Founder to Founder: Mariah Parsons of Haven Nova

(upbeat music) - You're listening to the unsafe Bible with Pastor Ken Brown. (upbeat music) - He and many of his contemporaries, while I have at the time believe that Jesus was coming back for a minute, that they were gonna be raptured. Yes, Jesus will be re-entering the atmosphere of this planet. He will indeed travel from or through the atmospheric heavens to earth. He will descend from the heavenly realm, the presence of God towards the physical earth, but when he comes the first time, he's not gonna touch the earth. He's gonna stay up there, and as this invasion takes place, that's when the noise begins to happen. (upbeat music) - From the earliest days of the church, believers lived with the expectation that Jesus could return at any moment. Even the Apostle Paul believed he might personally witness the Lord coming for his people. In today's message, Pastor Ken remind you that the return of Christ is not symbolic or uncertain, but a real event promised in the word of God. If you belong to Jesus, it will be a moment of victory, hope, and everlasting joy. So live every day faithfully, watching with the expectation of his return. Well, let's join Pastor Ken in the book of First Corinthians chapter 15, as he continues his message, "The Rapture of the Church." - Peter, we wanna talk about a guy who was a serious problem, pre-resurrection. He wanted to help God, then work out well for him. He denied Jesus multiple times, but after he saw the resurrected Lord, his life was never the same. In fact, after they all saw Jesus alive, they all went and became martyrs. Nothing could change their mind about who they saw and what was going on. And Peter's the prime example. For us as believers, that's not the end. Paul calls it sleep. There's a thing called soul sleep. That's a false teaching. It means you're in a state of suspended animation. That's not the case. We're not in suspended animation, waiting for their resurrection, okay? Not at all. All who dies believers immediately go to be with Jesus, Philippians 1, 19 to 24 tells us that. And in fact, it tells us in Luke 16, 22, we're probably gonna have angelic escorts. All of us. Early believers were so convinced of this that they started calling the place where they would bury people. They'd used a Greek term for dormitory. That term is anglicized now to cemetery. It literally means dormitory, sleeping quarters. That's how convinced the early church was. They're not dead, they're gonna come back. For us as believers, the moment of death, we are with Jesus immediately. If you don't know Jesus at the moment of death, you go to a place called shiol. It's not suspended animation, it's not waiting for the judgment. You go to shiol, that's the abode of the dead. It's also known as the underworld or the realm of the dead. In the Old Testament, it's referred to 64 times. And in the New Testament, it's called Hades. Now when Jesus rose from the dead, he emptied one side of that, which was called paradise. There's nobody there now, they're all with him. It was called paradise, Abraham's bosom, but it was not where those who were bad centers, that's not where they went. When Jesus rose from the dead, he emptied out paradise. Now, shiol or Hades, if you wanna use the Old Testament term, in the New Testament term, is not hell. Since I worked in law enforcement, I always considered nothing more than a holding cell. We would hold people in the cell until they'd get picked up and taken to the bad boy prison or bad girl prison or wherever they were adjudicated to. Shiol is a holding cell for the spirits of those in this life who didn't come to know the Lord. There's no second chance, there's no purgatory, there's no praying people out or anything like that. In the Old Testament, Shiol is always down. And the bad side of Shiol, based on what we read in Deuteronomy 32, 22, has levels. So could it be that as somebody arrives in Shiol, an angel throws him a shovel and says, "Start digging? We can't get deep enough yet?" Yeah, I guess. There's levels of punishment, but in the New Testament it's called hatey's. Now, thanks to Jesus and his discussion of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16, we also know this. Everyone is fully conscious of what's going on around them, where they are and why they're there. Everybody knows. Because the rich man knew why he was in the wrong side. And Lazarus knew why he was in the right side. And by the way, it's an area that's still under God's jurisdiction, too. And about purgatory, because I always get asked this whenever I've taught on Shiol or Hell or anything like this. It doesn't exist. Purgatory was created by Pope Gregory as a money-making endeavor for the Catholic Church. That's one of the reasons why Martin Luther got really, really, really upset. They would say, for a donation of X amount, we'll pray for your loved one to get out of purgatory. That's how they did it. You want your loved one out of purgatory? What kind of sins did they do? And they would give you a dollar figure. Here's the problem with the doctrine of purgatory as it's presented within the Catholic Church because the Eastern Orthodox Church rejected that. It's a very clear denial of the finished work of the Messiah. When Jesus died on the cross, he died once and for all for all our sin, past, present, and future. Period. When we come to Christ, we are justified. All of our sin is forgiven, past, present, and future. It's forgiven. It's a done deal. The teaching of the New Testament is when Jesus died on the cross, it's a finished work. And the finished work of Jesus means that we don't have to go through being purified again. We don't have to go through a period of purging and purifying in purgatory. The work of Messiah is a done deal and we are forgiven of sin. We don't have to go through a temporary purging ever again. It doesn't have to happen. We are believers. Oh, and here's one other thing, because I'm do get asked this. Currently, no one is in hell. No one. There will be no one there until we get to Revelation, chapter 1920, right in that area. That's when hell will receive its first two residents. The beast and the false prophet. We read that in Revelation 1920. Others will be arriving there shortly. They won't be alone for long. The sheep and goats judgment that takes place per what Jesus says in Matthew 25, 41 to 46. Those who are the goats who will not enter into the millennium because Jesus is the one who's judging them. There's no great white throne for them either. They just go directly from meeting in front of Jesus. They're outside of Jerusalem to be friends with the beast and the false prophet in their new digs. And that's not getting a boat with asbestos and evin rude motors and doing water skiing across the lake of fire, okay? That's not happening. At the end of the millennium, Satan and his minions arrive. That's when they get there. And then that's when the rest of the population begins to show up. The great white throne judgment takes place at the end of the millennium. And that's when as a result of judgment, the population starts to increase. How alive and engaged are those who have gone before us, okay? Those who have died. For Jesus in Luke 16, there's conversations going on right now on both sides in shiel and in heaven with the Lord. So a friend of mine who has now with the Lord, who used to come to Bible study all the time and always wanted to know what's the really big thing that you're going to teach me from the Bible today. Well now he's talking to Jesus saying, is there anything else? I'm sure he's there doing that. He's probably been spending more time on his knees worshiping, though. We're provided a picture of shiel. Actually, kind of an interesting picture. It's given to us in Isaiah 14 as the king of Babylon arrives. So the king of Babylon's died. He's arriving in shiel and in Isaiah 14 verse 9, we see what's going on. Shiel below is stirred up about you. Ready to meet you when you arrive. It rouses the spirits of the dead for you. All the former leaders of the earth. It makes all the former kings of the nation rise from their thrones and all of them respond to you saying, you too have become weak like us. You've become just like us. your splendor has been brought down to shield. as well as the sound of your stringed instruments. And then here's the conclusion of that, really happy memories. You lie on a bed of maggots and with a blanket of worms over you. Okay, thank you Isaiah. We needed that. As believers, we can have the full confidence that our loved ones who have gone home before us are right now in the presence of Jesus and all the saints. They're fully conscious. And they know where they are. And they know who they're with. And I can't wait. And neither can Paul. There's this buzz that was going on in Tesla and Ike. It's a false teaching that those who died would miss out. And that's not the case, not hardly. When Jesus comes back to get us, guess who he's bringing with him? He's bringing everybody who's there right now. Everyone who's died, they come back with him. Remember, when you die and you go to be with Jesus, you're gonna be with him forever? Well, that means forever. That means when he comes back to get us, he's bringing everybody else too. If you die without Jesus, you don't have that to look forward to. You're gonna have no Jesus, which is what you've wanted for all eternity. But verse 15, "We say this to you by the word of the Lord that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not proceed those who fall on the sleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel and with the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ will rise first. Paul and the church in Thessalonica expected and believed that Jesus was a brow to break into time and space and begin the great reset by removing the church. We're waiting for that today too. Now, the concern of those who died was, hey, you're gonna miss out. Now, don't be worried about that. You see, when he changes us who are alive, that's the second change of the day, okay? What Paul tells those in Thessalonica is don't stop looking for Jesus, keep looking. Paul's personally been given this communication by Jesus saying, hey, the rapture's happening. It's common. Jesus told him it is. But those of us who are alive won't be the first ones changed. Those who are in dead in Christ, they've come back with him. They're gonna be in the clouds with him. They're gonna have front row seats to everything that's going on. They're gonna be resurrected into glorified bodies first. There's no way they're gonna miss out on this event. They're the first ones to get it. But here's the thing, how do you know you're on planet earth that this is going on? Paul tells us, Jesus told him, it's not a secret, okay? This is not going to be a secret. It'll be a very, very noisy event. What are we being told here? Well, Jesus Christ, as he promised in John 14, three, is personally coming back for his own. So when we see that in a scenario based on the word of the Lord to Paul, it begins with a personal manifestation of Jesus Christ coming to fulfill his prophesied return for his church. There's no angelic entourage. He has the entire church with him. He is the one descending from heaven. He promised, and he always keeps his promises. So what does descending from heaven mean? Is it like a reentry of a satellite? No, it's a cross-dimensional intrusion into our present space and time by the God of the universe. I tend to call it an extraterrestrial invasion. You can hear my UFO thing coming back. But it is, okay? Paul expects to be part of this. He uses first-person plural construction in the Greek when he starts talking about it because he thinks that he's going to be part of the group that's going up to see. He believed, and he and many of his contemporaries, well, I have at the time, believe that Jesus was coming back for him in any minute, that they were going to be raptured. He will descend from the heavenly realm, the presence of God towards the physical earth. But when he comes the first time, he's not going to touch the earth. He's going to stay up there, and as this invasion takes place, that's when the noise begins to happen. It says in verse 16, the first part of it, the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God. There's three sounds taking place here. Three successive sounds that we read in the text. As Jesus enters this present dimension, this portal opens, and he comes, and we hear this word, the word in the Greek is K'elus-Mati, and it means a battle cry. It's a battle cry, it's a battle engagement, it's a signal for a command or engagement, do this process. So the shout is a command from the king. What's the procedure? What's the major engagement? You're going to raise from the dead. That's what it's it. The king is fully in command. He personally enters the dimension with his own to resurrect them all. I'm reminded of what Jesus did when he rose Lazarus from the dead in John 11, 43. He said these things, he was talking to Mary and Martha, and then he cries out with a loud voice. I'm thinking he probably yelled as loud as he could. Lazarus, because Lazarus had the hearing in Paradise, and he had to make sure it was the right Lazarus. If he hadn't said Lazarus, they'd been a real problem in the graveyard that day. They'd come out and out, comes Lazarus. So that was the voice of command, same voice. So what's the shout? I think it's probably at one time the name of every person being resurrected, being called out in person at that point. He's calling them to be resurrected into their glorified bodies. It's a shout of a military commander, which implies not only the authority required, but the urgency of the matter as well. In the next term in our translation says the voice of the archangel, that's a little bit leading in the Greek. It just says, "Infone archangel level." There's no article, it doesn't say the archangel. It just says, "Invoice archangel." Okay? We're not told the name of an archangel. Jude 9 is the only other place in the New Testament we read about archangels, and there we're given a name. Here we're not given a name. So who's making the sound? Well, whoever it is has the same voice of command. Now remember Jesus is a military commander. Any of us who've ever been in the military are kind of used to this. You have the primary officer who yells the command. The NCOs then repeat the command. That could be what's happening. The shout of command, and then you have the repeat of the command, and it sounds like archangel doing it. It could be all the archangels at that point in time, saying the same thing. God's commanding resurrection, and almost instantaneously like the senior NCOs that they really are, they make the same cry. This is a military operation. Jesus is taking over, and this is the beginning of that operation. The great reset is starting. Then there's a third sound, the trumpet of God. It's connected with all those who are being called back to life. Now in the Old Testament, a trumpet is the alarm for war, and it was designed to throw the enemy into a panic. It's also sounded for the assembly of God's people in Israel. Here it calls all of God's people together, and this is not a silent event. This is not something just we will be hearing. The world will hear this. They may be hearing noise. We're going to be hearing, "Can come up here." Your name come up here. We'll hear the trumpet. We'll hear all of that. But the world may be hearing just a lot of noise, and then that's when all the problems begin for the world. With that taking place at the same moment, the dead and Christ are resurrected. Now there may be a few funeral homes that are all of a sudden missing bodies, but other than that, they may not be a big impact on that one. But the Father's turn to Jesus. Let's go. Get them. Bang. It's a forceful entry into the universe. Everybody knows this is what's going on. It's very loud. There's no doubts that this is happening and to the unbeliever they just hear noise. But what a noise as Christians everywhere across the planet, all the graves empty in a millisecond, and at the same moment believers across the planet disappear as well. Then there's the additional issue of all the children below the age of accountability. God. Everybody who has been established have some kind of mental disability, and I think of my uncle who's now with the Lord, who never got to be more than a certain age, mentally there with the Lord too. Billions suddenly gone. Verse 17, "Then we who are alive, who remain," this is Paul talking, "He's using we, "he's expecting to be part of this, "will be caught up together with them in the clouds "to meet the Lord in the air, "and so we will always be with the Lord. "Comfort one another with these words." Those of us here on Earth alive when Jesus returns, we're out of here. We're caught up. We're hot sod, raptured, out of here, with force. And we're going to be meeting Jesus in the clouds. So as we head up, we see Jesus, we see all the saints with Him, we see all of our lives. our loved ones that have gone on before us, and we're never gonna be away from Jesus ever again. Ever. The word here for meeting is another interesting Greek word, Apontusen is the word. It is used as a technical term for an old custom that they used in antiquity, where a public welcome was given by a city to important visitors. So when Jesus shows up at the gates of the world, we go up to meet Him, where are claiming Him as Lord, we're giving Him that welcome. And here's the other thing. Who's the Prince of the Power of the Air today? Satan, where's Jesus going to meet us in the air? 'Cause Jesus is God, he is supreme. He's gonna meet all of his saints in a region that Satan thinks is his, and he's gonna take them all out of here. So much for Ephesians 2.2, in terms of having Satan stop anybody, just because he's the Prince of the Power of the Air. So what? Jesus will intentionally, once again, be tweaking Satan by meeting his church in the air, ripping them out of the gates of hell and delivering them into the presence of Jesus by the power of God. And once we're caught up to be with Jesus, and the rest of the church is there, that's what we're gonna be forever. We're gonna be with Him. Now there's more to that, we're gonna have time to get into it. We'll always be with the Lord, always. And Paul concludes his thoughts on this with comfort, one another with these words. That's a comfort, let me tell ya. Jesus provided us the prophecy of what is return for his own looks like. In John 14, one in three, and then Paul begins here in First Thessalonians with a fulfillment of that promise looks like. He's coming again to take us to be with Him and his return is eminent. And this is where comfort and hope comes in. Jesus was literally crucified, literally buried, and literally raised bodily from the dead in a physical body. He literally and physically ascended to heaven to be seated at the right hand of the Father. And the term used to describe those events is also being used to describe this event. And because of the truth of the first two events involving Jesus, you can take it to the bank that he's coming back to get us, literally and physically. What we see in a First Thessalonians 4, 13 to 18 is a blow by blow description of the bridegroom coming for his bride. A bride who's been made ready for a reception at the groom's home, and once the groom meets the bride, he takes the bride to his father's house, where there's a wedding feast and a formal union of marriage. Everything that we've been talking about is what Jesus has talked about in John 14, is all happening here. Once we leave this planet to be with Jesus, then that's where we're going to be. We won't be here on earth. You can look for me. I won't be here. In order to participate in this imminent event, though, you've got to be a believer in Jesus Christ. If you're not a believer, you're not part of the church, and you're going to find yourself here, not there. That's an issue you can resolve right now by believing in Jesus. In Romans 3, we read, "God's shown us a way to make right with him, but not keeping the requirements of the law, we're made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ." We solve that, and he even referred to it, that we have to believe that he died on the cross force and he rose from the dead. Well, Romans 10, 9 says the same thing. If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believing your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved. It's by believing in your heart that you're made right with God. It's by opening to declaring your faith that you are saved. As the Scriptures tell us, anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced. Jew and Gentile are the same. They have the same Lord who gives generously the all. Everyone who calls in the name of the Lord will be saved. If you don't know Jesus, number one, you just acknowledge it's your center, we'll pray about that. Believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sin and that he rose from the dead and that he is Lord. And if you do that, you're saved. (upbeat music) Thanks for joining us today for this edition of the Unsafe Bible. Pastor Ken Brown has been leading us in a study through the book of First Thessalonians. This letter to the church in Thessalonica is centered around the persecution that Thessalonians were experiencing because of their faith in Jesus. The Roman authorities were not thrilled with the fact that they were proclaiming the reign of a new heavenly king. But despite the persecution and trials, the Thessalonian church thrived. And Paul was extremely fond of the people he and Silas had come to know in their time of church planning. As we learn from this book, let's remember that while the enemy will try to tear our communities apart, the fellowship we have with other believers is a bond that this world cannot destroy. If you're near Hope Sound, Florida and are looking for that kind of faithful church community, why not pay us a visit at Calvary Chapel Martin County? For more information about our in-person services, be sure to visit us online at theunsafebibole.com. While you're there, you'll also find our media page, which has hundreds more messages from pastor Ken from all corners of the Bible. If you'd like to reach out to us to share how God is speaking to you through today's study, you can also fill out our connect card online. And we will get back to you to celebrate what God is doing in you. We believe that God's mercies are new every morning and so is the wisdom that we can glean from His word. Join us next time for another great teaching here on the unsafe Bible. [MUSIC PLAYING]