THE GREAT SEPARATION

 

Dr. W. A. Criswell

 

1 Thessalonians 4:16-18

 

01-19-58

 

 

You are listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in Dallas.  This is the Pastor, bringing the morning message, entitled The Great Separation: The Earth Without a Christian. 

In our preaching through the Bible, we have come to one of the tremendously great eschatological discourses, an apocalyse—a little brief passage, but so filled with meaning, written for the comfort of God’s people.  I have spoken twice from the passage, on the comfort—what it means to God’s people. 

The sermon this morning is a corollary.  It is a deduction.  It is not mentioned in the passage.  It is not referred to, but it is so terribly, so awfully, true.

Now, the passage is in the fourth chapter of the first Thessalonian letter and it concerns the beloved dead in Christ:

… For we sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will god bring with him.

For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first;

Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

Isn’t it a strange thing?  Throughout this Book, what is for life and comfort is also for death and damnation.  The two go together and there is no escaping.

Paul, one time, wrote in the second chapter of the second Corinthian letter:

For we—preaching the gospel of Christ—we are the savor of death unto death to those who do not believe; and the savor of life unto life unto those who believe.

The same gospel message that saves will also condemn those who refuse it—repudiate it.

            The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night was a strength and a hope and comfort of Jehovah God to His people.  But, to the Egyptians, it was dark and foreboding and spoke of judgment and of death and of damnation.

            So, as I read this passage here, the comfort of God’s people is that the dead in Christ will be raised.  They will see Him, in His likeness and filled with His fullness.  And we who are alive and remain will be caught and meet the Lord in the air.  And in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we shall be immortalized, glorified and transfigured.  And all of God’s sainted dead, and all of God’s sainted and forgiven and justified believers shall be taken out of the world and shall meet the Lord in the air. 

            “Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”  But, what is comfort to us—hope for us, life and light and glory for us—Oh, think of these who abide and remain.  The Great Separation—and the earth without a Christian, all the believers having been taken away.

            Throughout the whole Word of God, you will find that separation depicted.  For example, in the passage that we read this morning, out of the great Sermon on the Mount, the Lord said:

Not everyone who saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven…

Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophecied in thy name

—preachers filling the pulpits?

And in thy name cast out devils

—They said they have worked miracles in His name.

And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye who practice iniquity.

—The Great Separation.

            Another instance from the lips of our Savior: in the parabolic thirteenth chapter of Matthew, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that “was cast into the sea and gathered of every kind,”

which, when it was full, was drawn to shore… and they gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.

… At the end of the world, the angels shall go forth, and sever the wicked from among the just,

And shall cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

—The Great Separation.

            Here again, on the lips of our Lord, in the thirteenth of Luke:

Strive to enter in at the strait gate, for many will seek to enter in and will not be able. 

But, when the master of the house rises up, and shuts the door, and you stand outside, and you knock, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us and he shall answer, I know not who ye are.

Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy presence… . 

But he shall say, I tell you, I know not who you are; depart from me.

—The Great Separation.

            In that same Gospel of Luke, from the lips of the Lord: “There shall be two men in a bed, and one shall be taken and the other left.  Two women shall be grinding together; one will be taken and the other left.  Two man shall be in a field—one taken, one left.”

—The Great Separation.

            In this day, this age, we have an opportunity to believe in Jesus.  We call upon all men everywhere to turn in faith to Christ, to give every evidence of being real and genuine and acceptable to God. 

There are professors are not real, who give no evidence of being acceptable to God.  They give no evidence of being saved or converted.  And there is coming a time in which God shall separate the two.  When he comes for His own, and their bodies are resurrected from the ground, then those whose faith is not genuine, who are not regenerated, who are slaves of iniquity, will be left behind.

May I speak of those things in that order?  We live in an age of great opportunity, when the door to the kingdom of heaven that the Lord has been left ajar for us.  Paul says this dispensation, this oikonomia, this administration, translated here “dispensation”—this age, this administration is a period of time in which God deals with people in certain covenant ways.

I hold in my hand a Bible with an Old Covenant and a New Covenant, an old dispensation and a new dispensation.  When I look at that Old Covenant there, I think different ways that God hath wrought with men.  In the Garden of Eden, in the days and age of innocence; in the antedeluvian days; in the days of the patriarchs and the Mosaic Covenant; in the new days, the age of grace—the opportunity of the preaching of the gospel of the Son of God.

And beyond, there is an age, an oikonomia, an administration of the Millennium kingdom, when we shall see God face-to-face.  Then, beyond that, there is the age of the ages—the eternity of the eternities, after Satan is loosed for a season.  There will be the judgment of the wicked dead, the Great White Throne judgment, then the renovated heavens and earth and the New Jerusalem, the city of God, where we will forever with the Lord.

This day, this age, this hour in which we live is a certain set period of time known to God.  It began at a certain time.  It shall end at a certain time.  And we know how those beginnings and endings are. 

We may not know the times.  We may not know the seasons.  We may not know the length.  But, God has revealed to us how they begin and how they close.  This age began secretly, quietly—this day of the church, this day of the Holy Spirit, this day of opportunity, this day in which we can be saved by looking to Jesus.  It began secretly.  It began in the womb of a virgin named Mary.  It began in the quiet resurrection of our Lord and His breathing upon the disciples the breath, the Spirit, the ruach, the pneuma of God. 

Then, it began openly and publicly at Pentecost, when every nation under the sun heard the gospel of the Son of God in his own mother language.  Now, it shall end in that same way.  It will end quietly, this day of the church, this day of grace, this day of the gospel.  It will end quietly, in stealth.  Any time, any day, any hour, we could be caught up to be with the Lord in the air.  Then, later, the Lord will come visibly, openly, gloriously—like the vivid lightning across the bosom of the sky—the Lord will come visibly, openly with His saints. 

In that stage in between—however long is our stage of grace, there are those who accept the Lord in His proffered mercy.  There are those who believe in Jesus and they give every evidence of being really saved and acceptable unto God.

Anybody can say, “I don’t believe.”  Anybody can refuse.  It takes no money.  It takes no commitment.  It takes no scholarship.  It takes no pain.  It takes no godliness.  It takes no repentance.  It takes nothing at all to be an unbeliever.  It is our natural state.

But, to believe—to accept Jesus as Savior is to have the seal of the elective call and purpose of God.  They open their heart to the seal of God.  They openly, publicly, proudly announce their faith in Jesus.  They stand and confess their faith in Him.  “Faith comes by hearing; hearing the word of God.” 

They love the Word of God: the written Word, the incarnate Word—our Savior in heaven—and the spoken, preached Word, as they stand and proclaim their commitment.  They love the house of God.  They love to come to the house of God: “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go unto the house of the Lord.”  They love the fellowship and the communion of the people of God.  These are the people of Christ.  These are my brethren and these are my sisters. 

And they love the lost.  Missions: the lost across the sea—missions: the preaching of the gospel in the homeland—missions: the striving after the souls of men who speak our language who live in the same land, who breathe our air and who live in our cities.  And when appeal is made, and they come to Christ, there are real, genuine conversions and there is gladness in his heart.

I have seen godly men and women with tears falling unbidden from their faces, just looking at men and woman coming to Christ—just the sight of it and the knowledge of the meaning of it: the washing away of sins in the blood of the Lamb and the writing of their names in the Book of Life and the hope we have in heaven.  Oh, the soul of the child of God.

But, there is a profession of faith which has no evidence of being genuine and acceptable unto God—none at all, none at all.  They may be religious, but they are not spiritual.  Their churches are placed to marry the young and to bury the dead.  It is a matter of respectability.

There are these on the church rolls in every congregation, who give no evidence of being born again.  I’m thinking of a fine couple who came to our place from another great city.  He had been an officer in their church there, an affluent church, and came to Dallas.

In prosperity, in affluence, he moved in a glittering circle.  But, wealth and affluence and success has turned his head.  And the time came when he passes by his church, and he passes by his Lord and he passes by the word of the kingdom of Christ.  Oh, how could he if he were a saved man? 

I have never yet been able to understand why, because a man was affluent, he felt, “I can’t love God anymore and I don’t want to.”  I don’t understand.  And the only explanation for it I can give is this: when a man is not really saved, when he is not really genuine, whether he is poor or rich, the temptations of life will take him away, like the wind blows the chaff.

But, if a man is saved, if he is regenerated, if he loves God, if there’s a new heart and a new life implanted in his soul, whether he has a billion times a billion dollars, or he languished in hunger and thirst, it would be just the same.  In poverty with the Lord, in affluence with the Lord, whether to live or to die, whether to be there or here, a big house or a small one, whether to live or to die, you will be with the Lord—that will be my next sermon, if it please God: “Forever with the Lord.”

But, I continue this message.  Someday, there is going to be a great separation.  Right now, God says, “Leave them alone.  Leave them alone.”  The tares and the wheat, side by side—not for us to do the separating—that’s the prerogative of heaven that belongs to the omniscience and the omnipotence of God.  Leave them alone—side by side, the tares and the wheat, the good and the bad—all together in the net, the two working in the field, the two together in the bed, side by side.

But, someday—someday, some immediate day, some imminent day, some day known to God, there shall be that moment, that moment—oh, that moment, that second.  In the twinkling of an eye, there will be the catching away, the lifting up to heaven.  There shall be Rapture, the translation, the immortalization of God’s beloved in this earth—those who have placed their trust in Him.  And that will be the moment of The Great Separation.

Behind—left behind all the unregenerate, false teachers, false systems of Christianity, false preachers of the gospel, unbelievers, a world that is dark and death and blasphemy—a world without a Christian.

But, they that are in heaven, they that have been resurrected to a life of glory; they that remained, translated in a moment, in a second, in the twinkling of an eye—and the world without a Christian.

What shall it be like that awful day?  Jesus tells us.  Listen.  “To him who alone could know—As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of man.  They ate.  They drank.  They married, and were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark.  And the floods came and destroyed them all.” 

It will be, says Jesus, like the day when Noah and his family entered the ark and God closed the door, there was not a living righteous man on the earth.  Outside that door, blasphemy and iniquity and hypocrisy and the unregenerate and the darkness of judgment on each person.  The Great Separation—not a righteous man; not a justified man; not a saved man; not a fogiven man in the earth.  And God—God—God shut the door.

Think of this earth without a Christian, without a believing witness—caught up with the Lord.  As it was in the days of Noah—the Great Separation.

 

There shall come a night

Of such wild a’fright

As none besides shall know,

When the heavens shake

And the wide earth quake

In her last and deepest woe.

Oh, loved one, give in,

While the saints are near.

Soon, let the tide be riven

And men, side by side, shall guard

As far as hell is from heaven.

Some husband, whose head

Is laid on his bed,

Throbbing with mad excess,

Will be awaked from his dreams

By the lightning’s gleam

In his last distress.

Or the patient wife,

Who through each day’s life,

Wept and wept for his soul;

Who is taken away

With none left to pray

For the husband and his soul.

The children of day

Are summoned away.

Left are the children of night

Left to assume

A fate of gloom

 Not in the mansions of light.

 

The Great Separation.

Dear people, before I close, I have time, just for a moment, to speak of the fate that the Bible says so much about.  And as God shall help your stuttering pastor, he shall speak of these things as we come to them in the Word of God. 

The earth without a Christian: what then?  What then?  The Bible calls it the great tribulation.  The Bible calls it the distress of nations.  The Bible calls it the time of Jacob’s trouble. 

Oh, the darkness of those days.  Jesus said, “Pray that you may escape from the tribulation of those days”—those days of the earth without a Christian.

Let me comment.  Any time one is persuaded that the race, left to itself, can work out its own problems and troubles by science or philosophy or speculation—any time he is told, “Oh, look at this world, when God’s hand is withdrawn and God’s people are taken away.  It is a world of blasphemy and iniquity and violence and bloodshed.” 

“As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in those terrible days.”  And nations shall arm to the four corners of the globe and war against nation, and there shall run the four horsemen of the Apocalypse: the white horseman, conquering and to conquer; the red horseman of war and blood; the black horseman of starvation and famine; and the fourth horseman, pale and of death—the world without a Christian.

The judgment of God poured out: the seals broken, and the trumpets sounding, and the vials of wrath poured out—O God, who is able for these things?

Our refuge is in Christ.  Stand by me in that hour of judgment.  Be my advocate at the judgment throne of God.  O Lord, how could I do without Thee?

That’s what it is to be a Christian: leaning upon Jesus, the Son of God, who came to die for my sins, that I might stand without fault and without blemish, and be presented unto god in that great—in that final hour.  O Lord, remember me.  Remember me. 

The prayer of every converted child of God is that of the thief dying on the cross: “Lord, when Thou comest into thy kingdom, don’t forget me.”  Remember me, sleeping in the dust of the ground, having passed from this life… .

 

             

.