Sunday School | The Return of Christ - Part 1

Introduction

All right, you guys, we're finally getting to the last of our 10 big points about the work of Christ, the ministry of Christ. He was born in the incarnation of his birth, and his, what did he do? His miracles, and his teaching, and his obedient life, and his death, and his resurrection, and he gave the Spirit. He ascended his king. He intercedes for us. I think that's everything.

And then now the final thing, which is our three R's. What are the triple R's that kind of cap this? Final thing that we're gonna see Jesus do. Do you guys know this? Return. What does he do when he returns? Yeah, he's gonna restore all things, and raise the dead. Yeah, resurrection.

The return to Christ when he restores all things and raises the dead. This one, you guys, is a biggie. This is a hugegie. The return to Christ is a massive, massive thing.

The Significance of Christ's Return

And so what I did this week, as I went through, I have this method that I do, I have them, really exceptionally great Bible software, and I can read through the entire New Testament, in about like two and a half hours, quickly, very, very quickly, and then tag passages, and then compile all those passages and then organize them.

So I went through, and I read through the entire New Testament, and looked for every time that the return of Christ is referenced, and it's so much. It's just so much. In fact, it's so much that I made a document. Don't pass them out yet, hang on to these.

This is as best as I can tell, and I may have missed one, but this is every time the New Testament talks about Jesus coming back, and so we're gonna go through this document for the next several weeks. This is a process. I've run this process a number of times, and I find it so helpful, just to stop, and it set us out a couple of hours, and it just blitzed through.

It's actually kind of overwhelming, whatever topic I tended to do this on, is to see just how the scriptures speak about these things all through. So I made one for you, I printed them out, well, hand them out in just a couple minutes, but I don't wanna give it to you yet until you kind of just do this on your own brain.

So let's try to build this document with our heads, all right? The return of Christ. What would you say are maybe, I don't know, the top five or six, whatever, passages in the New Testament that inform your understanding of the return of Christ? Gil?

— And Jesus saying it himself.

Okay, where does he do that, Gil?

— Right before the Great Commission, where he's like talking about how you're gonna do this, and this is your thing, and then I will come back.

Okay, so Gil is pointing out that Jesus talks about his return a lot, and that's true, that the primary teaching that Jesus gives on his return is what we call the Olivet Discourse. Does anybody ever heard that term? The Olivet Discourse, Jesus is on the Mount of Olives.

Olivet Discourse, it shows up, each of the synoptics includes this, but in Matthew's Gospel, it's Matthew 24.

So if you go to, if you looked at, we can look at this, go to Matthew 24, there's a lot of places he talks about it, but maybe most famously, I'll just read you this passage, Matthew 24, three,

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, there go the Olivet Discourse. The disciples came to him privately, "Tell us," they said, "when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age?"

Then he says a whole bunch of stuff, well, we'll look at that in due course, and then as you get into chapter 25 of Matthew's Gospel, you get a lot of parables. This is where he tells stories, parables of like, he doesn't have Matthew and Mark and Luke, but what are some of the parables that he told about his return? Do you guys remember these?

— Shaping the goats.

That's Matthew 25, that fits right in here. So, sheep and the goats, and you might know the sheep and the goats because it's like this judgment day, you know, it's like you're gonna separate the sheep from the goats, but if you look at it, and I have it right here, it says, when the Son of Man comes in his glory, this is Matthew 25, 31,

When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory, the nations will be gathered before him, he'll separate the people's one from another as a shepherd, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, so that sheep and the goats is contexted in his coming in glory, all right?

Other parables that Jesus tells, yeah bro, Eric, parable of the talents, okay, and this is good. We also might not necessarily think about this, so he tells a story, sometimes it's a talent, sometimes it's the minus, but he tells his stories of like, he's gonna give away all these things, and then he's gonna leave, and then he's gonna come back, and when he comes back, there's gonna be this accounting, this assessing, right? So that whole thing is the point of that story, we tend to hear that story through the lens of like, are we good stewards of what we have, and that's fine, but it's framed in his return, and it's in that passage where he's talking about those things, excellent, others, and we can leave the parables if we want to, other key passages in the New Testament on Jesus' return, yeah, Jason?

— In the parable of the 10 virgins?

Yes, also Matthew 25.

— And then, 1 Thessalonians 4.

Okay, we'll go to 1 Thessalonians 4 in a second, cause that's, I love 1 Thessalonians 4, so go, if you go to the parable of the virgins, that is gonna be Matthew 25, let's see, blah, blah, blah.

At that time, the kingdom of heaven will be like 10 virgins who took their lamps, so went out to meet the bridegroom, five were foolish, five were wise, the foolish ones took their lamps, blah, blah, blah.

The bridegroom was a long time in coming. Can we say amen?

— Amen.

And they became drowsy and fell asleep, but at midnight, the cry rang out, "Here's the bridegroom, come out to meet him," right? So parable of the town, it's very much about his return, and then what's 1 Thessalonians 4?

— Yeah, if you go, flip there, this one is great to look at, go to 1 Thessalonians 4, and we're gonna just kind of survey them all here, but then we'll dig into this more deeply later on. 1 Thessalonians 4, I don't know if we talked about this in this lately, but in 1 Thessalonians 4, what Paul is addressing is the fact that the Thessalonians were all freaked out because, you know what they were worried about, they were dying.

Now, most of you probably assume that you're gonna die before Jesus comes back. Maybe you hope that he'll come back before you die, but it wouldn't be shocking and it wouldn't be particularly worrisome to you if you died or somebody else died before he came back, that feels normal. This first generation of Christians, that did not feel normal to them. They knew Jesus was coming, and they thought, "Well, maybe he's coming like today, tomorrow, right now."

In fact, one of my, there's a scene in my, one of my favorite books is The Robe. Have we talked about The Robe? I think Robe is about the guy who crucifies Jesus. He leads this Roman legion, his name is Marcellus, and he's the one who wins the robe when they cast lots for his garments.

And he's, and he's just grief-stricken. He doesn't know the full impact of what he's done, but he knows that he killed an innocent man, but he ends up meeting these believers. And he notices they have this habit. Do you remember this? Sam, do you remember the habit? What was it?

— They always look whenever other crossroads, like in the distance or if Jesus is over the horizon or something, of that sport.

Exactly, right. Every time they get to the crest of a hill or to an intersection of crossroads, they would always stop and look because he might be just around the corner, right? They're just living in this anticipation. Well, for the Thessalonians, they're living this way. They're waiting for Christ to come back and then they start dropping.

And their question is, oh, what happens? If you die before Jesus comes back, do you miss out? Like, do we need to be alive when he comes back? Cause he's gonna come back. But if you're dead, how does that all go? And so Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, he's writing to address this and he says in 1 Thessalonians 4:13,

Brothers, we don't want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep or to grieve like the rest of men who have no hope. 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. According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left to the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.

The Lord Himself will come down from heaven with the loud command of the voice of the archangel, the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. It's a reassurance.

And so he says, so we will be with the Lord forever, therefore encourage each other with these words. So he was seeing the return of Christ as a solution to the problem that all those who've died of, is it over for them? The answer is no.

— 1 Thessalonians 4 is great. We may come back to that one later. Okay, we got Jesus in the Olivet Discourse, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We got the parables, we got 1 Thessalonians 4.

— I don't know the words, but when he says, will he find us painful when he returns?

Probably. Yeah, you might be thinking of Luke 18. Turn that, go to Luke 18. Tell me if this is what you mean. Let's see.

Luke 18 is where Jesus tells the parable. Hang on, do, do, do, do. Luke 18 is the parable of the unjust judge and the persistent widow. And it's, in a certain city, there was a judge, you know, this is 18-1.

There was a judge, you know, the feared God and a respected man. There was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, "Give me justice against my adversary," blah, blah, but then down to kind of the punchline.

Verse six, the Lord said here with the unrighteous judge says,

And will not God give justice to his elect who cried to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?

Is that it? Okay, now what's interesting about that one, Catherine, is that Jesus isn't teaching on the return of Christ on his return, he's just assuming it. It's just an offhand thing, right? And that will find that there are passages that are didactic instruction. Here's what I want you to understand, but then there's a whole bunch of passages where it's just like, it's just a backdrop, right? He's coming, of course he's coming, and there may be some secondary or tertiary implication to that, so Luke 18, excellent.

Okay, so Matthew 24 is the heartbeat of that Olivet Discourse, yes.

— The man in the field of the women granted.

Yes, okay, and we are going to, we're gonna take that one apart in a little bit more detail soon, cause I think we have talked about this, that when you are not, are you still not yet? Okay, I'll give it another swing.

So what, let's just do it. Okay, this is a little bit out of sorts, a little bit out of order, but Matthew 24, the passage that Steve is referencing is it is about the return of Christ. But some people, like Steve Henderson, think it's about the pre-return of Christ. Do you know what the pre-return of Christ is?

— Yeah, okay, so basically the rapture. So there is this idea that is also rooted in 1 Thessalonians 4.

Oh gosh, I don't think we wanna, okay.

Okay, all right, so we'll do this now with whatever. So some of you have heard, some of you have read a book by Tim LaHaye called Left Behind. Some of you may have just kind of been raised in a Baptist kind of a framework or whatever, and you think, God bless you, that sometime prior to Jesus' actual return that what he's gonna do is sort of return. He's gonna like skim off the atmosphere, and when he comes by, he's gonna pick up all the good ones, and then he's gonna leave, okay? And then for whatever reason, people are always raptured naked, it seems. We're gonna leave little piles of shoes and clothes on the floor, and then we all get taken up to heaven. And we go away for seven years, while like Jesus just pours out wrath on the earth, but we're rescued from wrath 'cause he hasn't appointed us to suffer wrath. Is this ringing a bell?

— Okay, I don't think any of that's true. None of that has any actual basis in reality. I think that when Jesus comes, he comes all the way. When he comes, he's coming one more time. When he comes, he's gonna stay. When he comes, we're gonna stay with him, and let all of those things are based on a misunderstanding chiefly of 1 Thessalonians 4 and Matthew 24.

Okay, so while we're here, just take a look. We'll start with Matthew 24, since that's the one that Steve brought up, okay? So, and it's understandable, and I understand that what I'm about to read to you is gonna be like, yeah, dummy. Like it says what it says, believe Jesus, instead of Tim, and that's all is a good idea, but I would append to it, understand what Jesus said, instead of what your incompetent Bible teachers taught you, okay?

So, am I putting too fine of a point on this? Okay.

Alright, so look at the, here's the verse. This is Matthew 24, and you might go down to like, I don't know, 30, yeah, we're gonna go a little bit later first. Here's the punch line, verse 39, the end of verse 39.

This 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.

Okay, so here we are, doing normal stuff, just making flour tortillas, just doing what we do, right? And then suddenly bam, the other one's gone, but the other one stays, and then suddenly bam, one of them's gone, and the other one stays.

And what's happening is they're being allegedly, is they're being raptured. That's a Latin word that means caught away, they're being caught away to be with the Lord. Okay? Makes sense so far?

Okay, here's why that's not what it means. Here's why that can't possibly be what it means. If you go a little bit earlier, 36.

No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

But in 37, it says,

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

What he's saying is there's something that happened like, I don't know, 5,000 years ago or something, and whatever that was is instructive to, is illustrative of, bears some correspondence to what's gonna happen when he comes back.

As it was in Noah, so will be when Jesus returns. There's something there that's gonna be replayed here, okay?

And what is that? Well, verse 38, in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving a marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark. They're just doing normal life stuff, okay? And they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away.

Now, let me ask you, when the flood came and took people away, did it take them in rescue or in judgment? It took them in judgment. Any ambiguity? Any possible way that it could mean something else?

To be taken by the flood is to be taken in judgment. And then one verse later, that is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

The flood came, the sun will come. When the flood came, they were taken in judgment. And at the coming of the Son of Man, two men will be in the field and one will be taken. Taken in judgment or taken in rescue? Judgment.

This is not picturing being taken in rescue. It's picturing being taken in judgment.

Two women will be grinding with a handmill, one will be taken in the other left. Matthew 24 is picturing a sudden and unexpected judgment, not a sudden and unexpected rescue prior to the judgment and prior to Jesus' return, which will happen seven years later. It's just, you're making that up, okay?

— Kelly first, then Jason.

— I feel like the synoptic story of this in Luke even expounds even more on the judgment side.

Absolutely. Okay, so we are.

— There's enough of the days of Lot.

Yes.

—and he even, when he says, will he find us painful when he returns?

Probably. Yeah, you might be thinking of Luke 18. Turn that, go to Luke 18. Tell me if this is what you mean. Let's see.

Luke 18 is where Jesus tells the parable. Hang on, do, do, do, do. Luke 18 is the parable of the unjust judge and the persistent widow. And it's, in a certain city, there was a judge, you know, this is 18-1.

There was a judge, you know, the feared God and a respected man. There was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, "Give me justice against my adversary," blah, blah, but then down to kind of the punchline.

Verse six, the Lord said here with the unrighteous judge says,

And will not God give justice to his elect who cried to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?

Is that it? Okay, now what's interesting about that one, Catherine, is that Jesus isn't teaching on the return of Christ on his return, he's just assuming it. It's just an offhand thing, right? And that will find that there are passages that are didactic instruction. Here's what I want you to understand, but then there's a whole bunch of passages where it's just like, it's just a backdrop, right? He's coming, of course he's coming, and there may be some secondary or tertiary implication to that, so Luke 18, excellent.

— Okay, so Matthew 24 is the heartbeat of that Olivet Discourse, yes.

— The man in the field of the women granted.

Yes, okay, and we are going to, we're gonna take that one apart in a little bit more detail soon, cause I think we have talked about this, that when you are not, are you still not yet? Okay, I'll give it another swing.

So what, let's just do it. Okay, this is a little bit out of sorts, a little bit out of order, but Matthew 24, the passage that Steve is referencing is it is about the return of Christ. But some people, like Steve Henderson, think it's about the pre-return of Christ.

— You know what the pre-return of Christ is?

Yeah, okay, so basically the rapture. So there is this idea that is also rooted in 1 Thessalonians 4.

Oh gosh, I don't think we wanna, okay.

Okay, all right, so we'll do this now with whatever. So some of you have heard, some of you have read a book by Tim LaHaye called Left Behind. Some of you may have just kind of been raised in a Baptist kind of a framework or whatever, and you think, God bless you, that sometime prior to Jesus' actual return that what he's gonna do is sort of return. He's gonna like skim off the atmosphere, and when he comes by, he's gonna pick up all the good ones, and then he's gonna leave, okay? And then for whatever reason, people are always raptured naked, it seems. We're gonna leave little piles of shoes and clothes on the floor, and then we all get taken up to heaven. And we go away for seven years, while like Jesus just pours out wrath on the earth, but we're rescued from wrath 'cause he hasn't appointed us to suffer wrath. Is this ringing a bell?

— Okay, I don't think any of that's true. None of that has any actual basis in reality. I think that when Jesus comes, he comes all the way. When he comes, he's coming one more time. When he comes, he's gonna stay. When he comes, we're gonna stay with him, and let all of those things are based on a misunderstanding chiefly of 1 Thessalonians 4 and Matthew 24.

Okay, so while we're here, just take a look. We'll start with Matthew 24, since that's the one that Steve brought up, okay? So, and it's understandable, and I understand that what I'm about to read to you is gonna be like, yeah, dummy. Like it says what it says, believe Jesus, instead of Tim, and that's all is a good idea, but I would append to it, understand what Jesus said, instead of what your incompetent Bible teachers taught you, okay?

So, am I putting too fine of a point on this? Okay.

Alright, so look at the, here's the verse. This is Matthew 24, and you might go down to like, I don't know, 30, yeah, we're gonna go a little bit later first. Here's the punch line, verse 39, the end of verse 39.

This 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.

Okay, so here we are, doing normal stuff, just making flour tortillas, just doing what we do, right? And then suddenly bam, the other one's gone, but the other one stays, and then suddenly bam, one of them's gone, and the other one stays.

And what's happening is they're being allegedly, is they're being raptured. That's a Latin word that means caught away, they're being caught away to be with the Lord. Okay? Makes sense so far?

Okay, here's why that's not what it means. Here's why that can't possibly be what it means. If you go a little bit earlier, 36.

No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

But in 37, it says,

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

What he's saying is there's something that happened like, I don't know, 5,000 years ago or something, and whatever that was is instructive to, is illustrative of, bears some correspondence to what's gonna happen when he comes back.

As it was in Noah, so will be when Jesus returns. There's something there that's gonna be replayed here, okay?

And what is that? Well, verse 38, in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving a marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark. They're just doing normal life stuff, okay? And they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away.

Now, let me ask you, when the flood came and took people away, did it take them in rescue or in judgment? It took them in judgment. Any ambiguity? Any possible way that it could mean something else?

To be taken by the flood is to be taken in judgment. And then one verse later, that is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

The flood came, the sun will come. When the flood came, they were taken in judgment. And at the coming of the Son of Man, two men will be in the field and one will be taken. Taken in judgment or taken in rescue? Judgment.

This is not picturing being taken in rescue. It's picturing being taken in judgment.

Two women will be grinding with a handmill, one will be taken in the other left. Matthew 24 is picturing a sudden and unexpected judgment, not a sudden and unexpected rescue prior to the judgment and prior to Jesus' return, which will happen seven years later. It's just, you're making that up, okay?

— Jason, then Durham.

— So lines up with what Paul continues to say in 1 Thessalonians 5:2-3.

Yes, exactly. And we'll come to 1 Thessalonians 5 in just a second, cause that's, I think, a key piece too, which bleeds into first Thessalonians 5. So the picture are there and the Olivet Discourse, the picture that Paul is painting in 1 Thessalonians 4 and into 5 is a sudden surprise of judgment when he comes.

— Eric.

— Oh, Revelation 1:7.

Yes, okay. Relative, are you saying that something about the rapture teaching?

Well, it's talking about the grief and people wailing.

Oh, yes, right.

What we're talking about, you know, being taken.

Yes, however, I'm actually hopeful about that revelation. Okay, let me put that aside for a second. I'll come back to that. Cause I think the grief there is something else. But I'll show you that, we'll get there.

This is fun, I love this class. Okay, so go to 1 Thessalonians 4.

1 Thessalonians 4, Matthew 24, maybe the most picturesque depiction of the supposed rapture, but the ground of this doctrine is 1 Thessalonians 4. In fact, the word, you may have heard somebody say that the word rapture doesn't occur in the Bible. That's not true. The word rapture doesn't occur in an English Bible. It occurs in the Latin Vulgate.

The translation of 1 Thessalonians 4 is the word, has the word, rapture, is what we're talking about. So here's what he says. This is the passage we already read about. They're all sad that all their friends are dying and they don't know what's gonna happen. In verse 15, it says,

According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord will not proceed those who fall into sleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with a voice of the archangel, and the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

So they're like six feet lower, they need a head start. And then after that, here it is, we who are still alive and left will be caught up. That's the word rapture in Latin.

We who are still alive and 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, therefore encourage each other with these words.

So once again, you might be like, well, says what it says, okay? And so when I tell you there's not going to be a rapture, what I mean is there's not gonna be the rapture that we leave the earth and go away. I do think, because Paul says so, we will be caught up to meet him, but I just want you to notice the ambiguity of this, okay?

So, usually I do this with a chalkboard or something, but here's Jesus, and here's us, right? When Jesus comes, and this is when he comes, and this is when he comes, this is not seven years before he comes, this is when he comes. He comes here and then we're down here, and we will be actually caught up to meet him.

And that's where Paul ends the story. He simply says that we'll be caught up together to meet the Lord in the air.

Somebody necessarily is gonna do a U-turn, okay? Either Jesus does a U-turn and we escape with him, or we do a U-turn and we escort him down to the earth, necessarily, right? Nobody thinks we're just gonna like hang out in the atmosphere forever.

He comes, we meet him, he does a U-turn, and we go escape, that'd be the Tim LaHaye Left Behind version, or we do the U-turn and we escort him in. The question is, which one is it? The text sort of doesn't say, but it does, but it's not obvious, but we meet him, and then something happens.

Can you live with that? So, just like, one second, John, just like you may not have noticed that there was any ambiguity in Matthew 24 about what does it mean to be taken? Is it taken in rescue or judgment? I want you to notice there's an ambiguity here of what happens next. So far so good, and then I'm gonna settle the ambiguity, but John?

— When Paul was, made his trip to Rome, and Rome came out to meet him and escorted him into Rome.

Exactly right. So, this word here, what John just said is when Paul makes it into Rome, his friends come out to meet him. That's exactly right.

So, this word here, meet in verse 17. After that, we were still alive, and our left would be caught up together with him in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, meet the Lord in the air. The Greek word there is apentesis, which shows up three times in the New Testament here, and 1 Thessalonians 4, and then two other times.

In each of the other times, it's used in reference to somebody who goes out of the city to meet someone and escort them in.

Those virgins in Matthew 25, they go out there with a trimming their wicks. When the bridegroom comes, they go out to meet him, to apentesis him, and then to guide him in. That's in Matthew 25.

And then Paul, when Paul is coming into the city and it's in Acts 28:15. The brothers there had heard that we were coming, and they traveled as far as the poreia and the three taverns to meet us.

And then they escort him in. The other two times, it's that, and I think for a number of reasons, that's exactly what's gonna happen, is that we will meet him and we will escort him in.

That trumpet call, the resurrection from the dead, that's all, that's what 1 Corinthians 15 talks about, it's one event. It's not two events, seven years apart. When he comes, he comes, and he raises the dead, and we will meet him, okay?

— One thing you want to pick and call.

Exactly. So we're welcoming the King, we will escort the King in, and we will be with him.

That was for free. Okay, so Matthew 24 and 25, we got 1 Thessalonians 4. Any other biggies that kinda like loom in your mind here? Jason?

— Revelation 19.

Okay, so Revelation, we go to the end of Revelation, up through 22, those are all kinds of stuff. What are you thinking in chapter 19 in particular?

— Why the wrong way?

Yes, excellent, right? His name is Faithful and True, right? Here, actually, let's see in our packet here, let's see. Ah, no, it's more fun to see that him kinda work, I think I'm gonna make him earn it, sloop.

Okay, so Revelation 19, I saw heaven standing open, and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is Faithful and True, with justice, he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns.

He has a name written on him that no one knows, but he himself. He's dressed with a robe dipped in blood, his own blood, by the way. And his name is the word of God. And the armies of heaven were following him, riding on horses and dressed in fine linen and white and clean.

He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. That's a great, that's a great scene.

— And then?

Michael?

— So a quick question on Matthew 24.

Yeah.

— If you're saying with that, so the sudden judgment piece, how does that translate in to the writings and Revelation and stuff, when it tends to be like, so those pictures, he's in the Battle of Armageddon, he's taken out the army, it's like a, it's there a massing, so how do you kind of, he's through like the sudden judgment of Matthew 24, the flood was very obvious, the eight peoples survived, and then one came, in the end, it does picture that there's some type of war that takes places in the physical geography of the Mount of Olives and the valley and the blood running, you know, to the horse's bridle, so how does that play in, can you hear it?

Yeah, okay, so Michael, I think what you're asking is, we have, when the return of Christ is figured in the New Testament, it shows up lots of times in different ways, and sometimes you get the impression that like, just bam, everybody drops dead. And then sometimes you get the impression that there's going to be a war to be waged, and is it gonna be, is it gonna be over in a second, or are we gonna have to like, kind of grind through it a little bit, is that fair?

Okay, so the simplest answer to that is that I don't know, all right, that we do have lots of different pictures and lots of images. If I had to guess, I think it might be literally what J.R.R. Tolkien was trying to depict in the battle at Helms Deep, for those of you that know what I'm talking about.

Okay, do you know this in The Two Towers that, what is it, Rohan, who they live in this like, or they retreat to this big stone castle, you know what I'm talking about? Have you seen it, read the book or seen the movie? And they're in this massive battle, and they're losing, but do you remember that kind of the Gandalf's prophecy was like, on the third day at dawn, look to the east, right? And then Gandalf shows up, and then it's over. Do you remember that?

My guess is that it's something like that, that there is gonna be a final battle, and I can, I hold this loosely. Anytime when we get into eschatology, there's a certain degree which you just gotta be like, yeah, maybe. There's always a maybiness to this, but, and we will look more at eschatology, you know, in like three years, we'll get, when we finally get to there, but my guess is that it's gonna be prolonged distress, and then Jesus comes, and it's like Gandalf coming over the hill, and I literally think that's probably what Tolkien was trying to portray there. I might be wrong, okay.

Alright, one or two more, before Sloop gets to pass out the sheets, biggies, biggies, biggies. Oh, we probably should do it right now, okay, yeah, let's do it, we're almost out of time. So, if we run these things around, and I'll give a handful of you guys a bunch.

Here's my invitation to you, as these guys are passing these out, the first one's free, but they're 10 bucks if you want a second copy. I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. We'll give you all you want, okay.

And I am gonna email this out, if you are not currently getting the emails for this class, just send an email to chsdoctorin@gmail.com, and I'll send this to you.

Here's my invitation to you. When I was doing this the last couple of days, I did it, I read through it all a couple of days ago, and then yesterday I formatted it down, and it's a prime mistake, so be gracious.

But, going through it all at once was really overwhelming, because there's just so many references to the return of Christ, and there's different implications each time it shows up.

As I went through this, or not as I went through it, as I was kind of making it, and going through the text, there's just a bunch of different observations that I made, and you, if you choose to take, you might do this, you can take one quiet time, take some evening, don't watch TV, turn off your Netflix, and just read it straight through.

I think if you choose to do that, I think it will impact you positively, because you'll see my goodness. His return is a grounding reality of our faith. He's coming back, it's what Titus calls the blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us.

Or a demon from all wickedness, and to purify for himself, of people's own, to do what is good, right?

Are we out? Did I not? I've got—

— I'll put my hand out too liberally.

I'll put my hand out too liberally.

— Davey Liberal. Sorry, I have a few more in my office, but here, I don't need mine, so who's missing them? Yeah, but I didn't mean to give them any. (audience laughs) Okay, I have—

Oh, Doug's got a few more, so these guys over here, Doug, thank you, sorry.

Okay, so, read through it all, straight through it. And I'm gonna, I'll email it to you today. So if you didn't get a copy, or if you just wanted to have a digital version, you can have that.

And then just notice things. You will invariably, you're gonna notice things that I didn't notice. Kelly and I had a fun conversation last night of just different things that struck us here.

Let me show you a couple things. Go to the section on 1 Thess. I don't know if you know this, but the last verse of every chapter in 1 Thessalonians is about the return of Christ. Did you know that?

If you go to it, here I give 'em out of way, but still true.

First Thessalonians, if you just flip through, he concludes chapter one, chapter two, chapter three. What is wrong with this thing? You got one? I'll take one back at these, faster for these guys. Thanks, pal.

So, he ends every chapter with some little homage to the return of Christ. He says, chapter one, for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve in the living and true God and to wait for his son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.

In chapter two, he says, "What's our hope, our joy, the crown, which will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy."

He says in chapter three, "May he strengthen your hearts so that you be blameless and holy and the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones."

Chapter four, we already talked about kind of extensively. And then in chapter five, now, brothers, about times and dates, we don't need to write you for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night, while people are saying peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly.

This is what Jason was quoting, right? And I love the fact that whether it was just intuitive to Paul, or it's what he specifically wanted to impart to the Thessalonians, the return of Christ anchors every other thought.

This is it, we are living our lives in anticipation of this. I noticed when I went through it in this fashion that it's summarized or titled in different ways. Like I tend to say the return of Christ. I've said the phrase the return of Christ about 500 times today, right?

Peter doesn't tend to say that. He talks about things being revealed. If you look at Peter's letter also, say when salvation is revealed, or when Jesus is revealed, or when his glory is revealed. Paul talks about it a lot. He uses different language. Sometimes he calls it the appearing.

He'll say where to keep his command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He'll say in view of his appearing, and then he gives this charge to Timothy. He says in Colossians, when Christ who is your life appears, you will appear with him in glory.

Sometimes it's just called the day. And that by the way, when you go through this document, it's a little bit, sometimes I'm like, "Should I include this one, or should I not?" And so there's kind of some judgment calls, but they'll say we're waiting for the day to dawn, or that the day is approaching, or that there will be an award on that day.

And you may make, you may make, I hope you will make other observations. Maybe you'll take an evening and just blitz through it, read it all, or maybe not. Maybe this is like a week's worth of quiet times, or two weeks worth of quiet times, and you just work through it and look them up in context.

But that's what I'm gonna invite you to do here. We will be here at the return of Christ, at His appearing, at the revelation of Jesus Christ. We'll be talking about the day for a few weeks still. I'm not sure, we'll kind of make this thing up as we go along.

But as we do, it’ll be really fun. If you guys are all coming back to class, having read this, having pondered this, having noticed something that nobody else has noticed yet, and made some discoveries, okay?

So that's where we're gonna go. We got a few more minutes. So I wanted to save a couple minutes at the end. Anybody else wants to comment a passage they've seen, or something even that you've noticed just flipping through this, that you'd like to impart to the rest? Catherine?

— Philippians 1 has the day of Christ, and he says, I pray that you love me about more and more wisdom and depth of insight, so that you may be pure and blameless on the day.

That you're exactly right. So some, and those are all listed here. Sometimes it's the day, in Philippians, that is kind of an idiomatic phrase there. He says, at first, or in Philippians 1, that you'd be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, and then in chapter two, in order that I may boast on the day of Christ.

In chapter three, we usually wait a savior from there. It's, and then there's one other, oh, also in Philippians 1:6. We carry down a completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Yeah, so there's different kind of titles that are given to it. But again, you see it just pervades its thought.

Okay, question, comment, any of these things, about his soon coming? No, no, no. Okay, well then we're gonna be done. So take it, read through it. I hope it'll be enriching for you, and we'll talk more about it in the next couple of weeks. Thanks for coming.

You betcha. We got a few more up here. We have three more copies, and I'll get more.