Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. Matthew 24:30
00:00Now, we have a few issues in the church about this, and one of the big issues concerns the issue of the rapture of the church.
00:09Now, if you look at a number of passages in the scriptures, you can see that there appears to be two stages to the second coming of Christ.
00:16Actually, this applies to whatever position you take on this subject.
00:21First, he comes as a thief in the night to take the believing Christians to himself in the event which we call the rapture of the church.
00:28Then he returns with the saints to the earth and sets up his millennial rule on the earth.
00:35Actually, all of those, whether you take the pre or the mid or the post-tribulation, those are all two stages of the second coming.
00:43The difference is, is there a difference between the timing of the rapture, does it come before the tribulation, does it come in the middle of it, does it come at the end of it?
00:54Either way, Jesus is going to take the believers out first, then he'd come back with them.
00:58Whichever view you have, that's actually the procedure.
01:02The question is, is there a difference between those two events?
01:06That's the subject we're going to look at today.
01:09So when we look at Bible prophecy, we can see that there are these three possibilities.
01:14There's the rapture of the church, the time of the great tribulation on earth prior to this,
01:19and the return of Jesus Christ to the earth in power and great glory.
01:22Now, if you look at the average church, in theory, every church believes the last one.
01:30Because they have creeds which say he should come again in power and great glory to judge the quick and the dead.
01:35Part of the Anglican creed, part of the creeds of the churches.
01:39I'm not sure if it's even part of the Catholic creed.
01:40I don't know, I don't know that one, but it's possible.
01:42Basically, in principle, all Christians believe that Jesus will come again in power and great glory.
01:48In practice, you'll find that the idea has been pushed out by most of the church.
01:54And you'll find that they don't really want to believe the great tribulation is going to happen.
01:58Some people actually believe it's already happened, which is a bit far-fetched, from my opinion.
02:03And people are sceptical or dismissive of the idea of the rapture of the church.
02:08Now, we're a Bible-believing church, so we believe that if it's in the Word of God,
02:12either it has happened, or it's happening now, or it will happen.
02:17And since the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, affirm the Second Coming,
02:21or in the Old Testament it's called the Day of the Lord,
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