Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, I want you to think through the issue of the blessed hope of the Christian, that is Christ's return, or the parousia. Now, parousia is a Greek word that means the coming of someone in personal presence. And the Bible calls Christ's return, the parousia.

Now, while this return forms material for endless jokes and poking fun by the world, right? The Christian looks eagerly for it. And he looks for it with the eyes of faith and a heart of hope. The one he waits for is the same one who came in the first century, our Savior, the one we love because he first loved us and gave his life as an atoning sacrifice for us, as Paul says. And who, on our behalf, Paul says, God made sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

And because we have thus been made acceptable to God now, reconciled to him, united with God the Father in Christ the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit, we always keep one eye on the horizon looking for Christ's return. Jesus left this earth in great glory, being lifted up in the air, surrounded by clouds of glory, and in the presence of myriads of angels. That's why, figuratively speaking, we keep one eye on the horizon. One of the angels said to those apostles standing there with bugged out eyes and their jaws on the ground and awe and wonder, he said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?

This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. Unquote. Why, being here in the first place, did Christ leave? Why didn't Christ just kick butt and take names right then and there and collect all those who believed in him and start to rule then and there? That's the way that any human might have done it, the way any Caesar, Napoleon, Stalin would have done it.

But God does not establish his kingdom in ways familiar to men. He operates on different principles. Jesus himself said, it is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. That helper is the Holy Spirit.

Jesus goes on to say, but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. Unquote. This is the aspect of God's kingdom that necessitated his departure. The invisible omnipresent ministry of the Holy Spirit had yet to apply to all the benefits of redemption to all of the saints throughout history until, as Paul says, we are joined together, grown into a holy temple in the Lord.

In him, you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Unquote. From Ephesians chapter two, that's the apostle Paul. This, the Holy Spirit does in a way that the personal corporal presence of Christ could never do. The Holy Spirit, the invisible omnipresent third person of the Godhead, the Trinity, has been at work on this holy temple from the earliest days of the world.

God deliberately designed our incorporation into this body, this temple, this city called Zion, the new Jerusalem. He designed this to be done by faith, an invisible thing to the world, but blazingly evident to the invisible realm of the Spirit. You do not climb high mountains or cross wide rivers or slay mighty dragons to become a Christian. You do not do great and humble works like Mother Teresa or the Good Samaritan to qualify for entrance into this life and company of the church. No.

Just being a good person, a good neighbor, church member, tither, not committing some heinous crime. None of these things is sufficient to mint a membership card into the kingdom of God, if we might put it that way. Paul says, by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast, unquote. So when this happens, when you are thus birthed into the kingdom of God and you come alive to the realm of the Spirit, when your spiritual eyes are open and your spiritual ears become unstopped, you eagerly devour the things of the kingdom of God.

The Bible comes alive and means something, and prayer becomes the conversation of heaven. Then you also eagerly look forward to your Savior's return, like waiting at an airport for a long-lost friend or long-departed spouse or child. You scan the horizon on a regular basis for the first signs of their arrival, the return of the beloved one, the one who will renew all things and recreate you in his image when he does return. This is what the Apostle Paul calls our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is what is next, dear listener.

Jesus has gone from this visible realm into heaven where he sits at the right hand of the Father till his enemies are made his footstool, as the Bible calls it. He has promised that I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also, unquote. What will his return be like then when he does return, when he does come back, his parousia? One of the clearest portions of the Bible is found in 1 Thessalonians 4, 13 to 18. Here we see that Paul is reassuring the Thessalonians that those who have preceded them in death will miss nothing of his glorious return.

They seem to be worried that loved ones would either be left out of his return or maybe not share in a bodily resurrection as the pagans believed. Oh, Paul writes, but we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as those who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with a voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore, encourage one another with these words." Unquote from the Apostle Paul.

Encourage, indeed. We will be reunited with the Savior. The end of all things here, the final wrap-up, the conclusion of God's plan as he comes to claim his own. Note with me these features about this passage. Note, first, those who have died and gone on before will miss out on nothing.

In fact, they will precede those of us alive at the time of his parousia, his rapture. Note the sights and sounds, too, of this event when Christ returns. Note with me, first of all, Jesus himself will descend, glistening in his glory, visually stunning with a company of angels, clothed in billowing clouds, and here implicit is fire and light and rainbow, as it was in the Old Testament with the prophets when they saw a vision of the Lord. And secondly, he will come with a cry of command. And this is a military term.

It was barked loudly, ordering the dead to rise. And then thirdly, there's also the voice of an archangel. In the Old Testament, it was loud enough to shake mountains. And then fourthly, note with me the sound of the trumpet of God, the trumpet of God. And it evokes the earth-shattering volume of Mount Sinai when God appeared to Moses in Israel.

We see from Exodus, I quote, now, on the morning of the third day, there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. Can you imagine the sights and sounds of that day when Christ returns?

It will be like this. The return of the Lord will be a deafening, blinding, earth-shattering thing, impossible to ignore those of you who believe in a secret rapture. Paul goes on to say in chapter five that all the world will be saying peace and security, but that that's the very moment at which sudden destruction will fall upon them when the judgment of Revelation 19 will crush them. The day of the rapture will be a day of glory, salvation, and transformation for the believer, and a day of awful destruction and judgment for the unbeliever.

For those of you unfamiliar with the biblical notion of the rapture, when is this generally thought to happen by most of the Revelation Red Heifer rapture teachers? Oh, you have been told by the authors of the Left Behind series and Hal Lindsey of the late great planet Earth and John Walvoord of Israel oil in the Middle East, for example. You have been told by these Revelation Red Heifer rapture teachers that this rapture will occur just before the tribulation, and then Jesus will come again a third time at the end of the tribulation.

And in your excitement to see prophecy happen before your eyes, and in your thrill to be able to predict the future and set your prophetic watch by end-time events, have you bothered to compare what is being taught by these things with the Bible? Compare what is being taught with the Bible, dear listener. I have five points to make in this regard. Number one, in passage after passage, Christ teaches that He came the first time to redeem us and will come again a second time to claim us. There's no evidence for a third parousia, which is taught by those who hold to a pre-tribulational rapture.

The New Testament terms for His parousia, that is coming, are all synonyms, and they describe the same event. Behold, I come quickly, right? Erkali is the Greek word used there. As in the days of Noah, Jesus said, so shall be this coming, this parousia of the Lord. We are waiting for the coming, the apocalypsis of the Lord, as Titus says, looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing, the epiphania of the great God and Savior.

All of these Greek terms are synonyms for the one and same event, His parousia, to redeem and vindicate His own, and then judge the world. Secondly, I want you to remember, there's no evidence that the parousia will occur before the tribulation. None. Look, examine, search the scriptures. The positioning of the parousia before the tribulation is something that is inferred by dispensational teachers on the grounds of other questionable theological reasons.

No direct biblical evidence. There's not a scintilla of evidence that this catching up of the church to meet Christ will occur before the tribulation. The context, in fact, for 1 Thessalonians 4, 15 to 17, indicates, if anything, that it will happen at the close of time in history. That is, one parousia, one day of the Lord, one coming. When Christ comes to defeat His enemies, that is, when sudden destruction will come upon them, as Paul says, and when He comes to catch us up with Him, that we might always be with the Lord, as Paul says.

Thirdly, note with me as well, this doctrine of the pre-tribulational raptures, teachers, is that this rapture for His saints will be a secret rapture. Yes, a secret rapture, known only to the church, which is taken out of the world. Why? Hal Lindsey says, as well as does the Left Behind series, says this, imagine getting up some morning and your wife is not there, and you call for her, but there is no answer. You go downstairs, but she's not there.

The rest of mankind wakes up to the nightmare of a world gone mad. Driverless cars crash, pilotless planes collide, and universal panic sweeps over the globe as a final apocalyptic period called the Tribulation is ushered in. In the midst of an unimaginable chaos, the mysterious Nicolai Carpathia, representing the Antichrist, rises to world leadership with promises of peace, and on and on these kinds of things go. But it all flies in the face of what we've just read, that it will be the loudest, brightest, most universally public event in history, not a secret rapture.

Fourthly, note with me too, this doctrine of the pre-tribulational rapture teaches that there will be a second chance for those who do not place their faith in Christ. Yes, a second chance. After Christ comes again, a definitive sign which men demand of God before they will believe. Then they will believe. I can't tell you how many men and women I've talked to who don't have a clue as to what the Bible actually teaches, but they've read the Left Behind series, or they've heard a preacher or a friend tell them about the rapture and the time that follows.

When they figure this is the fallen fleshly mind, when they figure that they will have at least another seven years during the time of the Great Tribulation, as it's represented, that they'll have this time to repent and believe. But they insist on waiting until the rapture. I can't tell you how many people I've encountered who think this way. And they, like the Pharisees of old, who demanded a sign of Jesus before they would believe, these are deceived because the Bible is very clear. It says, it is appointed unto man once to die, and then the judgment, no second chances.

There will be no more signs than the sign of Jonah, as Jesus said. Jonah, like Christ, lay three days in the belly of the whale. That is Christ in the grave as well. And then he came forth, even as Christ rose from the dead. This is the sign.

In other words, there will be no more signs like a pre-tribulational rapture, except the one already given. That is, Christ has risen from the dead. Christ has risen from the dead. This is the sign we have. What further proof do you need?

If you do not believe this, you will not believe a pre-tribulational rapture, even if it were to happen. And it will not happen like pre-trib rapture teachers tell us. Fifthly, then also, Christians are being deceived into thinking that they will be taken out of the world in order not to face persecution and tribulation. Paul does say, God has not appointed us unto wrath, but to obtain salvation through Jesus Christ. But this is a far cry from the destructive escapism that's nurtured by pre-tribulational rapture teachers.

The wrath spoken of here in 1 Thessalonians 5 is that wrath which falls upon the lost in the final cataclysm when Christ returns to judge the world. Of course, we will be saved from this, but it has always been the course and privilege of the saints of God to endure persecution, tribulation for the sake of the gospel. Instead of deceiving the church with false promises of escape, the church should be strengthening, encouraging those suffering, even as they are in Islam lands today. Encourage our fellow brothers and sisters who are suffering under Islam, for example, with strong medicine of patient endurance.

Paul says, count it all joy, or James says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. Well then, from where in the world has come the teaching of the revelation red heifer rapture teachers? Whence? What are its origins? If it isn't from the Bible, then from where does it come?

Well, the doctrine of Christ coming in three separate stages rather than two, that is his first advent chronicled in the New Testament gospels, and then a secret pre-tribulational rapture, and then a third coming at the end of the tribulation. These three advents have never existed in the life of the church for over 1800 years. Not a whisper, not a hint, not a word. The church has consistently and faithfully taught that Christ's return will be single and glorious. It will be cataclysmic and final.

It will be full of inexpressible joy for the believer and unmitigated horror for the unbeliever. There are two advents, not three. The doctrine of three advents of Christ first surfaces in the teaching of a fiery preacher in England in the 1830s, a man by the name of Edward Irving. Irving began his journey into prophecy by studying an old Catholic Jesuit priest, a Spaniard named Manuel Lacunza. At the behest of the papacy, Lacunza tried to figure out an eschatology, which we haven't inherited, by the way.

Lacunza tried to figure out an eschatology that would relieve the Pope from the stinging criticism of being the Antichrist, which the Protestants were calling him. The Reformers had been successfully using this label, the Antichrist, as an argument against the papal authority for centuries. Now, Lacunza hit upon the idea of throwing all the prophecy concerning the end times into the future. This is where we get pre-tribulational rapture teachers, including the coming of an Antichrist, so that obviously if the Antichrist had not yet appeared, then the Pope couldn't be the Antichrist.

So he was successful in crafting a theology to save the Pope. It went over very well in Rome, and soon Lacunza's commentary on Revelation fell into the hands of Edward Irving in England, the instigator of the pre-tribulational rapture. Irving began preaching it in a series of prophetic meetings in Plymouth and Bristol and London back in the 1830s, although the idea of three Advents for Christ had not yet quite come fully to either Lacunza or Irving. However, the focus on in times had a very popular appeal, as it always does. It's a pagan superstitious feeling that all fallen men and women have.

Everyone liked to think that they were living in the last times. Everyone began seeing signs that it was indeed true that they were the last generation before Christ's return. That was generations ago in the 19th century. Irving's church and many of his followers began practicing the charismatic gifts in this meeting too, a thing that he encouraged. It was in one of these meetings, a charismatic meeting in which visions and tongues and supernatural knowledge were ostensibly present, where we first meet the idea of a secret rapture.

A young woman named Margaret McDonald, in the ecstasy of a prophetic utterance, reveals that Christ's second coming will actually be in two stages. And this is where we get this teaching. As Reverend Robert Norton notes in his book, The History and Doctrines of Irvingism, he says, here we first see the distinction between that final stage of the Lord's coming when every eye shall see him and his prior appearing in glory to them that look for him. Unquote. That is the secret rapture.

And one of the men who was a leader of these conferences and became instrumental in propagating their doctrines was a man called John Nelson Darby. Darby traveled extensively and tirelessly throughout England and America, peddling these doctrines, spreading and refining these teachings in his writings. And as he established little groups of believers who met together to worship and become known as Plymouth Brethren.

In addition to his new doctrines concerning the end times, Darby also taught that there were no more true churches, that all of them were unfaithful and corrupt, and that true believers were to come out of the organized church and just simply meet together as brethren in the Lord until Christ returned sometime in their generation, too, at the rapture. Oh, dear leaders, dear believers, dear listeners. In his travels to America, Darby met and had a profound influence upon a man named C.I. Schofield. Are you beginning to make some connections here?

Are bells going off for you? Darby met and profoundly influenced C.I. Schofield, who, of course, is the author of the Schofield Reference Bible. And here we find, in an accessible, readable form, the new system, a brand new system of doctrine and eschatology, first conceded in the fevered conferences of charismatic England. C.I.

Schofield, however, edited out the supernatural gifts and revelations, which were integral to Irving and his church. A lot of fundamentalists do not know this. And from here, we can trace a direct line from Schofieldism to men like Dwight L. Moody, the Moody Bible Institute, and a whole variety of prophetic conferences in the 40s and 50s, many other influential men and institutions, too, like Lewis Sperry Chafer, founder of Dallas Theological Seminary. Bingo! We're home now, right?

To the Revelation Red Heifer Rapture Teachers at Dallas Theological Seminary. These, in turn, produced what you probably have on your bookshelf. Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth, perhaps, or John Walvoord's Israel Oil and the Middle East, maybe. Or most recently, Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series that just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. That series didn't get left behind, did it?

And the cumulative effect of all of these books and teachers over the past few decades has pushed out the church's consistent biblical doctrine of last things, including the simple two advents of our Lord, in which he will return not to signal a series of prophetic events to thrill and titillate the appetite to discern and control the future, no, but quite simply to redeem in great glory and power you, his people, dear church. And Christ will bring all of history and creation to its full consummation in Christ at that time. So, do not be deceived, dear listener. The day of the Lord, the day of his parousia, is one.

It will be when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, as Paul says, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed, unquote. Christian, the church until recently has always taught two advents of Christ, not three. There indeed is coming a terrible leaving behind when Christ returns.

However, it will be all the more terrible when those who have been deceived into thinking there is yet a further chance to delay repentance and faith to a period of the tribulation. And when they find instead that all of it was a lie, illusion, and hoax, many as well will be left behind when they find to their dismay that they have been so consumed with arranging prophetic tables and events with reading volumes of carnal fiction instead of their Bibles that they have utterly lost the passion and preoccupation with Christ and the consummation of all things in the believer's life.

That is in your life, dear listener, and in the life of the church. Calvin said of this day, whence then is our body's restoration to be hoped for? From heaven at Christ's coming. Hence, there is no part of us that ought not to aspire after heaven with undivided affection. Dear listener, do you indeed aspire after heaven with undivided affection, the affection of Christ, the love of Christ, dear listener?

Christian, dear listener, I urge you to set your mind on things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. Unquote. Paul exhorts us in Colossians 3. There is your hope in heaven with the Savior.

Your Savior is there, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is in heaven. There he is, and there Christ is ready to descend at the appointed time to take you to himself, and you will be with him thereafter. This is what is our blessed hope, as the Bible calls it, our blessed hope. The appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Embrace this. Aspire to it, dear believer, dear listener. It is your blessed hope, and I hope you long for it like I do. I hope you long for it like our church does. I hope you long for it like other believers do as well.

This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. New Geneva is a church of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and we meet on Sundays at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street, and it's on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. I urge you, perhaps you have been in the shadows for a while, you've been listening for a while, it's time to come out and to meet us, to come to one of our lovely summer worship services.

Doors open, windows open, and it's just beautiful breezes, and we love the summertime at New Geneva, and we urge you to join us on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard, and you can reach us at 523-0196. Call us for feedback and perhaps some more information at 523-0196.