Notes of Faith September 24, 2024
Runaway Train?
Therefore comfort one another with these words.
1 Thessalonians 4:18
A man once told his pastor, “I really don’t have much interest in studying prophecy.” His pastor said, “Oh my, that means you must be neglecting the books of Daniel, Zechariah, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Revelation, and vast portions of Isaiah and Ezekiel, along with Matthew 24 and 25. That’s a lot of Bible to ignore!”
After the apostle Paul wrote the predictions God gave him about the Rapture of the Church, he said, “Therefore comfort one another with these words.” The study of prophecy is tremendously comforting. It reminds us God controls the course of history and has a glorious conclusion for all His children. We’re not destined to crash with the hopelessness of a runaway train. Instead, God is the Conductor, and He will get us safely home. Just as the predictions of His first coming were perfectly fulfilled, so will be the prophecies about His Second Coming.
Hope is the anticipation of wonderful future events. The details of prophecy may seem daunting, but the basic outlines are pretty simple. Jesus is coming again, and heaven is our destiny. Let’s comfort one another with these truths.
Bible prophecy helps us to better understand the future…. And gives us hope in a hopeless age.
Tim LaHaye
1 Thess 4:13-18
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. 15 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 not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 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. 17 Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.
This is one of the two directions that life leads when life on earth ends. Those who believe and trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior will go to live with Him forever, and all others will be condemned for their unbelief and judged with eternal separation from God, living in torment and pain.
Knowing God, His work through the history of mankind, the prophecies that have come true just as He said, gives us hope and comfort for the things that still lay ahead. We need not worry about what is to come, for God is in control and will bring about His divine plan!
Pastor Dale