34 What will it be like to witness the catching up of the saints and not be part of it?

But this is just the beginning of the sorrows of the rebellious.

Now the wrath of God is ready to be released—wrath that has been smouldering since the first angel thought of rebelling, of attempting to be like the Most High. All Divine wrath against rebellion will be revealed at once.

The Divine wrath is so frightful, so terrible, that the Rider who leads His army from Heaven will be clothed in a robe dipped in His blood. Only those who follow the blood of the Lamb will be saved in the Day of wrath.

At the coming of Christ, in the Day of the Lord, the dead will be judged. The victorious saints will receive their rewards. The reward we will receive in that Day will depend on what we have practiced during our life on the earth (Revelation 2:23; 22:12).

Those who are teaching that it does not matter very much how the Christians behave themselves in the world, that we will be kings and priests of God on the basis of our profession of faith and doctrinal correctness, are greatly in error. They are ignorant of the fundamental Kingdom principles of cause and effect, of sowing and reaping.

We shall reap, in the Day of the Lord, what we have sown in the world. If we sow to our flesh we will reap corruption in the Day of the Lord. If we sow to the Holy Spirit we will reap eternal life in the Day of the Lord.

God forgives our sins when we come to Him as an unsaved person. Then He expects us to live the Christian life. If we do not we will be treated as any other transgressor. There is no respect of persons with God (Romans 2:6-11).

Those who teach differently from this will bring themselves and those who follow them into tribulation and torment. They will answer to the Lord Jesus Christ at His judgment seat, and also to those people whom they deceived by teaching them it is not necessary to forsake all (even one’s life) in order to be a disciple of Christ.

Let us obey the whole counsel of God in the Scriptures and then there will be no mistakes. Our eternal destiny and the eternal destiny of those who trust in us are in the balance.

If anyone chooses to be ignorant, let him remain ignorant. The behaviours of all persons, Christians and non-Christians alike, will be revealed in the Day of fire that is dawning.

Those who fear the Lord will be rewarded. Those who are teaching today that we are not to fear God, and that God is incapable of wrath, will be caught off guard. They are deceivers and are deluding many in our time. They are deceived because of their love of the world, their love of sin, and their love of their own self. They are self-cantered, self-willed, determined to do whatever pleases them. Self-love and self-centeredness are adversaries of the Lord.

Many people are destroying the earth today with their lust for fornication, for material gain, for fame, for power, for pre-eminence. Christ will destroy them at His appearing.

Christ is coming to take command of the world, of all the nations of the earth. Then righteousness will reign throughout the earth. The destroyers will be gone from the earth. Can you imagine anything more wonderful than that? It will be days of Heaven on the earth. The curse will be lifted and all the marvellous things of earth will be ours to enjoy forever.

Our greatest joy will be to bring the Person, glory, and wisdom of the Lord Jesus Christ to the nations of the earth (Isaiah 2:2,3).

And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightning's, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail. (Revelation 11:19)

The glory and significance of the opening of the Temple of God in Heaven, and the appearing of the Ark in the Temple, can scarcely be grasped. These revelations portray the unfathomable power and majesty about to be brought into the world.

Because of the history of God’s moving in the earth from the time of Adam and Eve to the present moment, we have gained an idea of what God will do in the earth and what God will not do in the earth. Our idea hinders our grasp of what God actually is able to do and, according to the Scriptures, shall do in the earth.

Perhaps in the recesses of our minds we understand there is nothing God cannot do; and yet our vision is limited by our experience and by what we know to have been true in time past.

The power, the majesty, the glory, the righteousness of the Godhead will fill the whole earth in the near future. First will come the latter-rain revival. This revival is portrayed by the figure of the "two witnesses."

Then there will come a terrible tribulation, a destruction greater than any earth has experienced.

After the tribulation will be the thousand-year reign of Christ and His conquering saints over the nations of the earth. Finally there will come into being the sublime, incomprehensible glory of the new heaven and earth reign of Christ.

The Glory of God that soon is to come to the world, which even now is beginning, will be so much more extensive than anything the world has witnessed that we may have difficulty believing such a restoration of God’s Presence actually will take place in this sin-darkened world.

We can go to the Scriptures in order to gain the faith for what God proposes to do.

Jesus has stated that the Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached "in all the world for a witness to all nations" and then the end of the Gospel witness will be here. We must understand that this is not a conditional declaration that depends for its fulfilment on self-interested churches of frail humans—humans who are hoping all the while that the Lord will come and catch them away to escape their problems before the end-time Gospel of the Kingdom is preached.

The proclamation of Christ concerning the last-day preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God is a Divine declaration. It is a prophecy concerning the last days. It will be a Divinely ordained work of power and righteousness that will command the attention of all persons on the earth.

It is not in the power of men and women to "put on" a revival. True revivals flow down from the Throne of God in Heaven. The colossal angel standing astride the sea and the earth (Revelation 10:1,2) came from Heaven. He is not a composite of the strength, wisdom, and talents of pitiful, helpless human beings. The universal, galactic authority and power of the throne of Almighty God has been assigned to the angel in order that the prophecies that control the last "week" of the present age may be fulfilled.

If we are to be able to believe God and enter the end-time, latter-rain revival we must turn to the Scriptures and read and accept what God has stated concerning the closing days of the age and the coming of the Lord Jesus.

Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth. (Hosea 6:1-3)

God has permitted His people to be "torn" and "smitten" throughout the two thousand years of the Church Age. By "His people" we mean the Lord’s elect whether Jewish or Gentile by physical birth (Romans 9:23,24). The hour will come when He will heal us and bind us up.

God emphasizes the glory that is to come at the end of His working. He will "raise us up, and we shall live in his sight." This refers to the majesty and power that have been reserved for the closing days of the present age and for the ages to follow.

God shall revive His people. God shall raise up His elect and they shall live. God always is moving toward greater works in the earth, toward the full, complete restoration of all that was lost to mankind in the garden, and then toward unimaginable glory beyond that.

We will come to know the fullness of God’s Glory if we "follow on." We are not just to sit and wait for the Lord to return, we are to follow on to know the Lord. Waiting easily can become stagnant and dead, causing us to lose interest in God and His Kingdom.

As we follow on to know the Lord we make progress in the things of the Kingdom. We press forward toward the mark of the power of Christ’s resurrection. We come to know Christ, to win Christ, which was Paul’s goal.

Christ’s "going forth" always is "prepared." God never does anything without making exhaustive preparations. Every detail is described in advance. Nothing—absolutely nothing—takes God by surprise.

God is the God of advance planning, predestination, foreknowledge, election. This is why it is possible for us to move into the flow of preparation for the future and to be able to speak of it so confidently, prophesying in advance concerning the coming events.

"The works were finished from the foundation of the world" (Hebrews 4:3), therefore, we are able to enter the finished work, into the "rest" of God.

Christ’s going forth always is as assured, as certain, as the morning. Morning speaks to us of a new beginning, a fresh start of the Day the Lord has made. God’s mercies are renewed to us every morning, and each morning we receive grace to overcome the burden of evil of the day.

We do not have to always look backward to behold the Glory of God in the earth, although we are to build on the Divinely ordained works of the past. We never are to remove the old landmarks. The route the saints of old have taken, the highway of holiness on which they marched, guides us as we press forward on the continuation of the same highway, toward the fulfilment of the promises made to Abraham.

We always look back to Calvary and to the resurrection of Christ. Then, as Paul, we press forward to the mark that is before us.

The Hebrew day goes from sundown to sundown, beginning with the night-time. The Christian Church has passed through the night-time of the Day of the Lord. There is a dark hour yet to come before the dawning of the thousand-year Kingdom Age. In the darkness that continually is deepening on the earth, the Day Star is rising. Christ is dawning in the hearts of the elect, heralding the morning of the Day of the Lord.

Christ is coming to us as "the rain, as the latter and former rain to the earth." It is time now for the Lord to prepare all nations for His glorious appearing, for the Millennial Jubilee release that will bring the created world into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. The creation will be revived, the curse lifted.

God is preparing to send the Lord Jesus Christ back into the earth, not as a helpless baby, not as a gentle teacher, not as a sin offering, but as the rightful King of the nations of the world.

Christ came to us as the former rain, the seed rain. His Presence produced the ministry of the Apostles described in the Book of Acts.

The Book of Acts does not come to a conclusion, as we can determine from reading the last few verses.

The acts of power of the Holy Spirit are continuing today as Christ comes to us as the latter, harvest rain—the double portion of righteousness, wisdom, and power. It is time now for the harvest rain to become an abundance of rain, a downpour (Zechariah 10:1).

The everlasting doors of the Temple of God in Heaven are opening slowly, majestically, powerfully. The Temple in Heaven, that Moses saw on the mountain and from which the Tabernacle of the Congregation was designed, has been cleansed by the blood of Christ (Hebrews 9:12).

The Temple of God in Heaven has been closed to mankind since Adam and Eve heeded the counsel of Satan and disobeyed the ordinance of God.

Every person who applies the blood of Jesus to his life by faith may enter boldly past the veil into the Presence of the Almighty God, there to obtain mercy, and also grace by which the spiritual darkness of the world can be overcome.

The unsaved peoples of the earth continue to labor in the darkness of satanic rule, being under the Divine curse. Death still rules over all, although the Lord Jesus alone carries the keys of death. The beasts of the field and all nature groan in the travail of the chained creation.

In the goodness of God, the travail of the creation is not leading to hopelessness and despair but signals the coming of life. The birth pains of the creation already have commenced. The Kingdom of God is about to be born.

The massive, eternal gates of the Temple of God are opening steadily. The elect are beginning to see the golden light of the Day that has no end. There is hope. God never has left His creation without the hope that one day the bondage of futility, of uselessness, of never-ending, backbreaking toil will be finished. The rainbow still appears after the rain. The Redeemer of the world is preparing to "come out of Zion"; for as soon as "the Lord shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his glory" (Romans 11:26, Psalms 102:16).

What will the peoples of the earth see when they first look into the Temple of God in Heaven?

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