Little Red Book Ministry

VII.A Biblical Exhortation
The Church is a God-ordained organism of which all born again, blood-washed Christians are automatically a part. However, not all Christians take their part seriously. From the verses quoted at the beginning of this lesson, you can see that God expects His people to assemble themselves together to encourage and assist each other to grow in love and good works. This type of assembly, when done in a proper, organized fashion, produces what we call a local church.

According to Hebrews 10:25, our Lord considers this type of assembly to be even more important as we see a certain ‘day’ approaching. This “day,” which incorporates the final 1000 years of this present Earth’s history is almost here. We will go into this in greater detail in a future lesson, but for now we will summarize briefly what this day is all about.

The day mentioned in the above verse is alluded to throughout the entire Bible. It is called by several names, but most frequently it is referred to as the “day of the Lord.” The day of the Lord begins with a “rapture” event. A rapture is a bodily removal of the saints of God (that’s you and I) without the intervention of death (see 1 Corinthians 15:51–52 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18). At this time, these people will receive a glorified body that cannot get sick, feel pain, be injured, or have needs. They will truly have everlasting life. The rapture of the Church will be immediately preceded by the resurrection of the righteous dead whose souls have been in a part of heaven called Paradise. The resurrected bodies will be glorified in the same manner as the living and the souls of these dead will be reunited with their bodies (see Philippians 3:20–21; 1 John 3:2–3; 1 Corinthians 15:35–38).

Immediately following the initial rapture, will be a 7 year period known as the “tribulation.” It will be characterized by devastating natural disasters, plagues, wars, and many other severe judgments from a furious God which will claim billions of lives. These judgments will result from an open rebellion and rejection of God in favor of a man the Bible calls the “man of sin” or “Antichrist.”