From Adam to the Rapture: God's Plan for the Ages

Hello and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Good afternoon or good evening and good to have everybody back in the studio with us. And for those of you joining us on television, we trust that you can just become a part of our classroom. After all, this is just an informal Bible study. We stress that fact that we want it informal. We want you to feel as though you're a part of it. So take a Bible and take a pencil and take some notes. And we trust that you can learn with us. And again, we appreciate the letters from our television audience. We just ask that you would continue to send us notes of encouragement. You won't end up on a mailing list. And it's just simply some way of telling us that people are being blessed. And for those that are supporting us, that they will have an understanding that their money is accomplishing something. All right, for those of you now here in the studio with me, we're going to take a brief review of our timeline as we've looked at it now over the past 14, 15 months, just a real quick run, how that Adam and Eve come on the scene back about 4,000 B.C. And you remember that that generation of humanity, God dealt with them as one race of people. And they all had an equal opportunity at God's salvation. Relatively simple, always based on their faith, of course. But back in the pre-Flood dispensations, it was if they were convicted of sin on their conscience, they were to bring a blood sacrifice by faith and God will accept them. And the best example of that, of course, is Abel. And the great faith chapter in Hebrews tells us that by faith, Abel brought a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. But as all through human history, that generation of people totally rebelled against it until finally there were only eight left and we had the bringing in then of the Noah Flood. That takes us up to about 1600 from Adam or about 2400 B.C. And then, of course, in between the Flood at about 2400 B.C., and I usually just in general terms, about halfway between the Flood and the call of Abraham, we have the Tower of Babel. And here we have Abram, who would later on be called Abraham. Now, always remember that from the eight souls that came out of Noah's Ark, and as they began to repopulate the earth, instead of scattering as God had instructed them to scatter, they all stayed together and were united under Nimrod, you remember, at the Tower of Babel. Now, the main thing I like to have people remember about the Tower of Babel is that there, all idolatry, all of the paganism that has saturated the world ever since, have its roots in Babel. All the occultic religions and even many of the cults that are coming on the scene today who are in one way or another associated with the occult, they all have their roots back here at the Tower of Babel. Then, of course, God forced their scattering by the confusion of the languages, and then after another 175 to 200 years, the whole new generation of people, everybody, is now steeped in idolatry. And so, what does God do? He says, I'm going to have to do something different. And so, we're out of the midst of the idolatry in Ur of the Chaldees, and we know that from the last book of Joshua, where God says so plainly in His Word that even Terah, the father of Abraham, served other gods. So, they were all in idolatry. But God calls out the one man, Abraham, and he becomes then, of course, the great man of faith, and it was at this point that God leaves off dealing with what we will now refer to as the Gentiles or the non-Jew, and God begins dealing with, as I've said so often, Jew only, but with exceptions. Now, I never want anyone to miss that, with exceptions. Now, one of the primary exceptions in the Old Testament account was what great city? Nineveh. And you remember God told that good Jew, Jonah, to go and minister to that Gentile city of Nineveh? And did Jonah want to go? Why no, why? He was a good Jew, and he understood that God was dealing with Jew only, and he wasn't about to go and see his archenemy, a Gentile city like Nineveh, be blessed of God and enjoy God's salvation. So, you know the story of Jonah, but he finally got there, and the Ninevites, of course, repented, and then it wasn't very long until they went right back into their same old way. But anyway, from 2000 B.C. then, all the way on up into our New Testament, it is primarily God dealing with the nation of Israel, Jew only. Based on these covenants and these promises, you remember that God made with Abraham. And so then we have the appearance here of John the Baptist and the Christ to fulfill the Abrahamic promises made way back here. But what did that generation of Israelites do? They rejected him. They killed him. They crucified him. And then you come back in the book of Acts, and still Peter appeals to the nation of Israel to repent of the fact that they had killed their Messiah, their King. And Peter again pleads with the nation of Israel to still accept her King, and they could have the kingdom. But they rejected it out of hand, and somebody asked me the other night, well, when did Israel really come to the place of a final rejection? Well, it isn't exactly final, but they reached the crescendo, if I may use that word. They reached the crescendo of their rejection when they stoned Stephen in Acts chapter 7. And from that point on, Israel just slides down into her dispersion, her temple is taken away in 70 A.D., and God now turns to who? The Gentiles. And so this is what we've been looking at for the last several weeks, this calling out a people for His name, the bride, or what Paul normally refers to so often as the body of Christ, the church, which is His body, or the body which is the church. And then in our last program, we got down to the place where the church is raptured out. Those of us who are alive and remain, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, will be changed, and all those who have died during this church age are resurrected bodily, visibly, physically with a new body, and they meet the Lord in the air who has brought the souls of those departed saints with Him. They've been in heaven in His presence. They've been in a place of bliss and blessing, but without benefit of a body, remember, until the great resurrection day, when they're caught up, received, their descending soul and spirit reunited with their new body, and then, as Paul teaches, those of us who are alive and remain will be caught up, changed on the way, and so shall we all ever be with the Lord. Now, I thought before I'd go back to Genesis and pick up where we left off several weeks ago, that we should delineate some of these basic doctrines of eschatology or end -time teachings, because we've had several people write in and have asked that we spend a little time on our end-time view. Now, I think before we actually go on into the tribulation and the second coming, it might behoove us to take a good look at this terminology, resurrection, because there is probably no other word in Scripture that has been so maligned and has been so twisted completely out of its truth. Now, I remember several years ago reading a pastor who was certainly bound up in what I call the fundamental definition of resurrection, visible, bodily, and he was on Easter Sunday visiting in a city, I don't remember where it was, I think in one of the large Midwestern cities, and on this Easter morning he was going to visit a church where he knew the pastor did not believe in a literal resurrection. And so he thought, well, now how can that guy preach a sermon on Easter Sunday morning and not believe in the resurrection? So he went. And I read, as he reviewed that man's sermon, that yes, he talked about resurrection, but he had no concept of a visible bodily resurrection. His definition of resurrection was just something into an invisible spirit realm, and that he totally rejected the genuine resurrection as most of us understand it to be. So I think in order to clarify, especially for some that may be out there in television who are not real sure about the bodily resurrection of Christ as well as our own resurrection someday, we're going to take at least this first program to look at what the Bible calls the first resurrection. Now, for those of you here in the studio audience, I've told you to turn to John's Gospel, chapter 5. So for those of you on television, you will have to turn quickly now and catch up with John's Gospel, chapter 5, and we'll drop down to verse 28. I think most of you who've heard me teach know that I'm a stickler on what the book really says, not what somebody thinks it says, but what does it say. All right, now in John's Gospel, chapter 5, verse 28, Jesus is speaking while He's during His earthly ministry, and He says, Now isn't that plain English? Everyone who has lived and died at some point in the future, when God calls, they're all going to come forth. Now let's read on. Now, how many resurrections have you got? Two. You've got the resurrection of the just, the believers, but you're also going to have a resurrection of the lost. Now, a lot of people don't realize that. They think that when a person dies and goes to hell, that's the end of it. Oh, no, it isn't. They're one day going to be resurrected out of hell and brought before the great white throne, and from there they go to the lake of fire. You remember several weeks ago, months ago, time goes so fast. I told you that the question had come up in one of my classes, what is the difference between hell and the lake of fire? All the difference in the world. But I've been shrinking from teaching it on this program because I don't think I can cover it in 30 minutes. It would take probably two half-hour programs to really do it justice, chasing down all the references. So, tonight we're just going to look at the first resurrection, the resurrection of the just. Now, here again in this verse 29 is a good example of what Peter meant when he wrote in his little epistle there toward the end of your Bible that no Scripture is of private interpretation. I'm sure you've all seen that verse, and you probably wonder, well, what does he mean? All Peter meant was that you cannot take one verse of Scripture and build doctrine on it. See, now that's what the cults will do. They'll take a verse here, and they'll take a verse someplace else, and then they build their doctrine. You can't do that. And so this verse, if you took it alone, and just even though the Lord Jesus is speaking it Himself, if you lifted this verse out of context and used it to build a doctrine, what could you teach? Well, you could teach that people will go to heaven by doing good. Isn't that what it says? Look at it. They who have done good, verse 29, will go to the resurrection of life, and they who have done evil under the resurrection of condemnation. Now, see, if you took that verse all alone, you could say, well, yeah, I can go to heaven by doing good. People are going to go to law, go to hell, because they're doing bad. But if you study all of Scripture, there's only one way we can please God. There's only one way we can do good in God's eyes, and that is how? By faith. See, without faith, Hebrews says, it is impossible to please God. So what Jesus is really alluding to here when He says, those who have done good are those who have become people of faith. Whether it was back in the Old Testament economy or whether it's in the age of grace, there's only one way we can please God, and that is by believing His Word. So we've got two resurrections, the resurrection of the believers, the just, and a resurrection of the lost. Well, now, for this next few moments, we're just going to look at the resurrection of the just, or the believers. So now I'd like to have you come back with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. And 1 Corinthians 15 is a total, total chapter dealing with nothing but resurrection. The fact that men die and we can revert back to the dust, we can be cremated, we can be burned at the stake, that still will not stop God from actually bringing the smallest particles of that original body are still someplace, and He knows where they are, and He will take at least some of those original cells and reconstruct a new resurrected body. Now, I've often over the years had people ask me what I believe about cremation, and my only answer is I don't see that the Scripture forbids it or encourages it. Personally, it's anathema to me, because I feel that when someone cremates a body, they're in so many words telling God, now try and bring that back to life. Now, that may not always be their mindset, but that's the way it looks to me, and so I am certainly not in favor of a definite cremation. Now, we also know that, especially during the Reformation, a lot of God's choice of servants were burned at the stake, weren't they? They were burned at the stake for their faith. Now, they were cremated, and God is going to have no trouble resurrecting them, but all I want you to see is I don't care where a person may go to their grave, whether it's in the deepest ocean or a deepest cave, or whether they're cremated or blown apart in an explosion, never doubt for a minute that God is going to be able to resurrect that body, because that's what resurrection is all about. He does not start with something new. He brings back that which was before and makes it new. Now, Paul teaches all that throughout 1 Corinthians chapter 15. But now come down with me to verse 20, because we're going to look at this first resurrection. And remember, the first resurrection is primarily attached to this rapture of the church. That's a coined word. It's not in the English. Now, I read the other day that the word rapture is in the German translation, but we don't have it in the English. But we know what we're talking about. It's that outcalling of the living believers as well as the resurrection of the church age believers. Now, this is why I'm taking the time to point this out. Not everybody from Adam all the way up to here will be resurrected at the same identical moment as we'll see Paul teach here in 1 Corinthians 15. Now, look at verse 20. But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the firstfruits of them that slept or died physically. Now, that word firstfruits, the only way we can again put a definition on it is go back to our Old Testament. So, if you'll go back with me to Leviticus, Leviticus chapter 23, and in this chapter we have the seven feasts of Jehovah as they were given to the nation of Israel there at Sinai. When they were given the tabernacle, the priesthood, God also gave them instructions for their seven feast days. And it was to begin, of course, with Passover, which was the feast day that Israel was celebrating at the time of the crucifixion. And since Passover was about to begin at 6 o'clock on Friday evening, they had to hurry and get the body down off the cross because it could not be out there once Passover started. And so that was the feast of Passover. And then, of course, Paul goes on to show us in Corinthians also that Christ then became our Passover lamb. And so these seven feasts of Jehovah all have an indication of a New Testament truth. But we want to look over to verse 9 of Leviticus 23, and we'll see what firstfruits was all about. Now, you have to remember, too, that back here in Israel's ancient history, they were primarily an agricultural or an agrarian people. And that's why so much of our Bible, and even Christ in his earthly ministry, is constantly using what we would call just ordinary farming language because they understood what he was talking about. All right, now here in Leviticus chapter 23, verse 9, the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When you be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, and you shall bring a sheaf or a bundle, you shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest. In other words, when they got into the promised land and they had planted their crop, the first thing they would do as that crop began to ripen. Now, here again, you have to have a little basic understanding of farming, of grain farming. Wheat farmers will understand this. You know that as that wheat field begins to ripen, and I prefer to think it was probably barley back here because barley was the early spring crop, and so as that field of barley was beginning to ripen, or in farmer's language we say it's turning, all through that field of green all of a sudden will come some golden stems that have ripened early. Now, if you ever happen to be driving through the wheat country in the spring, and it's turning from green to the golden yellow of harvest, you watch for it. And as a field is just preparing to turn and get ripe, scattered around you'll see some golden heads of grain. Now, what the Jew was to do here is go into that field and pluck these early ripened stems and make a sheaf of them and take that sampling of the crop that will be ripening now within the next few days, they were to bring it and wave it there before the temple as a wave offering unto the Lord. And it was called firstfruits because it was the sampling of the crop that is soon to follow. Now, Paul says here in 1 Corinthians 15 that Christ has become the firstfruits, plural. Now, you couldn't make a bundle or a sheaf of grain with just one stem. So, what'd they have to do? They had to pluck many of them as they were ripened throughout the field and with it make a sheaf. So, Christ could not be the only one, although He was definitely the first. So, now I want you to come back with me quickly to Matthew chapter 27. Matthew chapter 27. And a lot of these things I've come across because people have asked questions. And that's why I never shun from people asking questions, because that's the way I've learned over the years. And I'll never forget, almost 18, 20 years ago, somebody asked me about these verses in Matthew. What were these people who came out of the graves while Christ was on the cross? And I said, now wait a minute. I said, nobody came out of the graves while Christ was on the cross. Oh, yeah, they did. So, we went and found a Bible and we looked it up. And as so often is the case, people don't read right. Now, let's look at it. Matthew 27. And we might as well jump in at verse 50, so you'll see where we are in the timing. In verse 50, Jesus, when He had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghosts. Now, you see where we are? He's on the cross and He has just yielded up the ghosts. He has died. Now, come into verse 51. And behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. Now, you remember that was that huge veil that separated the holy of holies from the sanctuary. And as an act of God, that veil was rent from the top to the bottom. And the earth did quake and the rocks rent. Now, here's the verse. Verse 52, and the graves were opened and many bodies of the saints, believers, believing Jews, many bodies of the saints who had died arose, came out of the graves after His resurrection. See, not while He's on the cross, but after His resurrection. Now, you see, it had to be that way because Christ had to be the first to be resurrected from the dead. This has never happened before. Oh, there were people that were raised from the dead by the prophets, Elijah and Elisha. But see, they died again. Even when Jesus called Lazarus forth from the grave, that was not resurrection. That was just simply restoring life to Him and Lazarus had to die again. But beginning with Christ's resurrection, now we have the term in its fullest meaning. But you couldn't have a bundle of first fruits with one stem of grain. There had to be many. So these, I feel, in Matthew 27, verse 52 and 53, were the sampling of those believers who had died, and they were resurrected, and they walked into the city, and with Christ as the first fruit, altogether they become the first fruits of them that slept. Now, our half hour is almost gone, so I'm not going to get as far as I'd like. But what I want to point out is that the first resurrection is really broken down into three areas. Now, we've only covered the first one, and that's what Paul refers to here in 1 Corinthians as the first fruits, the first fruits of resurrection, Christ and this sampling that came out of the grave and went into the city of Jerusalem. Now, the Scripture is silent on them, but if they were resurrected, then naturally Christ had to take them on up into glory. They were not left here in this old world of sin and pain. Now, then, if you'll turn back with me just to finish out the half hour, and for those of you on television, just have to wait until next week, and we'll just come right in and pick up where we left off, because that's the only way we can do it on such a short program and on this kind of a Bible study. Now, if you'll come back to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 again, this is all part of the resurrection of the just. Read verse 20 and 21 once again. 1 Corinthians 15, verse 20 and 21, but now is Christ risen from the dead and become, past tense, the first fruits of them that slept or who have died physically. Verse 21, why does there have to be resurrection? Because since by man came death, back there in the Garden of Eden, so also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported and your gift is appreciated. Thank you and be sure to tune in next time for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.