Manoa Valley Church
July 2, 2006By Dr. Kent M. Keith
The Second Coming, the End Times, and the Rapture © Copyright Kent M. Keith 2006
Good morning!This is the fourth in a series of five sermons. The first was on our core beliefs, the second was on faith and beliefs, and the third was on the Bible. My next and final topic, two weeks from now, will be worshipping Christ and following Jesus.
This morning I want to talk about the Second Coming, the end times, and the rapture. This is a very complicated topic. What I want to do this morning is to report to you what I have learned so far. I hope that my words will be useful to you in some way.
The Second Coming was included in the Apostles Creed, which dates back to 100-150 A.D, and the Nicene Creed, which was adopted in 325 A.D. However, neither of those historic creeds specifically mentioned the end times or the rapture.I think it is important to know that the Second Coming, the end times, and the rapture are not mentioned in the Statement of Faith of the United Church of Christ or in the Statement of Faith of Manoa Valley Church. This does not mean that these ideas are unimportant, it just means that they are not part of our core beliefs. Each of us may arrive at his or her own beliefs on these topics without contradicting the UCC or Manoa Valley Church Statements of Faith.
The Second Coming, end times, and rapture refer to events which may be connected in different ways, depending on your beliefs. I will talk about each one in turn.
The Second Coming or Second Advent is the belief that Jesus will return to earth to fulfill the prophecies, judging the world and establishing the Kingdom of God. This belief is held by the vast majority of Christians, even though Christians may not agree on the details.
The Second Coming is mentioned at a number of places in the New Testament. For example, at Matthew 16:27, Jesus says: "For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done." The Second Coming is mentioned in the Bible in connection with the end times, and in the Book of Revelation.
There have been a number of predictions regarding the date of the Second Coming. For example, Pastor William Miller and the Millerite movement thought that the Second Coming would occur on October 22, 1844. Some Jehovah's Witnesses believe that it occurred in 1914, in an unseen presence, with the visible events yet to come. Fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell made a prediction in 1999 that the Second Coming would occur within 10 years, so that would be any time up to 2009.
The Second Coming is linked with the end times. The end times are a time of tribulation that occurs just before the Second Coming. The end times are described in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Let me read the description of the end times that is found in the gospel of Matthew, at Matthew 24: 1-42, in the New International Version. This is a long passage-you may want to follow along in your pew Bibles:
Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. "Do you see all these things?" he asked. "I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another, every one will be thrown down."
As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. "Tell us," they said, "when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?"
Jesus answered: "Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.
"Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
"So when you see standing in the holy place 'the abomination that causes desolation,' spoken of through the prophet Daniel-let the reader understand-then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now-and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. At that time if anyone says to you, 'Look here is the Christ!' or, 'There he is!' do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect-if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time.
"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. For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.
"Immediately after the distress of those days
'the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.
"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 power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other."Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.
"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come."
This long passage includes many predictions, and is rich in imagery. It opens up the opportunity for a wide range of interpretations.
There are many Christians who believe that the end times are near. This may account for the immensely successful series of books known as the Left Behind series, written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. The first book in the series was published in 1995, and at least a dozen books have been published since then, selling a combined total of over 60 million copies.
Any predictions about the date of the Second Coming or the end times seem a little odd, in light of the fact that Jesus said that "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." Most Christians seem willing to accept the idea that we simply cannot know when the Second Coming or the end times will occur.
One of the puzzling statements made by Jesus in Matthew 24 is that "this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place." This certainly seems to contradict the idea that the end times are yet to come. And it may be why there are some Christians who believe that the end times described by Jesus occurred long ago.
This is an idea in Brian McLaren's new book, The Secret Message of Jesus. McLaren points out that Jesus was speaking to the Jews of his day, and was talking about their temple and their life as a nation. In the passage we read from Matthew 24, Jesus said that the temple in Jerusalem will be destroyed. The disciples ask him to explain what he means. Jesus responds by describing the end times. What he said about the end times matches up with the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the dispersal of the Jews in 70 A.D. The connection seems even closer in the passage from the book of Luke that describes the end times. Here is Luke 21:20-24:
When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city. For this is the time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people. They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
We know that the Roman army-the Gentiles-crushed the Jewish rebellion, and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem. The Jews fled for their lives, and they fled to many nations. For the Jewish people, the destruction of the temple and their dispersion was the end of their kingdom, and could easily be seen as their "end times" and their "end of the age." It was 1,800 years before they began to return to Israel, and nearly 1,900 years before they again came together as a nation. The point is that if the destruction of the temple and dispersion of the Jews in 70 A.D. was the end times that Jesus was predicting, then indeed, members of his generation would have still been alive when it happened.
So there is the intriguing possibility that the end times that Jesus described were for the Jewish nation of his day. But even if that were the case, the Second Coming and the rapture could still be in the future.
Let's turn to the rapture. The rapture was a topic of intense discussion here at Manoa Valley Church a couple of years ago. I have to confess that when the topic came up, I had never heard of it before. I had heard of the end times and the Second Coming, but not the rapture. So I had to go look for a definition. Here is a definition from an on-line religious encyclopedia:
The rapture is an event in certain systems of Christian eschatology (the study of the end times) whereby it is believed that all Christians will be taken from Earth by Jesus Christ into Heaven. Although almost all forms of Christianity believe that those who are "saved" will enter Heaven, the term "rapture" is usually applied specifically to the belief that Christians will be taken into heaven prior to the second coming of Christ, and there will be a period of time where non-Christians will still be left on earth before Christ arrives to set up his earthly kingdom.
The word "rapture" comes from a Latin word that means to carry off, abduct, seize, or take forcefully. The idea is that in the rapture, Christians are carried off into heaven. This is said to occur before seven years of tribulation, which will be followed by the Second Coming.
The key idea here is that Christians will be carried off to heaven long before the Second Coming. This means that there will be two Second Comings, in effect. The rapture will be an earlier, additional Second Coming for Christians only.
The idea of the rapture as currently defined is relatively new. It seems to have arisen after the Protestant Reformation, 1500 years after the death and resurrection of Christ. It gained some attention in the 19th century, after an evangelist named William Eugene Blackstone sold a million copies of his book, "Jesus Is Coming."
The idea of the rapture gained wider exposure in the 1970s as a result of books by Hal Lindsey such as The Late Great Planet Earth. Lindsey assumed that the rapture would occur very soon. There were a number of predictions that the rapture would occur in 1993, which was seven years before 2000, the millennium. There is a website that has a "Rapture Index" that assigns numerical values to world events that are believed to predict the date of the rapture. The index was at 50 in 1993, and is now somewhere around 150.
The rapture is a major event in the first Left Behind book. In that book, Christians suddenly disappear, leaving cars and airplanes to crash because they no longer have drivers and pilots. People returning to their homes find their loved ones gone, their empty clothing crumpled on the floor. Some people believe that during the rapture, the bodies of believers will be converted into a different form, and will then rise vertically into the air, passing through ceilings and roofs, to meet Jesus in the sky.
One view of the rapture is that it will occur before seven years of tribulation, so that Christian believers will be carried off to heaven and will not have to suffer the persecutions that will occur during the time of the Antichrist. Another view is that Christians will remain on earth during the seven years of tribulation, but will be protected when a wrathful God carries off the wicked at the end of the age. A third view is that Christian believers will be raptured in the middle of the seven years of tribulation.
Personally, I have always assumed that Christians will remain during the time of tribulation. In Matthew 24, Jesus described the end times and said: "Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." He also said: "If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened." I read both of these passages to mean that Christians will be present during the time of tribulation, which will be shortened for their sake.
Perhaps I read the text that way because the rapture as it is being described today doesn't fit my understanding of the teachings of Jesus. I believe that Jesus calls us to love and help everyone, Christian and non-Christian, friend and foe alike. He didn't teach us to abandon others to save ourselves. He taught us to be Good Samaritans, and go where we are needed. If indeed there is going to be a time of tribulation, that is when we will be needed the most. If the time of tribulation is a dangerous time, and we die loving and helping others, then we will die doing what Christ has called us to do. Perhaps our love for others during the time of tribulation will tell people more about the love of Christ than anything they have ever seen before. Perhaps they will come to understand, and will be saved, too. And when we go to the hereafter, and see Jesus face to face, perhaps we will hear him utter those wonderful words: "Well done, good and faithful servant!"
That is my own particular interpretation. That is what I want to believe. Your interpretation and belief may be different. However, so far as I can tell, many Christians do not believe in the rapture as it is currently being described. Here is what it says in the religious encyclopedia that I consulted:
Most Roman Catholics and many Protestants do not accept the concept of a rapture in which some are 'taken up into Heaven' before the end of the world; this idea did not exist in the teachings of any Christians whatsoever until the 1800s, so it cannot be said to belong to Apostolic Tradition. Instead, most Catholics and many Protestants interpret 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 literally, and assert that the rapture will immediately follow the general resurrection on Judgment Day, when the living and the newly-resurrected-dead will rise up to meet Christ as he descends from heaven to judge the world. These people consider the rapture to be merely a minor detail in the Biblical description of the Second Coming of Christ.
It appears then that many Christians believe that the rapture is not an event that will occur a number of years before the Second Coming. Rather, they believe that the rapture is part of the Second Coming. For example, in the passage in Mark in which Jesus describes the end of the age, he says at Mark 13:26-27:
At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the end of the heavens.
This gathering of the elect which is part of the rapture can be interpreted to be part of the Second Coming. And here is the scriptural reference that was mentioned in the religious encyclopedia, 1 Thessalonians 4: 16-18.
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. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
Again, this passage can be interpreted to mean that it is during the Second Coming that people will be caught up and meet the Lord in the air.
All of this can be very confusing. I have spent some time trying to understand it, and I admit I have not gotten very far. I am comforted by knowing that the Second Coming, the end times, and the rapture are not included in our Statement of Faith, and are not part of our core beliefs. We can study, and discuss, and pray about these ideas and arrive at our own beliefs.
In the meantime, we need to keep these issues in perspective. First of all, we believe that Christ will be with us every day, if we only let him into our hearts and into our lives. Events that may occur in the future should not overshadow the opportunities for us today, and every day, to know Christ and to live together as the body of Christ. We believe that Christ is risen; he is with us now; we are his people. So we should not be waiting. We should be doing what he has called us to do.
In the book of Matthew, the description of the end times is followed by four parables told by Jesus- the faithful and wise servant, the ten virgins and their oil lamps, the talents, and the sheep and the goats. These parables tell us what to do until the Second Coming occurs.
From the story of the faithful and wise servant, we know that we must do our duty, so that when the master returns, he will be pleased with our actions. From the parable of the ten virgins, we know that we must always be ready-we must have enough oil for our lamps, or we will miss the bridegroom when he comes. From the parable of the talents, we know we should be good and faithful servants who multiply our talents for the Lord. From the parable of the sheep and the goats, we know who will join the Lord in heaven.
The parable of the sheep and the goats is especially relevant, because it describes the judgment that will occur at the Second Coming. Jesus says that when the Son of Man comes in all his glory, he will separate the people as a shepherd separates the sheep and the goats. Those who will rewarded with eternal life are those who gave food to the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, welcomed strangers, clothed the naked, looked after the sick, and visited those in prison. This parable makes it clear that when the Day of Judgment comes, it will not be enough to have believed in Christ. We must have loved and helped others. We must have lived the way Jesus calls us to live.
I can understand why Christians yearn to be raptured into heaven to see Christ face to face. What a glorious day that will be! But we do not know when the Second Coming, the end times, and the rapture will occur. What we do know is that today and tomorrow, Christ can be present in our lives. What we do know is that today and tomorrow, we can live the way Jesus taught us to live. We believe that Christ will come again. Until then, we need to demonstrate to the world what it means to be his people, doing his work.
Let us pray.
Lord, we do not know when you will return in your glory, or what the Second Coming, end times, and rapture will be like. But we know you are with us now, and will continue to be with us, even to the end of time. We praise you, and we rededicate ourselves to being your body, doing your work. In your name we pray, Amen.
Manoa Valley Church