5 Reasons to Join a Local Christ-exalting, Bible-believing Church

 Five God-glorifying Reasons to Join Berean (the local church I pastor)

1) Joining Berean Baptist church is like getting married. Membership brings you into a covenant relationship with this local church. You don't attend here—you are a member! You are officially part of the church.  Without a membership role, how do we know who comprises the church? Is it anyone who attends on Sundays mornings? Is it anyone who shows up to a member's meeting? How are local disciples of Christ supposed to follow the protocols outlined by Jesus in Matthew 18 without a church membership? The Apostle Peter exhorted the elders to "shepherd the flock that is among them" (1 Peter 5:2). Who is the flock?  Uniting with the church says, "I want to be part of the flock at Berean." 

2) Joining Berean brings you under the authority of the local church. Uniting with us is profitable for your sanctification and perseverance in the faith. If you wander from the gospel, the elders, deacons, and members of the church have a formal obligation to speak into your life, and you have made a formal commitment to respond appropriately.  The elders of Berean can't watch over the souls of every believer in Fayetteville—membership formally communicates, "I want Berean's spiritual leaders watching over my soul for my sanctification and spiritual growth." Read and study 1 Thessalonians 5:12-13, 1 Timothy 5:17, and Hebrew 13:17. 

3) Joining Berean gives you a legitimate voice in the church. Our church polity is pluralistic elder-led congregationalism — members of Berean have a voice. If you are not a member, you can’t approve or disapprove of recommendations brought before the church. You don’t see the reports and know the health of the church. Why wouldn't you want to be able to participate in making important decisions? Read 1 Corinthians 5 and see the church doing its spiritual duty.  Ask yourself, is my lack of commitment coming from the Spirit dwelling in me, or is my spirit grieving the Holy Spirit?

4) Joining Berean sets the conditions for you to be able to use your spiritual gifts to the fullest ability in the body of Christ. Non-members are not permitted to teach or lead. Yet this may be the will of God for your life. You may have spiritual gifts that will not be used at Berean because we believe it is quite prudent to limit the office of teacher, deacon, and elder to church members. I trust you understand the necessity of venting all teachers of the Bible in the church.  And the same for deacon and elder. 

5) Joining Berean is helpful for the corporate witness of the church in the community. Your formal commitment to membership speaks volumes to your level of commitment to Christ and the Christ the unbelieving world sees. We don't go to church—we are the church.  In a day and age, when people are struggling with commitment and apathy—we need to be counter-cultural. We are salt and light. Formal membership declares, loud and clear—"I am committed to being a faithful engaged member until God moves me to another city." 

I pray the Holy Spirit will use these five reasons to move someone to do what I know brings God glory.  For all who are on the fence, please pray earnestly about formally uniting with the church of God that assembles on Glensford Drive. I trust you understand that I would be negligent in my duties as a shepherd if I were not admonishing you in love for our Lord. 

Sean

The Rapture & the Second Coming are NOT Separate Events

The church in America especially, has adopted an unbiblical position concerning the rapture.  The dominant view that the church gets called up to heaven before the tribulation begins on the earth cannot be supported from the New Testament.  Many have been taught that Jesus comes back twice. First, he comes to gather the elect and take them back to heaven, then seven years later, he returns to establish his kingdom on this earth.  That perspective cannot be supported by the Olivet discourse, the gospel of John, 1 Corinthians 15, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, and the Revelation of Jesus Christ.  Yet 1 Thessalonians 4 is the passage that is quoted to support the rapture as a separate and distinct event.  This is the view of pastors like John MacArthur and others.  The popular website www.gotquestions.org illustrates the dominant position.

Question: "What is the difference between the Rapture and the Second Coming?"

Answer: The rapture and the second coming of Christ are often confused. Sometimes it is difficult to determine whether a scripture verse is referring to the rapture or the second coming. However, in studying end-times Bible prophesy, it is very important to differentiate between the two.

The rapture is when Jesus Christ returns to remove the church (all believers in Christ) from the earth. The rapture is described in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and 1 Corinthians 15:50-54. 

Anyone who will let the Scripture speak for itself will not adopt the view that the Rapture and the Second Coming are distinct events.  The position that can be most easily supported by Scripture is the truth that the rapture of the saints is one of the things that happens when Jesus returns to establish his kingdom of this earth. And yes that does mean that some believers will experience tribulation.

The word rapture (like Advent) has a Latin origin, but rapture is found only once in the Latin New Testament.  Whereas the Latin word Advent with its various endings (-us, -um, & -u) occurs throughout the New Testament to describe either the first coming of Christ or his Second Coming or the arrival of someone else. And advent is consistently a noun.  Nouns represent persons, places, entities, events, things, etc., whereas verbs describe an action.  Thus, we can say Jesus is coming again, in which case we are describing the action of coming or we can say 'the coming of the Lord' in which case we are describing the actual event.  While this seems technical, it is critical to understanding the text.  The Greek, Latin, and the English language all make clear distinctions between nouns and verbs.  So in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 we see Paul is describing the Second Advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, and one of the things that will happen during the Advent is the rapiemur (the rapture) of the saints or the catching up or the gathering of the saints.

1 Thessalonians 4:15–17 (Clementine Vulgate [Latin])

1 Thessalonians 4:15–17 (English Standard Version)

15 Hoc enim vobis dicimus in verbo Domini, quia nos, qui vivimus, qui residui sumus in adventum Domini, non præveniemus eos qui dormierunt. 16 Quoniam ipse Dominus in jussu, et in voce archangeli, et in tuba Dei descendet de cælo: et mortui, qui in Christo sunt, resurgent primi. 17 Deinde nos, qui vivimus, qui relinquimur, simul rapiemur cum illis in nubibus obviam Christo in aëra, et sic semper cum Domino erimus.

15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, 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.

 

When you see in the Scripture the clear distinction between the adventum, the noun and rapiemur, the verb, I can't understand how the church ever adopted such an unbiblical position as to take 'the catching up of believers into the air' and separated it from the Second Advent of Christ.   

Let's imagine for a moment that we are the church at Thessalonica, and all we have is the book of Matthew in Greek and a letter from Paul written to us (the local church). 

And we notice that both Paul and Jesus use the same Greek word to describe the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ—the word παρουσία or parousia. Now would we conclude Jesus and Paul are talking about the same event or a different event?

Jesus uses parousia four times in the discourse on the Mt. of Olives, and Paul uses parousia four times in his first letter to us (church at Thessalonica). Jesus refers to a 'loud trumpet call' and Paul talks about 'the sound of the trumpet of God.' Then Jesus says the angels will gather the elect (Mt 24:31) and Paul says ‘we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up.' Are Paul and Jesus talking about the same event or two different comings? If the only reasonable conclusion is Jesus and Paul are talking about the same thing—how did the church develop an eschatological position that the rapture is distinct from the Second Coming occurring before the tribulation?  When Jesus said:

"Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. ³⁰ Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, 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. ³¹ And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. (Matt 24:29-31)

This is not a gray or a debatable interpretative discussion.  There is only one Second Coming.  And this Second Coming happens after 'the tribulation of those days' according to the Son of God. The next text www.gotquestions.org presented as an authoritative passage creating a distinction between the rapture and the Second Coming is 1 Corinthians 15:50-54:

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. ⁵¹ Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, ⁵² in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. ⁵³ For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. ⁵⁴ When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory."

The problem with referencing this passage is it doesn't reference the rapture. The text says nothing about being raptured (in the Latin) or caught up (harpazō in the Greek) or 'gather his elect.' But Paul does refer to the 'last trumpet,' so it is very reasonable to conclude that Paul is once again talking about the parousia since he uses that Greek word in 1 Corinthians 15:23. And indeed, no one would consider the 'last trumpet' to be a trumpet call that sounds before the 'loud trumpet call' of Matt 24:30 or 'the trumpet of God' in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 or the 7^th trumpet of Revelation 11:15. 

Words matter. What was written by the biblical authors determine the systems of theology we form.  We develop our understanding of the end times from the New Testament's words, and we are not free to randomly ignore what the actual text says or the connection points easily established by comparing one portion of Scripture with another.  Finally, study 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 especially vs. 1, 3-4, & 8 and Paul removes all doubt concerning the unbiblical notion that the rapture is distinct from the Second Coming in 1 & 2 Thessalonians. See the comparative analysis of the Olivet Discourse to 1 & 2 Thessalonians in the chart below.

 

The Eternal Gospel of Jesus Christ

The eternal gospel is the good news that God is redeeming and reconciling sinners to Himself eternally through the sacrificial and substitutionary death, burial, and resurrection of the man  Christ  Jesus through authentic faith in what Jesus,  the one and only sinless  Son of God, accomplished on a tree in the city of Jerusalem  2000 years ago.

Gospel Glossary

Authentic: that which is real, true, genuine, and from the heart

Christ: the promised king  and deliverer  of the Jews, Messiah 

Crucify: to put to death by nailing or binding to a cross

Faith: belief and trust in Christ alone and the salvation He provides 

God: the Supreme eternal triune  Being who created everything and governs all things 

Gospel: the message of salvation  found in Jesus 

Jesus: the second Person of the triune God who is fully God  and fully man born of a virgin 

Reconcile: bring back to a former state of harmony, to eliminate hostility 

Redeem: to free from the consequences of sin including the wrath of God 

Sacrificial: the death of Jesus as a sin offering to God

Salvation: deliverance from the power of sin and punishment in hell 

Sin: any violation or trespass of God’s law 

Sinners: individuals who acknowledge their guilt before God and their need for a Savior 

Substitutionary: Jesus taking the place of sinners

Tree: the cross on which Jesus was crucified 

The Number One Sign of the Coming of Christ

 I saw a Facebook post that really bothered me.  The post referred to J Vernon McGee (an American ordained Presbyterian minister, pastor, Bible teacher, theologian, and radio minister) preaching on the Rapture of the Church.  Here is the post: He reminded us that Christians are looking for Christ, not for the Abomination of Desolation. His quote was, “I wouldn’t even know an Abomination of Desolation if I met one on the street.”😂

The post bothered me because it is so unscriptural that it is nearly heretical.  Jesus himself told His 12 disciples to look for the abomination of desolation in Matthew 24. They ask, “What will be the sign of your coming and the close of the age?” (v. 2).  And Jesus gives them the sign of Daniel 9:27 (v. 15).  Pause for a moment and think about what I just said. The disciples want to know when Jesus is coming again, and Jesus gives them the sign that J Vernon McGee says he would not even know if he met on the street. 

Some will say that Jesus is giving the Jews a sign for His return for them at the end of the tribulation in Matthew 24 (Daniel’s 70th-week concept) and does not reveal to the disciples a pre-tribulation rapture of the church in the Olivet Discourse.  The problem with that argument is that it doesn’t synchronize with the rest of the New Testament and, in particular, 2 Thessalonians 2. 

In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul describes with great specificity that one of the things that will happen when Jesus returns is “we who are alive, who are left, 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.”  The Latin translation of ‘caught up’ is rapiemur cum, from which we get the English word rapture.  

Before we move to 2 Thessalonians, I would like you to see how similar Paul’s writing in this passage (1 Thess 4:16-17) is to Jesus’ words in Matthew 24:31

    For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, 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.      

Matthew 24:31

And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

Do you think Paul is describing a different event or the same event?

In Paul’s second letter to the church at Thessalonica, he addresses questions they have and the issues they are going through. One of them is that some thought they had missed the rapture of the church—the second coming of Christ described in his first letter. Let’s read the first four verses of 2 Thessalonians. 

Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.  Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction,  who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. 

Now the question is: Is Paul describing the ‘abomination of desolation’ of Matthew 24:15, or is this something completely new that neither Jesus nor Daniel previously foretold?

It seems absurd not to conclude that opposing and exalting oneself against every so-called god and proclaiming himself to be God is the most abominable thing anyone could do.  Notice that he ‘takes his seat in the temple of God’, which is the ‘holy place’ of Matt 24:15. 

Notice how specific Paul is: he says let no one deceive you.  The coming of the Lord and our being gathered will not happen until the abomination of desolation occurs.  Paul reminds the church of the same thing Jesus told his disciples. One of the signs which will proceed the Second Coming of Christ (including the rapture) is that the man of lawlessness reveals himself to the point of demanding that the world worship him as God. 

While some still struggle with what I am showing you from the Scripture, the connection points are too many not to make the linkage.  For example, one of the strongest is the “our being gathered together to him” (v. 1) compared to Matthew 24:31 ‘gather his elect from the four winds.’  The Greek is nearly identical; Paul uses the noun, and Jesus uses the verb form of the same word. 

Finally, who is the book of Revelation, which tells so much about the signs that will proceed the Second Coming of Christ, written to?  The letter was written to and hand-carried to the seven churches that are in Asia.  Churches filled with Christians whom God intended to know an ‘abomination of desolation’ if they met him on the street. And in this letter, more detail is given about this beast, who is the man of sin of 2 Thessalonians 2, and the responsible agent for the abomination of desolation of Matthew 24:15.  

Read Revelation 13:5-6:

There was given to him a mouth speaking arrogant words and blasphemies, and authority to act for forty-two months was given to him. And he opened his mouth in blasphemies against God, to blaspheme His name and His tabernacle, that is, those who dwell in heaven. 

The holy place, temple, sanctuary, dwelling place, and tabernacle are all words to describe the assault against God and His people.   If today’s Christian does not need to know what this incredible act of defiance looks like, the abomination of desolation, why is it described in Daniel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, 2 Thessalonians, and the Revelation of Jesus Christ? 

This is the number one sign that the Coming of Christ is imminent.