The rapture of the church is described as a future event where believers, both living and deceased, will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, preceded by a shout, the voice of an archangel, and the trumpet of God. This event signifies a separation, with those in Christ being taken and those outside of Christ being left behind to face the Great Tribulation. The sermon emphasizes that believers are not appointed to wrath but to salvation, highlighting the importance of being "in Christ" through personal faith and obedience to the gospel. The text also cautions against sensationalized descriptions of the rapture and clarifies that the Great Tribulation is a period of divine judgment and Satanic activity, distinct from the rapture itself, with specific biblical passages like Revelation 3:10 indicating believers will be kept from the hour of temptation.
Restored with Diffio
Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 2.26 → restored 4.69
Let us be the name of the Lord. So the James star. First Thessalonians, chapter four, please. The epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians, fourth chapter, and the sixteenth verse. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God. The dead in Christ shall rise first, and we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
This morning we discussed nine different passages. that had to do with the rapture of the church, the catching up of the saints. This is one of them. There are more than nine, of course, but we went into some detail in the nine. We saw that the Lord Jesus promised to come back. He told his disciples he was going away to prepare a place that he would come back, and when he came back, he would take them to that place that he was preparing. Then we saw this description where there will be three great sounds, there will be a shout, probably the voice of the Lord himself as he called forth Lazarus in the grave.
It may well be the Lord who will shout here. And then the voice of the archangel and then the trumpet sounds. And down on the earth, something will happen. Every born again Christian, that is in the church, that is the Christians of this present age at least, in the grave will suddenly come alive, instantly come into life again with a restored body, better than that, an incorruptible body, no longer subject to old age and infirmity and decay. But a new body And at the same time, in the twinkling of an eye, we that are alive and remain shall be changed.
And we too will have resurrection bodies, but without going through the step of death. In First Corinthians, we read that we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. That was the mystery. That was the new truth being revealed. That this resurrection body would come to living people in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. Then, of course, from this passage, both the Christians who had died and those who remained alive will be caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. We noted that we can't be dogmatic in the description of this thing, whether we will rise slowly or whether we will instantly be gone.
The Bible doesn't give any description in this matter. If we draw any analogy on it from the departure of Christ, then that rising may be slowly. We may be well aware of it. We may experience the being caught up and not just suddenly find ourselves in the clouds, but we may be aware of going to be with Him. At any rate, the term caught up here is what is commonly called the rapture, but that's not a Bible word. A rapture meaning a transporting of a person or people from one place to another, the primary definition of the word, not the way it's commonly used today. This is the rapture of the church, all the born-again Christians, the whole true church of the Lord Jesus, the living and the dead, suddenly coming alive with new bodies and then caught up to meet him in the air.
Now, in this verse here, Notice in verse sixteen, in the last line of the verse, the words in Christ, the dead in Christ. And then in verse seventeen, we which are alive, and of course he is talking about believers here. And the thing that we did not say this morning is that there are those that are left behind. Those that are outside of Christ. We talked about the catching up of the church. This afternoon I'd like to talk to you about those that are outside of Christ, those that are not in Christ, those that are lost.
What happens to them? What is the future of the unbeliever? This will bring us into the subject of the Great Tribulation. You know, I just realized, as our brother, Linstead came to the close of his message that this maybe fits in very well with what our two brethren have brought us before. The path of rejection, the path of disobedience. Brother Linstead speaking of Christians who disobey. But what about the people that are outside of Christ who disobey the gospel and do not get saved? What lies ahead for the man who refuses to obey the gospel and come to Jesus Christ.
Have you noticed that phraseology in the Bible about obeying the gospel? We almost always present it as an invitation, and it is an invitation, but it is also a command. You must be born again. God commands all men everywhere to repent. And to refuse Jesus Christ is rebellion. It is disobedience. and a desperate future lies ahead for those outside of Christ. The rapture brings about a great separation. I was speaking this summer to boys and girls at a summer camp in Prince Edward Island, and I wanted to talk to them about the rapture of the church. I brought along a little box full of screws, and these screws were all painted the same color, but some of them were made out of steel, and some of them were made out of brass.
And when I took a magnet and passed it over my hand or whatever was holding the screws, there was a separation. The magnet picked up the steel screws and left behind the ones that weren't steel. And I used that to illustrate that magnet, drawing, lifting up, picking up. I used it as an illustration of the rapture. First I did it just with some nails where they were all the same and they all got picked up. And then in the second time I got this bunch of screws that were two different metals. and showed how the rapture, the church, doesn't pick up everybody on the earth. If Jesus Christ was to come now, right now, even in this auditorium today, there could well be some left behind, sitting here and looking at all these empty seats.
Now, I don't know your heart. The Lord knows your heart. But if you've never received Jesus Christ as your Savior and He comes now, you'd be left behind here. And left for what? There's an illustration, too, that comes from a missionary in Angola. I think it was David Long. He told about a man who went down to the railroad station to get on a train. He got on the last car of the train. He was parked there in the station, and he knew it was the train that was going where he wanted to go, and he got on the last car of the train, and by and by he heard the conductor shouting all aboard, and he heard the whistle blew, and he heard the train puffing, and starting out, and he looked out the window, and he realized that he was standing still. He wasn't going anywhere. And he walked up to the front of the car and looked out ahead and sure enough, there was the train gone, way on down the track, pulling away, and his car wasn't coupled onto the train.
And he hadn't noticed that when he got out. He got left behind. That linkage, that vital linkage between that car and the rest of the train was not connected. It was not there. They were separated. And when Jesus Christ comes back, You too will be left behind unless there's that vital linkage of personal salvation. You must be born again. And if you're linked with the Lord Jesus through faith in His shed blood, you're going to go with Him to be with Him forever. But if you're not linked with Him, you're going to be left behind. How important it is to be in Christ. Now, before we go on to this subject of the tribulation, I just want to say one more thing about the the description of the rapture.
Just a word of caution, and I hope I'm not treading on anybody's toes here. I'm enough of a stranger in this area that if I am stepping on anybody's toes, it's not deliberate. I'm innocent of it. But personally, I'm very cautious or very reluctant about these descriptions of the rapture that talk about airplanes crashing because the pilot suddenly disappeared or trains crashing or automobiles. carrying down the highway and having head-on collisions because there's nobody in the driver's seat. I think we ought to be very careful about using descriptions like that. First notice that the Bible does not use any type of description like that in connection with the rapture.
It's a very vivid description, but there's nothing like that in the Bible. No such picture of the catching up of the church. And then secondly, is it really the way of God to do it that way? The rapture after all is a life-giving event, not a death-dealing event. The great northern pine that crashes down in the forest takes trees with it. That's a fall and the man who falls, the man who goes down in disobedience, he brings death and destruction to other people. The downward path certainly is a path of destruction to others, but is the upward path a path of death to others?
And this I would be a little hesitant to affirm that it is. It seems to me that the Lord may well somehow take care of those situations. I don't know that I would care to describe the rapture as being a cause of death to multitudes of innocent people. You may think that out, I may be wrong about that. Now look on in this passage here, or rather let's go back to the beginning of it, verse thirteen. I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that you sorrow not even as others which have no hope. Now here the subject is introduced.
The Apostle Paul has been in Thessalonica not very long before, and he was only there a short time, and he started that assembly. He won the convert, started the work. He had to move on because of persecution. He wasn't gone very long before he wrote this letter, but evidently he had taught them about the rapture of the church, taught them very clearly about the rapture of the church. But one little point had been more or less overlooked. And that is what would happen if a person died before the rapture. And maybe he had taught it, but probably they hadn't taken a hold of it. And so probably in the interval of his absence, some of their believers had died.
And now these new converts, so strong in their faith that they should look for the coming of the Lord Jesus and wait for that coming, they were evidently very troubled. Oh, brother so-and-so died and we buried him last week. Brother, sister, so-and-so is on her deathbed. And will these people are going to miss the rapture of the church? Oh, no, no, Moses, the Apostle Paul. Don't be troubled. Don't be ignorant about that. Don't sorrow as others do. And then he goes on to explain that, as we saw in verse sixteen. that the dead in Christ will rise, and then the living will be caught up together with them. And he makes it quite clear that the ones that die, they'll be raised first.
And then we'll be caught up. Notice the words in verse seventeen. Together with them. I'm stressing the words here because I'm going on to a couple more verses that are probably very much misunderstood because of the neglect of these words. Together with them. Together with who? Verse thirteen. Those that are asleep. the believers that have died. Now in verse eighteen he says, comfort one another. And then very unfortunately to my mind a chapter division has been inserted here. The passage does not end at that point. Verse thirteen of chapter four begins a topic that goes right on through to chapter five verse eleven.
Wherefore comfort yourselves together and edify one another. That's the whole comfort passage regarding those that have died. And it is too bad that there's a chapter break because we lose the connection. We stop at the end of chapter four and we don't see the close relationship of what follows. Now just go on with me into chapter five here. Verse one, verse two. You yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night. Begins to talk about the day of the Lord. Now, the day of the Lord is a little difficult to define as a phrase because it's used of the Great Tribulation, it's used of the second coming of Christ, it's used of the events that follow the millennium, and in the Old Testament it's used of some of the battles and invasions that came about.
It is probably best defined as meaning the time when God intervenes directly in the affairs of man. Today he intervenes, but it's indirect. It's behind the scenes. But there are times when God steps directly into the picture and after the church is taken home and the Great Tribulation begins, this is the day of the Lord, God begins to move directly and positively in the affairs of men. And of course that continues right through the second coming, the whole millennial age and the events that follow the millennium. But here, The idea is the great tribulation, the day of the Lord. Verse three, sudden destruction, it's called.
Sudden destruction. Now here's what's coming. This is what's lying ahead. Sudden destruction for men. We'll see more descriptions of it. They shall not escape. It's inevitable upon people. The end of verse three, they shall not escape. And then in verse four, he comes back to the second person, but ye brethren, You're not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief. This is what's coming on those that are outside of Christ, not upon us. Now skip on down to verse nine. For God hath not appointed us to wrath. Now wrath, you see, that's the sudden destruction. That's the day of the Lord.
That's the description of what's coming. God has not appointed us to wrath. The unbelievers are appointed to wrath. We are appointed to what? To obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ. This is verse nine. To obtain salvation. Well, how long have you had salvation? Don't you already have salvation? Couldn't you give up, get up and give a testimony and say, I obtained salvation nine years ago? I obtained it five years ago. I received the Lord last week. I was saved twenty years, something like that. This is a salvation... that we don't have yet. This is not the day we got converted.
This is not the same as we usually speak of as salvation. This is a future thing. We are appointed to obtain salvation. Not salvation from hell. We've already obtained that. But salvation from the wrath to come. Salvation from this great tribulation. This is the rapture that's being spoken of. This is the same thing as in chapter four. And if it's not clear in verse nine, it certainly becomes clear in verse ten, to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, verse ten, who died for us that whether we wake or sleep, here's the two groups.
You see why the context is so important here, why the chapter division makes it confuses the issue? Whether we wait, whether we remain till he comes, or whether we sleep, whether we've died, whether we've gone into the grave. He died for us that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him. We should live together with him. And that's the same thing as back in verse seventeen of the fourth chapter. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. I believe this is one of the quite specific passages in the New Testament. There are others, but this is one of them that clearly states that the rapture of the church takes place before the Great Tribulation.
We are not appointed to wrath. We are appointed to obtain salvation from that wrath. In other words, we are appointed to the rapture, the catching up of the church, and the sudden destruction comes upon those who are left behind. Another such passage is II Thessalonians II, and that's going to take the time with it because it takes a little time to give an exposition of that passage. I believe it's a very strong passage, but it needs a little careful study, and I don't want to take the time with it right now. A third such passage is Revelation chapter three, in verse ten. Here again we are in the letters to the seven churches that were referred to in the first message this afternoon.
This is the letter to the church at Philadelphia. And these seven churches certainly represent all of the church age. That is, there's things in these letters for all of us. There's churches like this. There's assemblies like this. Today, every one of these assemblies you can find something around that matches up to it. And also I think these letters are intended to be a description, a sort of a description of the history of the Christian church. The Bible doesn't say that, but the parallel to church history is fantastic. The more I've studied it, the more I'm convinced that God must have intended it that way.
At any rate, we'll take this tenth verse addressed to the church at Philippi and look at it. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the world to try them that dwell upon the earth. Now here the coming tribulation is described as the hour of temptation, the hour of testing. And it's going to come on all the world, it's going to be a worldwide thing, and it's going to try, it's going to test those that dwell upon the earth. There's a lot more of us in the book of Revelation. For the church, the church is going to be kept not through the temptation, not in the temptation.
He doesn't even say kept from the temptation. He says kept from the hour of it. And that's the significant thing here. This is not a promise that the Lord says, I'll keep you so you'll survive the temptation. He says, I will keep you from the hour of it, the very time period of it. You will not be in it. I'll keep you out of it. Now, I'd like to give a little summary of the whole book of Revelation. From chapters four on through chapter eighteen, you have the period that we usually speak of as the Great Tribulation period that's coming on the earth. Chapter one gives us a picture of Christ.
The Lord Jesus walking among the candlesticks, walking among the churches. Chapters two and three give us the letters to the seven churches. These particular seven churches were the ones that John ministered to when he was living there in Ephesus, and now he was in exile on the Isle of Patmos. And the Lord, through John, has a message for these seven churches. And as I say, these two chapters seem to give us a picture of the church age. at the beginning of chapter four you have the time when the rapture takes place now the rapture of the church is not specifically mentioned here not directly indirectly it seems to be there is no exact description where john says i saw the church caught up to heaven that does not appear in this part of the book of revelation but what does appear certainly seems to be an allusion to it in verse one of chapter four after this I looked and behold a door was opened in heaven a door opened in heaven and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet here's the trumpet remember
first Thessalonians four and first Corinthians fifteen the trumpet sound a trumpet talking with me which said come up hither He's called up. You see, John in the vision so far in the book of Revelation, all that he's gotten so far he's been on the earth. Now he's called up to heaven. Come up hither and I will show these things which must be hereafter. And immediately I was in the spirit and behold a throne was set in heaven. Now from here on through the rest of the book, at least through the nineteenth chapter, John sees things from a heavenly standpoint. He says, I was in the spirit. That is, his body wasn't taken to heaven.
His body, he was still there in the Isle of Patmos, but in his vision, in the spirit he was in heaven. And he describes everything now from a heavenly standpoint. He's caught up, so to speak, into heaven at the sound of this trumpet calling him. And it certainly corresponds in prophetic chronology to the time when the rapture of the church takes place. And from now on, on through the next, well, on to the, on through the eighteenth chapter, there's no more mention of the church. It's been the church, the church at Philadelphia, Laodicea and so forth, over and over again, and now the church disappears from the account until you get to chapter nineteen. All right, from chapters four to eighteen, we have this period of the great, of the tribulation.
I shouldn't say the great tribulation. That's a technical Bible term, and we'll come to that in a minute. I'm a great believer in very close study of the Word of God. Verse by verse, word by word. I am thoroughly convinced that this book is the inspired, infallible Word of God. I believe that you can study it with all kinds of precision and exactness and it will never let you down. Some things, if you look at them a little too closely, they don't look so good. You might see some car that's beautiful and you want to buy that car, that's the greatest car in the world. But if you start looking a little close, you look at the accelerator pedal or on the arm where the driver's arm would be or something, and you begin to see little signs that maybe this car has had a great deal of use.
I bought a car one time and I took it home and before I ever got it home it was sort of a wet night and the black paint from the steering wheel came off all over my hand. used car dealer had painted up the whole steering wheel, you know, and it all came off in my hands before I got home and I knew I had been taken. Well, there's things, if you look at them too close, you're not so enchanted. The Bible's not that way. The harder you press it, the more convinced you are you're dealing with the Word of God, you're dealing with an infallible book. The closer you examine it, and so I believe in a very close word-by-word study, And maybe because I do, because I'm inclined that way, I find sometimes it advisable to tell people there's another way to study the Bible that we often neglect, and that's to read it fast.
To just take this book of Revelation and start at chapter four and read through chapter nineteen just as fast as you can read it. Never mind the details, don't try to understand everything, just go through it just as fast as you can. and you'll get something that you will not get by close study. You'll get an overall picture. You'll get a picture of the intensity of the events that are coming to pass. You'll get a picture of the build-up of this intensity that you won't get in word-by-word, verse-by-verse study. Came into Des Moines on the plane the night before last and came to the plain land at Waterloo and then came on to Des Moines and it was a beautiful clear night and I could look out across the farmland there between Waterloo and Des Moines and started picking out the various lines where by the farmhouses you could tell where the mile roads would be and then I began to realize my I'm seeing for I'm seeing for twenty miles here I'm seeing for miles in every direction and then I started counting the towns The Iowa towns down in the prairie, I counted something like twenty, twenty-two towns that I could see
in just one view out the window right there, real quick before the plane moved on and some of them disappeared and more came into view. That's a different picture of Iowa. Now mind you, it'd be a nice thing to go into every one of those towns and study them and they'd all be a little different and there'd be some sameness about them and it'd all be interesting. But still, that overall view is a good thing too, isn't it? It's all part of the picture. And here in the book of Revelation, you can't figure out every detail of this book. You'll never get every one of these symbols straightened out. If you became an expert on every symbol in the book of Revelation, why, you'd be doing something nobody else has ever done without becoming almost a hobbyist on the thing.
But you can certainly get the picture of the general trends of the event, increasing trouble. increasing judgment from God and the antagonism of unbelievers aimed more and more against God and this clash developing further and further. Let's just go through rather quickly and let's just look at a few of the things that come along in this book as we proceed. Chapter six. Chapter six, verses fifteen to seventeen. The early part of chapter six gives the first of the series of judgments, the seals, the opening of the seals, of the scroll of what was going to happen.
Now, verse fifteen, and the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and chief captains, and mighty men. That's all the big shots so far. And now we go the other way. Every bondman is the slaves, even the slaves. You're getting everybody here. You're getting the top men to the people at the bottom of the scale. and every bondman and every freeman hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains and said to the mountains and rocks fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb for the great day of his wrath is come and who shall be able to stand the wrath of the lamb I've been on a lot of farms.
I'm certainly no expert on farming, but I have yet to see an angry lamb. I guess a ram can get angry, but usually lambs are thought of for their gentleness. Maybe they do get angry, I don't know. To me, this expression is sort of a very strange expression. The wrath of the lamb. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, will get angry someday with those that refuse to obey him. He'll get angry. The great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand? Now, there's a description of the period that lies ahead for this earth. Chapter seven.
Verse fourteen. And I, I, John, said unto him, the person who's talking to him in this vision, Sir, thou knowest, and as you know who these people are, you tell me. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Great tribulation. Literally, I think the Greek is the great tribulation. This is a Bible term. This is not like the word rapture, which is an invented word or like the word Trinity. But this is a Bible term here. The great tribulation. that period of time that's coming, particularly the last three and a half years of that coming time, called the Great Tribulation.
These are they which came out of it and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Now that's convert. People saved by the blood of Christ. People who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, they've come out of the Great Tribulation. Verse nine describes this multitude. I beheld, after this I beheld and lo a great multitude which no man could number of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues stood before the throne and before the Lamb clothed with white robes and palms in their hands. He sees a great multitude, people from every tribe and tongue and nation.
These evidently are the converts. of the preaching of the gospel in the early part of the coming seven year period the converts of the hundred and forty four thousand Jewish servants of the Lord that go out multitudes converted from every tribe and tongue and nation and a great many of them put to death that's the way John sees them here these are in these are in heaven they've died they're up in glory they're clothed in white robes who are they They are they who have come out of great tribulation and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the land. Now, not all the converts of that period will die.
Because the Lord himself told about coming back as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats, he'll separate the people that are living on the earth at that time. And the goats depart from me into everlasting fire. To the sheep, come into the kingdom prepared for you. And so many of these converts will survive the tribulation period. And they'll be the sheets that enter into that kingdom that the Lord will prepare. Well, here we have a description then of the Great Tribulation. Now, chapter twelve. You move on through these series of the trumpets. Go on to the twelfth chapter.
Verses seven to nine, there was war in heaven and Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. Here's a war going on in heaven. Here's a dragon. The book of Revelation is a lot of it's set up in symbols, not all of it, but a lot of it is. The dragon is a symbol. Some people are afraid of the book of Revelation because, oh, how can we understand the symbols? First thing to note is that many of these symbols are interpreted. and we're told exactly what they mean. He sees a war in heaven and he sees Michael fighting a dragon and then it's explained in verse nine, the great dragon was cast out that old serpent called the devil and Satan. The dragon, he's the same as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, he's the devil, he's Satan.
Very clear who he is and who the dragon symbolizes. And he's cast out on the earth. in this war that takes place in heaven about the middle of this seven-year period. And then in verse twelve, therefore rejoice ye heavens and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea, for the devil has come down unto you, having great wrath because he knoweth that he hath by the short time. Great wrath. So the tribulation period is not only the time of the wrath of God, it is also the time of Satan's great wrath. And here it is in the twelve verse.
The devil will come down to the earth having great wrath knowing that his days are very closely numbered and his time is about up. And so he'll stir up a great deal of trouble. Now into chapter thirteen. At the beginning of this chapter, another symbolic figure appears in the vision, a beast, a huge animal. He's called the beast in the book of Revelation. If you study this first half of this chapter carefully, you see that he is a... a symbol of a man, an individual, and as in the book of Daniel in the Old Testament, also of an empire, the beast that once signifies both the empire and the king who rules over it.
He becomes then a great dictator, a worldwide dictator. It says in verse seven, The last half of the verse, power was given him over all kindreds and tongues and nations. He will eventually rule the whole world. At the beginning, it would seem from other passages that is clear as some form of a revival of the old Roman Empire, but eventually his domain will be extended to the whole world. He'll become a worldwide dictator. Where does he get his power? You get it back in verse two. The beast which I saw was like unto a leopard.
His feet were as the feet of a bear. His mouth is the mouth of a lion. That links it back to Daniel. And the dragon gave him his power and his seat and great authority. The dragon, the devil, will give to this dictator the authority to rule the nation. Do you remember that the devil offered this to Jesus Christ? took him up on a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world. And he says, I'll give you this if you'll bow down and worship me. I'll give you the rule over the whole thing. And Jesus Christ refused to take it from Satan. But he did not deny that Satan had the authority to offer it. And now here in this coming scene, the devil will find another man who will take that.
And he will give to this dictator His power and his seat and great authority, and of course the terms will be the same, providing that man will worship him, and this man will become Satan's agent on the earth. Satan's substitute for Jesus Christ. For the devil, he wants to take the place of God the Father. And he seems to be setting up or intending to set up this satanic Trinity where he'll put his man on the earth to rule the earth and take the place that should belong to Jesus Christ. In verse five, the last half of the verse, power was given unto him to continue forty and two months, forty-two months. That's three and a half years.
That's the extent of his total sway over the world. He'll be on the scene before that, rising to power, but it's in this last forty-two months that the great tribulation really breaks out on the earth. Go on in the chapter to the second part of this chapter. And you have another figure appearing on the scene. He's described as an animal here. But later on, he's called the false prophet. And he corresponds in this picture to the devil's attempt to set up one to take the place of the Holy Spirit. Our Lord told us that there would be false Christ and false prophet. And here is a false Christ and here is a false prophet.
The false Christ being the dictator and the false prophet being the false prophet. this one who would imitate the Holy Spirit. In verse twelve, he exercises all the power of the first beast before him and causes the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast. Notice that the function of this false prophet will be to focus the worship of the people of the earth to that dictator. And in this he tries to imitate the Holy Spirit. The function of the Spirit of God in this earth is to focus the hearts of people to worship the true King of Kings, the Lord Jesus Christ. And He directs our hearts to worship Christ. But Satan's false prophet will direct the hearts of people to worship this first beast.
And then He's going to make a great image of the beast, and He's going to cause people to worship that. And then finally down in verse sixteen, He cause of all both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond to receive a mark in their right hand or in their forehead. There'll be two choices. They can have the mark in their hand, probably right in the palm of their hand, or else up in their forehead, they can wear this mark. And no man, verse seventeen, no man might buy or sell, save he had this mark. If you're a farmer, you won't be able to sell your crops unless you'll take that mark. You won't be able to go to the store and buy anything. The whole commercial system will depend on having this mark.
Anybody who refuses it is going to be absolutely refused permission to buy or sell. It will be a terrible struggle for survival to keep alive for anybody who refuses to take that mark in that day. And in verse seventeen again, that no man might buy or sell, say that he had the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name. Actually, there'll be three choices. A mark, Hitler had a mark, the swastika, and there are various symbolic marks that are around today. And in that day, this dictator will have his own mark, whatever it might be. And if you don't want to wear that, you can wear the name of the beast, whatever it's going to be, it's not known.
Or the number of his name, that is the numerical value of his name, Hebrew and Greek and a lot of those languages use the same figures for numbers as they did for letters, just like we have these Roman numerals, you know, and the letter and the number are the same, so you can take any name and you can compute a numerical value for it, and we're told what that number will be, six hundred and sixty-six in verse eighteen. Now, will God allow this? Will God excuse people in that day? Will God say, all right, things were so bad that I didn't expect you, I couldn't really expect you to take a stand for me? Go on to chapter fourteen and see what God's attitude is. Verses nine to eleven.
And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, if any man worshiped the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hands the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb and the smoke of their torment ascended up forever and ever and they have no rest day nor night who worship the beast in his image and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name."
That's a terrible choice, isn't it? To live in that day, if you don't take the mark, It's almost certain death or persecution. You can't enter into any kind of business dealings. You can't buy or sell, and they'll persecute you and try to find you and try to kill you. If you do take the mark, God guarantees that you'll suffer forever in hell, no rest day or night, but tormented in the presence of the Holy Angels in the presence of the Lamb. Now, if the Lord means business like that, If he will not excuse people in days when it's almost certain deaths to refuse to compromise, how does the Lord feel today when Christian businessmen will say, well, you know, the pressures of modern business, if you don't use a little dishonesty or if you don't just sort of compromise a little bit, you'll never get by in business?
What do you think God's attitude is when a Christian businessman cheats a little bit, uses dishonesty or dishonorable methods, because he says, if I don't do this in this competition, I can't survive. You know, you preachers don't understand the competition of the business world. You don't know how cutthroat it is, and you can't understand that. And it's just so desperate that if you don't take a few shortcuts, you're not going to exist. Well, then don't exist. But be true to God. If you have to go out of business to be honest with God, then go out of business. But stand for the truth. God's not going to excuse it. If he won't excuse it in that day when you die for your faith, how is he going to look upon it today when it's the most it'll cost you is your business, not your life?
It's a very serious thing to compromise our Christian honesty and testimony in these things. There's some lessons in this for us. Now chapter sixteen, verse thirteen, and I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. There's that satanic trinity, dragon, beast and false prophet. Demons coming out of their mouths. These are the spirits of devils working miracles. Satan works miracles to deceive people.
Here it is. The spirits of devils working miracles which go forth unto the kings of the earth and the whole world to gather them through the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Here is the armies gathering together as the end approaches and gathered by Satan's demons. And now chapter nineteen and with this chapter we close. Chapter nineteen. And in chapter nineteen you have the return of Christ to the earth. Not the rapture now. That was back in chapter four. But the return to the earth after the tribulation. And this too is set up in symbolic form. Verse eleven.
John sees heaven open. He sees a white horse. And one riding on the white horse called faithful and true. In verse thirteen his name is called the word of God. And in verse sixteen, his name is written on his vesture, King of kings and Lord of lords. Here's the coming of Jesus Christ back to the earth. And then there follows the great battle. In verse nineteen, I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse and against his army. All these armies that had been gathered together by these demons will fight against the Lord Jesus when he comes back.
And verse twenty, the beast was taken and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast and then that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. There's the end of the beast and the end of the false prophet. Chapter twenty goes on to describe the earthly reign of the Lord Jesus and the destruction of the doom of Satan is held to a little later on. Perhaps tomorrow we'll continue and consider the events of the millennial reign of Christ and of the final events at the time of his return.
But I might just say in closing, this is a very gloomy future that lies ahead for this world. And I for one am thankful that I'm on the side of the Lord Jesus. I made that choice some years ago to receive Jesus Christ It's almost thirty years now. If I had to go back thirty years and decide all over again, I would a hundred times more make the same choice again that I may be. It's uncertain, you know, you're awfully uncertain when you first come to the Lord. Is this the right thing to do? It's a big decision. Am I doing the right thing? What's the future hold? And after almost thirty years, I can say, yes, it certainly was the right decision, and I'd do it again a thousand times over it.
to receive Jesus Christ and walk with him and follow him. That's the only path. And that's the only path of victory, too. The only way to be on the winning team. And there may be times when it's a difficult path, when the battle seems to be going in the wrong direction. But you know who's going to be the triumphant one in the end. The King of Kings.