THE BELIEVER’S FUTURE
C. K. Robinson
Luke 12: 40; 1 Thessalonians 4: 15–18; 2 Corinthians 5: 10; 2 Timothy 4: 8; Revelation 21: 1–5 (to “new”)
I would like to speak to you about the believer’s future. One of the things I find when talking to men generally, men and women, is they do not like to talk much about the future because really they do not know what lies before them. Not so the believer. The believer ought to be intelligent as to his or her future; and I would like to speak about a few aspects of this.
Bearing in mind that in a little while, and we do not know how soon it is, every believer—the dead in Christ shall rise first and we the living who remain—shall be caught up together, and the dispensation in which we have part through divine grace, will be completed. As the full eternal result of the glorious majestic work of Christ on Calvary, including the shedding of His precious blood, He will take every redeemed saint to glory. There are a lot of young people here tonight, and I want to go over one or two things as to your future. I trust every one is sure that their past is
dealt with in the finished work of Christ, and their future is secure in a risen and glorious Man in heaven. I do not know if you have ever thought of it, but a believer should be really exercised to be intelligent, and to have a real buoyancy as a result of the service of the Holy Spirit into what lies before you.
Now I want to speak about the rapture, the judgment-seat of Christ, the appearing of Christ and the eternal day. Let exercise be stimulated with every one here to ask, to enquire, to read the Scriptures, to pray, to look into the ministry, to look into these great truths. It has been made clear that the more we appreciate what is ahead for the believer the more it will affect our life here because our future is not in the world in which we are. You really have no future, nor can you expect any future as a believer in the world down here. You fulfil your part in it righteously, and under the care of a heavenly Father, desiring that in your circumstances you will be preserved, your health preserved, that mercy will be proved governmentally in your journeys around, and you will be saved in every way. We live in a time, I say soberly, of some real eternal matters. In the newspaper today, another two teenagers have committed suicide. We had a message passed to us today of another person that we know who has also committed suicide. Life is in Christ. Your future is secured in Him. What is making all this happen is a broken society, and a dangerous society in every sense. There are powers working that can completely overtake people to the point that they are prepared to take their own life. What a sad matter. I do not want to dwell on that but I want to bring in a touch of reality into what we are saying.
Now, before we speak about the future, I trust every one has had their past dealt with. If you are not a believer, I hope every one here would become a believer in the Lord Jesus, and His precious work, and the value of His precious blood. God can give you faith to believe in the Lord Jesus
and on that precious work. Then you will be able to realise, as the hymn-writer did,
‘My sins—O the bliss of this glorious thought—
My sins—not in part, but the whole—
Were borne on the cross, and are gone evermore.
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!’ (Hymn 238) If you are a believer, mercy has reached you from God when you did not deserve it. You have come to realise a God who is rich in mercy, and has the ability to meet every moral condition and state of every person in every country. God is continuing to grant souls repentance to the acknowledgment of the truth, that Christ Jesus came into the world to reveal the blessed God, and to secure every divine purpose and promise. God came here in Jesus, and the Lord Jesus in manhood glorified God on the earth, and completed the work that He was given to do. Men humiliated him but He humbled Himself even unto death and that the death of the cross (Philippians 2: 8). The work is complete, His sufferings are over, Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and was buried, and was raised again, according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15: 3). These truths are the basic foundation for every believer to hold on to, and have as a gift of God that will sustain them and keep them through every test of life. Not only that, but following Christ being glorified, God has given believers the blessing of the Holy Spirit, so they have a power on earth that links them with what is in heaven and their Lord and Saviour there. It is a wonderful matter that there is a living Man in glory who is the Head of everything. God has a realm and we are on the threshold of being taken there in actuality. How wonderful! I trust if you are feeling down these truths can lift you up. I trust if you are feeling anxious they can stir you up a little. Let us understand our future.
I did not read about the great white throne because I hope no one in this room will ever be there. I remember a brother saying to me, when I was a young man, after the
preaching, he said, Remember there are two great sessions to come, the judgment-seat and the great white throne, and you will only be at one of them. Nobody will be at both. The judgment-seat of Christ is where believers will stand, not in any sense of what is penal; but the great white throne is where the unbeliever will stand, there to be condemned to a lake of fire.
The first great event as we have read of in 1 Thessalonians 4, is the rapture. The rapture means ‘caught away’. God has fixed that day. I cannot tell you when it is, but God has fixed that day. The significance of the day is that the most glorious dispensation that there has been in the ways of God will come to a close. God will have accomplished through the revelation of Himself in Father, Son and Holy Spirit what He ever set out to achieve, because God will be hindered in no thought of His (see Job 42: 2). Dear friend, if you are a believer, God has sovereignly marked you out to have part in this dispensation; you are not secured for a place in this world, but you are secured for a place in that world. And in the time you are here God desires that you are in the testimony rightly, because God is developing features in you now that He will display in a coming day. What a matter the rapture is going to be. Have you ever contemplated it? What God will do in divine power, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye as another scripture says, when the Lord Jesus Himself comes.
Paul says, “we say to you in the word of the Lord, that we, the living, who remain until the coming of the Lord, are in no way to anticipate those who have fallen asleep”. What a comfort that is! What a comfort for any recently bereaved. The dead in Christ are the trophy of God’s work; their status is secured; august company from Abel down described as the dead in Christ. Think of the scope and period that it covers; and the millions of souls that will be included. God has operated in every one of those categorised as the dead in Christ, with each one being a trophy to the finished work
of Jesus. The dead in Christ shall rise first. I was in a cemetery recently, and you cannot but be affected. A cemetery is a very silent place but yet it speaks volumes. Somebody was saying they buried a relative there, a person of a good age, a believer; and next to that is a stone of someone in their mid-thirties killed tragically in a car accident. One after another is affected by the reality of death. Life is but a vapour. I desire to stress home to you that it is a privilege to be a believer, and what a privilege it is to know that you have a future. Mr. Darby said that the only future for the Christian is glory. Is that your language and outlook? The future for you is not to be wealthy down here. Disappointments, you will get plenty of them, but God is about to usher you into the realm where Jesus is, and the Lord Jesus Himself is going to come into the air—a marvellous matter! The Lord Jesus Himself—not sending an angel, but with archangel’s voice and trump of God.
What an evidence of divine power the rapture will be! We are sitting here now, but then in an instant we will be in glory never to return. It will be a secret matter. Men will not know it has happened. Were it to happen, we may say, tonight, there would be some class rolls that would not have certain names on them on Monday as they would not be there. People in their office will say, So-and-so is not in. They may try to contact their house, but they are not there, and on it will go. Think what God will do. God has His plan in the fulness and blessing of it, and the rapture takes us to glory. Believers will be taken off the earth, taken away from it, never to see the problems of it, or be concerned about it again. We ought, as believers, to live our lives in the expectation that we are going. The Lord said to His own, “be ye ready”, Luke 12: 40. Are you ready to go? Do you want to go to glory? God is preparing us, making us fit for glory. Wonderful matter to contemplate that there will be a time when it will actually happen, when faith will give place to actuality.
Now I want you to think not just what it means for you, but what it means for the Lord Jesus.
Think what the rapture will mean for Him. Ephesians says that the Lord Himself will present the assembly to Himself glorious (Ephesians 5: 27). Think of the Lord Jesus coming into the air, coming near, and the dead in Christ rise first, then we the living who remain. There is that moment in time when all of the assembly will be together for the first time and the Lord presents the assembly to Himself as it is, caught up into glory. We have often been reminded the rapture is not a rescue operation as a result of failure, but a glorious culmination to a dispensation characterised by the Lord in heaven and the Spirit here. Not a single saint will be left behind. I want to stir us all up, the younger ones and all present to begin to get an increased interest in their future.
God has planned the future for you. He had planned the future for you before you were ever here. Mr Raven made a remark I was reading this week, that your title to heaven is in divine purpose, and the glorious accomplishment of you being there is in the blood of Jesus. Your title for heaven is because God has chosen you. God had you in mind for blessing before you were ever here. You say, I was just born into my family. No, there is more to it than that. God looks on down the generations. Your surname may be what it is but God perhaps has blessed your family, blessed all of that environment in which you are; or perhaps in His sovereignty you might not have been brought up in a family which has historically known the Lord Jesus.
All these matters are the triumph of God’s grace, and of God’s sovereignty that He has selected you and chosen you for glory.
Then “we, the living who remain”; now you put this scripture alongside Romans 8 where it tells us that “he that has raised up Christ from among the dead shall quicken your mortal bodies also on account of his Spirit which dwells in you” (Romans 8: 11), and so at the point of translation on the earth the
Holy Spirit gives active power, we may say, for resurrection and glorification for those who are living. What a service of a divine Person. Scripture is so full of that, so as you think it gives you another view of appreciation of the service of the Holy Spirit. You say, I know the Holy Spirit—that is good. I find the Holy Spirit helping me in prayer—that is fine. I find the Holy Spirit helping me in confessing the Lord Jesus that is fine. I prove the Holy Spirit’s service in overcoming the flesh within me—that is fine. Think of the Holy Spirit, were the rapture to happen now and you are alive, of quickening you in relation to going to glory.
Then of course when we are taken into glory in an instant, we shall see the Lord Jesus face to face, but prior to seeing Him we will be made like Him. John brings that out beautifully, “we shall see him as he is”, 1 John 3: 2. What a moment! The Saviour that we have loved, the Saviour that we have longed to see, the Saviour that we will be with eternally, a blessed glorified Man, we are going to be like Him. If you really believe that, the effect of it will be that you will purify yourself, “even as he is pure”, 1 John 3: 3. ‘Like Jesus! Grace supreme!’
(Hymn 72). Beautiful contemplation that you will be made like Him. Not then male and female, we will be in a condition which is spiritual and in a condition in which we will be truly in Christ; how blessed and glorious, when the assembly is raptured. Millions of souls, the hymn says,
‘Myriads, myriads, raised and living,
Blessed adoration giving ...
Brings to God a glorious spoil,
Hosts unnumbered for Thy toil!’ (Hymn 380)
Now, after that comes the judgment-seat. You say, What are you talking about? As taken to glory there will be a period, a very short period as I would understand it. There is what goes on in heaven and there is what goes on on earth. Following the rapture, the Spirit, He that restrains, will have gone from this world, and that which restrains will have gone. What a world it will be! Immorality increasing, every restraint lifted, no prayer of any believing person going up
because the persons are in glory. Then the whole matter of Jacob’s trouble begins to open up, with this on the earth and experience of the Jew, and all that great period when there will be real trial and tribulation on the earth. But for us it appears a necessary matter in God’s love and in God’s provision that each one would appear before the judgment-seat of Christ. There will be, as I understand it, two aspects to it. One is it is personal, you will stand and I will stand. I have no fear of being there because the judgment-seat is not penal, there is no element of retribution or anything of that nature. As the hymn says,
‘Before Christ’s judgment seat to stand,
With Him look back on all the way;
To learn the meaning, at His hand,
Of every deed in every day!’ (Hymn 299)
Or as another has put it,
‘Not ‘til the loom is silent
And shuttles cease to fly
Will God unroll the canvas
And explain the reasons why—
The dark threads are as needful,
In the Weaver’s skilful hands
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned’.
How wonderful that is, that all the unanswered questions, and all the matters in our lives will come before us as there before the judgment-seat. I would commend to younger ones if you are interested in the truth, Mr Darby has a very fine article at the end of Volume 10 of the Collected Writings, where some of this truth is brought out in the last article. He brings out beautifully that when we stand before the judgment-seat, we will be in a body of glory and will be in the same condition as the Judge. Is that not fine to contemplate? And then Mr Darby also adds another point, that no believer will go into eternity with any concern as to a previous act or incident; everything will be finely adjusted. You see we are being prepared for the appearing, we are
being prepared for a divine administration. At the rapture, we will be taken to glory. The judgment-seat is to learn the meaning at His hand of every deed in every day.
We are speaking about God’s operations, and God desires to prepare everything in relation to the appearing as introducing the millennium in which Christ will reign and administer everything for God’s glory. What will be going on on the earth you can read from Revelation 6 onwards when the seven seals are opened, and later on you have the seven cups that relate to the fury of God. God will judge and deal with the whole matter on the earth, but out of that, even on the earth, let us not forget families will be secured. A family will be secured in Revelation 7 out of the great tribulation. There will be a great tribulation on the earth, we will not be part of it, but it will be going on, and God will work with His earthly people, and out of that will come those who are washed white in the blood of the Lamb. It says, “who are they, and whence came they?”, Revelation 7: 13. And God says that they will have been secured out of the great tribulation. What matters have yet to be upon the earth and from this God will secure fruit with other families formed out of that period. There will be heavenly families secured, as we would understand, and there will be earthly families secured all in this period. Supremely, of course, the assembly is the first of all the families, and you and I are part of that through divine purpose and through grace and divine operations.
But then we come to, and it is interesting, that in 2 Timothy 4 in broken days, that is the day in which our lot is cast. Paul is anticipating and looking on, we may say, that there should be a desire with the believer to love the Lord’s appearing. Do we ever think about His appearing? Do we realise we are going to be part of it? I remember when I was younger learning from impressions of what the fathers taught us. One of the aspects in the study of Scripture I was told, is to understand the prepositions and to look at them very
carefully. The Lord is coming for us at the rapture. The Lord is coming with us at the appearing. We are taken out of this scene into glory at the rapture; we are given glorified bodies like unto His own body of glory and when the time is ripe, not a long period after the rapture, but other things will be happening, as I have said. Then there comes the great and glorious matter of the marriage of the Lamb in Revelation 19, and all that being the appearing when the Lord Jesus comes out to reign. And where is He going to reign? He is going to reign over the earth. How wonderful.
I read a remark of Mr Raven’s where he said that the world to come means the habitable earth to come (see Vol. 14, p.175). We will see in that whole period of the appearing and what is referred to as the millennium—a thousand years of the Lord’s reign, God will have Christ operating administratively, using the assembly, to reign over the earth. We will see communion really for the first time between the heaven and the earth, as the Lord’s administration comes through the assembly out to the nations, and the Lord Jesus giving a demonstration of headship over all things. God intends “to head up all things in the Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth”, Ephesians 1: 10.
Do you not long for the appearing? As living amidst breakdown, failure and weakness, let us long for the Lord to reign over this scene. You long for an administration where righteousness prevails, where faithfulness is, and wisdom prevails; not politically motivated or financially motivated, but in the purity of the relationship that God desires through Christ and through the assembly, there will be a period of a thousand years of perfect administration. This truth is then to be worked out in testimony in our local meetings. As coming under the lordship of Jesus and His headship, God is looking for little millennia to be the testimony of our localities; our motives, our desires are to be judged so that we are all wholly for Christ with the desire that His rights will prevail.
When we break bread together we show forth the Lord’s death until He come. That is not the rapture, that is the appearing, and we are looking on to the Lord’s rights being vindicated.
And as another has said, if the world knew what we were doing they may well stop us breaking bread, because in doing so we are claiming the earth for Christ. We are claiming the Lord’s rights and acknowledging that we want Him to reign, because He is the only One whose right it is to reign.
Let us open up our minds and affections to such great matters because it is your future as a believer that I am trying to describe and to help us all to understand it more. What a time the appearing will be, and then a thousand years of perfect administration. The characteristics of it you can read of in Isaiah 11, in the first paragraph there, for instance, the wolf dwelling with the lamb, and a little child shall lead them; such are the features of this period. It will be a divine administration, a heavenly administration through Christ and the assembly.
Jerusalem on the earth will be the earthly centre, as I understand it. The nations will come to Jerusalem, and the influence of that will spread.
And now, let us consider Revelation 21. Once the thousand years are completed, at the end of the millennium Satan will be loosed and go out to deceive the nations, but then Satan is finally dealt with. The dragon, the ancient serpent who is the devil, and Satan, will be bound a thousand years, and then finally dealt with. Then there is the great white throne. On this throne will sit One from whom the heavens and earth fled. Books are opened, then you have the second resurrection, which is the resurrection of the dead. It is the resurrection of those who have not been secured through the gospel. Perhaps they have heard it and perhaps have spurned it. But then ‘too late’ will be the cry, as they stand there before the great white throne. If their name is not found written in the book of life they are condemned to an eternity without Christ. How solemn. Not
your portion and mine, I trust. Oh I am so thankful for the day that I confessed Jesus as my Saviour, and for the day when God gave me faith in the value of the blood of Jesus. So thankful for the day when I really believed in Christ risen and glorified, and received the Holy Spirit.
I do trust all the young believers have some spiritual milestones and solid beliefs regarding these things. When you talk about your future I trust your whole face and being lights up because you know what is before you. You believe the word of God, and you are proving the light and glory of them. What a glorious future the Christian has! We will be raptured to heaven, given a body of glory like unto His own body of glory, and fitted for eternity.
Somebody once said to an old believer, How will you spend eternity? He thought for a minute and said, Well, I will spend the first ten thousand years looking on the face of my Saviour, and then I will see what I will do after that. We have no real conception of what eternity will be like, but it will be a glorious experience. God has then accomplished everything, everything for His glory. Then in Revelation 21, the eternal day is ushered in. We are not told much about it in Scripture, therefore I cannot say much about it at all, but it does thrill your soul to think of it. The hymn says,
‘In adoration,
Deep contemplation,
We worship Thee;
In Christ before Thee
We shall adore Thee
Eternally!’ (Hymn 48)
Are we not trophies of God’s grace? Are we not trophies of God’s mercy? We, who could have been standing before the great white throne, will never be there. Instead of that we have an eternity with Christ before us. May these things move us. May it move us in the service of God on the morrow to touch the realm which is on the other side of death, which is real to faith, and enjoyed by the Spirit, and soon actually to be entered into. May we be ready to go. Let us desire that the operation of the judgment-seat is worked out now in ourselves and in our relations with one another; where there might be matters that it can be put right let it be put right, brother to brother, sister to sister. Let us look on with joy to the appearing when we will come out with Christ to reign, when all things will be headed up in the Christ, the things of the heavens and the things upon the earth, and where there is an administration which has never been seen before, carried through by Jesus, as King of kings and Lord of lords. Your faithfulness here, it has been said, will have an influence on your place in the kingdom, and all of that side so necessary. Let us be faithful. Let us anticipate in our lives the reign of Jesus. And when it is all finished and God closes up the first heavens and the first earth—He burns them up, they have had their day, to use the phrase simply—God will usher in a new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. May these things just encourage every soul here. I trust every one will ponder, pray, and look into, and be more confirmed as a result of the glorious future that is before us as believers, for His name’s sake.
Address at Sunbury
6 February 2008