The Coming to the World
Before we discuss the personal coming to the disciple, let us establish firmly the truth concerning the historic coming of Jesus Christ from Heaven to the earth.
The following verse is the cornerstone of the Book of Revelation and it is not to be tampered with in any manner.
Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen. (Revelation 1:7—NIV)
The above is the historic coming of the Lord. There shall be no coming in the clouds to receive His elect prior to this one. The doctrine of the pre-advent coming of the Lord (rapture), a coming in glory to receive His people prior to His historic second coming to the earth to establish His Kingdom, is in error. Its effect on the Evangelical churches has not been good. It has left the believers with the notion that at any moment they will be whisked away to Heaven before they can be harmed by the trouble that obviously is at hand.
This is not a true, scriptural hope and a multitude of God’s people will be horrified and totally unprepared to stand in Christ when they enter the moral horrors that are on the horizon. They will not be able to bear a bright witness of Christ because they are not prepared to stand in the evil day. This precisely is what Satan is counting on.
Let me now present several more passages that have to do with the great historic coming of Jesus Christ in the clouds of glory. As I understand the following verses they all apply to the same event, although each may have a different emphasis.
"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." (Matthew 24:29-31—NIV)
The passage above may be the strongest in the Bible concerning the historic second coming of the Lord. There are the great signs in the heavens as well as the trumpet call gathering together God’s elect. The emphasis is on the majesty and grandeur of the appearing of Christ to establish His Kingdom on the earth.
Another is as follows:
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. (I Thessalonians 4:16,17—NIV)
The above is sometimes viewed as a special coming that will precede the great historic coming. It is not, as I understand it. We notice the trumpet call of God, the resurrection of the dead, and the gathering together of God’s elect.
This passage is tied to Matthew 24 by the common employment of the Greek term parousia for "coming." The emphasis here is on the fact that the living and the dead saints will enter the Kingdom at the same time. It was written by the Apostle Paul to comfort the believers whose relatives and friends had died. It has nothing to do with our escaping Antichrist or the great tribulation by leaving the earth and going to Heaven. There is no basis in the above text to suggest such an interpretation. For this reason it should not continue to be preached. It is giving God’s people a misleading vision of the future.
Here is a third passage concerning the great historic coming of the Lord to establish His Kingdom on the earth. I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— In a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. (I Corinthians 15:50-53—NIV)
The emphasis here is on the resurrection and the change in the body. The catching up of the resurrected and living elect is not mentioned. However, Paul is saying here that before we are caught up we will be changed into immortality.
A fourth passage:
God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you And give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. (II Thessalonians 1:6-8—NIV)
This is the same historic coming. The emphasis is the deliverance of the saints from persecution. Now the shoe is on the other foot. Those who have harmed the saints will themselves be harmed, at the coming of the Lord.
A fifth passage:
And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. (II Thessalonians 2:8—NIV)
The Lord Jesus Christ will overthrow Antichrist at his appearing. His saints, those who have experienced the personal coming to the disciple, will be with Him and assist with this total victory. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power On the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you. (II Thessalonians 1:9,10—NIV)
We see this victorious attack on Antichrist, in the Old Testament.
You will flee by my mountain valley, for it will extend to Azel. You will flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the LORD my God will come, and all the holy ones with him. (Zechariah 14:5—NIV)
When the Lord Jesus appears we shall appear with Him, riding on the white stallions of war. We shall descend with Him to the Mount of Olives and go to the rescue of the nation of Israel. We shall be with Him when He is crowned on the Temple Mount. From there we shall go to our assigned places of rulership over the saved nations of the earth.
Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against the rider on the horse and his army. (Revelation 19:19—NIV)
I believe I have given you a true, scriptural portrayal of the historic second coming of Christ. His second coming in the clouds of glory will be followed by the thousand-year Kingdom Age.
There will be no secret coming prior to this great second coming, a pre-advent coming to carry off the Lord’s people before the second coming. If there were to be such a special, secret coming, it would have occurred in the first century. Christians have suffered terribly during the two thousand years of the Church Era. There is no scriptural or logical reason why our generation of believers should be especially favored of God and caught away to Heaven so we do not suffer.
There has been much persecution of believers, and many have been martyred, to this point in the twentieth century. The vicious torture and murder of Christians is continuing as I am writing today. What scriptural, logical reason can be advanced to prove that for some unknown reason the American Christians of our time, many of whom are a disgrace to the Gospel of Christ, will be caught up so they may avoid suffering, while the godly have suffered through the centuries?
The changing of our blessed hope from the coming of the Lord to the going of carnal believers to Heaven is one of the symptoms of the philosophy of Humanism that has so poisoned Western thinking. I believe the passages above are all referring to the same event—the historic return of the Lord Jesus Christ in the clouds of glory.
Having established this biblical truth, let us turn our attention to a coming of the Lord that is not nearly as well understood.