You. This is our last week in the Misconceptions series, and last week, kind of looking at some of the things that maybe we've thought or been told or believed for a long time that this was maybe truth or maybe something found in scripture, and yet perhaps we've been told in error or misunderstood something. And so we have these misconceptions. S. We've looked at a lot of different things over the last few weeks, but this week is probably the one that runs the most risk of somebody saying, well, I'm not listening to him anymore, or saying, well, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Or I don't know if I can trust this guy. Now how do I know that? Because it's happened before whenever I touch on this subject. And you know what? I'm not nervous about it and I'm not worried about it.

I'm going to declare to you a few historical things and a few things from the word of God, and if we disagree, so be it. It's not anything worth separating fellowship over, no matter what you've been told. There was a time where, sorry, I needed to start something here on my phone. There we go. There was a time where I had someone that was telling me that this thing that I taught, that they didn't like it and that they weren't coming to our church anymore.

And so I was an associate pastor, and I was teaching a class on a Wednesday night, and they went and they found my boss, the lead pastor, and told him what I had taught. And he says, good. He did it right. And they said, what? Are you serious?

And then they never came back anymore. And that made me quite sad because I liked these people. Even if I didn't like them, I probably would have been sad about that, too. But anyway, thank you.

Today, our misconception is that, and does anybody ever look at the marquee? They only look at the marquee, the big sign out front. When we don't update it, that's when I hear about it. But there's one on there that we promise to cover. If you're taking the marquee as a real, like our word, that we're going to talk about it.

And it said that one of the misconceptions is something to do with end times. Now, this always comes up whenever there's a new war, whenever there's a new conflict in the Middle east especially, or something along those lines, or whenever there's a big economic struggle, and everybody says, okay, see, there's a sign that Jesus told us about this.

I don't know if I needed some theme music or what that was. That's good. I like it. It's nice and calm and peaceful.

So the Bible is, a lot of times people think it's an end times roadmap. Usually if you just squeeze the side buttons, they go quiet whenever they're ringing, just letting you know that whoever it was. So anyway, the Bible, a lot of times people think, especially the book of Revelation, is an end Times roadmap. Now here's the misconception in that. That's not the point of revelation.

That's not the point of it. And I know you've been taught that it is because I've been taught that it is. I've been told that in churches growing up. I grew up in church since I was born and that's what I've been told. And the answer is no, it's not.

And if you want to know the long answer for what is revelation, then what is it about? I did a twelve week Sunday night limited engagement series. In other words, we did Sunday nights for twelve weeks. We came in here, we pretty much sat on one side, I sat up a little table and stuff over here and walked on one side. We recorded those.

They're posted to YouTube, but it's an unlisted video. In other words, I have to send you the links to them in order for you to be able to click on it because I just didn't want to stir up a hornet's nest of people that I didn't even know complaining that I said the wrong stuff. But I did that study and I can't really boil twelve weeks of teaching down to one sermon. So I'll just try for one sentence. How's that?

I'm going to read it because I wrote this sentence. And here's my summary. The book of Revelation, or the revelation of the exalted risen Christ, was given to the subjugated people of God to show that Jesus is ultimately in charge and that the powers of this world will not overcome him. Let me just boil it down even simpler. Jesus wins, evil loses.

Done. That's what revelation's about. And the people that received the book of revelation were Jews and Gentiles who were believers in Jesus Christ, but they were persecuted and abused and harmed and they were wondering what was going to happen and they wondered if they had misplaced their faith in Jesus Christ because Rome seemed more powerful. And if you backed up before that the greek empire seemed pretty strong. And before that the Medes and the Persians.

And before that, the babylonians. And before that, the Assyrians. And going all the way back to Egypt. It always seems like the empire wins and the people of God lose. Except every now and then we get a reminder that God's ultimately in control and that God's people, because of the power of Jesus Christ and his death on the cross and his resurrection and ascension, to sit at the right hand of the father where he has coronated as king.

Because of that, we win. Amen. That's what revelation's about. Now, it does talk about things that we call end times. Does anybody want to wager a guess?

When Jesus believed the end times began?

Yeah, they began the moment he left this earth, ascended into heaven. Then we're in the end of times. So we've been there going on 2000 years is nothing new. We think end times means a short thing, or we think it means maybe a seven year thing or a three and a half year thing. You've heard or maybe believed of things like a pretribulation and all these things.

Bible doesn't exactly even tell us how it all ends here. If you read revelation and you take it well, you could never just take revelation by itself. It wasn't written for you to understand it, just standing alone. It actually is built on the foundation of the prophets and of the Old Testament at large. There are hundreds of quotes or allusions to scriptures in the Old Testament.

You cannot read the book of Revelation without that. And so the book of Revelation, we see things like we see it talking about beasts and people following them and wars and rumors of wars and economic distress and all those things. And the way we read those things, we think, okay, we can follow those like a roadmap. And if we see those things happening, then surely it must be that we are now approaching the second coming of Christ and the end of life on earth as we know it. You've heard that, you've thought that.

You've probably believed that. Maybe you still do. And here's where we want to look at this. The thing is, in revelation, it tells about the end of the world at least three different times in three different ways. It's called recapitulation.

It's a literary tool that John the apostle that wrote it, it's a literary tool that he uses to try to make a point, but without telling it in a very exact chronological way. It's a way to talk about what Jesus is doing right now. He's not just kind of biding his time in heaven, waiting for his return. He's actually at work in the world right now, and that he is stronger than whatever forces of evil there are. The thing that perhaps is the biggest in all of this, that we've gotten a bit askew on over time, is something called the rapture.

Who thinks that you're looking forward now, I'm not going to have you do that. It's a trap. If you think you're looking forward to the rapture, I want to tell you something before you think I'm falling off the deep end. We're going to go through some history, and if you want sources about this, well, come to Sunday school class. I've got two nine page handouts, and I can print more copies if needed.

I just didn't like printing a whole bunch if nobody wanted them. This is something. There was a guy named John Nelson Darby that wrote that developed this out of basically thin air. In other words, he was in ministry between 1830 ish and 1850, somewhere in that range. And John Nelson Darby invented the concept of the rapture.

It had never existed in history in any context before that. There were none of the early church fathers, guys that were like Ignatius and Jerome and people like that, that were in the first couple centuries after Christ. None of them ever talked about it. None of them ever used a different word for it. The idea that there's a rapture whereby we will be kind of taken away from this earth while everything else on here kind of goes to hell, literally, that we'll be somehow sucked away from it and meet Jesus and just be carted off, and then everything down here will just kind of get all mixed up.

But we don't care because we're gone. That idea doesn't occur in scripture, first of all, and we'll get to that in a minute. It doesn't occur in historical interpretations of scripture or in traditions of the church fathers. I can feel the tension in the room when I say this, right? I can feel the tension in the room.

This wouldn't have been well known, except John Nelson Darby became influential with a group called the Plymouth Brethren, became one of their most influential leaders. Not to knock them or not to say anything bad about them, I'm just giving you a little bit of history here. He used that platform to promote this doctrine that he made up. Eventually, one of the people that kind of bought into it was a guy named Schofield. You might be familiar with the Schofield reference Bible.

You might have one, you might treasure one. The Schofield reference Bible was basically a study Bible that was designed simply to promote the teachings of John Nelson Darby. And as such, what it ended up doing was it got a few other people influenced by it. There were some people, such as later on, like even colleges, kind of devoted their whole teaching around this idea, such as Bob Jones University, Dallas Theological Seminary, and others. There were authors that wrote books.

You might have read them. You might be familiar with them. Hal Lindsay with the late Great Planet Earth, or Tim Lahay with the left behind series and the movies that followed after them. There's a lot of TV and radio preachers like Jack Van Impy or even a guy named Harold camping that convinced a lot of people that Jesus was coming back in 1994 and then in 2011 because he realized he'd gotten it wrong the first time. There was the whole 1988 reasons God, Jesus is returning in 1988.

I don't know if any of you guys were raptured away in 1988. You read that book? Yeah. With each one? Yeah.

Did you return it in 1989? There's a whole bunch of these things that have happened throughout time. There's a whole bunch of these people that believe in setting a date for the return of Christ. And they look through scriptures, they always miss that one where Jesus said, don't do that. He says, hey, nobody knows the times or dates that I'll return.

Not even himself. Jesus didn't even know. He says, only the father knows that. And the father is the one that will set that time and date and send the son back to earth. Now, in so doing that, Jesus also is starting to paint a picture of something that they were familiar with in their time and in their context.

You see, the church is considered the bride of Christ, right? Which is a weird concept because there's a whole bunch of us, and that just seems weird. But not you individually, the bride of Christ, but the church. The whole church of Jesus Christ is considered his bride that's being prepared for him and in jewish society or culture at that time and for a long time afterwards. And even there's parts of it that are still in existence today.

The betrothal would happen whereby they would have this engagement, but then the groom would go off. He would go to his father's home. He would prepare a place there. He would build a home within, let's say, the fence of the father's property. He would build a home there to bring his bride to when they got married.

When they were united in their wedding celebration, they would live there in that home that was part of his father's house. Do you hear scripture echoing throughout this Jesus was using words that they knew so that he could make a point. He's saying, I'm going to my father's house to prepare a place for you. In my father's house, there are many dwelling places, and I go to make one for you. See, what Jesus is doing is building on to his father's house for us to be there with him, to be the bride of Christ.

Amen. Now, the thing is, he's not done yet, because he wants more and more people to be part of his bridal party. He wants more and more of us to be there. And so Christ, even though it feels like his time is tarrying, he's not done yet. There's other people that kind of helped promote this idea, too, and got a lot of popularity, people that I respect, that I learn from.

One is DL Moody. In the seminary that he has up in Illinois, probably the most well known person that began his ministry believing and preaching about a rapture was Billy Graham. Later Billy Graham, you might not be aware of this, actually recanted that. I don't mean like he was brought before a church council and recanted, but I mean, Billy Graham actually later turned from it and said, I don't actually see that in scripture. And if you keep thinking, Pastor Nick, you're not going to scripture.

You're just giving me history. Don't worry. We're getting there. Billy Graham changed his mind on it. And I think if he did, maybe perhaps we can, too.

And not just for the sake of undoing a long held belief, but because I believe that we have to answer to scripture where it speaks, we need to listen. Amen. And where scripture is clear, we need to have a clear understanding. And where it's unclear, we need to dig into the context of it, specifically, the historical context that the people receiving this scripture lived in. Once we understand their life and their customs and cultures, it helps us to interpret it sometimes, to understand it how they understood it.

Now, the danger is when we keep trying to reinvent an interpretation of scripture based on our culture, that's where we get wrong. When we look at scripture and we look at our culture and we try to match it to our culture is where heresies get involved. It's where heretics are created. It's where cults spring up. It's where people believe things incorrectly, so much so that they end up walking away from the truth of Jesus Christ because they're content to believe lies that affect the way they live their lives.

But where we can understand the scriptural context we shall. Today we're going to look in one, Thessalonians 413 through 1918. Sorry. And as I read this, you're going to say Pastor Nick, though, isn't that proof of the rapture?

No, I'm just waiting for you to turn some pages. First, thessalonians. It's near the back of your new testament. It's right next to, like, Timothy. There's some other things around it.

Right after first and second Corinthians, Paul says this to this church in the city of Thessalonica. He says, and I think I need to hear this sometimes. The word he actually uses that's not in this translation is, we don't want you to be ignorant. This version says, now, we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep. In other words, those who have already died, who are believers in Christ.

We don't want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so we also believe that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep as Christians. For we tell you this by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.

Then we who are alive, who are left, will be suddenly 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. Wow. Don't miss this.

It's beautiful. The main point here is that whether you're alive or dead, when Jesus Christ returns, you won't miss out. See, there were people who were worried in the city of Thessalonica that they had people who believed Jesus was returning, and then they died, and then Jesus hadn't returned. And now the other people that are left are worried that their loved ones were going to miss out on his return. They're worried that they won't get to witness the return of Jesus Christ.

So Paul's answering this. He's saying Jesus Christ has gone into heaven to be coronated as king, rightfully so, but he will one day return. You know, there's a parable that Jesus told about a king who went off to get coronated as king. A prince went to go be coronated as king. And as he left, he left his possessions with his servants.

To some he gave a few talents, some he gave a few less, and a few less, like five and two and one. You remember this story? And then the one with five talents was faithful and doubled them. He invested them, he worked them, he made a return on his investment, and he handed that back and said, master, your five talents have earned five more. And he says, well done, my good and faithful servant.

The other one said, well, see, your two talents has earned two more. And he offered it up to him. The last guy said, well, I buried your one talent in the sand because I didn't want to lose it. He said, you're a wicked and lazy slothful servant. Now Jesus is telling the story.

And they were familiar with the idea of a prince going away, being coronated as king, and then returning. And when they returned, they wouldn't just kind of walk in to no fanfare, no celebration, or people just kind of sitting at home with the windows open on a nice sunny day, making a sandwich for lunch or something, and just kind of waving out the window as the king came back. No, that's not how you treat a returning king, is it? You see, they were used to this idea of an emperor coming for a visit or a governor or of some kind. And when this would happen, there would be a certain thing that would take place.

As this noble person showed up into town, you would go out to greet him and welcome him in. You wouldn't just wait for him to come. You would meet him as far out as you could. There would probably be a welcome, a party, an advance party, maybe some trumpets that were blown, a shout, a decree. Hear ye, hear ye, the governor is coming, that kind of thing.

The king is returning. And you would rush out, no matter what you're doing. You would run out to go meet him, and you would welcome him in. There's actually a greek word for this and the Old Testament that was translated into Greek called the Septuagint or the LXX, it uses the same word. And this word, what it's talking about is the word is apentasis, and it means going out for a face to face meeting.

And every time it's used, there's only about a few times, less than five times in the New Testament where this word is used about such a thing. But every time, it's in the context of going out to greet someone who's coming in. And in the Old Testament, is used countless times for such a similar thing. Anytime somebody was showing up, they would go out to greet him. Think of the way the prodigal's son, his father.

When the son was returning, he ran out to greet his son and brought him back. It's the same word, the same idea, the same concept every time in our bible that this word is used. It's about somebody going not to just be gone forever, but to welcome somebody back in. And Paul specifically uses that word as he talks about us going out to bring Christ in. Now you think, well, Pastor Nick, what about this, though?

How is this a misconception? Doesn't it say we'll go to be with him forever? Yes, but you're reading into the text. If you think that it automatically means that we will from there be taken away with him, you say, well, what about Jesus'teachings? He said that when he returns, there will be a judgment, and there will be two people working in the field.

One will be taken and the other left. Right? That's what you want to say to me, isn't it? I know you do. Here's the thing.

I know this because I've been down this journey, y'all. I've been there. I learned this. I was taught this. I believed this.

And then I studied scripture more deeply. I studied as deep as I could. I got books. I listened to professors and teachers and pastors. I watched videos.

I listened to audio. I've been through all this, and I know the journey, and I know the initial needles that you feel where you're like, no, that's not right. This isn't what I've been taught. This isn't what I've believed and held too dearly.

Every time that we see some example that is used that people say, well, see, this is evidence of the rapture, they say, well, look, there's one take and one left. Yes, there is a judgment, and there will one day be a final judgment. I'm not denying that. I agree with that. I believe that that's scriptural.

But you miss the context where Jesus says, so it will be then like it was in the days of Noah. Two will be in the field, one taken and the other left. Who was taken in the days of Noah? The wicked or the righteous? In other words, who was destroyed in the days of Noah?

The wicked or the righteous, who remained on the earth? Come on, people. The righteous. Jesus isn't setting us up to leave and to be gone, away from all of the things that we think. There's some evil tribulation going on in the world and that we'll be somehow removed from it.

Ignore the screens. The Internet dropped out on them. We didn't put that up there on purpose. Sorry about that. But Jesus isn't talking about people being removed away from suffering.

The only people that would try to believe that is people that don't live in any type of major suffering on a world scale. In other words, there's people that are living in this world that are suffering and struggling every single day. And those people would be offended if we said, well, God wants to remove us or rapture us away from all this suffering. They're like, really? That's my life.

Every day. We're persecuted, we feel struck down, we feel abandoned, but we're not. We know that Christ is here with us, that he's our strength and our guide. You see, it's hard for us to understand in this world, in our country that we live in. It's hard for us to understand this idea that other people have already been living the same things that we claim we're going to be raptured away from.

Now, granted, I understand that it talks about a tribulation such as has never been seen before. I get that. But the idea that God saves us from all of our earthly struggles and trials is to misunderstand scripture. Some of you have lived that a long time. You know that your trials, your struggles still continue to this day.

You look at the bank account and you wonder, where is it coming from this month? You look at the pantry and you're trying to get really creative with how to cook ramen noodles and tortillas. Like they just don't go together very well. But you're thinking, that's all I got left. You're looking at the things that you've got going on, physically or medically or mental trials and struggles or whatever it is, and you're wondering, when is God going to fix all this stuff?

And that the truth of the matter is we still go through tribulations and trials every single day.

The truth is that Jesus wants us to know that he's in charge, that he has defeated evil, and that one day we get to meet him. We get to meet his return, at his return and welcome him in just. Amy, just kill him. It's fine. He calls us to faithful servanthood that he's already entrusted to us.

Remember the metaphor about the idea of a bridegroom going away while he prepares a place for his bride? Jesus is currently doing that. He's currently preparing a place for us. And if you read the last two chapters of revelation, it seems as if he's crafting it in such a way that it will one day come out of the heavens, that it'll meet this earth, and that he will redeem and renew and restore this earth. That we don't actually get taken away somewhere else, but that heaven comes to us, and the wicked and the vile and the immoral and the idolaters and adulterers and all these things that revelation talks about, that they don't have a place in it, that the ones who actually get taken away are those who go to their eternal punishment.

The ones that stay get to dwell with Christ in the place that he has removed all stain of evil from, that he is redeemed and restored better than it even was when he created it, because now his presence is among us. He wipes away every tear. He heals every disease and sickness, and he stops. There's no more wars, no more trials, no more struggling, and no more strife. You see?

The truth of scripture. You guys aren't smiling about this. Be ready for that. The thing is that Jesus is preparing a place for us. He didn't say that you may come to be there with me one day.

He says that where I am, you may be with me. He promises to actually bring his heaven to our earth. He promises to bring heaven to earth. I know this. I've read the last page.

Praise God that he tells us the end. But if we think that there's this roadmap to get to the end times, and we can look at different parts and say, okay, if I move this puzzle piece here and this puzzle piece here and I put this up here, then we'll get down to the end of it, and we'll see that God has neatly lined it out, where all we have to do is decode the book of revelation, and we figure out when he's coming back. The truth is, he says, stay busy, stay working until I return. He says, there's a master who had servants who just kind of said, well, our master's been gone a long time. It's almost as if he was giving us a hint that he might be gone a while.

They said, our master's been gone a long time. And he says, some of them got lazy and wicked, and some of them even started to beat their other servants and do all this terrible stuff. He says that master will come back one day and judge them. In other words, Jesus tells us all these things. He says, I am going away, but I am coming back.

We want to look for all these little waypoints along the way, these markers along the way to try to figure out when he's coming. He didn't tell us to do that. He told us not to do that. What he did say is he will return. And what Paul tells us is he clues us in.

And he says, no matter when you died, if you've already died by the time Christ does return, those are the ones that will be first to meet him. They'll be resurrected to new life. They will meet him in the air. And this is where we've got it wrong. We think that means that he'll take them away somewhere else.

No. We will welcome him in as marching an emperor or a ruler back into his kingdom. The truth of the matter is, no matter whether you've died by the return of Christ or you're still alive when he comes back, we get the glorious honor of welcoming our king and our savior to the earth that he has died for. And he is moving heaven to earth so that we can dwell with him forever. Amen.

And we get to celebrate that. Now whether you don't believe anything I said or not doesn't matter. We get to celebrate the fact that we serve a risen savior. The fact that he died for us means that he lives for us. Pastor Kendall, go ahead and come up.

We're going to serve communion to you. And we.