What Nobody is Saying | The Tom Hughes Report

When is the Rapture? Part -10 Pr. Andrew Woods.

Studies with Stearman: Philemon - A Portrait of the Rapture

The Father’s House and the Way There

Republished from lighthousetrailresearch.com

September 4th, 2016 | Author: Lighthouse Trails author

Harry A. Ironside

By Harry A. Ironside

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:1-6)

In these verses, two outstanding truths are emphasized: first, that of the Father’s house, and second, our Lord’s personal return for His own. The Lord Jesus had been giving His last messages to His disciples. He had intimated that soon they would forsake Him and flee. He had told them He was going away, and for the present, they could not come where He was to go. And in verse thirty-six of chapter thirteen we read:

Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.

He was going, you see, to the Father’s house. He was going home to God by way of the Cross and resurrection, and Peter could not follow immediately. But the Lord says, “Thou shalt follow Me afterwards.” Peter did not understand that, and he said to Him, “Lord, why cannot I follow Thee now? I will lay down my life for Thy sake” (John 13:37).

“Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for My sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied Me thrice” (John 13:38).

And then He immediately adds, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me.” You see, the Lord Jesus is addressing these words, of course, to all His disciples, but directly to the disciple who was to deny Him in so short a time. And this is surely very comforting for our hearts. Peter was to fail the Lord—Jesus knew he would fail—but deep in Peter’s heart, there was a fervent love for the Lord Jesus. And when he said, “I will lay down my life for Thy sake,” he meant every word of it. But he did not realize how untrustworthy his own heart was. It was a case of the spirit being willing, but the flesh weak. And Jesus knew something of the fearful discouragement that would roll over the soul of Peter when he awoke to the realization of the fact that he had been so utterly faithless in the hour of his Master’s need.

In the very time that Jesus needed someone to stand up for Him and to say boldly, “Yes, I am one of His, and I can bear witness to the purity of His life and to the goodness of His ways”—at that time, Peter, frightened by the soldiers gathered about, denied any knowledge of his Savior. And, oh, the days and nights that would follow, as he would feel that surely he must be utterly cast off, surely the Lord could never put any trust in him again! But if he remembered these words, what a comfort they must have brought to his poor aching heart! For Jesus is practically saying, “I know all about it, Peter. I know how you are going to fail, but I want you to know this; in My Father’s house are many mansions, and you are going to share one of those mansions with Me some day. I am not going to permit you, Peter, to be utterly overcome. I am not going to permit you to go into complete apostasy. You will fall, but you will be lifted up again, and you will share with Me a place in the many mansions.”

When He says, “Let not your heart be troubled,” He does not mean, “Do not be exercised about your failure,” for He Himself sought to exercise the heart of Peter, and in a wonderful way restored him by the Sea of Galilee later on. But He means this, “Do not be cast down. Do not allow the enemy of your soul to make you feel there is no further hope, there is no opportunity for you.”

I wonder if I am speaking to someone who has failed, perhaps, as Peter failed. Under the stress of circumstances you, too, have denied your Lord, denied Him in acts if not in words, and the adversary of your soul is saying to you now, “It is all up with you; your case is hopeless. You knew Christ once, but you have failed so miserably, He would never own you again.” Oh, let me assure you His interest in you is just as deep as it ever was. If you have truly trusted Him as your Savior, the fact that you failed so grievously, and the fact that you mourn over it, only emphasizes the truth that you belong to Him. Still He says, “[Return], O backsliding children, [unto Me]; for I am married unto you” (Jeremiah 3:14)—not, “I am divorced from you.” And therefore He waits for you to come back and confess your failure and your sin, and He has promised complete restoration, for, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). And some day for you, too, there will be a place in the Father’s house.

“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me.” You see, in the days gone by before Jesus came to them at all, the people of Israel did have faith in the one true and living God. Now they had never seen Him, and Jesus is saying to His disciples, “You have believed in God when you couldn’t see Him, now I am going away in a little while and you won’t be able to see Me, but I want you to trust Me just the same as when I was here. Just as you have believed in the unseen God through the years, I want you to put your faith in Me, the unseen Christ, after I have gone back to the Father.” Do we have that implicit trust and confidence in Him, realizing that He is deeply interested in every detail of our own lives? The Word says, “Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you” (1 Peter 5:7). There is absolutely nothing that concerns His people about which He Himself is not concerned. And therefore, He would have us put away all the stress and all the anxiety. He says, “Be careful [anxious] for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” (Philippians 4:6). “Ye believe in God, believe also in Me.”

And then He adds, “In My Father’s house are many mansions.” “My Father’s house,” and by that of course He means Heaven, and He is speaking of a place, a place to which He was going, and a place into which some day He will take all His own. I often hear people say, “Heaven is a condition rather than a place.” Heaven is both a place and a condition. It is true we do not read a great deal about Heaven in the Bible. Somebody has said, “Heaven is the land of no more.” We have more in the Bible about what will not be in Heaven than about what will be there.

Remember in the book of Revelation, we read that there will be no more sin, there will be no more tears, there will be no more pain, there will be no more sorrow, there will be no more curse, there will be no more darkness, there will be no more distress of any kind in the Father’s house. The Father’s house is the place where Christ is, and that is the place to which the redeemed are going.

“If it were not so, I would have told you.” What does He mean by that? The Jews had had a belief in a heaven of bliss after death, and Jesus said, “If you had been wrong in that, I would have corrected you.” But because He didn’t correct it but rather affirmed it, we know that it is true, that there is a glorious home beyond the skies for the redeemed which we shall share with Him by-and-by.

He adds, “I go to prepare a place for you.” What does He mean by that? You see the mansions are different from what they were before He went back there. Before He went back to the Father’s house, the sin question had never been settled. Before He went back to the Father’s house, the veil had not been rent, the blood had not been sprinkled on the mercy-seat. So the saints of old went to Paradise on credit. They did not have the same blessed access into the immediate presence of God that the saints have now. We read in the Epistle to the Hebrews that we have now come to the spirits of just men made perfect. They were the spirits of just men of all the centuries before the Cross; God had redeemed them and taken them to Paradise, but they were not yet made perfect. They could not be until the precious blood of Jesus was shed on the Cross. Now having settled the sin question, He entered into the holiest with His own blood in antitypical fashion, sprinkled His own blood on the mercy-seat above, and now a place is prepared in the holiest for all of His own, and the spirits of just men of the past have been perfected, and we who believe now are perfected forever. So we are all suited to that place to which we are going. “I go to prepare a place for you.”

And then He said, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.” Now I know that a great many people think of this as a word in regard to death, and of course, when a believer dies, that believer goes to be with Christ. But we are never told in Scripture that in the hour of death Christ comes for His people. If we may draw an analogy from something our Lord said when He was here on earth, we gather that that is hardly true. We are told that a dear child of God was dying—he was a beggar, it is true. He was an outcast, lying at the rich man’s gate, but he was a real son of Abraham. He had faith in the God of all grace. And the beggar died, we are told, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. Angels carried the poor beggar—poor no longer—into Paradise. What I rather gather from that, is that the last ministry of angels, who are ever keeping watch over the people of God, will be to usher them into the presence of God. He is yonder in the Father’s house, and His angels usher His saints into His presence.

But He is speaking of something different here. Death is the believer going to be with Christ. That is what the Scripture tells us—”Absent from the body . . . present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8); “To depart, and be with Christ; which is far better” (Philippians 1:23). But a believer going home to be with Christ is spoken of as being unclothed, having laid his body aside. He is there in the presence of the Lord a glorified spirit, but he is there waiting for his redeemed body. When the Lord Jesus fulfills that which is spoken here in the fourteenth chapter of John, then believers will receive their glorified bodies and will be altogether like Him. This coming, referred to here, is developed for us more fully in the fourth chapter of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians. 

There we read in verse thirteen: “I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep”—that is, saints whose bodies are sleeping in the graves but whose spirits are with Christ—“But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then 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” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17). 

This is the coming our Savior refers to when He says: “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself” (John 14:3). It is at that coming that the expectation of our completed redemption will be fulfilled. In Romans eight, the apostle Paul tells us in verse nineteen:

“For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.” Verses twenty-two and twenty-three: “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption—”What does he mean by that?—”to wit, the redemption of our body.”
 
Our spirits have already been redeemed, we have already received the salvation of our souls, but we are waiting for the complete salvation of the body, the redemption of the body at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. “For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope” (Romans 8:24). What hope is it then? The hope of the coming of our Lord. And to this He refers again in the third chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians, where we read in verse twenty: “For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.”

About the way there. Will everybody get to the Father’s house? I wish that they would. Richard Baxter used to pray, “Oh, God, for a full Heaven and an empty hell!” But alas, alas, many persist in rebellion against God and so that prayer can never be answered! There is only one way to the Father’s house. And what is that way? I have had people say to me so many times, “We are traveling different roads, but we will all get to Heaven at last.” No, no; I don’t find that in my Bible. My Bible says, “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Prov. 16:25), and it warns me against taking the broad way that leads to destruction and tells me to take the narrow way that leads to life.
And so here Jesus says, “And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto Him—” Thomas was honest and he was never afraid just to blurt out all the truth. He said, “We don’t know what You are talking about. We have to confess we are ignorant, and we don’t know where You are going, and how can we know the way?”

Jesus said unto him—and, oh, dear friends, you get what He said, for it is for you as well as for Thomas—”Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6).

Oh, don’t talk about many ways. There is only one—Jesus is the only way. There is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved, but the name of Jesus. Have you come to Him? Are you trusting Him? If you are, you are on the way to the Father’s house, and now you can wait with equally glad expectation for the hour of His return, for He said, “If I go, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself.” When will He come? We can’t tell that, but we are waiting for Him day by day.

I know not when the Lord will come
Or at what hour He may appear,
Whether at midnight or at morn,
Or at what season of the year.
I only know that He is near,
And that His voice I soon shall hear.
I only know that He is near,
And that His voice I soon shall hear.

Dr. Harry Ironside’s writings are in the public domain.

The Mockers

I believe in Christ´s return - Robin Schumaker

The Creed - I Believe In Christs Return from Robin Schumacher

The Rapture (Part 10)

By Dr. Andy Woods Sugar Land Bible Church



 Reblogged fromwww.bibleprophecyblog.com 

My previous articles commenced a series on the rapture of the church. We began with the question, "What is the Rapture?" This question can best be answered by noting ten truths about the rapture from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and 1 Corinthians 15:50-58. In previous articles from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, we saw that the rapture is an important doctrine and not something that can be marginalized or explained away as a secondary doctrine. We also noted that the rapture is an event that is distinct from the Second Advent of Christ. We further observed that the rapture will involve the catching up of every believer to meet the Lord in the air, and that the rapture will involve a reunion between living and deceased Church-Age believers. We then began to examine several more points from 1 Corinthians 15:50-58. We noted that the rapture will be a resurrection, will exempt an entire generation of believers from death, will be an instantaneous event, is a mystery, and is an imminent event. We now move on to our tenth point.

A Traditional Doctrine Now Being Recovered

Tenth, the rapture is a traditional doctrine now being recovered. It is common to hear anti-rapturists attack the doctrine of the rapture on the grounds that such an idea is not found in church history until very late. They argue that the doctrine did not exist in church history until the writings of John Nelson Darby in the 1800's. They ask, "if the rapture is such a clear biblical teaching, then why do we not find the idea prevalent in the writings of the church fathers, in Christendom's great creeds and confessions such as the Apostles' Creed or the creed of Nicaea, and in church tradition?" Why do none of the great sages of the past such as John Calvin or Martin Luther ever mention the rapture? Some even go so far as to link Darby's rapture teaching to spurious and suspicious sources such as a young female charismatic prophetess named Margaret MacDonald. Several responses can be given to these common contentions.

First, arguments such as these epitomize a host of logical fallacies. One such fallacy they commit is called the recency fallacy. This fallacy assumes the veracity of an idea based upon how recently the idea was taught in the history of the Christian church. In other words, if something is not taught until late in church history, it cannot be true. Such misguided thinking represents a logical fallacy, because the veracity of something is not determined by what time in history the teaching arose. The standard for truth is, "does the concept harmonize with biblical revelation regardless of the chronological era when the idea arose?" Just because an idea is taught early on in church history does not necessarily make it true.

For example, many of the earliest church fathers taught baptismal regeneration (salvation by baptism rather than by faith alone in Christ). Although this idea arose early on in church history, this fact alone does not make it true since it contradicts the biblical record (Eph. 2:8-9). Early ideas are untrue if they are not biblical. Conversely, late ideas can be true if they are biblical. Consistency with Scripture determines an idea's truthfulness and not when the idea originated.

Another logical fallacy committed by those who  seek to discredit the rapture by linking the doctrine's origins to Margaret MacDonald is the genetic fallacy. This fallacy assumes the truth or falsehood of something based upon the source of an idea. Such thinking is fallacious since truth is determined by consistency with biblical revelation rather than where or from whom the idea supposedly originated. Paul speaks of those who preach the gospel out of corrupt motives and yet rejoices since at least the gospel is still being preached (Phil. 1:15-18). In other words, because the gospel is objectively and biblically true, it remains true even if it proceeds from the mouths of those who have impure motives. If an idea is biblically verifiable, it is true even if a questionable source reiterates the same idea. 

As a side note, scholars have carefully refuted the notion that Darby got the idea of the rapture from McDonald. [1] However, even if such a refutation did not exist it would not detract from the doctrine's truth as long as the rapture can be found in the pages of God's Word. All of this to say, the rapture cannot be discredited simply on the basis of the alleged recency of its origin or in seeking to anchor its source in Margaret MacDonald as long as the rapture doctrine is found in the Bible.

Second, it must be remembered that this argument from silence in church history has been used before. In fact, it was used against the Protestant Reformers. At the Diet of Worms in A.D. 1521, John Eck sought to discredit Luther's teachings of faith alone (Sola Fide) by grace alone (Sola Gratia) through Christ alone (Sola Christus) based upon the Scripture alone (Sola Scriptura) to the glory of God alone (Sola Deo Gloria) by arguing that such teachings cannot not be found in the teachings of the popes, priests, and church fathers. Luther responded by noting that his doctrines could be found in the writings of a church father who was far more significant than any source that Eck could produce. 

Luther's source was none other than the Apostle Paul. Luther built his theological case upon Paul's writings in general and upon the Book of Galatians in particular (Gal. 2:16). In other words, Luther's ideas were true because they could be found in Scripture. Since this was so, whether these ideas could be sourced in the writings of the theologians and tradition was somewhat immaterial and irrelevant. Such a scenario is analogous to the rapture debate. The rapture stands or falls ultimately on whether it is a biblical truth regardless of what church history has said about it. To those who seek to diminish the rapture teaching on the basis of its lack of prevalence in church history, our response is the same as Luther's: Sola Scriptura! Because the doctrine is found in the Bible, it is true.

Third, there is a very good reason why the rapture is not conspicuous in the church's creeds and confessions. Two centers of Christian thought developed early on in church history. The Antiochene school in Syria insisted that the Scripture, including its prophetic portions, be interpreted in a literal or normal way. Thus, the early church fathers connected with the Antiochene school became premillennialists or chiliasts. They were given this later title because chilia is the Greek word for "thousand" which is mentioned six times in Revelation 20:1-10. They arrived at the eschatological position of believing in a future thousand year reign of Christ on the earth because of their literal or normal approach to the prophetic Scripture.

Despite reigning supreme for nearly two centuries, the influence of the Antiochene school was eventually eclipsed by the Alexandrian school located in Alexandria Egypt otherwise called North Africa. This school, which took an allegorical or non-literal approach to prophecy, eventually won the day and consequently became the dominant force in church history. Dominant thinkers emerged from the Alexandrian school including Origen of the third century and Augustine of the fourth century. Augustine's book The City of God, which was the first formal exposition of amillennialism (a view that there will be no future earthly reign of Christ based upon a non-literal approach to the prophetic portions of Scripture) became perhaps the most influential book in all of church history. Here, I am using the word "influential" not in a positive sense but rather in a negative sense. 

Augustine by and large put the church under an allegorical spell. From Augustine onward the majority opinion within the church was to interpret prophecy allegorically. The church did not start crawling out from this shadow until Protestant Reformers began insisting on a literal method of interpretation. Even then, these reformers were inconsistent and did not apply literal interpretation to the Bible's prophetic sections. Such inconsistency was not rectified until the budding of the Dispensational movement in the 1800s. As the early Dispensationalists began to consistently apply the reformers' literal hermeneutic to prophecy, premillennialism, which had been submerged by amillennialism for nearly 1600 years, began to make a comeback.

The important point to grasp is that the creeds, confessions, tradition, and theologians cited by the anti-rapturists are all post Augustine. Since they were developed in the wake of the rise of the influence of the non-literal Alexandrian school and Augustine, it stands to reason that these creeds would omit the rapture. The rapture doctrine is built upon a literal approach to interpreting Bible prophecy. Had these creeds been developed pre Augustine or after Augustine's influence was diminished when literalism in prophetic studies again became the norm rather than the exception, it is likely that these creeds would have conspicuously mentioned the rapture.

Fourth, despite the prevalence of nonliteral methods of interpreting prophecy during the so-called prophetic dark ages when Augustine's influence dominated, it is interesting to observe the writings of those who still approached prophecy literally and consequently still taught the biblical doctrine of the rapture. Although certainly not the majority opinion, we do have record of those who either resisted or remained unaffected by Augustine's pernicious influence and thus found the rapture in the Bible simply by following a consistently literal interpretive approach. One such individual was Pseudo Ephraem, who lived at some time during the 4th to the 6th century A.D. Recently, one of his ancient writings was discovered, which contains the following statement:

Why therefore do we not reject every care of earthly actions and prepare ourselves for the meeting of the Lord Christ, so that he may draw us from the confusion, which overwhelms all the world...For all the saints and the elect of god are gathered, prior to the tribulation that is to come, and are taken to the Lord lest they see the confusion that is to overwhelm the world because of our sins (italics mine). [2]

If one were unfamiliar with who made this statement, they would mostly likely attribute it to one of the modern exponents of the pretribulational rapture theory. Yet, in actuality, it is an early medieval church rapture citation. Those who study in this area have told me personally that eventually we are going to find so many statements similar to the one made by Pseudo Ephraem that it will once and for all put an end to the contention that the rapture teaching is erroneous since it cannot be located anywhere in church history prior to Darby.

As more and more of such discoveries are made in the coming months and years, the rapture, which was eclipsed by Augustinian Amillennialism, is gradually being retrieved from the dust bin of history and brought back into a place of prominence within the church. For the time being, it is sufficient to say that those who argue against the rapture on the basis of the alleged silence of church history are guilty of committing various logical fallacies, ignore the origin of the Protestant Reformation, fail to consider the influence of Augustinian Amillennialism upon Christendom's most popular creeds and confessions, and do not fully consider a minority of early interpreters who held to a rapture in spite of the dominance of the Alexandrian school of interpretation.

In sum, not only is the rapture an important doctrine, an event that is distinct from the Second Advent of Christ, an event that will involve the catching up of every believer to meet the Lord in the air, a reunion of living and deceased Church-Age believers, a resurrection, an event that exempts an entire generation of Church-Age believers from death, an instantaneous event, a mystery, and an imminent event that can take place at any moment, but the rapture is also a traditional doctrine now being recovered.
(To Be Continued...)

Endnotes

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[1] Paul Richard Wilkinson, For Zion's Sake: Christian Zionism and the Role of John Nelson Darby, Studies in Evangelical History and Thought (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007).

[2] Timothy J. Demy and Thomas D. Ice, "The Rapture and an Early Medieval Citation," Bibliotheca Sacra 152, no. 607 (July-September 1995): 305-16.