This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program originally aired on Jan. 25, 2023. To listen to the program, please click HERE. To listen to the other programs in this series: “God Writing History Before it Happens”, please click HERE.
Sam Rohrer:
If you Google or do an internet search on the word saints, S-A-I-N-T-S, saints, literally every reference except for a few dealing with saints and the Catholic church’s view of saints, all of them are associated with the New Orleans Saints football team or some aspect of licensing of this name. Now, if I do a search of the word saints before 1967 when the New Orleans Saints was formed, saints of course would refer to another type of saint. When I do a search of the word saints in the Bible, well, that word occurs 95 times, with the word saint, singular, occurring just three times. And none of them obviously refer to any 20th century football team.
So what does God say about saints? Because he’s been talking about it for a long time. Who are they? Are you a saint? Are there differences between, say, Old Testament saints and church age saints, or a New Testament era saint and a tribulation saint, or a millennial kingdom saint? Now, all are referred to in scripture, but what are the differences? For example, where are the Old Testament saints residing, for instance, right now? Is there a purpose and a unique role for us here in our church age saint era, for instance, compared to an Old Testament saint or as compared to a tribulation saint? Now, what is God’s plan over the ages, since creation, for people, the Bible refers to as the saints, that’s all through scripture? And in the end, could ask this question, what difference does it make, anyways?
Well, thanks for joining me today for Stand In the Gap Today. And this is part five in a prophecy series that I began back in August of last year, one a month really effectively since then, with Dr. Carl Broggi, senior pastor of Community Bible Church in Beaufort, South Carolina. And the title for this vital series is God Writing History Before It Happens [inaudible 00:02:03] number five now. In today’s emphasis, the title I’ve chosen is this, Revealing God’s Unfolding Plan for Bible Saints. And while the world thinks little of or disdains any concept of or misinterprets the meaning of saints, God has a totally different view in mind about true Bible saints. They’re very special to Him, and we think we should know about it. So with that, let me welcome to the program right now Dr. Carl Broggi. Carl, thank you so much for being back with me today on this very interesting subject.
Carl Broggi:
Yes, it’s a pleasure to be with you Sam. And indeed, it is a very interesting subject you’re addressing today.
Sam Rohrer:
So let’s get right into it here. I’d like to define things at the beginning. When I do a casual search of scripture, Carl, I found the word saints those times that I mentioned, but the first occurrences are in Deuteronomy 33:2-3. Here’s just a portion of it. Moses writes there, he says, “And the Lord came from Sinai, from 10,000s of his saints with flaming fire at his right hand,” and then says, “Yes, God loved His people. All His saints were in His hand so that they followed in your steps, receiving direction from you.” Now, that’s just a portion of those two verses, first reference.
The very last reference is in Revelation 20:9, where John records final judgment of God on His enemies, who then encompass the camp of the saints, Jerusalem there and the beloved city there. And it says the word saints there always has a personal connection of love and protection with Almighty God. So to get us started, would you please define what the Bible defines as saints, and describe God’s relationship to saints, and the saints’ relationship to God? Somewhat wrap that together here as we get going.
Carl Broggi:
Well, it’s a critical question. Obviously, the term saints is determined in terms of the context to who it is referring to and how it should be applied. You just referenced Deuteronomy, where Moses mentions these holy ones or saints. And there, it appears in the context to primarily refer to angels who are there on top of Mount Sinai. There are two broad categories of angels. There’s holy angels, there’s fallen angels. Holy angels are separated, they’re set apart, they’re called saints in scripture. And of course, Steven understood that text to refer to that because he references it in Acts 7 when he gives that great sermon to those unbelieving Jews who hated him, ended up killing him. And it reminded them that the law was ordained by angels and yet they didn’t keep it. Paul in Galatians speaks about the law being mediated through angels. And even Jude, when he quotes Enoch, a unique quote not found in the Old Testament, he speaks about the Lord will come with many thousands of His saints or holy ones, clearly contextually angels, but most often it’s used in scripture to refer to people.
And there are three or four broad categories. Certainly, Old Testament believers are called saints. The psalmist says, “Oh, fear the Lord, you, his saints. For those who fear him, there’s never any want.” Even in the New Testament, Old Testament saints are referenced with the term saints. In Matthew 27, right after the resurrection of Jesus, there’s a small group of saints, Old Testament believers, who are raised up from the dead after Christ in keeping with first fruits. Then of course the term is used in the New Testament of every born-again believers. So saints refers to Old Testament believers but also refers to New Testament believers. And the word [foreign language 00:05:43] means holy ones, and it doesn’t speak of something we earn, but something that we are imputed with, that we are gifted.
And so in the New Testament, the newest believer, the oldest believer, the most consistent, the most inconsistent are all called saints. Even when Paul opens his letter, Sam, to the Corinthians, he speaks of them as sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, and yet there was a lot of problems in that church. So it speaks of a position. So I know in the church I grew up in, there was just a certain category of people who were deemed saints after they died. But in the New Testament, every born-again blood-bought believer is called a saint of God. There’s a future category of saints that the Revelation addresses. We call them tribulation saints. And so we see them in heaven pleading before the throne of God, “How much longer, Lord, before you deal with these who are murdering the innocent?” And in Revelation 13, there’s that picture of the antichrist and his false prophets who make war with the saints; not church saints because the church is gone, but tribulation saints, those who have come to faith.
And then finally, there are millennial saints. After the millennial reign of the Messiah begins, those who enter the millennial reign in their natural bodies will certainly continue to be saints, but they will have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren as the curse is lifted off the creation as Jesus reigns on the earth. And their children who believe are called saints. And so there’s a picture of that in Revelation 20, where there’s war against the saints, millennial saints living in Jerusalem by the unbelievers who are born during the great tribulation, during the millennial reign of Christ, who don’t receive Jesus. So Old Testament saints, church saints, tribulation saints, millennial saints.
Sam Rohrer:
Absolutely fantastic. So ladies and gentlemen, you’ve got the layout: set apart positionally by God, saints, Old Testament, New Testament, tribulation, millennial. Okay, now, when you come back in the next segment, we’re going to take and further break these out, compare, contrast. There are differences. There are a lot of the same things, but we’ll break them out when you come back in the next segment.
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Sam Rohrer: Well, if you’re just joining us today here on Stand in the Gap Today, this is a fifth … I’m terming this as a part five in a continuing series that I’m doing on the theme of prophecy. It’s under the banner, we’re titling this all … and you can find all of these on our website, standinthegapradio.com, under this banner, God Writing History Before It Happens. First one’s back in August, then there’s September and then there’s November, and then bringing it up to where we are here today.
If you take and pick up all of these from the beginning, you will have a very succinct, easy to follow understanding of the importance of prophecy, why it’s there in the scripture, what God wants us to know about it, why He has given it to us, and how it should impact our lives no matter what age in which we live. So today now we’re focusing on the theme of saints. And I’ve entitled this Revealing God’s Unfolding Plan for Bible Saints. Now, the guest all the way through all of these is Dr. Carl Broggi, a senior pastor of Community Bible Church in Beaufort, South Carolina. And he has a whole vast number of sermons on prophecy, very extensive. You can find a lot in the website, searchthescriptures.org. So you can go there. But anyways, let’s go back into it because we got a big topic here today, talking about saints.
Now throughout scripture, the reality of saints, that group of what is defined as holy ones, those who are consecrated and set apart by the act of God Himself, it’s unmistakable. Carl defined saints at some places in the scripture refers to angels set apart, consecrated to God, but the predominant usage of them are saints as refers to genuine believers, you and me who know the Lord, who chose or choose in the future to call on the name of the Lord during their earthly lives and become a part of what scripture calls the redeemed of the Lord. Now, yet some in the Old Testament though period of time, they never had the written word of God. Some had only portions of the Bible, depending upon where they were during those 4,000 years before the time of Christ. That’s an example. None had yet witnessed the first coming of Christ.
But for those of us alive now and are saints under this definition, we have the entire written word of God. And we can literally see with our eyes much of what the Old Testament saints could only very dimly see and had to believe by faith. Yet there are saints yet to be born or will be alive during the tribulation period or the 1,000 millennial kingdom reign, who will see with their eyes what we who are alive now must believe by faith.
So how do we compare and contrast the most significant differences of these groups of saints? That’s what we’re going to try and do briefly in this subject. Okay, Carl, difficult topic, but you are great at boiling things down. That’s what we’re trying to do. So if we take each of these areas, Old Testament, New Testament, tribulation and millennial, could you work it in, we’ll just deal with the Old Testament here first, but answer these three questions if you could. How did each one of them become a saint? In other words, how did they get saved? Put it that perspective. If there’s differences, put it in there. Secondly, when each of them died, where did they go? Old Testament, where are they? And then the New Testament and then tribulation, and go from there. So just start with that, those two questions, if you can. Start with the Old Testament saints.
Carl Broggi:
Well, God in every age has only had one way of saving His people, and that’s through the work of the Lord Jesus. Some people falsely think, “Well, we’re saved in the Old Testament by obedience to the law, in the New Testament by faith in Christ.” Paul argues against that, as does the Lord Jesus. The law was never given to justify, really as Luther said, only to terrify, to show us our need. And so you find right in the opening chapters of scripture, Cain and Abel bringing an offering in Genesis chapter four. And Cain we’re told, brought the fruit of the ground, Abel brought the firstlings of his walk. And so one came on the basis of blood, the other came on the basis of works.
Now, there was some liberal theologians in the 19th century who tried to erase this distinction of blood, but they do so to their own demise, that Cain brought maybe less than his best. There’s nothing in the text that teaches that. One came on revelation, the other came on reason. How do I know that? Well, New Testament commentary, in Hebrews 11, the Hall of Fame of Faith, it says that Abel offered a better sacrifice than Cain, and that through faith he brought his offering. And so where does faith come? Well, faith comes from hearing the word of God. Well, what did he hear? Well, either by direct revelation or through his parents, God had already established to Cain and to Adam and Eve that the shedding of blood was necessary to forgive sin. As they had their own fig leaf religion, God brought coats of skin. And so Abel believed you had to come on the basis of blood. Why? Because it was a picture of what the Messiah would do.
Somebody might say, “Well, how can you really say that about Abel?” Again, New Testament commentary, Jesus teaches us something about Abel that’s not revealed in the Old Testament. When He deals with the liberal Pharisees of his day who crucified and killed the prophets and hated them and so forth, He indicted them with the guilt of the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel, He said, to the blood of Zechariah. So we learned that Abel was a prophet of God. And Peter reminds us when he preaches to Cornelius’s household that of Him, of Jesus, all the prophets bear witness said through His name, everyone who believes in him, in Jesus, receives forgiveness of sin.
Now, obviously they didn’t know Messiah’s name was going to be Yeshua, or Jesus in English. But they knew that Messiah would provide the way of escape by which they could be forgiven. So any Old Testament saint who’s in heaven today is there because of the blood of Christ. They were looking forward to the promises that God was going to make. And so Jesus said, “Abraham saw [inaudible 00:14:34] and believed.” He said, “Moses wrote about me.” He told the Pharisees, “The scriptures speak of me.” And so the theme of the Old Testament, the single hero is Jesus and what He would ultimately accomplish.
What happened to Old Testament saints when they died? Well, they went to Sheol. And there were are two categories of Sheol. There’s righteous Sheol, also called Abraham’s bosom, or paradise, because Abraham is the father of the faithful, a true believer. And so we’re identified to the place that he went. And then there’s unrighteous Sheol. In Greek, it’s Hades. So we usually think of the term Hades negatively. But in Old Testament Greek, in the Greek edition of the Bible, there was a positive and a negative aspect to it.
After the resurrection, Ephesians 4, teaches God emptied out Sheol. All Old Testament saints today are in heaven. Unrighteous Sheol, or Hades you could call it, still exists. Jesus spoke of in Luke 16. And someday Hades. Unrighteous Hades will be cast into the final resting place of the lost, into the lake of fire. So that’s how Old Testament saints were saved through Christ. Now, a time has come when God has overlooked the times of ignorance and He’s declared all men everywhere that they must be saved through the one who has been raised from the dead. Again, they didn’t know His name was Jesus, but there’s salvation in no one else. There’s no other name ever in the history of man that has been given to people by which they can be saved, and His name is Jesus.
Sam Rohrer:
That’s great. Now, just move quickly by you’ve set up that basis, church, tribulation, millennial. Can you just put those together very briefly in that category like you laid out?
Carl Broggi:
Yeah. So now God has overlooked the times of ignorance. He’s appointed that everyone believe in Jesus. And so Paul in Romans 10 says, “Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” He’s quoting Joel 2, which is a messianic passage. And so he applies it to Jesus in the context: “You must call in Jesus’ name, for He is the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.” So today, we’re saved in the same way. We just know his name is Jesus. We acknowledge Him as Lord. The moment we die, because the payment has been made, unlike prior to the cross where they went to righteous Sheol, today we go directly into the presence of the Lord. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
Tribulational saints, those who died, again, they’re saved by grace through faith. Revelation 20 teaches it, as is true of millennial saints. They refused, the tribulation saints, to take the mark of the beast. They believed in the testimony of Jesus. When they died, where do we find them in the Revelation? They’re in heaven praising the lamb who’s on the throne. So they directly went to heaven. Same is true with the millennial saint. If they were to die, though death for a millennial saint is very rare, but it’s possible, they would go to be in the presence of the Lord awaiting their resurrection. So anyway, that’s the broad stroke.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, that is a fantastic condensation. So ladies and gentlemen, there’s only one way to heaven. It’s through Jesus Christ. Old Testament, they had to look forward. By faith, we in our age look back to what He did. By faith, the tribulation, they’re going to be looking ultimately right in the face of Jesus, by the same way. And then millennial kingdom’s going to be a little bit different, but they’re still going to have to trust. And the decision’s made the same way, but they’re going to be looking a slightly different direction, but it’s all to the same person. It’s not by works, by faith in Jesus Christ. So that’s the bottom line takeaway of all of this.
Now, the question that arises that we’re going to deal with in the next segment then is, all right, if the souls of these are now in the presence of the Lord, well, the scripture speaks a lot about resurrection of the body. It speaks a lot about judgment, standing before the Lord … And I’m not talking about the unsaved, although they will as well, but resurrection and judgment, and when that happens before the Lord. Now, we’re going to try to deal with that in the next segment, because it’s an issue that confuses a lot of people, but scripture is very clear. So we’re going to take these four categories, and we’re going to talk with Pastor Carl Broggi and have him take and lay out, just like we just did here, talk about resurrection and judgment, Old Testament saints, New Testament saints, tribulation saints, millennial saints. We’ll be right back.
Sam Rohrer: Well, since Genesis 3:15, where following the fall, that’s where the fall … You know what I’m talking about there, where Satan came, tempted Eve, and Adam joined right in with her? When sin came into the world at that point, then God Himself came back and He laid out there that first reference in Genesis 3:15, foretelling His plan of redemption. That’s what we call it. He didn’t use those words in that verse, but that’s what it is, His plan of redemption, the process by which fallen mankind could come back into perfect fellowship with God himself. And he prophesied then about the coming of his son, Jesus, the Messiah, we would call Yeshua. But as our guest today, Dr. Carl Broggi said, the Old Testament didn’t have that name. Those folks didn’t know that back then, but they knew that there was going to be a way for redemption.
Now, the balance of scripture, it all unveils, piece by piece, this promised plan, much of which has been fulfilled for us. Now looking back, we can see a lot of fulfillment, but there actually is a whole lot more to be fulfilled. 30% of scripture is prophecy. That’s why we’re dealing with this series, so we all understand it. And all through the ages and well recorded through the New Testament, the saints of God, the disciples, they were saints, but saints generally and the disciples specifically, they walked side by side with Yeshua. Yet they always wanted to know about the future kingdom, what was going to happen, what would come.
And they asked specific questions about what happened when they died, and would they be resurrected? And they asked those questions, and they wanted to know. But there’s nothing wrong with that, and Jesus did not chastise them for that. So it’s a natural question for us to ask and saints to ask in any age, what about the saints that went before? What about the saints of today? What about the saints yet to be born? And so that’s why we’re dealing with this now, because it’s legitimate to ask, and the Lord tells us. So we’re trying to break that out here today.
So Carl, go back and take each of these four categories again, like you outlined at the beginning. It’s good to think of these things, Old Testament saints, New Testament saints, tribulation saints, and millennial saint. And in this next section now, take that same group and break it out just like you did before, only this time from the standpoint of resurrection of the body. The scripture talks about resurrections. A lot of people are confused. And there’s always resurrection and there’s always judgment. There’s always that piece of it. Connect those together. And then the timing, Old Testament, New Testament tribulation into millennial. Put that together if you can, like you did in that last segment. It would be fantastic if you could do that.
Carl Broggi:
Well, Sam, as you know, there’s a lot of unbelievers, I’d say most unbelievers, and sadly many true believers, because prophecy and exegetical teaching of scripture is hard to find today, they think there’s just one big general judgment where all the people of all time are brought together and separated out. And the scripture is clear, there’s actually a number of judgments in the future, four that relate to people. And I say “people,” because there’s other judgements that would relate to holy angels and to fallen angels, to Satan himself. But concerning people, there is four big judgements in the future.
The next one of course, in reference to the resurrection, we call it the rapture. We shall not all sleep, we shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye. So not every person is going to die in the traditional sense. And so we’re going to be caught up, we’re going to be changed. And we’re going to meet the Lord at the judgment of the just. And so Paul says, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” He’s speaking of himself and all believers, where God evaluates our works as saved people, not to see if we get into heaven, that’s settled the moment we take our last breath by what we’ve done with Christ, but to see how He’s going to reward us in the future.
Then there’s the judgment of Old Testament saints, so the church is taken up. Sometime after, there’ll be a treaty that will be signed with the antichrist in Israel. It will make a seven-year clock tick. But at the second coming that precedes that timeframe, Daniel speaks of it. He first reminds us in Daniel 12:1-2, he said, “There will be a time of distress such as has never occurred since there was a nation, until that time. And at that time, your people,” speaking of the Jewish people, “everyone who is found written in the book will be rescued.” He’s using the same language that Jesus references in Matthew 24:21, this time of worldwide distress. We call it the time of Jacob’s trouble. And then he says, “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting lives.”
And so he’s speaking here of the resurrection of Old Testament saints that takes place at the second coming. So the church is resurrected, then Old Testament saints are resurrected. Those people who have died during the tribulation period, Revelation 24 through six indicates tribulation saints, they’re also resurrected when Old Testament saints are resurrected at the second coming.
Then there’s some judgements that take place at the second coming, living Israel, living Jews are separated, believing Jews from unbelieving Jews. When the Bible speaks of all Israel being saved, it’s a collective all, not an individual. Each and every Jew will be saved. The Bible’s clear that wasn’t true in the Old Testament. It’s not true in the coming age, but he speaks of this time, Ezekiel speaks of how God will separate believing Jews, Ezekiel 20, Ezekiel 39, from unbelieving Jews. And then He speaks of the judgment of the nations, Jesus in Matthew 25, the sheep and the goats’ judgment, we refer to it. And it’s based on what they did to the least of these, his brethren, a third group of people. So there’s goats that are unbelieving Gentiles, there’s sheep that are believing Gentiles.
They are separated at that point, based on what they did with Israel during the tribulation period, how they treated Israel, who will be the most hated group of people on the planet during that seven-year period of time, because their works will demonstrate whether or not they truly knew our Jewish Messiah or not. We’re not saved by works, we’re saved by grace alone, but the grace that saves is never alone. And so the unbelieving Gentiles go into Hades awaiting the final judgment, the believing gentles, like believing Jews, enter in their natural bodies into the millennial reign of the Messiah. Then at the end of the millennium, there’s another separation that takes place. Revelation 20:11-15, there are people who are born to tribulation saints during the millennial reign. They enter in their natural bodies, Jew and Gentile alike, who made it through the tribulation, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and …
Sam Rohrer:
All right, Carl, did we lose you here? I think we may have left him. Sometimes that happens, ladies and gentlemen, on live radio. Tim, see if you can get him back. What we’re talking about here, ladies and gentlemen, is the concept of saints. I asked Carl to be with me today on this as a part of our prophecy series. Now, this is the fifth in that series. And the reason that we’re doing this, I don’t know about you, but I don’t know that I have ever heard any focused instruction on just the concept of saints, the true believers of the Old Testament and the New Testament and the tribulation and the millennia.
Even that thought right now, you have these four different categories of saints, even that is something that for many people is a new thought. But it’s important that we as believers understand that our salvation, what causes one to become a saint, hasn’t changed, from Able to the last person who may be alive in the millennial kingdom yet to come. It’s all by faith in Jesus Christ. We either look forward, or in the case of the disciples, look right directly at the son of God when he was here, or for us now, we look back to what Christ has done, or those who are alive in the tribulation, they’re going to be looking to Christ to come, like we are right now. But then when the second coming comes, when Christ comes back to rule, then He’s actually physically going to be here. So the believers, those who would trust Christ then are obviously going to be looking right to Jerusalem, because Jesus as returning king will actually be reigning physically from Jerusalem. So they’re going to be different at that point, but they still will trust and need to trust just like we are now. And let’s see here. Are you back, Brother Carl?
Carl Broggi:
I am, yes. Sorry, I’m not sure what happened, but I am here.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, we’ve got about 45 seconds here. If you can complete the thought of where you were talking here now, judgment and all of that, and I think you were moving into the tribulation.
Carl Broggi:
So the church is raptured at the end of seven years. The Old Testament saints are raised from the dead at that point, along with dead tribulation saints, they’re raised with Old Testament saints. At the second coming, living Israel is separated from believers and unbelievers. Living Gentiles are separated, unbelievers and believers. And then the final, final judgment is the great white throne judgment where all the unbelievers of all time are brought out of Hades and they are cast into the lake of fire. So there’s a number of judgements still in the future. There’s not one big holistic judgment, but a series of judgments that are based on particular circumstances and timeframes.
Sam Rohrer:
All right, now, that’s just excellent. And again, ladies and gentlemen, when we come back now, we’re going to concentrate and focus on the saints alive, now us, those who are part of the church age, and deal with the questions of, all right, when we go, what happens immediately when we are raptured? What’s going to take place? And then what do we then do? What’s going to be our role during the millennial kingdom and the other saints during [inaudible 00:30:03]?
Sam Rohrer: Well, before we go into the final segment here, now focusing on us, saints, those of us who know who Jesus Christ is through faith and are part of the redeemed, we’re going to look at that group, that group right now. But just want to call your attention to this. This is the fifth in a series, now. If you go to our website, standinthegapradio.com, you will find there a series of graphics. One of them is God Writing History Before It Happens: A Study of Biblical Prophecy. Go there.
When you click on that, you will find the previous five programs, first one dealing with defining prophecy, connecting it with Israel, talking a little bit about the rapture at that point. The next one, we talk about the signs of the times. Jesus talks about the signs of the times … we deal with them, and how they were fulfilled; many, many still to come. We talk in part three about church and the church age. And then this one here today, now on the matter of the saints. We’ll pick up, second coming, we’re going to pick up the millennial kingdom. And some of these things in the future, we’ll build out. But go there, with all these together, take it from the beginning; really, really genuinely believe you will be benefited greatly, as we’ve taken big topics and tried to make them as simple as possible.
Okay, let’s go back into it now. For the disciples at the time of Christ, see, that group then, they actually were expecting that Jesus would actually return in their lifetime. And that was good. In fact, we are told all believers since that point till the rapture, all true saints, we should anticipate that Jesus will return in our lifetime. We should live each day with our wicks being trimmed, our lights burning, and excitedly occupying until He comes. That’s what we’re told to do. So in this last segment, I’d like to focus on those of us alive right now, and more broadly the New Testament era saints that fall between the Old Testament saints, pre-crucifixion and ascension, and the tribulations saints.
So Carl, if you could here, why do we know, for instance, that the rapture concludes the New Testament era, or the church age, we call it, and must occur before the start of the tribulation, and then that next group that we’re talking about as the tribulation saints? Just establish that fact. Why should we believe that that rapture marks the end and then starts that next chapter?
Carl Broggi:
Well, we know it, Sam, by direct promise, and we know it by direct inferences. Direct promise might be a verse like Revelation 3:10, where Jesus said, “Because you have kept the word of my perseverance, I will keep you from the hour of testing that hour, which is about to come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth, or earth dwellers,” a term used eight times in the Revelation to refer to unbelievers, those who dwell on the earth. Their focus is this life only. And Jesus makes a promise to that church that He will keep them from that hour of testing that’s going to come on the entire world. There’s never been an hour of testing that has come on the entire world, ever, in recorded human history, not even the great world wars. That time is still future during the time of the great tribulation.
So He doesn’t say, “I’ll keep you through the hour of testing or in spite of the hour of testing or in the midst of the hour of testing,” but “from, out of that hour of testing.” And Jesus spoke of that hour. He said, “A time that has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will. And unless those days had been cut short, no one would live.” And so Jesus is going to remove us. So there are many promises like that, we call that the rapture, where the Lord, in the twinkling of an eye, the Lord will descend from heaven with a shout. The dead in Christ will rise first. And we who remain will be caught up together to meet the Lord in the air. So He first comes, we meet the Lord in the air. It’s called the catching up, the rapture. Then we come back with him to the earth, two distinct events.
And then there are direct inferences. Obviously, the 70 weeks prophecy of Daniel, the first 69 weeks dealt with Israel. The 70th week of Daniel’s prophecy deals with Israel, the time of Jacob’s trouble, where between those two, 69 and 70, weeks is called the church age. The church will be removed. So take for instance, the end of the Revelation. Here’s a good inference. When the 1,000 years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison. He’ll come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth. And Christ will put it down. Now, what’s he talking about? Well, look, if the rapture happens at the end of the tribulation, we go up, make a U-turn, come back to the earth, then all those saints are caught up or in resurrected bodies. They can’t propagate, they can’t have children.
And yet clearly, the rapture happens before that seven years. So who are these children? These are the children of tribulation saints who are born during the millennium that Satan can’t tempt. So you either just write that away, spiritualize it, say there’s no future millennium, that’s what the amillennialist does, or you take the plain reading of scripture. So this passage, Revelation 27 through nine, cannot happen unless there’s a pretribulational rapture. So there are direct promises and then there are direct inferences that tell us the church will not be here, for we’re not destined for wrath, but for salvation.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, fantastic. Okay, here’s another question, and then we only have just a few minutes left. The believers of the church age, let’s focus in on this group now. We are raptured, we go. You already explained there is a time of reward and judgment that happens there. You also referred to we come back with Christ. What will be our role after Christ’s second coming?
Carl Broggi:
So we will rule and reign with him, as Paul reminds us in the book of Romans. And Jesus speaks of it in a number of direct parables of rewards, and rewards, among other things during the millennial reign, will imply responsibilities. So he speaks of one who’s over 10 cities, another over five cities, another over one city, based on their faithfulness to the Lord. So God will allow us to rule and reign with Jesus. He’ll reign with-
Sam Rohrer:
Okay-
Carl Broggi:
Yeah?
Sam Rohrer:
Okay. What about Old Testament saints? Are they reigning at that point? What about tribulation saints? Are they reigning at that point also?
Carl Broggi:
[inaudible 00:36:37] Yeah. So we come back with Jesus, and that’s the second coming. Old Testament saints are immediately resurrected. Their spirits, like we had at the rapture, will be reunited to their bodies in the grave. They’ll be brought out of the grave. And they’ll be involved in that coming kingdom as well. So there’ll be Old Testament believers who are in a resurrected body, church saints in resurrected bodies, tribulation saints in resurrection bodies, who had died during the tribulation, and will rule and reign over the earth for 1,000 years with the Messiah and over those living Jews and living Gentiles who survived the tribulation and have children during that 1,000 year period.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, that’s fantastic. Okay, one last question in our last minute. What should this knowledge that we just talked about here today and this immediate next steps for those of us who are part of this church age, what should this cause everyone who is a true saint, a believer, to think and do and live right now?
Carl Broggi:
Well, I’m actually preaching on that very subject on this Sunday, being ready for the return of Christ. And Jesus spoke of a parable of talents and various amounts that were entrusted to different people, but it’s not the way it’s often preached. He’s dealing really with the stewardship of the gospel that God’s people have. So we are to be good stewards of the gospel. We’ve been entrusted with the only news that can deliver people out of the eternal wrath of God into an eternal right standing. And so we are to be faithful as we go to make disciples or converts of all nations, all peoples, as God opens doors of opportunity.
Sam Rohrer:
Ladies and gentlemen, we’re at the end of today’s program. Go back and listen to this. Lot of information here. Dr. Carl Broggi, thank you so very, very much for being with us today. A lot of tremendous information in a short period of time. I just praise the Lord for the wisdom that God has given you. And you can go and find out a lot of Pastor Broggi’s sermons and other things at searchthescriptures.org. This sermon and all in the previous series, God Writing History Before It Happens at our website, at standinthegapradio.com. Thanks for being with us today, and take this knowledge and let it affect your life. Share the gospel with passion like never before.
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