The Coming of the Lord — Part One

Last time, in beginning this section, we noted the foundation upon which Paul was building the conviction and expectation of the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that there in verse 14—“We believe that Jesus died and rose again”[1]—this, we took time to emphasize, is the very cornerstone of Christian truth and belief, and it is upon this very platform that all of the rest is grounded and the superstructure is built—that for the believer to profess the expectation of the return of Jesus Christ is not simply to engage in idle speculation nor to build some kind of flimsy superstructure of philosophical meanderings, but it is to be grounded on these great, historical verities.

And we made much of the fact that Christianity is historical in its basis—that it is not ultimately enough to say, “You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart,”[2] because there would be many people who might make all kinds of subjective claims concerning truth. But it is important, ultimately, to be able to say to the agnostic mind, “You must examine the evidence. You must consider the claims. For here is the foundation.”

The conviction which we said emerged from the foundation is also there in verse 14: since “we believe that Jesus died and rose again, … so,” then “we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.” In other words, the platform of biblical doctrine is the springboard for biblical hope. “Why,” says somebody, “do you believe that Jesus is going to come back?” “Well,” we answer, “because he died and he was raised from the dead. And since he was ‘raised from the dead,’ as ‘the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep,’[3] he will in turn bring with him those who have fallen asleep in him.”

And again, last time we made much of the fact that one of the things that distinguishes the believer from the unbeliever in our day is that the unbeliever has ultimately nothing to look forward to and no God to whom they might turn, whereas the believer has everything to look forward to, insofar as they have the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to whom they might turn.

Now, we left it at that point, saying that we would come back to the nature of the expectation which is the Christian’s, and to this we come, having built it further in verse 15: “According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, [and] who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down.”

Now, I want, this morning, to try and summarize the expectation of believing faith by using five words. The words are these. You needn’t note them; we’ll come to them in turn. But first of all, to notice the return, then the resurrection, then the rapture, then the reunion, and then the responsibility. And the first four of these words I gleaned from John Stott, who summarized this so helpfully that when I read his summary, I couldn’t improve upon it, and so I was forced to use it—or to provide you with a less-than-helpful summary. So you ought to be grateful for, one, that I’m using it, and two, that I’m honest enough to admit it. And he cannot be held responsible for the meat that goes around the bones, however.

The Return

First of all, then, the issue of the return of Jesus Christ.

Verse 16, summarized in the paraphrase of J. B. Phillips in this way: “One word of command, one shout from the archangel, one blast from the trumpet … and the Lord himself will come down from Heaven!” The word which is used here is the word parousia.[4] Some of you may have come across this word, the parousia, and you said to yourself, “I wonder what it is? I wonder what it means and where it comes from?” Well, it is referring to the coming, the arrival, or the presence of the Lord Jesus. And where you read the word, the parousia, you are reading about the coming—the return, expressly—of Jesus. It was not an unfamiliar word for Paul’s early readers, because it was the word that would be used to designate the expectation of the arrival of some big dignitary. And if someone was coming into town—an emperor or a distinguished person—the word was going around that there was to be a parousia, and the identifiable feature of it was to be the grandeur and the expectation and the definite and decisive nature of it.

And so Paul picks up this word, and he says, “I want you to understand that there’s nothing vague, there’s nothing uncertain, there’s nothing ultimately cloudy concerning this event towards which the church looks. The return of Jesus Christ is to be decisive, and it is to be definite.”

When we think of the return of Jesus, we’re not thinking of an issue that somehow or another you have to go ferreting around and looking for it—picking up stones and boulders, as it were, of biblical truth in the hope that we may discover it somewhere. No, the very fact of the return of Jesus is replete throughout the whole of the New Testament. And if you doubt this, you need only to scan the Gospel records.

For example, in Matthew’s Gospel, you find him giving great emphasis to it in the twenty-fourth chapter. And you will do well to study chapter 24, and also into 25, and the words of Matthew, for example, in verse 26: “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the desert,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it.”[5] Because, he says, it’s going to be a cosmic event. It’s going to be a universal event. It’s not going to be a localized event.

I remember in the ʼ70s, in London, there was a chap who was wandering around who had long blond hair, wore a white robe, and sometimes had a large walking stick. And he used to be in Regent Street. He was down in Piccadilly Circus. He was everywhere! And he was announcing the fact that he was Jesus and he was back. And there were some people who were taking time to wonder about this: “Is he really back?” And the answer was, “He’s flat-out not back!” And people would say, “Well, how do you know? I mean, after all, he seems to be a nice kind of person, and he’s not doing anything bad, and he seems to have some of the jargon to proclaim.” Well, the answer is Matthew 24:25. If somebody says he’s at Piccadilly Circus, don’t go down to Piccadilly Circus; he’s not there. If somebody says he’s up at Marble Arch, don’t go to Marble Arch; he’s not there. Why? Because when he comes, it will not be localized; it will be dramatic, and it will be universal.

Interestingly enough and in passing, in this weekend of rock ’n’ roll, in one of the biographies of Paul McCartney, it mentions the fact that this character, whom I met on a number of occasions, showed up at Paul McCartney’s front door in St John’s Wood, rang the front doorbell; McCartney answered the door, said hello; the chap said, “I am Jesus.” So McCartney said, “You are? Come in”—brought him in, made him a cup of tea, and talked with him. And then he was going to Abbey Road Studios to record Let It Be. And so he said to the chap, “Would you like to come to the recording?” So he takes this blond-haired guy with a white robe and his walking stick to the Abbey Road Studios and introduced him to John Lennon and Harrison and Ringo Starr and said, “Guys, this is Jesus, and he was over at my house for a cup of tea.” And the biographer says, “And so”—something like—“and so this was the closest the Beatles ever came to meeting Jesus.”

But he wasn’t remotely related to Jesus. And there will be many of these Jesuses walk upon the stage of human history. Don’t be deceived by them. They are the spirit of the antichrist, which has gone out into the world. When somebody says, “He’s in the desert, let’s go there. He’s over here, let’s go there,” don’t even move. You don’t need to. That’s what Matthew 24 is largely about.

When you go into Mark’s Gospel, read Mark 13. You go into Luke’s Gospel, read 21. You go to John’s Gospel, read John 14. John 14, the opening verses were not written for funeral services. They’re read at funeral services, and that’s okay. But they were not written to comfort the dead and the dying and the bereaved. They were written to encourage these believers to understand that when Jesus went away, he was coming back. He looked into their eyes, and he saw that there was a dimming of their expectations—that they had begun to fasten on the fact that this was not going to end up the way they had anticipated. And Jesus says,

Hey, don’t let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it weren’t so, I would have told you. I’m going 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 you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.[6]

And good old Thomas gives voice to what no one else is prepared to give voice to—the kind of kid who, in the class, asks the question that you’re hoping somebody will ask, ʼcause you haven’t got a clue what’s going on. So Thomas launches out; he says, “Lord, we don’t know where you[’re] going, [and] how can we know the way?” And Jesus said, “I am the way … the truth and the life. [And] no one comes to the Father [but by] me.”[7]

You find the same thing in the Acts of the Apostles when, following the ascension of the Lord Jesus, the angel comes, and the people are standing looking up, Jesus having been “taken up before their very eyes,” and “a cloud” has now “hid him from their sight”—Acts 1:9. And “they were looking intently up into the sky as he was going”—you bet your life they were!—“when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky?’” Now, that must have caught them on the hop for just a moment. My answer would have been, “What do you mean, why do we stand here looking into the sky? Did you see this? Did you miss this? Jesus was here, and he took off! And last we saw of him, he was caught up into that cloud!”

But their question, you see, was directly related to the fact to remind the church that its responsibility is not to be focused in the matters of curiosity, but the responsibility of the church is to be focused on the matters of certainty—namely, “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”[8] That’s the main thing. That’s the plain thing. That is the expression concerning the return of Jesus Christ. His coming is going to be climactic for existence as we know it.

The coming of Jesus will transcend all events in time and space. We cannot even begin to conceive of what it will be like. All of our best approximations concerning computer linkups and worldwide television exposure and all these things—I don’t think we’ve got an inkling of what it will be like. I think he’s going to introduce a whole new deal. There’s nothing been seen like it. There will be nothing seen after it. And Gates and Windows ’95 is a tawdry representation of a marketing plan compared to what Jesus is going to do in his return. “Eye ha[s] not seen, [neither] ha[s] ear heard, neither ha[s] [it] entered into the heart of man, the things [that] God ha[s] prepared for them that love him.”[9]

The coming of Jesus will transcend all events in time and space.

What’s it going to be? “The Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, … the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God.” There’s going to be a loud shout, used of the charioteer to his horses. I never was on a chariot. The closest I came was watching the movie Ben Hur. And I recall then that the charioteer spoke to the horses—and not like “Goochy goo. Come on. Come on, horsey. Ooh, ooh. Come on now.” No! Nothing like that. Dramatic, decisive: “Move it! Let’s go!”

If people think that Jesus is going to come back with some little whimper somewhere in a corner, they are flat-out wrong. When he sounds out that voice, the dead will hear it, he says. It will be a magnificent, cosmic event. The world does not believe because the world has been blinded. Their minds have been blinded by the god of this age, the prince of the power of the age, “the prince of the power of the air”[10]—Ephesians 2:2. But the fact that man in his blindness cannot see it no more denies the reality of it than a man in his blindness being unable to see the light of the sun denies the reality of the sunlight. The voice will be that of a charioteer to his horses, a hunter to his hounds, the cry of a captain to the rowers in the galley slave of a great oceangoing vessel of Paul’s day, the voice of a commander to his soldiers. It is to be a voice of authority, it is to be a voice of urgency, and it will be accompanied by this great trumpet blast and call of God.

Now, when we begin to just peel back the pages of Scripture in relationship to the return of Jesus Christ, we can go in so many different directions. But let me remind you of what I always try to remind you of—namely, that the main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things. And when we take the main, plain expressions of the return of Jesus, we can say categorically that the return of Jesus will be dramatic.

Matthew 24, once again, and verse 30. Let me just quote it for you. Someone may ask you, and you’ll be able to tell them: “At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with [great] power and [with] great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call”—there you have the trumpet—“and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.” Now, human language is beggared before an ability to try and encapsulate in a sentence or two the magnificence and the grandeur of this dramatic event.

You have the same approximation to it in Revelation 1:7: “Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen.” The apostle John, anticipating this, giving encouragement to the beleaguered believers of the first century, who are having their heads torn off, who are being thrown to the lions, who are being buffeted by all kinds of hatred vented against them. The book of Revelation is not there for idle curiosity, for people to get PhDs fiddling with the minutiae of it. The book of Revelation is there to express the fact that we are more than conquerors, that we are looking forward to this great, dramatic return of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is also true to say that this return will be decisive. First Corinthians 15, we saw this. Verse 24: Paul, writing concerning Jesus’ return, he says, “Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all [of] his enemies under his feet. [And] the last enemy to be destroyed is death.” So when he speaks and the dead are raised, you know, and everyone comes to see, that Jesus has declared his authority over all of this.

So, the return of Jesus will be dramatic, it will be decisive, and it will be sudden. First Thessalonians 5 (we’ll come to this):

Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. [When] people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.[11]

Now, I say to you again: when we just take the lid off the New Testament teaching on the return of Jesus, we can go in so many different directions. But for now, I want you to notice that here, in this verse, 16, we have what is the fullest New Testament description of the parousia—namely, the return, the coming, of Jesus Christ. This is the most succinct and fullest statement: “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.”

You say to yourself, “If this is the fullest statement and there’s so very little here, surely we ought to be very careful about undue dogmatism in seeking to tell the whole story down to the minutest detail.” Answer: yes, we certainly should. And yet, what has the history of the church been in the last two hundred years? It has been a forsaking of the big picture, a preoccupation with the tiniest details, and then some of the most horrendous debates, discussions, arguments, and declensions over things about which the Bible is not dogmatic—and therefore a great loss of that over which the Bible is absolutely certain.

Now, if you doubt that, just go and pick up a Christian bookstore and look at it all. People send me books all the time on the most minute details concerning the return of Jesus Christ. I don’t want to mention them, because I’ll get in trouble. But believe me, they’re there. And I take them, and I put them on my shelf, and every so often I read one of them. But most of the time, I don’t. Quite honestly, I don’t. Because I don’t understand what they’re about, and I don’t understand why somebody would get so upset about a detail that is left unaddressed in the New Testament.

You remember the little mouse that went to London to see the Queen?

Little mouse, little mouse, where have you been?
“I went to London to visit the Queen.”
Little mouse, little mouse, what did you there?
“I chased another mouse under the chair.”

So the mouse goes to see the Queen, loses sight of the Queen on account of other mice, starts chasing around all underneath the furniture. Classic picture of the church at the end of the twentieth century in relationship to the return of the King: chasing round underneath the furniture, arguing about bits and pieces and corners and nooks and crannies, and missing the main issue. Do you believe he’s coming? Yes, he’s coming! Therefore, it has implications.

The Resurrection

Now, from the return we go to the resurrection: “The Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command” and so on; end of verse 16: “and the dead in Christ will rise first.”

At creation, God “spoke, and it came to be.” You can read that in Psalm 33:9. At the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus spoke, and Lazarus came out. Even the sister said, “Jesus, I don’t think you want to go to the tomb. Our brother has been dead now four days, and his body has begun to show the signs of decay.”[12] And Jesus stands outside the tomb, and he cries, “Lazarus, come forth.”[13] And the gathering crowd must have looked around and said, “Finally we know that this Jesus is crazy, because he is now speaking to the dead. And we know that the dead cannot hear.” And suddenly, out of the tomb, still bound hand and foot, walks the relatively embalmed body of Lazarus himself. And the people must have looked at one another and said—as did the disciples on the Sea of Galilee[14]—“What manner of man is this, that even the dead can hear his voice?”

Thursday, at Lakeview Cemetery, I was pondering this as I anticipated preaching it, as I drove all around there. What a place to get lost, incidentally. You go round and round and round. You never come out the same way you went in. At least I never do. I’m grateful to come out for the time being. I know there’s a day when I won’t come out. But on that day, I won’t be worried about it, so… But as I wandered round all those tombstones, I said to myself, “You know, 1 Thessalonians 4 says that the dead in Christ will rise first. I mean, there’s going to be some funeral procession going down round there when all of a sudden, it all cuts loose, and people start coming out of those places—just unbelievably dramatically!” If you’ve got a believer in the hearse, all of a sudden, bam!—the guy’s out of there, the girl’s out of there: “Hey!”

You say, “Oh, we can’t believe this. This is far-fetched.” Let me tell you something: we can believe this. We do believe this. We must believe this. We need to preach this.

Borders Bookstore, Barnes & Noble. Did you see the thing yesterday in the Plain Dealer? That Christian literature, biblical books, are now a three-billion-dollar enterprise, because Christian books are now selling in the secular marketplace—because people are consumed with fearfulness in a technological age, and they’re looking for something. So let us then write the books, and let us then get the books there that speak to the intrigue of the mind of somebody about angels, and about out-of-body experiences, and about death, and about what happens when you die, and about the idea of cosmic events. But let’s do it so that the plain things are the main things, and people can pick it up and not get lost chasing around under the furniture but may be able to say, “I see it now: this Jesus will return, and there will be a resurrection.”

Jesus himself taught it in John chapter 5. In teaching concerning life in his name, he says, “I tell you the truth”—John 5:25—“a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.” People must have been saying, “I wonder what he means by that?” And in verse 28, he says, “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.” “He speaks, and, listening to his voice, new life the dead receive.”[15]

You see, think about it. Why would we have the conviction that we are going to be united with Christ in this way? Well, think about it. We were blind and dead, weren’t we, in our own trespasses and in our sins? We weren’t seeking God. We were lost in our own confusion. We had nothing to look forward to and no God to whom we might turn. And then God shone the light of his Word and the truth of his Son into our hearts—illumined the dungeon of our experience, showed us our sin, showed us a Savior, and we laid hold of his mercy and his goodness, and we were brought from darkness into light.[16] In the same way, into the darkness of the tomb in which we are laid will come the very voice of Christ, “and the dead in Christ will rise first.”

Now, you see, this was the great concern of the Thessalonians. Because, you see, they were wondering about what would happen to the people who had died. They knew that Jesus was going to come back again, and they were concerned that they would miss the event: “What a shame that our friends and our loved ones have died, and they’re going to miss the great day!” “No, no,” says Paul, “the dead in Christ will rise first.”

Before the events of verse 17, the resurrected Christ will be accompanied at his coming by his resurrected people. That’s something along the lines of verse 14: “We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”[17] What does that mean? Might mean a number of things. It may mean that Jesus returns, and he brings with him the souls of those who have been with him in heaven to this point. Or it may well mean that instantaneously, as the bodies are resurrected and as Jesus comes with the souls of those who’ve been eternally with him, instantaneously they are reunited. And so when we hear and we look up into the skies, suddenly there’s a great crowd of people coming—not just Jesus on his own, but he is bringing his gathered people. He’s picked them up from here, there, and from everywhere. They’ve all been gathering together, and like a great swarm across the sky…

There is no possibility that those who have died in Christ will ever be separated from Christ. We are indissolubly linked to Jesus.

Do you see why I say this is a cosmic event? We haven’t even begun to imagine what this is going to mean. We haven’t got into the dimension that this is going to take us when this happens. I’m convinced of it. This is going to so far exceed anything we’ve ever known. It’s going to blow the mind of the unbeliever in a moment—and totally freak out the Christian as well.

There is no possibility that those who have died in Christ will ever be separated from Christ. We are indissolubly linked to Jesus. We are inseparably linked to Jesus. Think about it. If by nature we are “without [God] and without [hope] in the world,”[18] that we are “the objects of his wrath”[19]—Ephesians 2—and then the light of the glorious gospel of Christ shines into our lives and we respond in repentance and faith, then we become, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “a new creation”: “If any man be in Christ, he is a new [creation].”[20] So now I am in Christ. For how long am I in Christ? Forever! Therefore, I die in Christ. Therefore, I rise in Christ. Therefore, I will be eternally with Christ. “His forever,” says the hymnwriter,

      only his;
Who the Lord and me shall part?
Ah, with what a rest of bliss
Christ can fill the loving heart!
Heav’n and earth may fade and flee,
Firstborn light in gloom decline;
But while God and I shall be,
I am his, and he is mine.[21]

The Rapture

The return, the resurrection, the rapture. What is this? Verse 17: we’re going to be sneezed—seized. We may sneeze as well, but we’re going to be seized. “After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up”—seized, grabbed, snatched, carried off by force.

Where do we get the word rapture? We get it from the Latin—the Latin word rapere, r-a-p-e-r-e. And so our English word has entered to the parlance of the church as a result of the influence of the Latin. The word is descriptive of a sudden swoop, and usually of one with such a force that cannot be resisted. And so we anticipate this: the people who are still alive when there is the “loud command, … the voice of the archangel … the trumpet call of God,” and the resurrection of the dead in Christ—the people who are still alive at that point “will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” The Greek word is harpazō. That’s the Greek equivalent of the Latin rapere and the English rapture.

Now, let me say a word to you, and it’s a word both of caution and encouragement. This is the only place in the New Testament which speaks unambiguously about this event—namely, the rapture. That may be a surprise to some of you who have got the rapture appearing all the time and everywhere. But this is the only place in the New Testament that speaks unambiguously to the issue of the rapture.

Now, I want to quickly add that there are other places in the New Testament which can justly be said to refer to it when, of course, this is established as the foundational premise. But none of those other verses in the New Testament, absent 1 Thessalonians 4:17, can establish this fact on their own. So this is it, right here, in one verse. Everything else may cross-reference it, but nothing else on its own may establish the fact by itself.

You say, “Well, why do you make the point?” For this reason: that we’d better be careful, with such limited information, about being unduly dogmatic about things that we can’t be dogmatic about. Leon Morris says, “Had we an abundance of detail recorded we could say a great deal, but … we have no more than a few simple facts. [And] we must not read our pet theories into them.”[22] “We must[n’t] read our pet theories into them.”

Now, I put it to you that most of the preoccupation with the return of Jesus Christ has been characterized by the emphasis of pet theories and the de-emphasis of absolute verities. Because what is secondary becomes primary, and therefore, what is primary inevitably becomes secondary—that what is peripheral becomes central, and therefore, the central event begins to become peripheral.

The precise words that Paul uses here, in verse 17, don’t take us very far in our understanding of the details, do they? Don’t you find yourself with a lot of questions? “After that, we who are still alive and are left…” For how long? Doesn’t say. “Will be caught up.” How? Doesn’t say. “In the clouds.” Will we be suspended? Doesn’t say. Will we be able sit on the clouds? Don’t be stupid. So on. There’s a whole ton of stuff. Is there going to be enough room for everybody? Will we all be there at the same time? What about Moses? Is he going to be there? And so on and so forth. You find you’ve got more questions than you’ve got answers.

And so the history of the Christian church—especially in America, if I may be so bold as to put it to you—has determined that it will supply all the details, even though the details ain’t there. Because it’s far more fun to get all the details than it is to live with the bold assertion of the central verity—namely, there’s definitely going to be a return, there’s definitely going to be a resurrection of the dead in Christ, and there’s definitely going to be a rapture, whereby those of us who are still alive in that moment will be gathered up together with those who have had their new resurrection bodies.

Now, it is legitimate and it is obvious that students of the Bible are going to ponder this, and they’re going to draw their own inferences from it. And so they do, and so we might, and so we must. However, it does not give to us the license to condemn others who do not draw the same inferences. And in a way that has not characterized the church ever before twentieth-century American Christendom, American Christendom has failed to understand that.

“Well,” you say, “who are you to come here and tell us this?” I’m just Alistair, and I’m just here to tell you this. The debates, the divisions, the discussions, and the questioning of the integrity and the validity and the certainty and the commitment of Christians in relationship to a view of the rapture have totally paralyzed great sections of the church in the United States. In Britain, in other places in the world—and I’m not going to argue in favor of this, but I’m just pointing it out factually—the issue there is not to disagree over peculiar inferences as to what is plain but is to unite over what is plain and to respect the inferences which other people have. But as soon as we raise inference to the position of orthodoxy, then, of course, anyone who does not share our inference becomes unorthodox. And since we cannot unite with those who are unorthodox, therefore, we cannot unite with them. We have to allow legitimate room for differences of opinion on things about which the Bible is not dogmatic.

You say, “Well, can you apply that, for example, to the deity of Jesus Christ?” Absolutely not. “Can you apply that to the humanity and the deity of Christ?” Absolutely not. “Can you apply that to the authority of Scripture?” Absolutely not. “Well,” you say, “well, how in the world could we arbitrarily apply it to the return of Jesus Christ?” We are not applying it to the return of Jesus Christ in saying this. We are stating categorically and absolutely that the return of Jesus Christ is an absolute certainty—that it will be personal, that it will be visible, that it will be cosmic, that it will be glorious; that there will definitely be his return. There will definitely be a resurrection. That there will definitely be this rapture, à la 1 Thessalonians 4:17. But when it gets down to the details about which the Bible then no longer possesses the same clarity, we have now moved to the realm of inference and away from the position upon which we can be dogmatic. You’re going to have to think that out.

You’ll notice that we’ll “be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” I mentioned earlier that it is in the air that the demons hold sway. Satan is regarded as “the prince of the power of the air” in Ephesians 2:2. And when we are gathered up with the Lord in the air, he’s going to demonstrate his power and his reality on the home turf, as it were, of the devil and his hoards. He’s going to establish graphically, cosmically, his mastery over them.

The Reunion

We’ve got to hasten to a conclusion. The fourth word is the word reunion: “And so we will be with the Lord forever.” “So we will be with the Lord forever.” This is the main thing. Everything leads up to this, and after this there’s nothing more to add. His return won’t be local, as we said; it’ll be universal. You can read that in Luke 17:23–24. It will transcend all that we know of time and space.

What’s the toughest thing in life? I think the toughest thing in life is saying goodbye. That’s what makes it hard for kids to leave for college. That’s what makes it hard for lovers to say goodbye at the airport. That’s what makes it hard to look into the eyes of a loved one and know that they will be taken from us in death. That’s what makes it hard to watch as our friends and our neighbors are scattered throughout the country. It’s parting. And if we could deal with parting, we could deal with everything.

I’ve got good news for you: it’s all dealt with. “We will be with the Lord forever.” We’re all going to be there, and we’re all going to be together. And I, for one, am keenly looking forward to that, ʼcause I’m tired of saying cheerio to people. Don’t you wish you could get all your friends together for one night? Don’t you wish you could gather them all up—the ones that have gone, the ones that have left, the ones that have died—haul them all together in one room and just have a big, romping worship service? Don’t you wish that we wouldn’t have to say cheerio anymore? Don’t you wish that it could all be over once and for all? Don’t you wish that we were all going to be with the Lord forever? We are! We are!

Now, I don’t know how it’s going to be. I frankly don’t know how you’re going to get around everybody. I haven’t got the foggiest idea. But I do know this: it’s going to be fantastic! It’s going to be better than the best thing you ever conceived of—the most wonderful party you ever dreamed of, the best reunion you ever created. Imagine your most favorite family reunion, add in every friend you ever loved in all your life, put ʼem all together for one night, and multiply it to the nth degree, and you still haven’t come close to what heaven’s going to be like. There’s going to be a great big reunion.

In Scotland, as a kid, we used to sing a song:

You have heard of little Moses in the bulrush,
You have heard of fearless David and his sling;
You have heard the story told of dreaming Joseph,
And of Jonah and the whale [I] often sing.

There are many, many others [in] the Bible,
I should like to meet them all, I do declare!
By and by the Lord will surely let [me] meet them
At [a] meeting in the air.

[For] there is going to be a meeting in the air,
In the sweet, sweet by and by;
I’m going to meet [them], meet [them over] there,
In that home beyond the sky,

Such singing you will hear, never [ever] heard by mortal ear
’Twill be glorious, I do declare!
And God’s own Son will be the [reigning] one
[In that] meeting in the air.[23]

The Responsibility

Let the pessimist look down. Let the fearful look over their shoulder. Let the Christian lift his eyes and look up![24] What’s it going to be? His return, the resurrection of the dead, the rapture of the believing, the reunion of all. So what? Because of the final word: responsibility. This is not to allow us to go away and sit in a corner and pat one another on the back. “No,” he says, “here’s what to do: encourage one another with these words.” Someone is downhearted. Someone is going through difficult days. Someone is just overwhelmed by the events of the week that await them. Listen: encourage them with these words. Remind them of this ultimate triumph, of this certainty which gives meaning to our existence. Jesus is the Rock that doesn’t roll. He’s the Rock, the one that rolls our blues away.

People all this week will be talking to you about the rock ‘n’ roll, rock ‘n’ roll, rock ‘n’ roll. You tell them, “Why should the devil have all the good music? You come here, we’ll sing. You come here, we’ll worship. You come here, we’ll show you what it means. He’s the Rock of my salvation.”

And finally, the responsibility is expressed not only in the encouragement that we are to give to one another, but it is expressed in the fact that we are to encourage one another purposefully, as the New Testament says, to love and to good deeds.[25] We are to encourage one another to purity, because when he comes, he’s coming for the holy. He’s coming for the five wise virgins, not the five foolish ones.[26] We’re to encourage one another to watchfulness in keeping short accounts with sin. We’re to encourage one another in zealous evangelism. That’s why we’re doing next weekend: each one bring one. Did you read that? Did you plan on that? Can I encourage you to do that—to seize every opportunity this week to invite somebody, all the time, to this event? Oh, I know there’s some key people. Get them too.

We had two thousand people in worship last Sunday morning. Two hundred came for the visitation—10-percent response; 90 percent never showed up. That’s okay, ʼcause I believe that they were all out doing it in their own community—in which case, it’s getting really exciting. However, just in case some of us weren’t, can I give you a wee word of encouragement? Jesus is coming back. Men and women have got no hope. They live in a no-hope generation. Somebody’s going to have to tell them. How about you? Seize every opportunity. Every time somebody does something for you, give them one of these.

Happened to me yesterday at the driving range, hitting golf balls. Lady, perspiring like fury, but her head blowing up like a balloon, getting hotter and hotter with every left-handed surge at the ball. I was trying not to look at her. I was frightened she’s going to explode. After a little while, she comes across to me, and she says, “Here. I think you should have these balls.”

I said, “Well, I know I need the practice,” I said, “but what’s the problem?”

She says, “Oh, I haven’t done this for five years and, you know, I’m about to die.”

And I said, “Well, let me give you some money for them”—which was an uncharacteristic act of generosity on my part—all the time hoping she would do as she did and say, “No thank you.” And I said, “Oh, well, okay then. I can take them.”

So she poured the balls out for me, and she went away and hit the lingering two. And as she went out, I said, “Hey, hang on! Let me give you something.”

She said, “What?”

I said, “I want to give you an invitation to church.”

She said, “I don’t go to church.”

I said, “You’re just the girl I’m looking for. Stay there!” I got these things, the sheets and everything, got them out, and I said, “When’s the last time you went to church?”

“I don’t go to church. Never.”

I said, “Well, hey, you come to this, and you bring your friends.”

Now, she may not come. I hope she comes. But she’ll remember, at least somewhere along the journey of her day, that somebody cared enough to invite her.

Can I encourage you? You know what? I’m really afraid that the statistics of last Sunday are representative of where our congregation is in relationship to next Sunday. I’m not sure that some of you have caught the vision of this. You know what? We’re not interested in you coming here next Sunday by yourself. We’re not providing an afternoon in the parking lot so we can all get together and scratch each other’s backs. We’re going to do some stuff that’ll get some of you a little upset. The first song we’re going to do is “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” And you’re not going to find that in Scripture Praise. We’re going to follow it up with “Can’t Buy Me Love.” We’re going to finish with “Help!”

“You call that a Christian event?” Yeah! Do you know how you have a Christian event? You have Christians at the event, reaching out to non-Christians, quoting the poets of their day, seizing the preoccupations of their minds, and answering the questions from the truth of Scripture. That’s what we’re going to do. But you’re not going to like it if you don’t show up with somebody who says, “You know what? I do need help. You know what? I got to get you into my life. You know what? I know you can’t buy love, and I don’t know where you can find it.”

Can I encourage you? He’s going to return. There’s going to be a resurrection. There’s going to be a rapture. There’s going to be a reunion. Therefore, we’ve got a responsibility. All the saints who’ve rested from their labors, they’ve done their part. Now it’s up to us. Will you commit yourself, not just to this task but to the challenge?

---

[1] 1 Thessalonians 4:14 (NIV 1984).

[2] Alfred Henry Ackley, “I Serve a Risen Savior” (1933).

[3] 1 Corinthians 15:20 (NIV 1984).

[4] See 1 Thessalonians 4:15.

[5] Matthew 24:26 (NIV 1984).

[6] John 14:1–4 (paraphrased).

[7] John 14:5–6 (NIV 1984).

[8] Acts 1:11 (NIV 1984).

[9] 1 Corinthians 2:9 (KJV).

[10] Ephesians 2:2 (KJV).

[11] 1 Thessalonians 5:1–3 (NIV 1984).

[12] John 11:39 (paraphrased).

[13] John 11:43 (KJV).

[14] See Mark 4:41; Matthew 8:27; Luke 8:25.

[15] Charles Wesley, “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing” (1739).

[16] See Ephesians 5:8.

[17] 1 Thessalonians 4:14 (NIV 1984).

[18] Ephesians 2:12 (NIV 1984).

[19] Romans 9:22 (NIV 1984).

[20] 2 Corinthians 5:17 (KJV).

[21] George W. Robinson, “I Am His, and He Is Mine” (1876).

[22] Leon Morris, The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians, rev. ed., The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 145.

[23] May Taylor Roberts, “The Meeting in the Air” (1925).

[24] G. T. Manley, The Return of Jesus Christ (London: Inter-Varsity, 1960), 27.

[25] See Hebrews 10:24.

[26] See Matthew 25:1–13.