Times and Seasons

Temple Baptist Church - 11-29-2015

1 Thessalonians 5:1-8

Introduction:

A.  Last week, I took a short look at the impending Rapture of the church found in chapter 4.  Paul, in chapter 5, is writing to the church at Thessalonica concerning the signs of the last days in which we live.  The general theme of chapter 5 is how we are to live in light of the times just prior to the coming apocalypse or day of judgment.

B.  The bible uses two terms to describe the last days:  times (representative of number of years) and seasons (characteristics, i.e. spring, summer, fall, winter or—in this case, the particulars).

C.  Paul said that God’s children know what time it is and what the conditions will be when the Lord returns.  “But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.”  Though we understand scripturally what time it is, the true church may not be sound asleep but I still see the tendency of God’s people to nap occasionally. 

D.  The false science (science simply means knowledge) of our day is based more upon theory than fact because all things must have a beginning and had to have come from something.  The realization that our universe had a beginning instead of always existing, presented an insurmountable problem to the nontheistic scientist.  This is what the atheistic scientists believe and teach:

Scientists believe that our universe began with one enormous explosion of energy and light, which we now call the Big Bang. This was the singular start to everything that exists. The beginning of the universe, the start of space, and even the initial start of time itself.

Nothing we observe today existed prior to that exact moment.

Further, it was something outside of time, outside of space, and outside of matter that caused all of this to come into existence.  Are scientists certain of this Big Bang Theory? Yes. In the late 1920's, astronomer Edwin Hubble saw through his telescope that galaxies (some millions of light years away) were hurtling away from each other at fantastic speeds. This was not caused by some force thrusting them away from each other. Rather, they were still moving as a result of a primeval explosion, all from one point of origin.

In this point of origin, all the mass in the universe was compressed into a single point of infinite density...smaller than a single atom.  Then in a cosmic explosion--the Big Bang--the universe came into being. Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in Physics, gives further description, "At about one-hundredth of a second, the earliest time about which we can speak with any confidence, the temperature of the universe was about a hundred thousand million (1011) degrees Centigrade. This is much hotter than in the center of even the hottest star, so hot, in fact, that none of the components of ordinary matter, molecules, or atoms, or even the nuclei of atoms, could have held together."  He goes on and says, "The universe was filled with light."

E.  To sum up the Big Bang Theory: time, matter, and space all began in one instant.  This causes questions that they cannot answer: 1)  What time was before time as we know it?  There was no time before time?  That is preposterous!  If matter cannot be created nor can it be destroyed, then there must have been matter before the Big Bang in order to have something come from it.

F.  I do not want to go any deeper in the foolishness of today’s false science for it is much simpler to look around you and see that only God could have brought about the universe, our world, and all that in them is.  I do want to look at time for a few minutes through the eyes of the Bible.

G.  Stephen Hawking, a well-known physicist, wrote a book titled “A Brief History of Time.”  As an atheistic or deistic at best scientist, he made a fatal mistake when he said that physics has no place for God.  In true physics, there can only be understanding through the knowledge of God!  Without God, science falsely so called has no known facts concerning the beginning and must rest its case on theory alone.  The title of his book had more actual truth than what was contained within its covers.  “A Brief History” had to do with the size and content of his book but actual time has a brief history!

H.  “In the beginning God” stands as the only possible answer to the question of the beginning of time, space, and matter.  If all came from nothing, it had to be created and creation can only come from a Creator!  Natural science declares the impossibility of creation within nature itself. 

1.  The Times: The Bible teaches a total of 7,000 years of time in midst of God’s eternity.  Why 7,000 years?  Because that is what God created! According to the chronology of the Bible, there was 4,000 years from the beginning and the coming of Christ.  The coming of Christ signaled the beginning of the last days or 2,000 years of the Church Age.  This concludes the Six Days of man’s work and leaves the Seventh Day of rest which is the 1,000 year reign of Christ or the Millennium. 

a.  The Analogy of God's Time -  2 Peter 3:8  But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Psalms 90:4  For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

b.  The Allotment of God's Time -  Exodus 20:9  Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

Exodus 20:11  For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.  (Six thousand years from the beginning to the Rapture and the seventh one thousand years is the Millennium or Sabbath Rest.) 

c.  The Achievement of God's Time

Matthew 17:1-2  And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.  (Here is a beautiful of the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ at the end of the first 6,000 years of time.)

Hosea 6:2  After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.

1 Thessalonians 5:1  But of the times … brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you!  (We that are saved know what time it is!)

2.  The Seasons: The Bible gives the characteristics of the times just prior to the Rapture of the Church.  In great detail, the Bible describes the natural calamities, political realm, moral decline, spiritual falling away, etc. of the day in which we live.  No man could have written a book that described the future in such detail.  I remember the book “1984” that tried to give us a fictional look into the future.  Then came “2001: A Space Odyssey.”  Only the Bible, written over 1500 years by 40 writers, most of whom did not know what the others were writing, could have predicted with accuracy the times in which we life.

a.  Manifested in its Signs

Matthew 24:4-8  And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.  And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.  For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.  All these are the beginning of sorrows.

1 Thessalonians 5:1-4   But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.  For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.  For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.  But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.

b.  Manifested in its Sinfulness

Luke 17:26-29  And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.  They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;  But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.

c.  Manifested in its lack of Spirituality

Revelation 3:15-17  I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.  (16)  So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.  (17)  Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:  (People in our day just do not care!  They stand for nothing, believe nothing, and have little faithfulness of God’s house.)

2 Timothy 3:1-5   This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.  For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,  Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

2 Thessalonians 2:1-3  Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,  (2)  That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.  (3)  Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;

1 John 4:3  And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.  (America is quickly becoming anti-God and anti-Bible.)