2 Corinthians 5:16

Title:  From a worldly point of view

A person’s world view originates out of his own understanding of the meaning and purpose of life in relation to God (if he believes in one), to nature, and with other human beings.  Mainly he sees the world and internalizes and weighs his actions through the lens of his personal religious/spiritual convictions, with the pursuit of happiness as the primary goal in life.

But to the Christian the world is regarded, and everything in it, and the whole creation, through the Scriptures, and never of his own understanding, as existing for the pleasure of God under His sovereign will and determination. 

For this reason a Christian rightly esteems the Lord Jesus as he is:  the Creator, the only begotten Son of God, the only Savior, the Messiah, the God who is with us.

Matthew 6:10

Title:  Your kingdom come

A Christian’s main concern when approaching his Father God in prayer should be the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth; for himself he asks for his basic needs, righteousness, perseverance in times of testing, and deliverance from painful circumstances common to all.

Prayer is a longing for the time and the place where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, uttered with inward groaning as we fervently look forward to the revelation of the joint-heirs of the Lord Jesus and the transformation of our mortal bodies from the perishable to the imperishable.

The Lord God be praised.  Amen.

1 Timothy 6:6

Title:  Contentment

It is only godliness that can bring self-satisfaction with what one has because of the sufficiency, in fact the greatest gain in this life and in eternity, which piety procures in a measure that is necessary for life and Christian service.

Never was wealth assigned with contentment in the sense that no one really owns anything in his possession and one has to die as empty of material wealth as when he was born.

Now contentment is this: Assurance of possession of eternal life and with the basic necessities in order to live decently without burdening others, to be able to serve God in his church, by the power of the Holy Spirit, until the return of the Lord Jesus.

Note: 1 & 2 Timothy were written specifically for leaders in the church, but could be applied also to every believer.

2 Corinthians 13:5

Title:  Examine yourselves

Scrutinize yourselves whether the Lord Jesus is in you.

If He is, you have passed the test; and as proof that the Holy Spirit resides in you and you are guided by the truth, you are expected to do what is right as a church, dispense of justice with impartiality, aim for complete unity, pay heed to the advice of the elders, be of one mind, and live peaceably as one.

The church must conduct itself as a repository of truth, whether in doctrine or discipline or in its governance, that love and peace may abode in it in fellowship with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Job 26:14

Title:  Whisper

God reveals himself to us in faint whispers and not in fierce trumpet blasts, so no other sound should be in competition with it for our full attention.

A whisper is all we can tolerate about God for now, until the final trump be sounded announcing the triumphant return of the Lord Jesus, then we will know him as he is amidst all the glorious sounds and thundering heaven and earth could muster.

But until that moment arrives, we have to be still and like a sheep listening to the Shepherd’s soft yet distinct voice, hold fast to him.

John 15:7

Title:  Ask whatever you wish

In order to remain/stay in the vine who is the Lord Jesus, a Christian must read and study the Bible in order to know God’s will for His children, obey His commands, and thus stay in the sphere of God’s love.

Then whatever we wish in the name of the Lord Jesus will be provided us, whatever we ask that will enable us to love the brethren with a love that will allow us to lay down our lives for our Christian friends, and for any believer for that matter.

The everlasting fruit of the Christian that brings glory to the Father is our abundant love for the body of the Lord Jesus, the church, whether corporeally or individually; and by which all men will know that we are truly the Lord’s disciples.

Colossians 1:15

Title:  The firstborn of all creation

Cultists use this verse to prove that the Lord Jesus was a created being, having been created by the Father first and then Jesus, himself, creating all others in the universe.

If God the Father had indeed created the Lord Jesus, He had to bring forth time and space first in order to accommodate any created being; but v. 16 states that the Lord Jesus created all things, visible and invisible, to include time and space.  Now if the Lord Jesus had been created without the benefit of time and space (which is not possible), he is essentially eternal, because anything before time and space has no beginning or ending, and anything eternal is Deity.

The argument that the Lord Jesus was a created being is also faulty in the sense that creative power starts with nothing.  If the Lord Jesus was a created being, he was limited in what he could do, and surely he could not have made any thing out of nothing, for that is the prerogative of God alone.  If cultists would continue to argue that the Father had given the Lord Jesus the power to create out of nothing, that would be tantamount to making the Lord Jesus God, for creative power could not be transferred to a created being without making him Deity, if it could be transferred at all.

And we must also consider another aspect of creation which is the power to hold all things together (v. 17).  If the Lord Jesus was a created being, someone else holds the power to hold him together.  No one who is being held together by a higher power has the ability to hold other things together, for the simple reason that he has no control even of or over himself; and the power of keeping other things together will eventually fall on God the Father, and that would make (v 17) spurious.

The Lord Jesus was declared firstborn to show that he was before all creation, and that no one was before Him as his creator, that there was no creative act before him, that he was before there were time and space, that he was eternal, that he was Deity.

Colossians 1:19

Title:  All his fullness

Cultists may not use this verse to point out that the “fullness” referred to here was given or bestowed by the Father God to the Lord Jesus at a given time, for that is not what the verse is saying.

The “fullness” in the Lord Jesus is the completeness of God’s being, meaning the totality of who God is.  And here it is merely being affirmed as a fact that God’s fullness has always dwelt in the Lord Jesus and that the Father is pleased that it was so, and he was merely announcing it to all of creation.  No act of giving and receiving can be construed from this verse, and no time element is involved either.

The Lord Jesus had the fullness of God from eternity past to eternity future, if we could even imagine that eternity had a past and has a future, because he is Deity, the God who is with us, the Immanuel.  Amen.

Pre-Tribulation Rapture Theory

The Second Coming of Christ as declared by the Apostle Paul in his Thessalonian Letters is not the ‘Pre-tribulation RAPTURE,’ but His bodily return at the end of the  Tribulation Period.

Notes on the Pre-Tribulation Rapture

[Efren de la Cruz Agbulos, 2000]

significant facts to start with:

(John 17:15,20)

15  I do not pray for You to take them out of the world, but for You to keep them from the evil.

20  And I do not pray for these alone, but for those also who shall believe on Me through their word,

(Isa 26:19-21)

9 But your dead will live;

their bodies will rise.

You who dwell in the dust,

wake up and shout for joy.

Your dew is like the dew of the morning;

the earth will give birth to her dead.

20 Go, my people, enter your rooms

and shut the doors behind you;

hide yourselves for a little while

until his wrath has passed by.

21 See, the LORD is coming out of his dwelling

to punish the people of the earth for their sins.

The earth will disclose the blood shed upon her;

she will conceal her slain no longer.

NIV

the same word, "PAROUSIA", was used in the

following verses:

matt. 24:3; matt. 24:27; matt. 24:37; matt. 24:39;

1 cor. 15:23; 1 thess. 2:19; 1 thess. 3:13;

1 thess. 4:15; 2 thess. 2:1 2 thess. 2:8

Endtime protection

Rev. 3:8-10; Lk. 21:34-36; Isa. 26:20,21;

2Pet. 2:4-9; Exo. 19:4; Psa. 91; Psa. 27:5;

Zeph. 2:3; Isa. 33:14-16

(colossians 3:4)

Paul alludes only to one coming

Recipients:  Mostly gentiles

Purpose of 1 Thessalonians:

1) future of believers who die before Christ’s   return

2) time of His return

Purpose of 2 Thessalonians:

1) answer misunderstanding that the Lord had already come

2) give further explanation on his first letter, outlining the events that are bound to   happen before the coming of the Lord, as described in (1 Thess. 4:15-17)

 I. Who will come down with Christ at His coming?

                       

1] (1Thess.3:13; 2 Thess.1:7) holy ones; angels

(Zech. 14:5)   (Matt. 25:31) (Jude14)

2] (1Thess.4:14) believers who’d slept in Christ

II. Purposes of His coming According to the Thessalonian letters

                       

1] (2Thess.1:6) pay back trouble to those who trouble                 the Thessalonians/Christians

2] (2Thess.1:8,9) punish those who do not know God

3] (2Thess.2:8) overthrown the anti-Christ                        

4] (2Thess.1:7) give relief to Christians, including Paul

5] (2Thess. 1:10) glorified in His people

III. Manner of Christ’s coming

                       

1] (1Thess. 4:14) will come with angels and believers

2] (1Thess. 4:16) ‘come down’ (to earth) from heaven (Acts 1:11)

IV. Action of the saints

                       

1] (1Thess.4:17) meet the Lord in the air, where the “air” is just the place of meeting, a long ways off the ground, because the Lord Jesus Christ is really on His way down to earth

V. Time of Christ’s coming

                       

1] (1Thess.5:4) should not surprise Christians

2] (2Thess. 2:3) will not come until the anti-Christ is revealed

3] (2Thess. 2:7) the ‘restrainer’ should be taken away first before the anti-Christ is revealed.

Talking Points:

1) Paul was referring to only one coming in both Thessalonian letters

2) The difference lies in Paul’s treatment of the subject: in (1 Thess.) the future of believers who die before His coming; in (2 Thess.) that the Lord has not yet come

3) If it were the pre-tribulation rapture, the judgment of unbelievers (2 Thess. 1:6-9) and the destruction of the anti-Christ (2 Thess. 2:8)    would not have been the purposes of His coming, since the act of judging unbelievers and the overthrowing the ‘lawless one’ is at the end of the Tribulation Period

4) And Christ would not have come with His mighty angels if the purpose was just to fetch believers (2 Thess. 1:7)

5) (1 Thess. 4:16) refers to a ‘coming down’ from heaven, with the earth as the reference point of Paul (Acts 1:11)

6) If we were on our way up to heaven, Christ would have been the one to meet us, whereas in (1 Thess. 4:17) the believers are the ones to meet the Lord

7) The picture of (1 Thess. 4:17) is that of an Oriental guest being met by the host while still a long ways off.  In this case the Christians are the hosts out to ‘meet’ the coming Lord Jesus Christ

8) The sequence of Christ’s coming according to Paul:

a] The ‘restrainer’—possibly an angel or the present world economic and political systems—is taken away first (2thess. 2:7)

b] Then a falling away; then the anti-Christ to be revealed,  (2Thess. 2:8)

c] Then Christ would come and all believers to be gathered to Him (2Thess.2:1-3)

If the church were the ‘restrainer’, then that would not be in keeping with the sequence of Christ’s coming according to Paul

9) It is a grave interpretation error to take just two verses (1Thess.4:16,17) without considering its place in both letters, which, incidentally, was written just 6 months apart, and claim that it points to the pre-tribulation rapture.

10) The evidence from the 2 letters themselves overwhelmingly prove that Paul was referring to just one coming.

11) And that coming is not the ‘pre-tribulation Rapture,’ since the event stated in Paul’s letters is related to the punishment of unbelievers and the destruction of the anti-Christ which, we all know, cannot happen at the beginning of the Tribulation Period

13) In (Matt. ch. 28), Jesus tells us that He would be with us up to the end of the age.  The church will be here up to the end of the age to fulfill the ‘Great Commission.’

14) (1 Corinthians 15:51,52) does not refer to a ‘rapture’ either but to the process of change from a ‘perishable’ body to a ‘imperishable’ body the moment Christ comes down from heaven.  It doesn’t refer to any upward flight/movement at all.

15) (Daniel 7:21-25), the Anti-Christ will defeat the saints until the coming of Christ.

16) (1 Thess. 4:16) the rapture was supposed to be secret, but Paul was describing something open and public (Mark 13:26)

17) There is no evidence from Scriptures that the Lord Jesus Christ even hinted to His disciples that they would be caught up in the clouds before His bodily second coming as described in (Matthew ch. 24), among others.

18) (Rev. 19:8,9) The wedding of the saints and the Lamb will occur upon the bodily return of Christ on earth just at the end of the tribulation

period, and not in heaven after a pre-tribulation rapture as some groups would claim.

19) (2 thess. 2:2)

Paul equates the return of Jesus in the Thess. letters as the Day of the Lord

20) (1 Thess. 4:15)

The language here seems to indicate a not so common event transpiring, such as a wave of persecution against believers, for Paul to suggest that many believers would die, but some would be left alive unto the coming of the Lord

Texts to consider: 

Isaiah 66:15,16

Zech. 14:5

Dan. 7:21-25

Rev. 19:11-15

Matt. 28

Matt. 24

1 Cor. 15:51,52

2 Thess. 1:7

2 Thess. 2:8

1 Thess. 5:2

1 John 2:28