2:7 or 8, where God teaches about the rebellion that must come. And then it indicates that "He that restraineth will be taken out of the way." And you're correct, of course, in assuming that "He who restraineth" sin is God the Holy Spirit, because God is the one who restrains sin.
Now there are those who read that verse, and they say, "Well, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, God indwells us. And if the Holy Spirit indwells us, and He is taken out of the way, that implies that the church must have been raptured." But you see, that's reading a whole lot more into that sentence than we find there. Actually, God the Holy Spirit is not confined to the lives of born again believers. God the Holy Spirit is active throughout the world, and He indeed restrains sin. But if He simply allows sin to multiply, in other words if He takes Himself away in that sense, that He allows wickedness to grow, as He teaches must happen, in Matthew 24 ("Wickedness will multiply and most men's love will grow cold"), that is not saying for a moment that therefore the believers have been taken out of the way. That is not suggesting that. It is not the believers who restrain sin. It is God who restrains sin.
CALLER: But He indwells each one of us.
HC: But just because the Holy Spirit indwells us, that doesn't mean that God the Holy Spirit is not active in the lives of the unsaved, restraining sin completely apart from us.
CALLER: How can the Holy Spirit be in me and be taken out of the world? I mean, I'm here.
HC: Well, it doesn't say He will he taken out of the world. Now there again, you see, that's reading more into that statement than is indicated. It says that He will be taken "out of the way." And that's all we have there. We don't have any other statement there. It doesn't say that God is going to leave this world. God will never leave this world. God the Holy Spirit has always been present in the world. There's never been a time that He has not been present. The rebellion must come, and He allows sin to multiply.
CALLER: He keeps His protecting hand on His own.
HC: Of course He does. He still cares for us. He says that He will never leave us nor forsake us. But that isn't what's in view there. The Christian is not in view there. In II Thessalonians 2 God is talking about the rebellion, and the revealing of the man of sin. It's talking about the fact that Satan will rule in the body of Christ. He will take his seat in the temple, and will be worshipped. This is the final period before Christ returns, which would be the tribulation period.
CALLER: Do you believe that we will be here?
HC: Yes. You see, everything in the Bible teaches . . . that same chapter teaches that. See how it opens up? "Now concerning the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ (this is II Thessalonians 2:1) and our assembling to meet Him." What's the implication? That we're going to assemble to meet Him when He comes. And so already God is implying here that we will be there when He comes. And this is taught all through the Bible, that the believers will be here right up until the end.
CALLER: I have another question then on the same subject. In the Scripture it tells how we're going to meet Him in the clouds, and then it also says that He's going to touch His foot on the earth, and the mountains will split, before the Battle of Armageddon, I believe.
HC: The question that is raised is, how can we reconcile the two statements that we will be caught up in the air to be with Him, as I Thessalonians 4 teaches, whereas in Zechariah 14 we read that He will put His feet on the Mount of Olives?
Now first of all, when we read Zechariah, we must remember that this is very obtuse language. It is very difficult language. It is not nearly as plain, as direct, as what we read in Matthew 13 or Matthew 24 or Luke 21 or I Thessalonians 4, or I Thessalonians 5. All of those statements are without any symbolism. They're just the straight language of what Christ is going to do.
But Zechariah 14, or the whole book of Zechariah, is much more difficult. But let's look at this. When we look at Zechariah 14, He indeed is talking about the end of time. And before we look at His feet standing on the Mount of Olives, let's look at an earlier verse. He says, "Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, when the spoil taken from you will be divided in the midst of you. For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle."
Now what is Jerusalem here, that all the nations will be gathered together to battle? Well, repeatedly in the Bible Jerusalem sometimes is the literal city of Jerusalem. But also it is a figure of the body of Christ. We are finally the people that Satan most desperately seeks to destroy. And in Revelation 20 He speaks about gathering all the nations, Gog and Magog, from the four corners of the earth, to do battle against the camp of the saints, or the beloved city.
And here we see the same idea, that Satan will marshal! his attack, by whatever means he can—politically, religiously, through other gospels—to silence the Gospel ''And the city shall be taken," it goes on, "and the houses plundered, and the women ravished." In other words, he will be very successful in silencing the Gospel.
Then notice, "Half of the city shall go into exile. But the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city." Now what does God mean by that? It means that all those in the body of Christ who are not born again (and in our congregations, every one has many people who are unsaved) will be snared into other gospels. They will actually depart from the true Gospel. They will be like half the city going into exile.
"But the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city." The true believers cannot lose their salvation. They will stand firm until the end. And then it says, "Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fights on a day of battle." Now that's the language of Revelation 19, when He comes on a white horse. This is the language of Judgment Day, when He is going to judge the nations and cast them into hell.
And then He uses this language: "On that day His feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives, which lies before Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two." Now it's interesting that He uses the phrase, "the Mount of Olives." What is the body of Christ called in Romans 11? Do you remember? It's called an olive tree, isn't it? Into which we're engrafted. Do you remember that? It's called an olive tree.
CALLER: You're saying that these scriptures are not just to be taken literally.
HC: No, they're to be taken symbolically, only because when we search them out in the light of everything else in the Bible, we must. Now for example, it talks about His feet standing. Now when we search the Bible to find any other language that speaks about His feet standing, we find at least a couple of references. We find in Habakkuk 3 we read in verse 11, "The sun and the moon stood still in their habitation, at the light of Thine arrows as they sped, at the flash of Thy glittering spear. Thou didst destroy the earth in fury. Thou didst trample the nations in anger. Thou wentest forth for the salvation of Thy people, for the salvation of Thy anointed. Thou didst crush the head of the wicked, laying him bare from thigh to neck."
Now this is poetic language, speaking of the wrath of God against the unsaved, and the salvation of those who have placed their trust in Him. And notice what language is used. "Thou didst destroy the earth in fury." And so God is indicating that this is the kind of language He uses when He is speaking of His wrath on the unsaved, and His salvation of those who belong to Him.
Or again, in Micah 1:2: "Hear, you peoples, all of you. Hearken, O earth, and all that is in it. And let the Lord God be a witness against you, the Lord from His holy temple. For behold, the Lord is coming forth out of His place, and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth. And the mountains will melt under Him, and the valleys will be cleft. And it goes on to discuss what Judgment Day is.
Now again, you see, it's using language of trodding on the high places of the earth. This is the kind of language used here in Zechariah 14, where His feet are standing on the Mount of Olives. Now you see, it's language that is teaching that God is coming to deal with sin, to destroy the unsaved by judgment, and to save those who belong to Him.
The fact that the Mount of Olives is split indicates the same truth as the fact that Jerusalem, half the city is taken. The Mount of Olives really represents the body of Christ again. And the body of Christ is severed down the middle, because those who are unsaved in the congregation are going to stand for judgment, whereas those who are saved will go to eternally be with Him.
Now we know it's the end of time because it goes right on, in the last half of verse 5, "Then the Lord your God will come, and all the holy ones with Him. On that day there will be neither cold nor frost. And there will be continuous day. It is known to the Lord. Not day and not night. For at evening time there will be light." Now that's the language of eternity. That's the language of the end of time.
CALLER: Those that will come with Him, now who are they?
HC: Well, let's go back to I Thessalonians 3, in order to discover who these are. The question is, who are these holy ones who will come with Him? In I Thessalonians 3 He says, in the last verse, "He may establish your hearts unblameable, in holiness, before our God and Father, at the coming of Our Lord Jesus, with all His saints." Well now how did they get with Him? Good question.
I Thessalonians 4 repeats the same thing in verse 14: "For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep. Well, now let's figure this one out. These are the dead in Christ. They have fallen asleep, but in their souls they've gone to live and reign with Christ in Heaven, have they not? And so they come with Him. Their bodies are in the grave, and their bodies are going to be resurrected at the same time those who have not died and who are believers will be raptured, as I Thessalonians 4 teaches.
And so we come with Him, if we've died, and we are resurrected when He comes if we've died. Both of these are truth. And we're reunited. And so all the believers are with Him in the air. See how all this ties together?
CALLER: It's very interesting, you know, because I've been brought up with the other teaching, and I'm not afraid. The Lord is my Lord, and if He chooses to put me through tribulation, I'm not afraid. But I just find it very interesting that you bring this out, a different look on it.
HC: Well, you'll notice that we're not pushing on Scripture, we're not forcing. We're just letting the Bible speak, going from passage to passage. And wherever we go, we find that it all ties together very beautifully. When you look at the rapture, for example, in I Corinthians 15, remember what it says? "We'll not all sleep, but we'll all be changed, in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, at the sound of the last trumpet." Well, there's a time clue, "at the sound of the last trumpet." So we begin to search the Bible. When is the last trumpet?
Well, in the Book of Revelation we find the seven trumpets, don't we? And finally we read in Revelation 11:15, "Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet." Now there's not an eighth trumpet. Nowhere in the Bible is there an eighth trumpet. The seventh is the last trumpet.
And what happened? "The kingdom of the world is become the Kingdom of Our Lord and His Christ. And He shall reign forever and ever. And the twenty-four elders who sit on their throne before God fell on their faces and worshipped God, saying, We give thanks to Thee, Lord God Almighty, who art and who wast, that Thou hast taken Thy great power and didst reign. The nations raged, but Thy wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged." Aha! It's Judgment Day, you see. "For rewarding Thy servants." That is, to give us eternal life in our bodies, which we were still waiting for. "The prophets and saints and those who fear Thy Name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth." So the unsaved, the wicked, are cast into hell.
This is the seventh trumpet. This is the time of the rapture, when we will not all sleep but we'll all be changed, in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye.
CALLER: When does the Millennium come in on this then?
HC: When is the Millennium? Now you've opened up another question altogether.
CALLER: My whole teaching . . . and I just wondered, because we were taught that after the tribulation we were coming back with Christ, and that He would reign for that millennium time, and that life would go on. People would have babies, and there would be no influence of Satan during the millennium time. Then Satan would be loosed, and they would have an opportunity to make their choice. Now is that another thing that's been taught wrong?
HC: Yes, I'm afraid so. You see, let me ask you this question. What would Christ be doing on this sin-cursed earth to reign a thousand years? Now what would be the purpose of this kind of a reign? Here He's provided this marvellous salvation, and we've gone to live and reign with Him in Heaven in our soul existence. And now Christ is going to leave Heaven, where we are, and He's going to come to this earth...
CALLER: We're coming with Him.
HC: But we're in our souls, up in Heaven. Are we going to be on this sin-cursed earth in our redeemed bodies? Are we going to have to be in the presence of unsaved people, as people who are born again, both in body and soul? We've left this sublime wonder of Heaven, the glorious presence of Christ, and now are we going to have to be here on this sin-cursed earth, with its floods and its tensions and anger and pestilence?
CALLER: It won't have that in it.
HC: It won't?
CALI.ER: That's my understanding.
HC: But this earth is still under the curse of sin. It's still subject to viruses and pestilence. And frankly, if He's bound for a thousand years, then why does Christ have to rule the nations with a rod of iron during this period' Why are they ready to rise against Him at the slightest notice during the Millennium? Presumably He's supposed to rule the nations with a rod of iron
What is this kind of salvation where Christ is going to rule on a political throne in Jerusalem? This is the kind of salvation the Jews in Jesus' day were looking for. They were looking for a Messiah who would reign in Jerusalem, free them from Roman rule, and they would be the glorious people. And when Christ said, "My Kingdom is not of this world," what did they do? They crucified Him. They didn't want His kind of salvation, a salvation that was infinitely more glorious than anything relating to this sin-cursed earth. And yet now we want to talk about the same kind of a political rule, with Jesus reigning from a physical throne in Jerusalem. I don't know anywhere in the Bible where it teaches that He's going to rule on this sin-cursed earth this way.
Now it does speak of a millennium. Yes, it does. But when we study this millennium of Revelation 20, we will discover that it's not talking about reigning at some future time. But it's talking about the whole New Testament period.
CALLER: It's really good. I've never looked at it this way.
HC: You call another time, and raise the question of how we're to understand the first three verses of Revelation 20, which speak about the binding of Satan, and I'll be very happy to compare Scripture with Scripture, and see what we are to do with this. Okay?
CALLER: Thank you so much.
HC: Thank you for calling. Good night.