Jesus is Returning Soon | Jentezen Franklin

I'm so glad that you're joining us today, and I believe that the message is not only timely, it's urgent. We're living in prophetic days, and there's never been a more important moment to understand what the Bible says about the soon return of Jesus Christ. So many people have questions right now as they see the signs of the times everywhere. What does the Bible really say about the end times? What is the rapture? Is Jesus really coming again? Today, we're beginning a powerful three-part series titled, The Return of Jesus. You see, the early church lived every day expecting Jesus to return at any moment. The Bible says we should live with that same expectation. Let's go right into the service recorded right here at Free Chapel in Gainesville, Georgia. I want you to lean in. I want you to open your heart, and you know what? I think you'll hear a voice inside of my voice confirming to you that Jesus is returning soon. Together, we're inspiring people to live for Jesus. If you're looking for more in life, to live with purpose and peace, to make a difference for your family and those in need around the world, Jesus is the answer, and our mission is to simply point you to Him. You're watching Kingdom Connection with Judson Franklin. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 13. But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep or died, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. When we die, our body goes in the ground, but our spirit goes to Jesus. And He can't bring them with Him if they're not with Him. They're with Him. Right now, they're with Him. Praise God. I want to read that again. As He said, He will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say unto you by the Word of the Lord. Whose doctrine? Is this an apostle even? No, this is by the Word of Jesus, this will happen.

This is His promise. If He's lying here, He's lying big right here. He is not a liar, nor a man that He can lie. This is by the Word of the Lord that we who are alive and remain. Notice Paul says, we who are alive. Because He lived with an expectancy that the coming of the Lord would happen in His lifetime. He included Himself in the people who were alive. He said, we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, and the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain, notice this phrase, shall be caught up. Not just caught up, but caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore, comfort one another with these words. The Christians in Thessalonians were so expected of the coming of the Lord. They had seen Him do miracles. They had seen the truth of the Gospel. They believed His death purchased their salvation, and He resurrected from the dead. They believed that message. And so when Jesus said, I'm coming back again, it was very real, it was forefront in their thinking. It says in 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 52, something powerful. It says, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, the trumpet was sound. The dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. Did you know that you blink your eyes 20,000 times a day? That's 20,000 episodes that... Jesus could come in every day.

You ought to be living like that. He didn't come on that blink. Well, it could be the next one. It could be the next one. All day long, it could be the next one. What is the rapture? First Thessalonians 4, 16 tells us what the rapture is. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven. The central figure of the rapture is not the Antichrist, is not the end times, is not 666. The central theme of the rapture is the Lord Himself. Jesus Christ Himself is coming back for His bride. From the lofty heights of heaven, Jesus will step out and the clouds will part and He will descend and He will shout with His own voice. I don't know what He's going to shout. With a shout, He will give a command that will raise the dead. He may say, He may say, O grave, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? Or He may say that universal word that's found four times in the book of Revelation, Hallelujah. And when He does, that sound will go forth around the world and the dead in Christ will rise first. Not every dead person, there's going to be, there won't, every dead person won't get up, but everyone, you either die in Christ or you are dead in your sins. And the Bible said those who are alive, verse 4 and 17, and remain shall be caught up. There is a catching away. The Greek word is harpazo, H-A-R-P-A-Z-O, harpazo. It means to be changed, to be transformed, to be caught up. The word caught up in the, in the Greek language is found three other times. A beautiful mini picture of the rapture is Acts 8 and verse 39, Philip the evangelist baptizes an Ethiopian in the desert and when he brings the man out of the water, the Bible said that Philip was caught up by the Spirit of the Lord and taken to a city 28 miles down

the road and when the guy got down there, he was standing there waiting on him. And it was God showing he had the power to, to, to have a rapture, a catching away. First Corinthians 15, 51 and 52 says this, that so suddenly will it happen, behold I tell you a mystery, the rapture is a mystery, but we shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. The word moment there is the word atom and A-T-O-M and you know it's pretty amazing that that word would be used. It is the building material of all matter, everything that exists is made out of an atom. But these people had no knowledge of nuclear physics, they, they, they just didn't know what to call the smallest amount of time, so he said we'll say in a moment, in an atom. It means this, that there has been a moment that has been stamped atom and as time has gone and every second, every moment gets on the stage of life and it's here, it's been waiting to get here in lines of moments and by the time it's like a, a long, long line and by the time it gets here, it's here and it's gone and he said this, this is so fast, it's the twinkling of an eye, it's the batting of an eye and he said when that moment that's been stamped, it was stamped 2,000 years ago that he would come back on this particular moment, this particular second, this particular and one of these days that moment is gonna step up and it'll be just that quick and then it'll be gone and you will look and you will look again and millions of people will be gone. They will vanish. They will disappear instantly. The Bible and Jesus himself taught this lesson, caught up, seized by force, moved quickly from one place to another. I remember when I was a kid, we lived in Henderson, North Carolina, my family and we lived by an old scrap yard, you'd call it, or they would have a lot of old machinery from the cotton mill. We lived on the end of a street and there was a little paved part of the church parking lot and then there was a dirt road that you went to and there was a scrap yard back there and they didn't have one of these there, but there were, there were all kinds of metal, old cars, old...

all kinds of metal all over that place. But I've seen it in videos where they'll have a big crane in some of those junkyards like that. And they will have a massive magnet that has the power to pick up metal. And when they sweep that large magnet across the grounds of that old junkyard, it can move things. Some of the metal that it connects with is under the ground. Some of it is on top of the ground. But because the magnet has metal in it, if what is down on the ground is of the same nature that is in the magnet, that nature in the magnet will reach out to the nature in the metal on top of the ground or under the ground. If there's a nail down there, four or five inches, if it's the same metal that... You know what I'm saying? If you have the nature of Jesus, when that trumpet sounds, when he steps out and says, come home, come home, come home, everyone that has the nature of Jesus will begin to rise and meet him in the sky. If you don't have his nature, what's his nature? You love everybody. You forgive everybody. You live to please him. You love his presence.

You love his word. You're not perfect. You don't have to... Somebody told me in the line, this girl said, you know, that some of that metal's rusty. And she said, I'm so thankful that I know I'm saved. I still got some rust on me, but I thank God that it's not my perfection, it's my nature. My old flesh may be rusty, but I tell you, if you've got the nature of Jesus, you don't live in sin. You can't stand sin. You don't cheat on your wife. You don't sleep around. You don't get drunk. You don't live like the world. You don't do that. You've got the nature of Jesus. You want to please Jesus. You want to be a light in a dark world for Jesus. Oh, I feel like preaching this morning. You better get the nature in you. It's more than walking down an aisle and saying, I'm a Christian. No, do you have the nature? Do you have enough of him? That when he says, come on, there's something in you

will begin to rise through the clouds. Hallelujah. I've got it. It's called the Holy Ghost. Hallelujah. The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you. His resurrection is proof of my resurrection. Paul realized that they would have questions, so he says this so powerfully. He says, if we believe, for since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, stop right there, turn to somebody and say, do you believe that? Do you? Get the answer out of them, my God. How many of you believe Jesus is coming again? All right, put your hand down. How many of you believe Jesus died and rose again? He said, if you can get Jesus out of that empty tomb, if you can get Jesus through the door of that tomb, you'd get anything through it. Here's the whole reason why we are to believe in the rapture and the catching away is if Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him, who's he gonna bring with him? Those who have fallen asleep. He can't bring with him those who have fallen asleep if they're not with him.

To be absent from the body, if you're a Christian and you die in Jesus, not just knowing about him, but you've been born again, then you go immediately, your spirit, your body stays here, your spirit goes to heaven. And he said, Jesus will bring with him them. Oh, hallelujah, oh, hallelujah. Oh my God, I'm getting happy now. Oh, hallelujah, can you imagine when you look out on graveyards, it's gonna look like a plowed field. All the dead, all your granny and your great godly grandfather and your mother, your brother, your son, your daughter, they're gonna all bust open the grave and the boxes and come out with a brand new body and you'll have one too. Even so, in like manner, those who sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. How can we be assured of the rapture? Because Jesus died and rose again. And if He raised Jesus from the dead, that's proof that Jesus can raise you and your loved ones from the dead, and He can raise you if you're still alive. It all hangs on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The same Jesus that was born of a virgin, the Lord Himself. The same Jesus that performed 41 miracles. The same Jesus that fed the 5,000. The same Jesus that cast out devils. The same Jesus that healed the leper. The same Jesus that raised Lazarus. He's gonna say, all He said was Lazarus, three words, come forth.

And He came out after being dead for four days. But this time, He's gonna leave Lazarus off, and He's just gonna say, come forth, and the grave is gonna give up its dead. Somebody shout with me that there's power over death, hell, and the grave in Jesus' name. Hallelujah. Matthew 24 and verse 36, of the day and of the hour knows no man, not the angels in heaven, no man but my Father in heaven only. Matthew 24, 38 and 39, for as the days of Noah, they were eating, they were drinking, they were given in marriage, it was just normal days, even until the very day they entered into the ark. There was no other, nothing special about that day. I don't think it'll be anything special about that day, it'll just be that day. Verses 1 John 3, verse 2 and 3, Beloved, now we are the children of God and it has not yet been revealed. We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him. Now notice the next verse, and everyone who has this hope in Him, catch this, purifies himself. If you believe this message, you don't live a loose, lax, moral, wicked, evil. You don't let your eyes, your ears, your heart be corrupted by a sinful, ungodly world. You don't go to places, you don't cheat on your wife, you don't live immoral. You purify, this is how you know you have the nature of Christ. Not that you never fall, not that you're never tempted and you fail, but there's a nature in you that says, I don't belong here. It's like a sheep can fall in a mud hole and if it falls in the mud, it doesn't like it and it gets up and it says, please wash me, please cleanse me. If you don't have that kind of nature, you're a hog, not a sheep. Because a hog has a nature that, oh, I love this filth, and I'm not giving it up. Luke 21, verse 34, 35, 36 says, take heed to yourself. Take heed to yourself, lest at any time you should be overcharged with surfeiting.

What is surfeiting? Overindulgence. You're all about here and now and materialism and things. This is the word of the Lord, that you not be overwhelmed with surfeiting and drunkenness. Notice that alcohol will play a major place in tempting the end time generation. We've lowered the bar so much. I still am a teetotaler. I still believe, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I've heard it all, but I'm going to tell you something, anything that the Bible said is like a serpent, anything that the Bible said can damn your soul if you overindulge in it, I'm going to get as far from it. I don't want to know how close I can get up. I'm going to purify myself in some areas. I expect grace to do what I can't do, but I can get away from some things because if I drink, I want to get drunk and at least I want to feel a buzz. That's your power. Pastor and if I smoke weed and I did I want to feel it So I'm just gonna get all of that out of my life I'm coming out I got saved I got out of that I'm done with that. Oh I'm free. I'm free. I'm heaven-bound. I'm heaven-bound. I'm heaven-bound