Will you be snatched away or left behind?

I Thessalonians 4:13-17

September 19, 1999

Introduction: Many of us are familiar with the so-called Darwin Awards. If you do not know about these honorable mentions, they are given annually (and posthumously) to those individuals who did the most for the human gene pool by removing themselves from it.
For 1999, one of the finalists was an employee of the local gas company. In his small west Texas town, employees in a medium-sized warehouse noticed the smell of gas. Wisely, management evacuated the building and turned off all potential sources of ignition—lights, power, etc. Two employees of the gas company were dispatched to the warehouse to assess the situation. Upon entering the building, they found they had difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked. Witnesses later described the vision of one of the technicians reaching into his pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a lighter. Upon operation of the lighter-like object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it up to 3 miles away. Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter was virtually untouched by the explosion. The gas company employee who was suspected of causing the explosion had never been thought of as “bright” by his peers.
A runner-up in this year’s awards (a runner-up because she didn’t die) was a cleaning lady who greatly aided several others in hastening their trip to see the Almighty. A spokeswoman for the Pelonomi Hospital, in the Free State, South Africa, told reporters the following:
“For several months, our nurses have been baffled to find a patient dead in the same bed every Friday morning. There was no apparent cause for any of the deaths, and extensive checks on the air conditioning system and a search for possible bacterial infection failed to reveal any clues. However, further inquiries have now revealed the cause of these deaths. It seems that every Friday morning a cleaning lady would enter the ward, remove the plug that powered the patient’s life support system, plug her floor polisher into the vacant socket, then go about her business. When she had finished her chores, she would plug the life support machine back in and leave, unaware that the patient was now dead. After all, she could not hear the patient’s struggle and eventual straight-line beep of the monitor over the sound of her polishing machine.” The hospital spokeswoman went on to add, “We are sorry, and we have sent a strong letter to the cleaner in question. Further, the Free State Health and Welfare Department is arranging for an electrician to fit an extra socket, so there should be no repetition of this incident. The inquiry is now closed.”
One of these days, friends, perhaps very soon, maybe even tomorrow, we will all be going about our daily routines—some of us will be in the classroom, some on a factory assembly line, some making an ambulance run, some caring for hospital patients, some on the golf course, some changing a diaper, some visiting a widow, some milking cows and harvesting crops, some reading a good book, and whatever else is part of a normal day for each of us-- and in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye-- we are going to be confronted with a cataclysmic event even more sizeable than those faced by our Darwin Award finalists. We are going to be completely out of control, flying heavenward through the clouds like the angels. We will be totally at the mercy of God, completely dependent upon Him, newly clothed in a brand new robe (that fits us just right—not too loose, not too tight), and winding our way upward through the clouds toward heaven. This unbelievable experience is known in theological terms as the Rapture of the church. Now this event will not include all those who have memberships in local churches, but it will include all who are members of THE church of the Lord Jesus Christ. More about that in a little bit.
The central text for this Biblical concept is found in the first letter Paul wrote to the Thessalonians. We leave our study of the Proverbs with some sadness, at least for me, and for the next few weeks, we want to explore the books of I and II Thessalonians. They are rich in truth that is so encouraging. These are letters that Paul wrote, some of the earliest of the New Testament, that have a decided prophetic theme to them. In our study, we hope to be encouraged about life in the midst of a world that seems to be getting more bizarre by the day. Shootings of kids in a Baptist church in Fort Worth, the largest peacetime evacuation of Americans in history in the face of the largest hurricane ever, more and more earthquakes in Turkey, Indonesians killing Indonesians in East Timor… and perhaps some things closer to home that are just as earthshaking to some of us—loneliness, depression, discouragement, hopelessness, pain. What is our hope for tomorrow? Is that hope of tomorrow so grand that we live encouraged today? Is that prospect glorious enough to keep me moving in the right direction today? Is that expectation so compelling I leave my temptations to pornography, to overspending, to overeating, to laziness, to whatever… to continue walking with the Lord Jesus as closely as possible today? What Paul writes to the Thessalonians is just that, friends, a glorious, compelling expectation that stirs our hearts to faithfulness and steadfastness every day that we wait for His return!
Now I know it’s customary to start a book at the beginning, but like we did in Genesis, we are going to begin somewhere else. We’ll go back to chapter one next week, but for today, we want to look at one of the most famous passages in these two books. This is the passage that deals with the rapture of the church at the Lord’s return.
There are three dimensions of this concept called the Rapture for our consideration today. First, we want to know what happens. When the rapture takes place, just exactly what will happen? Secondly, we want to know what is its impact. What will be the effect upon the world, to both Christians and non-Christians, when the rapture occurs? And thirdly, what are the blessings on this cataclysmic phenomenon? What will be the benefits for us who experience the rapture?
The answers to our questions are found in our text for today, I Thessalonians 4:13-18. Follow along in your Bible or on the screen above as I read.
I Thessalonians 4:13-18: “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve, as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, and remain until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. 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 shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.”
Our first question was, “What Happens?” What takes place at the Rapture? According to verse 16, the Lord Jesus comes down out of heaven towards the earth. His descent is not a complete descent, for verse 17 tells us there is a meeting of the Lord in the air. The Lord Jesus’ coming down is accompanied by a loud shout, the voice of the archangel, and the trumpet (call) of God. These three alerts are three signals.
1. The loud shout or loud command is a call for the dead in Christ to rise. We remember the Lord Jesus standing outside the grave where Lazarus was entombed (Jn.11: 43). Jesus commanded, with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” And he did. And it’s the same here. At the loud command of the Lord Jesus, those who have died in the faith are raised again to life. (vs. 16c) Even those bodies of believers that went down on the Titanic and the Arizona, even those bodies burned in fires and destroyed in war, even those bodies of believers in airplane crashes at Little Rock and Lockerbye, even the bodies of believers cremated or buried at sea!
You see, for the God who holds all things together, as Paul had written to the Colossians, “He (the Lord Jesus) is before all things, and in Him, all things hold together,” for that kind of God, it is a small thing to pull all those pieces back together into a whole body once again. (As a sidebar here, I’ve had more questions this past year about what the Bible says about cremation. It doesn’t say anything, and so there’s no prohibition against the practice. Theologically, you can see why cremation is not a problem for God, just like fires and explosions are not either.)
And so the dead in Christ will rise.
Paul makes this point to the Thessalonians because they did not know what would happen to those fellow believers who died and the Lord had not returned yet. You see, all the believers in the early church expected the Lord Jesus to return at any moment—within days or maybe a few months at most. Everything the Lord Jesus had said seemed to suggest that they would all still be alive when He returned. He had said, Watch, Be ready, Don’t be deceived, the Son of Man will come at an hour that you do not think… There didn’t seem to be any likelihood that believers would die before that remarkable event. But some had, and the Thessalonians were confused. “What would happen to those who had died before the Lord’s return?”
Paul reassured these believers at Thessalonica that their loved ones in Christ would not miss out on the Lord’s return or be left behind when He called. Indeed, they would rise first at the Lord’s loud command. Why first? Dr. Walvoord, in the video we’ll see tonight says, tongue-in-cheek, that they rise first because, being in the ground, they have further to go!
2. Now there’s a second alert, and we see it in 16b—there is the voice of the archangel as the Lord Jesus descends. The only archangel named in the Scriptures is Michael—and according to the Old Testament book of Daniel, Michael is uniquely related to the nation of Israel. So it may be here, just maybe, that the Lord Jesus calls together the 144,000 Jews (12,000 from the 12 tribes) who will play a part in the great tribulation. In Revelation 7, the apostle John saw these 144,000 individuals, sealed and protected as Gospel evangelists, who serve during the 7 years of the tribulation period. So it may be that as Christ descends from heaven, He calls this remnant of Israel into a new relationship with Him by means of Michael’s shouting voice, calling them to their service of evangelism.
3. And finally, there is the third alert, after the loud command, after the voice of the archangel, there is the trumpet call of God, 16c. This is the call to the believers who are alive at the time—Paul had said to the Corinthian believers in I Cor. 15:51-52: “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.” So those who are not yet “asleep”—a reference to death for the believer—will be changed.
So when the trumpet call of God sounds, when its note reaches the ears of believers, we will be changed and caught up into the clouds to be with the Lord. This is what verse 17 says.
In a flash, we disappear; we meet in the air our deceased loved ones in the faith, and we join the Lord Jesus in the clouds! This is what I understand happens at the Rapture. The dead in Christ are called to life. The living in Christ are called skyward. The Jewish remnant is commissioned to a 7 year work of evangelism.
Our second question this morning is, “What is the impact of that event?” Well, upon the earth there is chaos and grief. Let’s put our imaginations to work for a few minutes.
**The captain of an airliner is suddenly gone-- there is his uniform, his cap, his watch, his wedding band, and his shoes are there on the floor at the rudder pedals. If the co-pilot is a believer, then he’s gone too. We can imagine what will happen to the airplane.
**All the cars being driven by Christians at the time of the rapture will become uncontrolled battering rams. Those of us who car pool to work or school with unbelievers may want to alert them to grab the wheel if we suddenly disappear. What a nightmare that might be
--at the airport where passengers disembark,
--on every highway and interstate where huge semi’s run out of control.
--in a parking garage after a concert. Just how much could a tow truck driver make clearing a parking garage like the one next to Purdue’s 6000 seat Elliott Hall?
**All the children in the world below the age of accountability disappear.
**Hundreds of band instruments in high school and college bands fall to the floor as Christian students disappear.
**Police forces find their ranks depleted. There are not enough firemen to man the fire trucks and emergency vehicles in their departments.
**Doctors and nurses vanish. Patients who know Christ disappear from gurneys in operating rooms.
**Husbands who never got around to going to church with their wives—who never bought into the Gospel—wake in the night to find family members missing. Husbands and wives are separated; one is taken, one is left behind.
**There will be much grief and anguish as youth realize parents are gone. So too the same for parents who try to come to grips with the fact their children are gone.
**Robbery and looting become epidemic when it’s noticed that so many homes are vacant, so many stores are understaffed.
There will be this dawning realization on the part of some unbelievers that there was something to that “Jesus” stuff. And for those, there may be the terrible self-accusing, recrimination that goes like this: Why didn’t I listen? How could I have been so blind? What do I do now?
But by far the greatest blow to those left behind will be the coming 7 years of tribulation. Shortly after the rapture of the church takes place, the whole world becomes subject to the wrath of God. Finally, God’s patience with sinful mankind has reached its limit. Finally, His anger and wrath and judgment fall upon a sin-filled world. It will be a terrible time of war, of famine and pestilence, of plagues and natural disasters, of persecution and deprivation and death. Believe me, no one in his right mind would choose to endure these experiences. They are described in detail in Revelation 6-18, about 40 minutes of reading material some afternoon or evening. And yet, all those who have rejected the claims of Christ upon their lives, who are not saved, who are not born again, will enter this seven year period of judgment, punishment, and condemnation. It will be a terrible time to be alive. Revelation tells us even some will seek to take their own lives and will be unable to do so!
So, in short, that is the impact of the rapture upon the earth. Believers will be snatched away, unbelievers will be left behind to face judgement and condemnation.
That brings us to the final question, “What is the blessing for us in this event?”
For one thing, it means there will be no dying for believers alive on that day. It means no walk through the valley of the shadow of death, or more literally, no trek through the darkest of valleys. Several older Christians—mature believers—have told me that death was not something they feared. But the process of dying—that was scary!! If you have ever watched a loved one die, then you can begin to appreciate what it will mean to be suddenly translated directly to heaven!! That will be a blessing indeed.
Another blessing is the beginning of eternity with the Lord Jesus (17d- …and thus we shall always be with the Lord.). We will know His daily presence more fully than we’ve known it here. We will begin to know the depths of His incredible love. We will become conformed to His image—no more of anything of our carnal and fleshly natures. No more sin, no more sickness, no more misunderstandings, no more – you name it.
Soon will follow the marriage feast of the Lamb, then the 1000 year reign of Christ upon the earth, and finally a new heaven and a new earth, a new Jerusalem, and an eternity of blissful worship and service of God almighty.
Well, that’s the rapture—the snatching away of the saints, the resulting chaos upon the world, and the blessing of coming into the presence of the Lord forever.
As we conclude this morning, we are left with just two questions.
(1) Will I be snatched away or will I be left behind? I want it to be clear this morning that the Gospel is a simple message. Christ died for our sins. He paid the price of our disobedience. If we are ready to acknowledge that we are people of flawed character, that we don’t always please God in what we do and say, then He is ready to receive us as our Savior. He simply awaits our decision to acknowledge our sin and invite Him into our life. His grace, His unmerited favor can handle whatever misdeeds I’ve done! Waiting to make that decision could be a disaster of incredible proportions!
A second question is for those of us who know we are saved, who have the assurance that we are His and He is ours. The question is this: If these things are coming to pass, how should we then live? If we are going to meet the King, perhaps very soon, how should we then be living? John would write in I John 3:3, “And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”
Friends, of all the prophecies in the Bible, there is not one that must be fulfilled in order for the Rapture to take place. It is the next big event waiting to happen in our world. It could happen at any time. What will we be doing when the trumpet sounds? What kind of attitude will we have about the day?
We should be living with power. (That’s next week, chapter 1) We should be living in the presence of God. (That’s next week, chapter 1) We should be living as those known for faith, love, and hope. (That’s next week, chapter 1) We should be living free, unenslaved by obsessions, idolatry, and immorality. (That’s next week, chapter 1) We should be living joyfully. (That’s in a few weeks, chapter 5) We should be living in the Word which has power to perform its work in us who believe. (That’s in a few weeks, chapter 2)
Today is decision day! Some of us need to make a decision about our sin and accept the Savior. “Come just as you are, come and live forever!” Some of us need to shine brighter and move away from our worldly ways. Let’s decide today!

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