Search the Scriptures Daily

You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.

If you’re a new listener to our program, we have, for a number of weeks now, we’ve been discussing Dave Hunt’s book, When Will Jesus Come? Compelling Evidence for the Soon Return of Christ.
Dave, for the last couple of weeks we’ve been giving reasons why the church must be removed. And I’m sure many of our listeners, or at least some of our listeners—the church being removed? I know when I came to Christ as a new believer, the Rapture—coming out of Roman Catholicism, the Rapture was not a teaching that we had any idea about. I was clueless about it.

Tom: This is our Understanding the Scriptures segment. We’re in the Book of Acts, now in Acts 16:13, which I’ll read: “And on the sabbath we went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made; and we sat down, and spake unto the women which resorted thither.”

Dave: That’s interesting, Tom. Who are these women? It doesn’t tell us. They are not Christians at this point. They may not have heard about Jesus and His crucifixion up there in Jerusalem.

Dave Hunt’s book When Will Jesus Come? Compelling Evidence for the Soon Return of Christ is the topic for this segment of our program. And last week, before we ran out of time, we were discussing the historic rejection in Christianity of the Rapture of the church, which, if you’re not familiar with the biblical teaching, is the return of Jesus Christ to take His bride, His saints—all those who have put their faith in Him, past and present—to heaven. It involves the resurrection of the bodies of those who died in Christ and the instant translation of the bodies of living believers into new incorruptible bodies. The doctrine is given to us in 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4, John 14, and many other verses. Nevertheless, professing Christians, both Catholic and Protestants, regard the Rapture as unbiblical. Catholic teachings of purgatory and indulgences nullify the direct access to heaven that the Rapture promises. And, although one of the cries of the Reformers was Sola Scriptura—the Bible alone as one’s teaching authority—they held onto many practices and beliefs that were carry-overs from the Catholic church, such as infant baptism and the rejection of the Rapture.

Dave Hunt’s book When Will Jesus Come? Compelling Evidence for the Soon Return of Christ is the topic for this segment of our program. And last week, before we ran out of time, we were discussing the historic rejection in Christianity of the Rapture of the church, which, if you’re not familiar with the biblical teaching, is the return of Jesus Christ to take His bride, His saints—all those who have put their faith in Him, past and present—to heaven. It involves the resurrection of the bodies of those who died in Christ and the instant translation of the bodies of living believers into new incorruptible bodies. The doctrine is given to us in 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4, John 14, and many other verses. Nevertheless, professing Christians, both Catholic and Protestants, regard the Rapture as unbiblical. Catholic teachings of purgatory and indulgences nullify the direct access to heaven that the Rapture promises. And, although one of the cries of the Reformers was Sola Scriptura—the Bible alone as one’s teaching authority—they held onto many practices and beliefs that were carry-overs from the Catholic church, such as infant baptism and the rejection of the Rapture.

It doesn’t make sense to me, Tom, that when you understand how vast this universe is – how far it would be, even if there was a planet somewhere out there in our galaxy, which is 100,000 light years across, that could get here. And we have thousands of these sightings! I mean, you would have to have millions of civilizations out there sending them out. We’re just a tiny dot, and then when they come here, they crash! I mean, they’ve got the technology to get here, then they crash.

It doesn’t make sense to me, Tom, that when you understand how vast this universe is – how far it would be, even if there was a planet somewhere out there in our galaxy, which is 100,000 light years across, that could get here. And we have thousands of these sightings! I mean, you would have to have millions of civilizations out there sending them out. We’re just a tiny dot, and then when they come here, they crash! I mean, they’ve got the technology to get here, then they crash.

Dave, what we hope to do in this program—yes, we are going to deal with issues that are controversial, issues that the church is facing. We want to be able to take a look at what is going on in the world. We are going to see the world in the church, the church in the world. But what we want to do is as best we can, help people in their understanding of the scriptures. So in this segment we are going to take a look a particular doctrine, a major doctrine of the church and then try and explain it as best we can from the scriptures. I think the most important thing, the greatest thing that we have is the gospel. The gospel of salvation. So let’s take a look at that. What is the gospel? Romans 1:16 says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation.” What does that mean?

Our topic for this segment Understanding the Scriptures is the gospel of salvation. And Dave, you know I think this is wonderful. We are going to be dealing with this, not just this week, but for the weeks to come because it is such an awesome doctrine. All the aspects of it are just so wonderful, because it’s what Christ has done for us. Last week we talked about the gospel, where it came from, some say today well, this was just an idea, a teaching that the people made up who followed Jesus and it’s basically man made,man produced. But we know from scripture that’s not true. 1 Peter 1:20-21 tells us he, that is Jesus, indeed “…was foreordained before the foundation of the world.”

“Dear Dave and T.A., I seem to remember reading in one of Dave’s books a chapter titled, ‘Forget Good Friday,’ but I can’t remember the reasons why. The subject came up in a conversation not too long ago, and the only thing I could remember was a Friday crucifixion would not allow the days necessary for Christ to be in the grave until His resurrection on Sunday morning. What other points are critical?”

We are in the Book of Acts Chapter 18. Dave, we are going to pick up with Verse 9, although we went a little farther than that last week, but it’s a good place to come back to. Acts 18:9, “Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision, Be not afraid, but speak and hold not thy peace:” Now Dave, that’s an interesting verse, based on what we were talking about earlier in our News Alert section. It doesn’t say anything about, Let your life be first and foremost, before these things. It doesn’t say that we are to avoid certain things, but we are to be not afraid but speak and hold not thy peace.