Truth Magazine

By Dr. W.H. Compton, Th.D., Pastor

Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17; 1 Corinthians 15:23, 51-58; Philippians 3:20-21; John 14:1-3; Luke 21:34-36; Colossians 3:4; Titus 2:13. (“Rapture” is not mentioned in the Bible. However, the words, “catching up” are, so it is permissible to use the word “rapture.”)

First let us call your attention to two expressions, “rapture” and the “second coming” of Christ. These two expressions are not the same. First, the Rapture is a time when the living Christians and those who are in the graves will be caught up to meet Christ in the air. The wicked dead will not be raised at that time. There is no such thing as a general resurrection. This is confirmed in First Thessalonians 4:13-18. These verses clarify the qualifications of those remaining in the graves and those who will awaken at the time of the catching up of those qualified to meet the Lord in the air.

There are so many who confuse the Scriptures related to the Rapture and the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. For instance, in Matthew 25:31-46 so many contend that this has reference to the white throne judgment day. If you will read it carefully, you will see that this refers to the judgment of the nations and has nothing to do with the rapture or a general resurrection, but refers to a judgment of the nations as to their treatment to the Jewish nation and its people.

Friends, the rapture will take place at least seven years before the Second Coming of Christ. First the rapture will take place and the second coming will be Christ coming back to earth with ones he caught up to be with him. Again, if one has studied Dispensational Truth he or she will not get confused in the different periods, however, we will have to properly divide his Word relative to different things mentioned in his Word. So many are going to be surprised when these events begin to take place. I can remember when I was just a boy, I would try to picture just how it would be at the coming of the Lord. I could imagine the Lord coming before I could get home from school. Or that the Lord might come before we could get home from church.

The rapture of the church could happen just anytime, but the Second Coming of Christ with the church could not happen just anytime. This event of the Rapture of the church, the people of God, might just happen any moment. However, the Second Coming of Christ could not happen just any moment. Christ comes for his saints first and he comes the second time with them. The church houses are not filled these days but after the rapture, it will be noised abroad and many will be interested in accepting the Lord Jesus Christ then.

Oh, try to imagine how it will be when millions of people will leave this world miraculously. They will just disappear from this earth. There will be many who will remember the messages they have heard about the translation of the saints that will be living when the catching up of the saints transpire. This event will cause many, many people to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour. It is not a second chance but a continuation of the first chance to be redeemed by the blood of Christ.

There will be many preachers as well as many church members who will miss the translation as referred to in First Thessalonians 4:13-18. Really churches will be crowded, packed out after the disappearance of millions of people. The newspapers, TV and radio will be flooded with news of the happening of the Rapture of those who will be ready at the time of the event. You talk about screaming, crying disappointments, asking questions, searching the Bible for answers. This will be a time of honest soul searching, it will not be such arguments as, “which church did you belong to?”

People will not be asking if you are Church of God, Baptist, Church of Christ, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Catholic, Jewish, Nazarene, Pilgrim Holiness, Jesus Only, Independent, etc. The great concern will be, “what must I do to become a child of God?”

Revivals will break out everywhere. Church buildings will be crowded with people who miss the rapture, preaching will be everywhere, people confessing, professing to becoming a Christian. This will happen immediately after the translation of the Christians from this earth.

If anything is clear in the Bible, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 is.

Can you imagine what a time of soul searching it will be when the trumpet sounds for the saints to meet the Lord Jesus in the air? Churchanity will not be the issue then. The conclusion will be or should be, have I been born again?

People will at that time see.

By Gary Bagwell

Just imagine a young boy or girl being lost. Think of all the sleepless nights of the parents and the kinfolks. It is frightening isn’t it? Oh, but what a great jubilation when you find that child and he is all right. One can’t begin to imagine the thoughts, despair, concern of losing a child or the joy, happiness or elation of finding that child, unless he has experienced it for himself. I have friends who did experience this, so I can relate to it on a small scale. There are some lessons we can learn from the parable of the prodigal son – let us look at those.

The very first lesson I learn is that young people (teenagers) many times want their freedom. The attitude is, “I know what is best for me, so I want my own way. I want to have my freedom. Mom and dad, I no longer need you or want you telling me what to do. I am old enough now to make my own decisions.” Please notice in this parable though he wanted his freedom and he never needed his father anymore he asked his father for the portion of goods he had coming (money; the share of his estate). “I want my money (what is mine). I am leaving home for greener pastures.” That was the prodigal son’s first mistake. In Proverbs 1:8-9, Solomon said, “Heed the instruction of thy father and forsake not the law of thy mother. For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.” The first lesson to be learned then is that young folks should listen to their parents!

The second lesson I learn from this parable is that parents are not always to blame when children go astray. There is nothing within this parable that places the blame on the Father. Another example of this is Samson’s parents. Manoah and his wife (as far as we know) brought Samson up right and yet he went into sin. Judges 13-16 tells us of Samson’s evil ways. When godly parents, those who fear the Lord, bring their children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and still their children go astray, it is not the fault of the parents. Children have volition and even the right kind of teaching and training does not take this away.

The third lesson I see, is that sin is not as beautiful as it appears. The prodigal’s attitude was, “I am leaving home; I have to have my freedom.” But, one day he came to himself. After he had spent all his living and the famine came, he then realized for the first time what it meant to be in want, hungry and destitute. He had too much month left at the end of the money. He said, “My father has plenty, even the servants are taken care of and I perish with hunger.” Sin is expensive. “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23).

Fourthly, I see true forgiveness in this parable. The boy’s father was willing to forgive him even though this young boy had brought shame and reproach to the family name.

Notice verse 20 – “the father saw the son coming home yet a great way off. He had compassion on him, he ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” The son made his confession to his father – how he had sinned against heaven and against his father and how he was no longer worthy to be called his son. “But the father said to his servants, bring forth the best robe and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat and be merry: for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found. And, they began to be merry.” None of this ever would have happened if the prodigal son would have only listened to his father and heeded his advice.

The father in his parable is like God our Father who stands by at all times waiting to receive us if we have sinned and if we will confess our sins and then repent of them. He will pardon us and treat us as though we have never sinned – as he did his son in this parable.

In conclusion (a word of caution to the young people), make sure you “honor your father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth” (Eph. 6:2-3). Be friends with your parents, get to know them, love, them, respect them. If they are Christians, you have two of the most wonderful blessings God could have given you. Do not take them for granted and hurt them by doing things that would cause them heartache and grief. As you grow older and have your own family, you will realize what it means to be a parent and what a tremendous responsibility it is. Be grateful for godly parents; obey them and tell them you love them often. The prodigal son had to live with the mistakes he had made and the memories even though he had been forgiven. Be respectful to parents and heed their advice. God will bless you for it.

Guardian of Truth XXXII: 12, p. 363
June 16, 1988

By Steve Wolfgang

Footnote Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind. How Higher Education has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), pp. 75-77.

Allan Bloom, currently a professor at the University of Chicago, has had a distinguished academic career, teaching also at Yale, the universities of Paris, Tel Aviv, and Toronto. During the 1960’s he was a professor at Cornell, resigning in protest over the capitulation of that school’s administration to campus radicals.

His Closing of the American Mind became an unexpected bestseller, indeed, something of a cultural phenomenon, during 1987. While we do not endorse everything in the book, several pages are well worth reflecting upon.

This phenomenon [the addiction of youth to rock music – SWI is both astounding and indigestible, and is hardly noticed, routine and habitual. But it is of historic proportions that a society’s best young and their best energies should be so occupied. People of future civilizations will wonder at this and find it as incomprehensible as we do the caste system, witch burning, harems, cannibalism and gladiatorial combats. It may well be that a society’s greatest madness seems normal to itself. The child I described has parents who have sacrificed to provide him with a good life and who have a great stake in his future happiness. They cannot believe that the musical vocation will contribute very much to that happiness. But there is nothing they can do about it. The family spiritual void has left the field open to rock music, and they cannot possibly forbid their children to listen to it. It is everywhere; all children listen to it; forbidding it would simply cause them to lose their children’s affection and obedience. When they turn on the television, they will see President Reagan warmly grasping the daintily proffered gloved hand of Michael Jackson and praising him enthusiastically. Better to set the faculty of denial in motion – avoid noticing what the words say, assume the kid will get over it. If he has early sex, that won’t get in the way of his having stable relationships later. His drug use will certainly stop at pot. School is providing real values. . . .

TV, which compared to music plays a comparatively small role in the formation of young people’s character and taste, is a consensus monster – the Right monitors its content for sex, the Left for violence, and many other interested sects for many other things. But the music has hardly been touched, and what efforts have been made are both ineffectual and misguided about the nature and extent of the problem.

The result is nothing less than parents’ loss of control over their children’s moral education at a time when no one else is seriously concerned with it. This has been achieved by an alliance between the strange young males who have the gift of divining the mob’s emergent wishes – our versions of Thrasymachus, Socrates’ rhetorical adversary – and the record-company executives, the new robber barons, who mind gold out of rock. They discovered a few years back that children are one of the few groups in the country with considerable disposable income, in the form of allowances. Their parents spend all they have providing for the kids. Appealing to them over their parents’ heads, creating a world of delight for them, constitutes one of the richest markets in the postwar world. The rock business is perfect capitalism, supplying to demand and helping to create it. It has all the moral dignity of drug trafficking, but it was so totally new and unexpected that nobody thought to control it, and now it is too late. Progress may be made against cigarette smoking because our absence of standards of our relativism does not extend to matters of bodily health. In all other things the market determines the value. (Yoko Ono is among America’s small group of billionaires, along with oil and computer magnates, her late husband having produced and sold a commodity of worth comparable to theirs.) Rock is very big business, bigger than the movies, bigger than professional sports, bigger than television, and this accounts for much of the respectability of the music business. It is difficult to adjust our vision to the changes in the economy and to see what is really important. McDonald’s now has more employees than U.S. Steel, and likewise the purveyors of junk food for the soul have supplanted what still seem to be more basic callings.

Guardian of Truth XXXII: 12, p. 366
June 16, 1988

By Larry Ray Hafley

Dr. Compton’s article is full of personal speculation and human imagination, but it is devoid of divine revelation. The Bible says nothing about the rapture as defined by Dr. Compton. It says even less about the day after. Note that Dr. Compton prescribed no passages of Scripture which tell us what will happen the day after his alleged rapture. We only have his word for it, but that is not good enough (1 Pet. 4:11). Dr. Compton, please cite just one verse that deals with the day after the rapture. Can you do it? Will you do it?

The Chief Text

Since most of Dr. Compton’s article hinges on his misunderstanding of 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, that text must be examined. Contrary to the Doctor’s opinion, the text says nothing about some “remaining in the graves,” nor does it state that “The wicked dead will not be raised at that time.” Simply read the passage.

Paul shows that the dead in Christ are not to be sorrowed after like those who have no hope. Some believed that one who died before Christ came would miss the blessings and benefits of his coming. Paul lays that fear to rest. Indeed, the righteous dead will rise first, before the righteous living, to meet the Lord. Paul was not contrasting the righteous dead and the wicked dead.

Men divided the Bible into chapters and verses, so we often separate areas that are related to one another. Continue reading into 1 Thessalonians 5. Obviously, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:4 is contextually united. Compare the comforting conclusions of 4:18, “Wherefore comfort one another with these words,” and 1 Thessalonians 5:11, “Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.” So, when the Lord comes and the righteous are “caught up,” at the same time the wicked will be overtaken and destroyed. This is also the teaching of 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10. See that text.

God is going to repay tribulation to the troublers. He is going to repay rest (a noun, not a verb) to the troubled. But when? (1) “When the Lord shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them (the sinners)” and (2) “when he shall be glorified in his saints … in that day.” (3) “When Christ who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:4). But what about the wicked? They are not in Colossians 3:4. Yes, but they are in 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10. (4) Both the righteous and the wicked are in Matthew 16:27. “For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.”

So, when the Lord comes with the angels, then (not later) he shall reward every man (not part, not some), but “then,” “every man.” There is no sequential, sectional coming, hence, no rapture.

“No General Resurrection”

Dr. Compton says, “There is no such thing as a general resurrection.” Well, another Doctor, Dr. Luke (Col.4:14), quoted the apostle Paul who said, “there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust” (Acts 24:15). Note, “a resurrection,” singular, “of the dead” no “just the righteous,” but Dr. Luke’s word to that of Dr. Compton. If you are following Dr. Compton, you ought to change Doctors.

Dr. Compton, in his treatment of Matthew 25:31-46, says it “refers to the judgement of the nations, and has nothing to do with the rapture or a general resurrection, but refers to a judgment of the nations as to their treatment of the Jewish nation.”

Where did Dr. Compton learn this? His word is not our authority. Look at the text of Matthew 25:31-46. “All nations” will be there. When the Lord said, “Go teach all nations,” he referred to all nations of men, to “every creature” individually (Matt. 28:19; Mk. 16:15; Acts 10:35,43). So, all nations will be there, i.e., “every creature” will be present.

Further, the division of the sheep and the goats is not national, but individual. Those being judged are persons, not nations. There are no “sheep nations” versus “goat nations” in the text. Judgment is rendered to individuals on the basis of their treatment of one another (vv. 40, 45). The Lord did not say to a nation, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my nations, ye have done it unto me.” Absolute ly nothing is said about the nations as to their treatment of the Jewish nation.

Are the “cursed” of verse 41 nations or individuals? Are the “righteous” of verse 46 nations or individuals? Individuals are judged by how they have treated their fellow man (vv. 34-35). Neither blessing or cursing is based on how the Jewish nation was treated. Read the text.

Finally, the judgment of Matthew 25:31 is that of Matthew 16:27. Both involve the “Son of man.” Both include his coming in “glory.” Both incorporate his coming “with his angels.” Both encompass the judgment of “every man (not nation) according to his works.”

Both the righteous and the wicked will be raised on the last day in the same hour (Jn. 5:28,29). Observe that -A “all that are in graves shall hear his voice and come forth.” The believer will be raised “up at the last day” (Jn. 6:39,44, 54; 11:24). Also, those who do not believe, those who reject Christ and his word, will be judged “in the last day” (Jn. 12:48; cf. 5:29; 2 Cor. 5:10).

“Not Just Any Time”

The second coming of Christ, Dr. Compton contemplates, “could not happen just anytime,” nor could it “happen just any moment.” See Matthew 24:36-39. The wicked will be taken and punished; the righteous will be taken and blessed. As with Noah, there is no “day after” for the wicked. “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 25:13). Sounds like to me, Dr. Compton, the second coming could happen “just anytime.”

Conclusion

Remember the title of Dr. Compton’s article. He cited not one single verse that deals with the day after his rapture, no, not one. His surmising and theorizing is all of his own devising. We want the Scriptures that tell us about “the day after the rapture.” Surely, he knows of one. We promise to pass it along if he surrenders it.

Guardian of Truth XXXII: 12, pp. 369, 374
June 16, 1988