The Great Tribulation is a future period of unprecedented trouble on Earth, lasting three and a half years before Christ's second coming, characterized by divine wrath and global catastrophes. It distinguishes the Great Tribulation from the rapture of the church, arguing that believers are not appointed to this time of wrath but will be taken to heaven before it begins. The sermon details the escalating judgments described in Revelation, including the breaking of seals, sounding of trumpets, and pouring out of bowls, emphasizing their literal fulfillment and devastating impact on a Christ-rejecting world. It concludes by urging believers to live in constant expectancy of Christ's imminent return, to be faithful stewards, and to share the gospel, as the rapture offers a blessed hope distinct from the tribulation's judgment.
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Last evening I mentioned the book room, a book store, and the fact that some of the books are at greatly reduced prices, the Bible Knowledge Commentary at half price, and the prophecy knowledge handbook, a book that covers every prophecy in the Bible also at half price. He did such a good job he about bought us out. The bookstore offer has a price of a list, and if any of the books that are on the table are sold out, you can order it, leave your name and address and zip code, pay for the book. indicate which book you're buying, and it'll be shipped to you from Dallas. It should reach you in two weeks at the same price as if you bought it across the table. I will absorb the postage. So I trust you'll avail yourself of this because you won't get these prices or these books easily at that price again.
Now, in the evening hours, we've been dealing with the subject of prophecy of the future, and I have a single purpose here, really, and that is to focus on the imminency of the rapture of the church. Now, there are many items in prophecy that are very interesting that we should study and know about, but many of them don't really affect us. But this is one of the most practical and most important truths that we have. After all, if it's possible and even probable that Christ may come any day and take us to heaven, there are very few truths that are more striking than that, or call for more response on our part than that. After all, this is very important. And so while there's some prophecies we study that aren't important, it's very important to understand what's going to happen at the rapture and also how soon it's going to happen.
And that's what we're dealing with this evening hour. Now tomorrow, both in the morning and night, we're going to deal with the subject of the rapture and its details, first of all, in First Sessalonians four, and then some other passages that bear on it. And we're going to see exactly what this event is, what it isn't, and then see why again we should be looking for that glorious hope. Now tonight I want to deal with what we call the Great Tribulation. This is what Daniel calls it. This is what the Book of Revelation calls it. This is what Christ called it. A time of unprecedented trouble. And I want you to notice how Christ introduced this doctrine. He points out in the end time, three and a half years before the second coming of Christ, The Jews will have a temple, and this will be desecrated by this future world ruler who takes over at that time, and that will also signal the beginning of the great tribulation.
You see, the disciples would ask for signs of the Lord's coming. This is the sign, three and a half years before the second coming. Now, it's not a sign for us, because we're going to be in heaven, I think, before that happens. But for those left in the world, this is going to be evidence that Christ is coming again to judge the world. And as Christ himself pictures this, it's a time of unprecedented trouble. I want you to see what he tells us about this in the Scriptures. He defines this as a time of unprecedented trouble. In these words, verse twenty-one, for then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until that time, no, nor ever shall be.
And unless those days were shortened or literally cut off, stopped, terminated, no flesh would be saved. But for the elect's sake, those days will be shortened. Now Christ himself said this is an unprecedented time of trouble, so awful that if he didn't terminate it by his second coming, that it would exterminate every living person in the world. Now, we're sometimes accused of being dramatic and sensational. You can't get more dramatic or sensational than that. But what I want you to see is that Christ refers to this as a specific time of future trouble. It hasn't happened, but it's going to happen these three and a half years before the second coming of Christ.
Now, in our study of the rapture of the church, we soon become evident that there's difference of opinion on this. And while the church... at least theoretically agrees that Christ is coming again to judge the world. One of the traditional points of view is the rapture is just a phase of the second coming. In fact, it's almost buried in the history of doctrine of the church. They didn't discuss the rapture separately. And while there were some that understood that it was a distinct event, others didn't. You see, we have the perils of that in the Old Testament where the prophecy was given of the first and second coming of Christ, And nobody understood that there were two comings. You don't find a glimmer of this anywhere in the Old Testament or even in the Gospel period.
And even the disciples were following Christ because they thought he was going to bring in the glorious kingdom which is related to his second coming. And they never really understood that there was a first coming, then a time gap, then a second coming until they saw Christ actually ascend into heaven. Now, you have a similar confusion today, I think, between the rapture and the second coming, but there are totally different events. And this time, at least, there are thousands of Christians who have studied the Bible who see the difference, not confused in everybody's mind. You see, the rapture is a moon from earth to heaven. And the purpose is simply stated as taking out of the world every Christian, those who have died, resurrected, those who are living, are changed.
They meet the Lord in the air and then go to heaven. And we're going to discuss that tomorrow. But that's the event of the rapture. Now, the second coming is a totally different event. This is pictured in Revelation, as a glorious return of Christ from heaven to earth, accompanied by millions of saints and angels. And while the rapture seems to be an instantaneous event, we're suddenly gone. The second coming is something that probably takes hours and perhaps even days. These millions of people accompanying Christ in a stately procession from heaven to earth. In fact, the whole earth is going to see it. We're told in Revelation one seven that every eye will see it, both the saved and the unsaved, when the second coming of Christ occurs.
At the rapture, we don't know what they'll see, probably nothing. So there are two distinct events. Now, in the history of the doctrines, the so-called post-tribulational view is that the rapture and the second coming occur at the same time. And historically, they viewed it this way. They said that when Christ comes from heaven to the air above the earth, that the church would rise to meet him in the air, then he would make a U-turn, come back to earth with us. And that's the way they explained it. And so they said there isn't any time of tribulation. In fact, they said, of course we have tribulation. Didn't Christ say in this world you shall have tribulation? Yes, we do have trouble in this world, don't we?
All of us have experienced it in one way or another, but not the great tribulations. You see, so often in prophecy, mistakes are made because there's no attention to the details that mark off an event. And as Christ made clear in Matthew twenty-four, this event is a special event that starts with a given event on a given day, goes for three and a half years and culminates in the second coming. And it's unprecedented. It's not the trouble we have now. It's something absolutely different as is described in the Bible and as it is fulfilled in the future. And so the customary thing in all books on post-tribulationism, I've read so many of them, is they start right out the interdiction and say, what about the church going through the tribulation?
Well, of course, we're in it already, you see. They identified our present trouble with the future time of unprecedented trouble. And they did that pretty successfully up until World War II. In other words, they just blotted it out. The Revelation from six to eighteen that describes this prayer, they say, well, it's all fulfilled already, but not literally. The idea that prophecy isn't fulfilled literally is absolutely wrong. I don't find any justification for it in my study of prophecy in the Bible. When prophecy is given, it has a literal fulfillment. And that's the way prophecy has been fulfilled in the past. Hundreds of prophecies have been fulfilled literally. And that's the way prophecies that haven't been fulfilled will also be literally fulfilled.
That's why we need to pay close attention to what the Bible pictures for the future. But up till World War II, they just wrote it off and said, well, it's already passed. One of my good friends, who's a good Bible scholar, he's in heaven now, I think he knows better. But he used to say, well, the tribulation's already passed, the man of sin and the Christ has come and gone. He wasn't sure who he was, but he was sure he'd already passed, and so Christ could come any day. And so he had the same idea of imminency as we do in the rapture, but he was absolutely wrong. The second coming is not imminent. And I want to bring out some of the reasons for that tonight. Now after World War II, there is a movement in human thought towards more realism, because here was the atomic bomb with its capacity to kill millions of people in just a short time.
And so even the post-tribulations were influenced and So they made a U-turn and they said, well, there is a time of trouble ahead. In other words, the rapture is not going to occur today. The tribulation isn't past, it's still future. And that was a radical difference. And one well-known scholar wrote a book, The Blessed Hope, which he set forth that idea. This was back about nineteen sixty. Well, you know, I'm pretty prejudiced in this because I've studied it and come to firm conclusions and I said to myself, now I think this book's wrong, but Suppose I just read it and go along with it for a while and see what it teaches and what it says. So for several days I read the book and sort of went along with his argument.
Yes, the rapture can occur now. It has to come at the end of this future time of trouble. And suddenly I realized that my outlook on the world was totally different than it was before. Now I wasn't looking for the rapture. I wasn't looking for the Lord. I was looking for the Antichrist. I was looking for a time of trouble. I was looking for Scriptures to be fulfilled. And only after that, perhaps years ahead, the rapture might occur. You see, it makes a practical difference what you hold on. Some items in prophecy don't make any difference to us practically. We may differ on it, but it doesn't make a bit of difference because we're not affected. But this is not that way.
This is a very important practical issue. Can Christ come today or... Is it postponed indefinitely? You don't have to be looking for it. That's the issue. Well, they ran into a problem, no. And we're going to deal with that on Friday morning in our study of First Thessalonians. And that is that in First Thessalonians five, nine, it says we're not appointed to wrath. Now the problem is that this future time of tribulation is a time of wrath. And here Thessalonians tells us that those who are looking for the rapture are not appointed to this time. And so the problem was how to get the church through this tribulation, such as they held to, without being subject to the wrath of God.
And of course they use all sorts of devices, no two of them quite alike. I taught a course last fall at the seminary, though I'm not really on the faculty anymore, but students request I taught a whole semester on the subject of the rapture, just that one subject. Thirty class hours and we had trouble covering all the material. You see, every book on post-tribulationism approaches a little differently. They don't think the others have solved the problem. Of course, they haven't. So they try a new tact. So when you answer one, you haven't answered the next one. So we have to spend about half of our time dealing with various views on the post-tribulational view. And so they come up with various expediencies. I won't go into it because it gets almost confusing. There are so many different views of it.
What they try to do is to get the church through this period somehow without experiencing the wrath of God. Now tonight I want you to go through this with me and see what the Bible teaches about this future time of trouble. And you'll see that it's a time of wrath. And it's the wrath of God expressed in such a way on the world that it doesn't just single out unsaved people. You see when there's pestilence and warfare and famine and stars falling from heaven, it doesn't just affect unsaved people. It affects save people as well. In war, Christians die at the same rate as others.
And then in the Great Tribulation, you have the added factor that the world ruler, who is controlled by Satan and allied with Satan, is trying to put to death everybody who will not recognize him as God. Of course, these are Christians or possibly Jews. He's going to try to exterminate them. So in addition to all the natural catastrophes that God brings in judgment on the earth, There's this added problem that he's going to try to capture as many as he can and execute them. And a lot of them die. Post-Tribulation is loved to just ignore what the Revelation teaches on this. But in Revelation seven, it pictures the heaven and there's a multitude there which is described as coming from every kindred tongue of people.
And the question is raised, who are these? And the answer is, these are they who came out of The Great Tribulation. How did they come out of it? Well, by dying, you see, as martyrs, or perhaps destroyed by some of the natural catastrophes. You see, it's impossible for the church to go through this period unscathed as they try to tell us it'll be. And so I take it they have a real problem there, and some of them recognize it, and some of them try to ignore it. But let's take a look at what the Bible teaches on. Remember what Christ said? He said there's three and a half years from the middle of that last seven years to the end is so awful that if he didn't stop it at the end by his second coming there wouldn't be anybody left in the world.
Now that's pretty drastic. Now was he exaggerating? Oh no. Turn book to the book of Revelation. There's many other passages in the Bible we could treat but for brevity and for simplicity let's turn to this passage. Now as I mentioned I think previously The Book of Revelation moves through a series of descriptions of these catastrophes. And the first seven is pictured as a parchment rolled up on a roller that has seven seals attached to the side. Now, that's symbolic, of course, but as the roll is unrolled, each of these seals is broken one after the other, and each signals a new drastic development in this time of trouble that's ahead.
And so we have the seven seals. Then out of the seven seal... comes another series of sevens called trumpets of angels, and each of these sound, and as they sound, it affects one-third of the world in some way. And then when the seventh trumpet sounds, in chapter sixteen, we have a third series of sevens, and these are described as bowls of the wrath of God, and the symbolism is a full bowl that's turned upside down. Now, they're a lot like the trumpet judgments. But these affect the whole world. Drastic catastrophes that attach the whole world. Now, I see if the church is going to go through the tribulations, they're going to have to go through this period of trouble.
And that's precisely what First Thessalonians five tells us won't happen. We're not appointed that day of wrath. We're appointed to a day of salvation. You see, the rapture is going to take us out of this world before the night, as it were, of the great tribulation overtakes the world. Now let's take a look at some of these things. We can't study the whole book of Revelation in one hour, of course, but let's take a look at these seals that are opened. The first seal pictures a world government, and while some relate this to the beginning of the seven years, the world government actually begins in the middle of the last seven years, so at least that's the concentration of the Revelation. And it has war, and it has pestilence, famine, that occur, the first three seals.
Now the fourth seal is described in verse seven and eight. Chapter six of the book of Revelation. When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, Come and see. And so I looked and behold a pale horse, and the name of him who sat on it was death. And Hades followed with him. and power was given to them over a fourth of the earth to kill with sword with hunger with death and by the beasts of the earth what does that say one fourth of the world destroyed nothing like that's ever happened not to be sure in the flood the whole world was destroyed except known as family but since that time there's been no devastating uh That's like this.
Now, supposing that happened today, won't, of course, before the rapture, but the world population, they tell us, is about five billion people. What's one-fourth? A one-fourth is one billion, two-hundred-and-fifty million people. In just two verses. You see, when Christ said this was unprecedented, he meant exactly what he said. Now, notice the nature of the destruction. You know, they tell us We can't take the book of Revelation seriously because it's all symbols. It's not all symbols. One fourth is not symbolic, and the things that it describes here are not symbolic. Sword, hunger, death, and the beasts of the earth, they're all very literal, aren't they?
And this is the cause of this terrible judgment on the world. And so certainly this has never happened before. You're in the wrath of God here right in chapter six. There's some post-tribulation that try to fix it out so it doesn't occur until chapter sixteen. Here it is right in the beginning of the book of Revelation. It's the time of wrath. If there's any question about it, read on the book verse sixteen in this same chapter where the unsaved say, Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the wrath of the Lamb. The wrath of God. You see, this is what's going to characterize the world. Now the seventh seal, when it's broken, as I said, opens up the next series of sevens, which are seven trumpets.
And these sound, and one after the other, they destroy a third of the waters, a third of the green grass. They're worldwide catastrophes that cover about a third of the earth. But the most dramatic one is found in chapter nine, the sixth trumpet. And listen as I read about this in Revelation nine, verse thirteen. Then the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden holler, which is before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, released the four angels, or actually four demons, who are bound at the great river Euphrates, so that the four angels...
who have been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third part of men. What did that say? This demon world is let loose in order to kill a third part of the human race. Well, you don't have to be a great mathematician to figure out that if the fourth seal deals with one fourth of the world, and then there's seventy-five percent left, that one-third has reduced the world population to fifty percent, just in these few judgments. And as a matter of fact, it doesn't tell us how many are killed in the other things that occur, such as war and famine and these other difficulties that take place.
So the world is already devastated before we even get out of this portion of the Book of Revelation. And then when the seventh trumpet sounds, We have another series of sevens, and here we turn to the book of Revelation, chapter fifteen and sixteen. And in chapter sixteen it starts out with the first bull, and it's poured out on the earth, and this time it doesn't cover a fourth or a third, it covers the whole earth. And I'll just read one of them to get the point. The first bull went and was poured out upon the earth, and a foul and loathsome sore came upon men, who had the mark of the beast and those who worshipped his image.
And they poured out his bowl on the earth, the second bowl, became blood as of a dead man, and every living creature in the sea died, and so on. One third judgment all the way through. Now when we get towards the end of this, the seventh bowl, chronologically we're close to the second coming of Christ. In fact, this occurs just before it. And this is the final judgment on the world, the whole world. Now notice what it tells us here in verse seventeen. Now just imagine being a member of the church and having to go through this. It's quite obvious that you wouldn't get through. It says in verse seventeen, Revelation sixteen, the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple of heaven and from the throne saying, It is done.
And there were noises and thundering and lightnings, and there was a great earthquake. Such a mighty and great earthquake has not occurred since men were on earth. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell." The word nations can be translated to Gentiles. Apparently this great earthquake doesn't affect Israel, but affects all the rest of the world. And it says the cities of the nations fell. Can you imagine this? If you're writing a book of fiction, and wanted to write a horror story, could you beat that? No. Just imagine our great cities with our great skyscrapers, just literally shaking the pieces by this giant earthquake.
Just imagine the millions of people who perish, the loss of property in life, the tidal waves, you name it. It's a picture of total destruction. And so it goes on to say, in verse twenty, then every island fled away. And mountains were not found. The whole world is in convulsions. An awful, awful judgment of God upon a Christ-rejecting world. It's only after this that Christ returns. But then to cap the climax in verse twenty-one. And the great hail, a great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent.
A talent is a hundred pounds. These hundred-pound blocks of ice pelt the earth, and whatever isn't destroyed by the earthquake is obviously destroyed by these blocks of ice. Now, as going through this period of the seven seals and the seven trumpets and the seven bowls of the wrath of God, a blessed hope, just imagine yourself going to the Thessalonians, and we're going to study that in the morning hour tomorrow. And saying, you've lost some loved ones, but cheer up, the rapture is going to occur. And he offered it to him as a present expectation that the Lord might come at any day. But suppose Paul was a post-tribulationist.
Suppose he told him, now, I'm sorry to tell you that unless you die and go to heaven, it's going to be quite a while before your loved ones see them again. As a matter of fact, the world's going to be engulfed with this terrible time of trouble, and most of the world's going to be destroyed, and your city's shaken to pieces. But cheer up, if you survive, you'll be raptured. Blessed hope. Comfort one another with these words. You see, it doesn't make any sense at all. And so they try to minimize it, but there isn't any scriptural basis for minimizing it. This is just as literal as the first coming of Christ, as the virgin birth, as the deity of Christ, as his death on the cross, as his resurrection, as his second coming.
See, these things were all prophesied at one time. Some have been literally fulfilled, and the Second Coming is still ahead, but these are just as literal, and they're going to happen. And so for these reasons, I think the post-tribulational view is wrong. Of course, it's nullified the study of prophecy. Churches that believe in this don't have prophecy conferences, you know. What are you going to tell people? They're all going to die in the Great Tribulation. Pleasant hope, no, it won't work very well. People aren't interested in something like that that actually isn't what the Bible teaches. No, those who study prophecy do so because they have a personal interest in Jesus Christ.
They love Him. They want to see Him. They're longing to go to heaven where their loved ones may be already and where they can go and be free from all the cares of this life. The blessed hope is the imminent coming of Christ. And as I mentioned many times before in previous messages, this is the practical side of prophecy. You see, why is prophecy given? For us to argue about, no. There's a lot of things in prophecy that may not be entirely clear. But you know, all the things we really need to know and expect, I take it, are very clear. In other words, we don't have obscurity on some of these important things if you rightly understand the Bible.
And therefore, this is a very practical question. Is the Lord coming, and is He coming soon? As I've been bringing out in previous messages, what we're seeing in the world today are not signs of a rapture. The rapture doesn't have any signs. You can read all the past and the rapture. It never tells you to look for a sign. It always tells you to look for the Lord, not for the Antichrist or for the Great Tribulation or anything else. We're to be looking for Him. That's our expectation. And that's our hope, of course, that he will come. But if that's true, then it's also true that we should be ready. And as I pointed out before, the reason for prophecy is not to give us arguments and differences, but to give us the record of what's going to happen so that we can get ready for the event before it happens.
See, it's as simple as that. If the Lord is coming, the time to get ready for it is before it happens. When it happens, it's too late. You see, it's going to be an instantaneous event. And the person who's not a Christian then will be left behind. A person who isn't perfectly repaired won't have time to get ready, but he'll be raptured if he's a Christian. And he's going to meet the Lord with perhaps a life left unfinished at home. And so there is this practical side to the rapture. And I believe, of course, the bottom line and prophecy. is are you saved? Are you born again? I mentioned some of the radio interviews I had in connection with the Gulf War because people were all asking the questions, this Armageddon, of course it wasn't.
And I was on a Roman Catholic station near Chicago and they were interviewing me about this. And I said, no, the Gulf War is not predicted in the Bible specifically. It's not the Battle of Armageddon, the Battle of Armageddon is in Israel, not in Iraq, and so on. And then they said, well, what is ahead? So then I described the rapture, as briefly as I could, you have to do it in a minute or a minute and a half, because they don't want long answers. And then this time of unprecedented trouble, and then the Second Coming of Christ. Well, the announcer was pretty much shaken by that. He said, that's awful. He said, what can we do to prevent it? I said, you can't prevent prophecy being fulfilled.
It's going to be fulfilled. But you can prevent having a part in it, you see. And the way to escape it is to trust in Christ as your Savior. And on this Roman Catholic station, they gave me a minute or two to explain what I meant by trusting in Christ as personal Savior. You couldn't have bought that time for a lot of money. But here I had it for free. So you have to walk through these doors when they're open. No, the answer is get ready before it happens. And if you in your mind do not have clear conviction that you're a child of God, that you've been born again, that you have eternal life, don't put off settling that issue. Now is the time to be saved, and I believe you can settle this issue.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of people in our world today that are good church people and good moral people that aren't born again. And when the rapture occurs, they're going to be left behind. They're not ready. As I put it off before, the only preparation, really, that makes the difference is whether you are born again and have the life of Christ and are in Christ by the baptism of the Spirit that comes the moment you trust Him as Savior. So that's the major issue. An audience like this, as a congregation, you're much better educated in the Bible than most and perhaps have deep-seated convictions, much similar to mine, about the future. But it's not enough to know things.
You have to commit your salvation to Jesus Christ in a personal decision. And believing in Christ is an act of the will. You decide to believe. You decide to commit your salvation to Him. And it's not complicated in our part. In Christ's part, it had to be from a man. He had to live among man. He had to live. He had to die. He had to rise again. It's complicated for God, but not for us, because it's God's wonderful gift to all who come. And Christ made it so simple. He said, him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out. The issue is, have you come in sincerity and faith and trusted him for your eternal salvation? That's issue number one.
But then most of us here tonight, I'm sure, are really saved. So you've been saved for many years. Now the question is not, are you saved? But what are you doing about it? And that's a pointed question which I have to face, and you have to face each one of us for himself. We can't settle this question for other people. They've got to face the issue themselves, what they feel God wants them to be and to do in preparation for the Lord's coming. But obviously it requires certain things. It requires, in some sense, you being a channel through which the gospel would come to others. You can give your personal testimony. You can win people through prayer. You can win through people through your gifts or even by inviting into church.
It's one way to win people to Christ, you see. But the important thing is that God's left you here to be a light in a dark place. And then he wants you to grow in grace. And in the knowledge of the Lord, he wants you to mature in your Christian faith and your knowledge of your life before him and your knowledge of the future. He wants you to grow, you see, in your Christian life. I think it means you have to be faithful stewards. Now the Bible doesn't advocate radical things like taking all your money out and giving it away. Every once in a while someone sets a date for the rapture and they think they have it made, so people give away their houses and their property and then it doesn't happen and they're left without funds.
I don't think God wants us to do that. But he do have to face the fact that when the rapture occurs, whatever you've saved, you're going to leave behind. And I believe that adds up to this, that we should be very faithful and sacrificial and proportionate stewards of what God's given us. And perhaps we can start out with ten percent. Some we should be given twenty or thirty or more. I know businessmen are giving fifty percent. Some are giving almost all our money to the Lord. Each person has to settle that for himself. You can't decide it for somebody else. But be a faithful steward of your financial possessions, realizing that the time may be short. should give what you can, not store what you don't need, and to give it to the Lord for his use.
There's so many worthy works of God that are suffering for lack of financial support, and that sometimes the responsibility of Christians who should be giving who aren't. So these things are practical things, you see. Yes, there's truth to be believed, but truth also to be a fountain for our actions. And as we study prophecy and become alive to the fact that Jesus Christ is coming again. It's a spur to our Christian life and testimony that makes us realize that we must maximize our time and our opportunities and make the most of them every day until Jesus comes. And that doesn't mean you run around frantically or do strange things, but to think soberly, how can I make my life count for Christ and then to live in constant expectancy.
Well, a wonderful thing is to wake up in the morning and say, Perhaps today. Just think what a day it would be if the Lord came. Or at night when you go to sleep. Perhaps tonight. You see, it's just as close as your next breath. Everything about that? Your next heartbeat. That's how close the possibility of the rapture is. And when it occurs, it's going to occur instantaneously. You're going to be on your way to glory before you hardly realize what's happened. You see, it's going to be that shout from the blues. And we're going to be gone if you're a Christian. And I trust tonight that's been settled long ago for you. You're serving the Lord every day until Jesus comes.
Now, tomorrow night, we want to pursue this further. Subject of the rapture that applies to our Christian life. But we trust tonight you've seen we're not destined to go through that great tribulation. That's a time of wrath for a Christ-rejecting world. For Christians, we have the blessed hope. Christ is going to come and take us to heaven. We're going to be up there where all these tragic chapters are fulfilled on earth. And then when Christ comes back in his second coming, we're going to come with him because we're going to reign with him in the thousand year reign of Christ. And we're going to be part of wherever Christ is. We're going to be also. And so when he's in the earth, we're his millennial kingdom. We're going to be here too. And then ultimately in the new earth, new heaven, and the new Jerusalem throughout all eternity to come after our present earth is destroyed.
We have a wonderful prospect ahead, don't we? There is no setting sun for a Christian. There may be life, struggle, maybe even death. But beyond that, there is the unending day of being in the presence of the Savior, rejoicing in His marvelous grace and be the object of His loving care. We have a wonderful future, praise God. Shall we pray? Our Father, how grateful we are for this great truth. You're now tragically pointed at the scriptures that describe this awful time of trouble that those who do not know Christ are going to face once the rapture occurs. We pray, Lord, that we may be thankful.
This is not our appointment. Our appointment is the day in the presence of the Savior forever and ever. So, Lord, help us to rejoice in that at the same time.