Pastor Barry's  "Chapter & Verse"  Day 273

September 30;   Luke 17:26;   61/260(II);   ‘Stay Ready’

 Luke 17:26 And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man:

The Lord Jesus Christ will come in the clouds to remove the Church from the earth before the tribulation period.  During the tribulation, the Lord Jesus will be doing all that He can to see to it that the Jews and unsaved Gentiles are saved.  He will not have to deal with the Church, we are already saved.  During the tribulation, the Lord will also be pouring out wrath on those who have rejected Him.  It is not too late for these people to be saved, but the deception of the devil will have hardened their hearts to a dangerous degree.  Again, the outpouring of wrath has nothing to do with the Church, we have not been appointed to wrath (I Thessalonians 5:9).  In the days of Noah, the world of people who did not know the Lord and lived alienated from the Lord, went about their daily lives, ignorant of the flood that was about to come.  It was the same in the days of Lot, when he was in Sodom and Gomorrah.  The wicked inhabitants of those cities, continued in their wickedness, never dreaming that destruction was upon them.  It is the exact opposite for Christians.  We know that the rapture of the Church will happen, though we do not know when.  We are told in the Bible that as Christians we can sense the season of Jesus coming to get us based on what is going on in the world.  Since we know that the Lord Jesus is coming for the Church, we as His body must be ‘about His business.’  Our lives were never meant to be like the lives of the unsaved.  We are on a mission, to reach as many unsaved people as we can.  We have natural responsibilities, but the greatest joy in life is to see others saved, coming out of darkness.