Resurrection and the Heart

Well, yesterday I wrote that it is not good to be obsessed with end-time events, and thereby to overlook the task of keeping our hearts pure and free from sin in the here and now. And so it is, but today I would like to set forth a couple of things that DO have to do with the end-time, and I'm talking about the VERY end. Jesus gave us a number of parameters that map out the trek into the end of this age, most of which can be found in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. I would just like to touch on one of them, which in turn confirms another, both of which are of vital importance to all who hope to inherit eternal life. So let's look at one of these elements in Luke: "And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled" (Lk. 21:20-24). And we are given a little more detail about this time when Jerusalem is going to be under siege by the Gentile nations in Revelation 11: "And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months. And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth" (Rev. 11:1-3). During the siege of Jerusalem, there will be two great prophets there, seeking to turn the Jews back to the true God, and his Son Jesus Christ. These "two witnesses" will also bring great plagues on all the earth during the time of their prophecy in Jerusalem (Rev. 11:5,6,9,10). Now much could be said about all of these things, but I am making only a couple of simplistic, but integral points today. And to get to those points I would like to take up in Zechariah, who foretold of these exact things, with still yet a little more detail: "Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south" (Zech. 14:1-4).

So again we see the siege of Jerusalem, and in Zehariah we see that this siege will end with the armies breaking through and devastating Jerusalem with a very great devastation. This final devastation of Jerusalem by the Gentile nations is spoken of in a number of places in the scriptures, and in every place it is generally described as follows: "For thus saith the Lord; We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace. Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness? Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of it" (Jer. 30:5-7). So this time will be, as Jesus said, a time of "great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be" (Mat. 24:21). But note that in Zechariah 14, as well as Jeremiah 30, and Daniel 12 also; that Jerusalem WILL BE saved out of that great trouble, howbeit only a small remnant, as shown in our quoted passage from Zechariah 14. The two prophets that will be prophesying in Jerusalem for three and a half years will have managed to turn only a remnant of the inhabitants of Jerusalem to the Lord, and it will be the desperate cries of that remnant that will actually bring about the second coming of Jesus to this world from heaven, as we see in Zechariah 14:3,4. Note that he will come from heaven and set foot first on the Mount of Olives, even as the angels standing by at his ascension said that the would do (Acts 1:11). So by these things we can see that when the armies of the earth lay siege to Jerusalem, it will be approximately three and a half years before the second coming of the Lord. And for all of the "rapture" enthusiasts there is only disappointment, because there IS NO rapture before the second coming of the Lord from heaven. There is only the "first resurrection," which is AT the second coming: "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto THE COMING of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord" (I Thess. 4:15-17). There are a number of mentions of "the resurrection of the dead" in the scriptures, and they all say THE resurrection of the dead, not plural resurrections (Mat. 22:30; Lk. 14:14; Lk. 20:35; Jn. 11:24; Acts 4:2; Acts 23:6; Acts 24:21; I Cor. 15:42; Philip. 3::11), To be technically sound however, there are TWO resurrections, the second being after the thousand year reign of Christ on earth, which will be when the wicked dead are raised to go the the white throne judgment (Jn. 5:29; Acts 24:15; Rev. 20:13). But the point is that there is only ONE resurrection of the righteous, and that resurrection is AT the second coming of the Lord from heaven, as we have seen in 1 Thessalonians 4. To add to that a "rapture" that supposedly takes place before or during the time of great tribulation is to contradict and confuse everything that is written concerning the resurrection of the dead, which in fact is the "one hope" of the gospel (Acts 23:6; Eph. 4:4). So as we have seen, there is only ONE second coming of the Lord, and there is only ONE resurrection of the righteous, who will be caught up both dead and alive AT that second coming. And that one and only second coming of Jesus, and the one resurrection of his elect, will FOLLOW the time known as the great tribulation, as Jesus himself plainly stated (Mat. 24:29-31). And that about covers what I had to say today. God bless.