Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: We must say to the believers of our own country that there is no guarantee that we shall be spared from crushing destruction under a hail of guided missiles with atomic warheads. In fact, I am convinced that the Bible teaches that great judgments shall come upon our nation.

The teaching is largely by silence about us, while at the same time painting the picture of the nations that shall be the most powerful at the time of the end of this age and the brief period of the Great Tribulation which will come after we are removed from the earth. All who pass through trial may know that Jesus Christ our Lord today is on His Father's throne, pleading for them.

But our trials are small in comparison with the Great Trial which shall come and which He will engineer and from which we shall be kept. In the light of all this, we must realize our text, that it is high time that we awake.

Guest (Male): Over a half century ago, the late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, then pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, saw the need to spread God's word beyond the hearing of his local congregation. He started the radio ministry which has become known as Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible. The application of God's word as taught by Dr. Barnhouse is as relevant today as when he first taught over the radio airwaves decades ago.

The message we'll be featuring on today's edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is entitled, "It is Later Than You Think." Jesus once told a story about five foolish virgins who did not prepare wisely for the coming of the bridegroom. When he came, they were not allowed into the wedding feast because they were unprepared.

But the five wise virgins in his parable carried extra oil, trimmed their lamps, and made sure that they were ready for the bridegroom and the wedding feast. It is later than we think, and we must not live foolishly and be unprepared for the Lord's second coming. How can we make sure we are ready for our bridegroom when he returns? Let's find out as today Dr. Barnhouse takes us to Romans chapter 13 and verse 11. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled, "It is Later Than You Think."

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto Thee, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit, Thy word is truth and we thank Thee that Thou hast given it to us as a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Bless us as we study its pages and reveal to us afresh the glories of our Lord Jesus. For we know that it is by knowing Him better that we can love Thee more and can grow in grace and in truth.

And as we consider the great truths of Thy return, Lord Jesus, give us holiness of life to meet Thee and zeal to do Thy will while we wait. For we ask all these things, our Father, in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Today, we go on in our studies of the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, considering the text in Romans 13:11, "Now it is high time to awake." We have shown in previous studies that both Christ and the disciples taught that He was going to return to this earth. We have seen that He specifically stated that nobody, not the angels, not even Himself in His humanity, knew the time or the season of His coming.

That return may or may not be immediate, but it is always imminent. He might not come back for generations, but He could come back in our day. If in the days of Paul, the Holy Spirit could tell Christians that it was high time to awake out of sleep, how much more can we say the same thing when man has split the atom and thrown satellites into space? It is indeed high time to awake.

The whole thrust of New Testament teaching is that the believers in Christ should look for Him to come again. He spoke of certain signs that would be evident, but these were set forth as waymarks and not as any goal. Our hearts and minds are not to be concerned with the events of passing history, but with the thought that our Lord Jesus is coming again to satisfy our hearts and to right all the wrongs that exist in the universe as the result of rebellion against the will of God.

In our present text, the Apostle is using the truth of the return of the Lord Jesus Christ as a great persuasive argument for holiness of living. The behavior of the believer has been under discussion and will be more so as this chapter draws to its end. But here, the emphasis is the trumpet call of revelry. It's time to get up.

If we are to know the times in which we live, it is best to know what the Bible says about the future. If we have a simple outline of the events of prophecy, we shall be able better to plot the course of our own lives and know greater incentives for holy living. We know that God wants us to be holy. We do not have to add "if it be Thy will" when we ask Him to make us more like Christ.

He has revealed to us that His purpose in saving us was that we might be conformed to the image of His Son. He has flatly stated, "This is the will of God, even your sanctification." And since this is the will of God, we may come boldly asking Him to perform this work in us.

God has given us the truth of the second coming of Christ in a way that is calculated to strengthen our faith and excite our hope. The certainty of the fact of His coming and the uncertainty of the time of His coming join to produce in the believer a great assurance and a great watchfulness.

If we are to have both of these, we must not hold any form of biblical interpretation which will take our eyes from Christ. If there is any event which must be fulfilled before we see Him personally, then there can be no watchfulness for Him, no thought of Him primarily, but rather a turning of our eyes from Him to the events or times that would precede His coming.

It is no wonder, therefore, that Satan has always tried to get the believer to look away from Christ alone and fix his eyes either on signs which supposedly must take precedence over Him or upon events which would have to come to pass before we could see Him. This is why it is so wrong to believe that the church is going to pass through the Great Tribulation.

Here, I face the displeasure of close friends who disagree with me. I know that there are honest and sincere men who believe that there is only one great single event at the coming of Christ. To my mind, they simply have not seen the implications of what I believe is great error. The second coming of Christ, like His first coming, is a long series of events with many phases, dealing with God's various purposes.

We can know what the disciples preached by the objections that were raised by their hearers. Paul preached that grace covered all of a believer's life—past, present, and future. A believer is saved not up to the moment that he believes, but in the totality of his being and his existence. And this led people to object that Paul was preaching the possibility of loose living, of continuing in sin that grace might abound. And to this, Paul answered with a cry of horror.

Now, in the same way, we can see what Paul preached about the second coming by the objections that were raised. He announced the fact of Christ's coming and the uncertainty of the time. But in his announcement of uncertainty, there was the certainty that it could take place at any moment. The people to whom he preached lived their lives in that expectation.

If the church must pass through the tribulation, such preaching becomes nonsense. We may be sure, therefore, that any interpretation of Bible prophecy which takes away the possibility of Christ's return at any moment has departed from the underlying force of prophetic truth.

If you go to any of the good brethren who accept the idea that the church must pass through the tribulation, either the whole of it or the first half of it, they will be forced to answer if you ask them if Christ could come back today, that He could not.

I know two brethren who are both in the ministry. One of them holds, as I do, that Christ has promised to return and that this return may take place at any moment, although there is the possibility that the return shall not take place for some time, long or short. He holds, as I do, that there is nothing prophesied that must take place before the actual coming of the Lord.

We can both sing the hymn "Jesus May Come Today" with its chorus: "Glad day, glad day, Jesus may come today. I live for today, nor anxious be. Jesus, my Lord, I soon shall see. Glad day, glad day, Jesus may come today."

The second brother began to read material that is, I believe, based on false exegesis of the Scriptures. He came to the position that the church was going to pass through the Great Tribulation, or at least a part of it. The first brother wrote to him and suggested that he alter the hymn so that it would read: "Sad day, sad day, Jesus can't come today. I live for today and anxious be. The beast and false prophet I soon shall see. Sad day, sad day, Jesus can't come today."

Now, there will be those who think that we should not reduce an argument to its absurd proportions in order to show the fallacy in a given line of thinking. But this reduction to the absurd has eminent examples in history. The Lord Himself must have caused laughter when He spoke of those who would find a fly in their soup and make a fuss about straining it out while they would then go on to swallow a camel. The idea of swallowing a mouse in a bowl of soup would have been absurd, but Christ pushed it to the proportions of a camel. He wanted men to see how absurd their actions can be.

Let me justify further this denial of one position by showing where it leads to. There are in the Bible many references which refer to Jesus Christ as being none other than the Lord God Almighty, God the Son, the second person of the Trinity. True Christians will not even argue the point. Jesus Christ is God.

But suppose someone comes along and wishes to take the few verses which speak in no uncertain terms of Christ's humanity. If they want to use these verses to deny His deity, we will simply not take the time to discuss the matter with them. We proclaim the truth, and it stands there without the possibility of discussion. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Objects thrown into the air fall back towards the earth. Spring follows winter. These are facts. Jesus Christ is God. This is even more a fact.

There are other biblical doctrines which will not bear discussion. Sin is hateful to God. God is the Creator. Christ died for our sins. Man cannot save himself. All of these truths and many others cannot be changed, altered, modified, or interpreted to mean other than their simple meanings. They can be understood by study to convey greater meanings in the same direction as their simple meanings, but they may not be whittled down to contain lesser meanings.

In this same category is the truth found in many parts of the New Testament that we are to watch for the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Both in parable and in direct teaching, our Lord announced that He would return. "If I go, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." Watch. Wait. We shall see Him and be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

The Bible teaches without possibility of deviation that the Lord Jesus Christ is coming back again and that the church is to live in the ever-present expectancy of seeing Him. As I understand God's word, any attempt to interpret any verse in the Bible in a way that will put His coming after some other event—any other event whatsoever—is false teaching, no matter how fundamental a man may be in his faithfulness to the great truths of the person and the work of Christ.

Any verse in the Bible which seems to say the contrary is like a verse that seems to indicate that Christ was not the eternal God. We must find the true deeper meaning of any verse in a way that will not make it to be a hammer that will strike other truths or a lever that will pry the foundations of truth apart.

Several years ago, a well-known Bible teacher published a booklet entitled, "36 Reasons Why the Church Will Not Pass Through the Great Tribulation." At the time, I read the booklet and found myself agreeing in general with all that was written. But at the same time, I thought that the author had left out the biblical reason that I consider to be one of the most important on this subject.

In addition to what we have seen about the necessity of having the personal coming of the Lord an event for which we can watch as being the very next event that must be fulfilled, there is a wonderful picture of prophetic events to be found in one of the scenes of the book of Revelation. John had been taken into heaven to receive the revelation of future events. The book containing these prophecies was there before the throne of God.

With intense desire, John wept, waiting for someone worthy to come to the throne of God and receive the book in order that the promise to him might be fulfilled and the knowledge of future events revealed to him. Then came the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and yet the Lamb who had been slain, evidently bearing still the sacrificial scars, telling of His past sufferings, of His present power, and His future right to bring judgment upon the earth.

Now, the important thing that we must note is that Christ was no longer seated upon the throne of His Father, but that He had come to stand before that throne to begin a new phase of His work. This cannot be too strongly emphasized. There are a dozen verses which speak of the present enthronement of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It was a matter of such import that the leaders of the church in the early centuries wrote into the creeds of the time the important clause: "He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty." This position of the enthroned Christ began at the moment of His ascension into heaven and comes to an end at a definitely announced time.

The Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven and began His work of intercession for His church. We read in Hebrews 7:25 that Christ is able to save to the uttermost. The Revised Standard Version here is utterly wrong, for the Greek is "completely" and has no reference to time. He is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him, living as He does to make intercession for them.

A third verse must be considered with these two. A prophecy found in Psalm 110 is perhaps the most frequently quoted in the New Testament of all passages from the Old Testament. It begins, "Jehovah said unto my Lord, sit Thou at my right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool." This word "until" is very pertinent to our study.

Finally, we read that the Lord Jesus Christ, speaking as the risen sovereign of the church, said to the church of Laodicea, "He who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on His throne."

Now, putting these verses together, we must conclude: Jesus Christ ascended into heaven and took His place on the throne of the Father. He did this in order to be the intercessor for His people. His place and His mediation are temporary. The day is to come when He is to rise from His Father's throne and proceed to the work that will bring Him to His own throne for the purposes of the kingdom.

In the passage in which we have seen Christ in the act of coming to the Father's throne to receive the sealed book that He might open it and begin the judgments that are to come upon the earth, it is evident that the age of the church is passed. If it were not so, Christ would still be interceding for His people instead of being engaged in an act of punitive judgment.

We must draw the conclusion, therefore, that if the church of Jesus Christ is to go through the Great Tribulation or any part of it, it must do so without the Lord as intercessor and mediator upon the throne of the Father.

There is one other passage which we should consider in this connection. The risen Lord, speaking to the believers of the church of Philadelphia in the third chapter of the Revelation, says, "Because you have kept my word of patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial which is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell upon the earth."

Dean Henry Alford, one of the greatest of all biblical interpreters, says of this trial that it is the well-known and signal temptation, that prophesied in Matthew 24:21. That is the great time of trouble which shall be before the Lord's second coming. Not only does Alford agree with all that I have been saying here, but he goes so far as to say that those who have tried to interpret this as referring to some other time or some other trial than that of the final one have followed "a line of interpretation carrying its own refutation."

But having established the fact that the Lord is going to take His church out of the world before the Great Tribulation, we must end with the strongest possible warning to those who believe that the church in America, for example, must be kept from any very great trouble. There were many Christians in Russia before the Revolution, and these passed through a tribulation which practically eradicated them.

There were multitudes of true believers in Germany, but this did not keep them from the terrors of the war. There were multitudes of believers in England, but they were not kept from the bombings of London and the other horrors of war. There were great numbers of believers in Korea. They were not kept from the trial of the wartime, but were rather the target of the hatred of the Reds who sought to kill the Christians first of all.

And we must say to the believers of our own country that there is no guarantee that we shall be spared from crushing destruction under a hail of guided missiles with atomic warheads. In fact, I am convinced that the Bible teaches that great judgments shall come upon our nation.

The teaching is largely by silence about us while at the same time painting the picture of the nations that shall be the most powerful at the time of the end of this age and the brief period of the Great Tribulation which will come after we are removed from the earth. All who pass through trial may know that Jesus Christ our Lord today is on His Father's throne, pleading for them.

But our trials, even though they may be bombings, are small in comparison with the Great Trial which shall come and which He will engineer and from which we shall be kept. In the light of all this, we must realize our text, that it is high time that we awake.

And our God, we pray Thee to give restlessness to any who have not been born again, that Thou wilt arouse Thy people that they may be ready in these days to witness before Thee a good confession and to live lives of holiness before the world. We ask Thee this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Guest (Male): Now is the time to awaken from our spiritual slumber and be ever watchful, alert, and vigilant in prayer and godly living, for salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. We hope you've benefited from today's message, "It is Later Than You Think."

To listen to additional Bible teaching by Dr. Barnhouse, visit us online at alliancenet.org. An audio copy of today's teaching is also available by calling us toll-free: 1-800-488-1888. Today's message again is entitled, "It is Later Than You Think," or simply request message number R13-13.

We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled, *The Cost of Discipleship*. Although salvation is a free gift of God, it does not come cheaply. It cost Jesus His life to redeem us and will cost us something if we are serious about submitting to His lordship. This free booklet will show you that as pilgrims in this life, we must count the cost of discipleship, learn to travel light, and realize that following Jesus radically changes our relationships.

Discipleship is demanding, but the Lord promises that He is always with you. Ask for your free copy of *The Cost of Discipleship* when you call or write. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is a radio ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We exist to promote a biblical understanding and worldview.

Drawing upon the insight and wisdom of Reformation theologians from decades and even centuries gone by, we seek to provide contemporary Christian teaching which will equip believers to understand and meet the challenges and opportunities of our time and place. The Alliance also produces the radio broadcasts *The Bible Study Hour*, featuring the teachings of the late Dr. James Montgomery Boice, and *Every Last Word*, featuring the teaching of Dr. Philip Graham Ryken.

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