Prophesy – Preparation for the return of Christ
Matthew 24:3
This is a dialogue series on the “return of Christ”. We hold to the Biblical teaching of a pre-tribulation and pre-millennial rapture of the church.
Matthew 24:4-31. The Lord gives us a broad description of coming events in human history. Verses 4-8 describes the church age, verses 9-14 describes the first half of the tribulation, verses 15-20 describes the middle events of the tribulation, verses 21-28 describes the last half of the tribulation and verses 29-31 relates the actual visible return of the Lord.
A calendar of prophetic events will proceed in roughly this order: the church age (Acts 2), rapture of the church (I Thess 4; I Cor 15), time of tribulation on the earth (Dan 9:27, the 70th week), visible return of Christ (Rev 19), judgment of living Gentiles (Matt 25:31-46) and Jews (Ezk 20:34-38), the millennial reign of Christ (Rev 20), final judgment of all unsaved to the lake of fire (Rev 20) and followed by a new creation of the earth (Rev 21).
This first session will be looking at the times in which we live, the church age. I Cur 10:32 tell us there are just three classes of people, the Jews, the Gentiles and the Church. The Jews, during this time are in dispersion, blinded to the Gospel). The Gentiles are being blessed with political power over the world and is freely being offered the gospel of salvation. The church is the “called out ones” from among the Jews and Gentiles.
Next week we will look at scripture which shows the state of the Jews, Gentiles and the church at the end of the church age.