This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark
Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,
County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
God has not appointed us to wrath.
Does that make you feel good? I don't like to get in trouble
for something I don't think I deserve.
I'm a Sinner just like you are, and the world is centered.
The difference between US and them is that we've received a
Savior, right? Christ has taken our guilt in
our judgement upon himself. That's the good news of the
gospel. You think?
Why wouldn't everybody in the world believe and realize they
need a savior and want Christ to save them?
It's like getting a detention in school.
You had a penalty coming your way, but then you were given a
free pass to get out of detention.
This is how it is with Jesus paying the penalty for your sin.
Today, Pastor Clark touches on the fact that when you make that
conscious choice to follow after Jesus, the events and judgments
talked about in Revelation are not meant for you.
They're meant for a world that has rejected Jesus as Savior and
has chosen to go another way. So if you haven't yet, get that
free pass out of detention now. Here's Pastor Clark in
Revelation Chapter 4 with today's edition of Living Waters
of Grace. Revelation Chapter 4 After these
things I looked, and behold a door standing open in heaven.
And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet
speaking with me, saying, Come up here, and I will show you
things which must take place. After this, immediately I was in
the spirit and behold a throne set in heaven and one sat on the
throne and he who sat there was like a Jasper and a Sardis stone
in appearance. And there was a rainbow around
the throne and appearance like an emerald.
Around the throne were 24 Thrones and on the Thrones I saw
24 elders sitting clothed in white robes and they had crowns
of gold on their heads. And from the throne proceeds
lightnings, thunderings and voices. 7 lamps of fire were
burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God.
We just covered the seven churches about 3 weeks ago.
Then the last days, the churches that are symbolic of what the
church will be like in the last days and also what the church
was like back in the days shortly after Christ had
resurrected from the dead. And so now we're going to begin
to make a transition after these things that we've just studied
in the last few weeks. We're going to begin to now be
prepared for what is it going to be like on the earth prior to
the return of the Lord. Now the apostle John is being
taken up into heaven. The word caught up is what we
get that word from Latin, which means reptazo, and it's the
catching away. We use the word rapture, but if
you take the original Greek meaning of that word, it means
to be caught up or caught away. And it's important to realize
that in these last days, there's going to be a lot of cataclysmic
events that are going to be on the horizon.
All the loss of life. It seems every day there's some
kind of cataclysmic event that is occurring around the world.
The frequency of these things will grow in increasing
dimension as we move closer to the return of the Lord.
So as we see these things occurring, Jesus said, look up
your redemption draws nigh, meaning that the return of
Christ is clearer and nearer than we've ever imagined before.
But some things to consider. And there's different positions
on this, how this is all going to to play out in the end.
These are futuristic events. We have some capability of
looking into the future regarding prophecy, prophecy
that's been fulfilled and also prophecy that is yet to be
fulfilled. The way we gather the
information and make some degree of determination on what
possibly might transpire is based upon historical fact
throughout the Old Testament and into the New Testament.
But one of the things that Calvary Chapel ascribes to, and
we're not alone, some of the leading Bible noble teachers on
the radio that you might respect the day like John MacArthur,
Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel or David Jeremiah, Charles Stanley,
Chuck Swindoll, these men are all pre Trib, pre millennial men
of God. We believe that Christ will come
and take the church out before the great tribulation.
We don't believe we're going to be here to have to endure that.
And I'm going to give you some proof texts this morning, some
verses that might help you come to that same conclusion and not
be confused, I trust. But Romans chapter 5.
I, I was thinking about that earlier this morning as I was
finishing up this minute message.
And it says that God commendeth his love toward us, and that
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us much more
than in verse 9 of chapter 5 of Romans.
Then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from
wrath through him. God has not appointed his bride,
his kids, to wrath. God doesn't marry us in the
sense of bringing us into the Kingdom and calling us his bride
to abuse us. There's no knowledge of that in
the Scriptures anywhere. God loves us.
The wrath of God is going to be poured out upon a rebellious,
unbelieving, ungodly world that we're still living in, right?
We're frustrated at times because of why things go the way
they they go. The horror on the face of the
earth, the unfairness, the unjustice.
Sometimes those who represent us in government frustrate us and
we wonder why people can make the decisions on behalf of us
that they make. And it's difficult at times to
accept it, isn't it? But one day God's justice will
be vindicated and one day his wrath will be poured out upon
the whole earth. I think of David when he prayed
he said Lord, why to the wicked rage and imagine vain thing.
Why do people seem to get away with what they get away with?
But one day God will definitely deal with those on the face of
the earth that have shaken their fists at him, who have cursed
him, who have forsaken him, who have hated him and have ignored
them him throughout their life. First Thessalonians chapter 5
verse 9 says For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to
obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ.
Again a great proof tech text. God has not appointed us to
wrath. Does that make you feel good?
I don't like to get in trouble for something I don't think I
deserve. I'm a Sinner just like you are
and the world is centered. The difference between US and
them is that we've received a Savior right?
Christ has taken our guilt in our judgment upon himself.
That's the good news of the gospel.
You think? Why wouldn't everybody in the
world believe and realize they need a Savior and want Christ to
save them? What is it in our hearts that
causes us to push the love of God away?
What's our pride and our sin? Jesus says men love darkness
rather than light because their deeds are evil.
There was a time in my life that I like doing evil things.
I enjoyed it and I knew that there was a God.
I was a fully aware there was a God, but I thought he doesn't
see or he doesn't pay attention or it's no big deal.
But the wages of sin is death. The more my life became consumed
with sinful pattern and sinful activity, the emptier I became
in my heart, The more mixed up I was, the more anxious I was, the
more lost I became. And I one day with this, go out
and look at the stars at night and say, there's got to be more
to this life than what I'm living.
There's got to be something behind us that would make sense
because the way life appeared to me before I knew Christ, it
didn't make sense. I mean, even your best friends
that you had, they'd stab you in the back.
I mean, at this everything seemed to be upside down, right?
I couldn't find any example of love or real love until Christ
came into my life. And so God has not appointed his
bride to wrath his church. The pre tribulation rapture is
that the church will be caught up before the seven-year
tribulation and the entire seven-year tribulation period is
a time of pouring out of God's wrath.
It's God's time where he says enough's enough, right?
And he basically allows the whole universe to explode in the
sense of his indignation against sin and against man's rebellion.
You know, God didn't create us to be this way.
We made that decision ourselves in the garden when we said we
want to go our own way and God let us go our own way.
He's a loving, merciful God. You want to do your own thing,
make your own choices, fine, go ahead.
But there's consequences to do that.
In Revelation chapter 617, it says the great day of His wrath
is come and who shall be able to stand?
We'll get to that in a few weeks.
Chapter 6. But this day of wrath is going
to be so tough guys, that the human beings that are on the
earth at that time are going to be turned upside down.
They're not going to know which way to turn.
Every day there's some new horrendous thing that's
occurring and they're going to fear for their lives.
And this is the issue of what's going on at this time.
Rebellious man desires to live without God.
Has anybody ever in here desired at one time in your life to live
without God? Raise your hand.
Most of us. We didn't need His love, We
didn't need His mercy. But yet in His great love, as He
looks down upon us today, all of us here, His intention for us is
to pull us out of this world. Before this event occurs, He
will withdraw us, being His restraint upon sin right now on
the face of the earth. Guys, whether we realize it or
not, as weak as our testimony is at times, as Christians, God
uses us because the Holy Spirit lives in US.
Every time you're around someone that doesn't know Christ, they
know there's something different about your life.
They can't put their finger on it, but they know you're wired
differently and you're called Jesus said in the Gospel, salt
and light. When the salt and light, that's
us. We're taken out of this world at
the rapture. That's why so much evil is going
to come down upon the earth because there's going to be no
balance anymore. There's going to be no
constraining force right now in the midst of our society, as bad
as things are and as ungodly as the human race is, we still have
influence, don't we? There's people that are becoming
Christians every day because of people like us and others that
love the Lord and follow him. But the constraint will be drawn
out whenever the rapture happens.
It doesn't mean the Holy Spirit still won't be present, working
on the face of the earth to bring people to himself, but the
influence of the church will be gone.
And then what will happen is this wrath of God will be poured
out upon the heads of all those people that have been worn
throughout their lives, that one day this would come upon the
face of the earth, the tribulation period, seven years
of lies and wars and famine and death.
I don't want any of my loved ones to be there to you.
I don't want anybody I know to be there.
But I can't make people believe any more than you can.
All I can do is give them my testimony.
Then tell them, this is what Christ has done for me and this
is what He would like to do for you too, if you would ask Him to
be your Savior and to come into your life, turn from your sin.
Now, a picture of this illustration actually happened
back in Genesis chapter 19. And this was a time whenever God
was warning Lot and His family to get out of Sodom.
Sodom was a picture of this ungodly world that we live in
today. And God's telling Lot and His
family that you got to get out of this town because I'm going
to destroy it. He's warning them ahead of time,
just like the Scriptures today are warning you if you're here
today without Christ, to come to Christ so that you're not left
here during this time of wrath. And the Lord literally had to
drag them out by the power of the angels to get them out of
that town. And this is a picture of God
sparing His elect from wrath as God looks down upon the face of
the earth. There's a large group of people
that live here right now that are his kids, and he's focused
on his kids every day, just like I'm focused on my kids or my
grandkids every day. I don't want anything to hurt
them. I don't want anything to come
into their life to influence them that would destroy their
lives. And I'll do everything I can as
a follower of Jesus Christ to persuade those I love the most
to be prepared and to be living for Jesus Christ in these last
days, to see people spared from this eventual wrath.
Now, Hebrews tells us that there's a group of people and
we, we are that people, that we're not of them who draw back.
Lot's wife, even though she was delivered from Sodom, that she
was warned not to look back and longing for that old wicked part
of life, Sodom, all the experiences she had there, she
was warned not to look back, as was Lot.
And she unfortunately looked back and she became a pillar of
salt and she was gone. God's judgement upon her.
The cataclysmic events on Sodom and Gomorrah were like one of
the worst nuclear Holocaust that mankind could ever experience.
And it was all done not by a bomb made by man, but by the
great power of our God. God is awesome, His power and
His power is designed to show forth His glory and His love.
His power was not initiated, intended for a destruction upon
the human race. But we have made our own
decisions and we have said we will roll in reign independent
of the God of creation, right? The majority of the people in
the face of the earth don't believe in God anymore.
They don't want to have anything to do with him.
They want to be their own final authority.
They want to make up their own mind, their own decision every
day, do their own thing and as a result suffer the consequences.
Now as we go back to chapter 4 and verse one, this is the
spirit speaking to John. It says come up here and I will
show you things which must take place after this.
There's a voice of a trumpet that's occurring here.
It says he hears this voice that is like a trumpet speaking,
saying come up here, I will show you things which must take place
after this. Now to me, I mean, I've studied
this. I'm excited about it.
You guys might think, well, who cares?
This is nice. One time's a sermon over today.
You know, I'm going to go watch the masters later, whatever.
But I'll tell you when you, when you study this stuff, this rocks
your world. It does.
And I trust it'll rock your world a little bit.
The day this hearing about some of this stuff because it's, it's
just fascinating. So he's, he's giving John the
privilege to be able to look into the future and see what
it's going to be like when these things come to pass.
We're recipients of this opportunity today.
Just sitting here hearing this and getting a heads up from what
God had shown the apostle John. Daniel Chapter 9 in the Old
Testament, verse 27 talks about this issue of the evil 1
confirming a covenant with many. And this will be over in the
Mideast between Israel and their enemies for one week, symbolic
of seven days, which means a tribulation period of seven
days. There'll be a false peace like
right now, President Obama, President Bush, President
Clinton, President Carter, as far as you can go back.
Remember growing up watching the news, there was always this
excitement about a potential Treaty of peace.
There'd be no more fighting in Israel and everybody be all
excited. And it would last for maybe a
day or a week or a couple months.
And then all of a sudden, the war would start again.
The tension, the fighting, there's no real peace that will
be in Jerusalem, in Israel, in this world until the Prince of
Peace comes back. Jesus Christ.
That's the only time they'll be peace.
But man and his energy and his desire to try to be known as a
maybe the next Nobel Prize recipient, I'll be the guy that
got the peace established there. Well, this Antichrist will be
the one midway through this great tribulation that will
reveal himself in the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem.
He has the arrogance and the audacity because he's a very
charismatic individual. He can persuade people.
There's World Peace developing in the 1st 3 1/2 years,
prosperity. Everything's getting better.
Everybody's like, wow, we finally have someone in this
world that's getting things straightened out.
The stock market's going up, values of houses are going up.
Everybody has money and everything's great.
And so people are deceived. The Bible says those days will
be so deceptive that even the elect could be deceived if it
were possible. And So what will happen is
people be be persuaded to follow this world leader, this
Antichrist. He could be alive now.
He could be getting ready to be raised up into leadership.
There's a lot of thoughts on people like who this person
might be. But nonetheless, through this
midway period, this guy will really show his true colors and
he will actually set himself up in the rebuilt, rebuilt temple.
It's called the abomination of desolation.
And he will sit on the throne and claim to be God and call
himself God. If you go to a Second
Thessalonians, just for a minute, let's flip over to the
left in your Bible, Second Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse
5, he says, do you not remember that when I was still with you,
I told these things to you? This is Paul writing, and now
you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his
own time, referring to the Antichrist.
For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.
Only he who now restrains will do so until he's taken out of
the way. Now this spirit of lawlessness,
any anybody that rejects Jesus Christ, it's against his Kingdom
and against his authority, is of the spirit of Antichrist.
We learned that in first and second John when we went through
it. But there will literally be one
who will truly be raised up one day, who will be the real
Antichrist that's being spoken about in the Book of Revelation.
But it's talking about this mystery that is already working
in the world, only he capital H, referring to God himself who now
restrains, will do so until He's taken out of the way.
What's restraining all this stuff from occurring right now
to a great degree is still the church in this world.
And when the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will
consume with the breadth of his mouth and destroy with the
brightnesses of his coming. Even though this Antichrist will
be raised up one day and he'll rule and reign for a period of
time on earth, Christ will come back at the second coming in and
deal with Him in a very, very, very dramatic way.
The coming of the lawless 1 is, according to the working of
Satan, with all power signs and lying wonders and with all
unrighteousness deception among those who perish because they
did not receive the love of the truth.
That's what's heartbreaking, all the people in the face of the
earth being deceived to believe and to follow this world ruler
because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they
might be saved. I pray today if you're here, you
would receive the love of the truth.
That you can be saved. And for this reason God will
send them a strong delusion. God will send them strong
delusion, and they should believe a lie, that they all may
be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in
unrighteousness. Now, when John is speaking here
in chapter 4 and writing down the things that the Lord has
given him to reveal to the body of Christ, he's seeing all this
stuff and living color way ahead of the time it's supposed to
happen. When this book was written, it
was written a long time ago, thousands of years ago, and it
is so contemporary and current with the times that we are
currently living in now. And so he's seeing all that's
going to take place as a prelude to the tribulation, which will
actually start in chapter 6, verse one.
We'll get to that in the weeks ahead.
That's when Jesus, a lamb, will open up the first seal.
And the first seal is a picture of this Antichrist on the face
of the earth. He's going to pose as a savior
of the world. And in verse 1 of chapter 4, he
says again, the future is insight.
He says, I will show you the things which must must take
place after this. He says he was caught up.
He was told to come up here and God would show him what was
going to be revealed. And I'd like you to look at
First Thessalonians chapter 4. This is really an important
section of Scripture for us here today who believe that the Lord
will come before this great tribulation.
It says in First Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 13, Paul, his
passion for the church. He doesn't want people to be in
ignorance. He wants us to know what's going
to happen, what's going on. I love what he says here, but I
do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who
have fallen sleep, meaning those who have passed on and who have
died, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, Even so God
will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus.
Now when someone dies, a Christian dies and their bodies
in, you know, the casket that isn't that person anymore.
Their body is a shell. They're out of that body.
The the Bible says to be absent in the body is to be present
with the Lord. So as soon as you die, if you're
a Christian, soon as I die, I'm not going into some ground and
the worms are going to get me and you aren't either.
We're going to be taken out by God's power and taken up to be
with Jesus is the apostle Paul says to be absent.
The body is present with the Lord, but the physical body will
still be in the grave. I did a funeral this week and I
reminded the people that this dear woman who died at 92, that
love Jesus wasn't at the gravesite going into the ground.
She was already with the Lord, but her physical body, her old
body was going into the ground. And it says 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 will by no means precede those
who are asleep. For the Lord himself will
descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an
Archangel, and with the trump of God.
It's interesting that that trumpet shows up every time
we're talking about this truth of the rapture being caught away
and it says and the dead in Christ will rise first, meaning
the physical bodies of all those Christians and believers in the
Old Testament, New Testament that died, that their bodies are
in the grave. When Christ comes back, those
bodies are going to be resurrected where the Bible says
this mortality will put on immortality, this corruptible.
The old dead body will put on incorruption, and we'll be
receiving these resurrected bodies, those who are dead in
Christ at this time. Keeping in mind that we're
referring to the body there's. In the Book of Revelation,
Pastor Clark is taking us through all kinds of events and
happenings that are predicted for the future.
But for those who believe and follow Jesus, there's much to
look forward to in heaven with Jesus.
However, for those who are here on earth during the Tribulation,
there's all kinds of chaos that will unfold.
The Bible talks about an Antichrist, false prophet, and
of course that evil enemy Satan. Do you see how there are such
clever attempts for the enemy to disguise himself as God and even
the Trinity? The true Savior of the world is
God and how he comes to rescue through his triune nature, God
the Father, Jesus the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
Just like Satan tried to take over for God in heaven and was
cast out, Satan will try to convince people on earth that he
is the triune God to be worshipped instead of the
legitimate God in heaven. It's an attempt, and although he
will capture plenty in his schemes, he will not win.
The true God wins, and Revelation unpacks how that will
all happen in detail. Be encouraged because there's a
way out for all of this madness that will ensue on this earth.
But you don't want to wait indefinitely to make that
decision about Jesus. We don't know when the church
will be raptured, and you want to be ready to be with Jesus.
To learn more about this, head over to calvarychapelonline.com.
We're so glad you've been with us today.
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This has been living waters of grace.