The Apocalypse: When the Church Becomes the Enemy — Q&A

In this episode of From the Cutting Room Floor, we follow up on Pastor Brian’s message, The Apocalypse: When the Church Becomes the Enemy (Revelation 3:7–13).

If you grew up in evangelical Christianity, you’ve probably heard Revelation 3:10 cited as proof of a pre-tribulation rapture. But what if that popular interpretation actually misses Jesus’ point?

In this conversation, we unpack what Christ truly promised the church in Philadelphia—and why His words offer something far more encouraging than an evacuation plan.

Along the way, we also tackle a few big questions: Which Old Testament covenants are still in effect? And who are the “chosen people of God” today?

Join us as we dig deeper into the text and explore answers to these questions.

Transcript

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Welcome to the cutting room floor where we're exploring some topics that uh didn't have time to dig into with incredible depth on Sunday, um, or some things that may maybe I teased on Sunday, but were not able to expound in their um uh full and glorious uh way in which it it deserves. And uh it's actually got a long, I got a couple of questions that came in uh for this one, and one that I mentioned I was going to address um in the sermon itself. And I want to start with that one. Uh, we talked on Sunday about Jesus' message to Philadelphia, this small marginalized church that Jesus commends without a single word of rebuke. They were faithful in her pressure and they were loyal when it cost them. Um at the end of the message, we lingered on the promise uh Jesus gives them in verse 12 that they will be made pillars in the temple of God. They will never have to leave it again. But there's a verse we didn't spend much time on on Sunday, that's verse 10. I want to come back to it today because it raises the question a lot of people, um, a lot of Christians uh carry around but don't always know how to answer. Here's the verse, let me read it, and then I'll I'll talk about it. Jesus says, Now you have kept my command to endure patiently. I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. If you grew up in evangelical Christianity, there's a good chance that you heard this verse cited as a proof text for the pre-tribulational rapture. The idea being that the verse promises Jesus will keep us from the hour of trial, meaning he's going to remove us from the earth before things get bad. That's a popular reading. And um, I understand um how one arrives at that uh reading, but I want to push on it today because I think the text, this text is actually saying something different and something honestly that's more useful for how we live right now. Um but before I get there, I want to lay out the the argument fairly. The reasoning goes with this verse, it goes like this the hour of trial refers to the great tribulation, a future period of intense judgment on the earth. And Jesus promises to keep his people from that hour of trial. Therefore, the church will be physically removed, raptured, before it begins. And uh, I understand why that reading is attractive. It's tidy, it's hopeful, uh, it takes the promise seriously. But with regard to Revelation 3:10, there are five reasons I think it misreads what Jesus is actually saying. First is the Greek phrase itself. The key phrase is tereo ek, keep from. And here's where it gets interesting. This exact phrase appears only one other time in the New Testament. That's John 17, 15. Jesus is praying for his disciples on the night before his crucifixion, and he says, I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. So notice what Jesus does here. He explicitly contrasts being kept with being removed, being kept with being removed. He's not asking the Father to extract his people from the world, he's asking him to preserve them while they remain in it. That's the same phrase and the same author, John, in both Revelation 3.10 and John 17.15. And it means the opposite of removal. If John 17, 15 is the interpretive key, and it probably should be, because it's the only parallel, then keep from the hour of trial means preserved through it, not airlifted out before it. Second, who is the trial actually for? If you look carefully at the verse, the trial is coming to test the inhabitants of the earth. That phrase, earth dwellers, literally in the original, is a technical term in revelation. It appears nine times in the book, and every single time, without exception, it refers to unbelievers, uh, pagan persecutors of the church, those who reject God. So the hour of trial is specifically designed for them, not for Christians, which means the promise to believers isn't, I'll remove you before this starts. It's this judgment isn't aimed at you, I will preserve you through it. Third is this is the Old Testament pattern. You think about the plagues on Egypt in the book of Exodus. Israel was not removed from Egypt before the plagues fell. They lived in the middle of it, in Goshen, surrounded by the same geography, the same air, the same Nile, and yet the plagues did not touch them. God preserved them within the situation, not by evacuating them from it. That's the consistent biblical pattern. Noah wasn't removed from the flood, he was preserved through it in the ark. Lot wasn't teleported out of Sodom, he was led out by the by the hand. Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego weren't kept from the furnace. They walked through it with someone who looked like the Son of God beside them. Um, it seems like the trajectory of the biblical promise is almost never removal, it's almost always preservation through it. Fourth, the message had to mean something to first century Philadelphia. This is a point we can't skip. Jesus is writing a personalized, tailored message to a real church in a real city facing real opposition in the first century. If the hour of trial refers exclusively to a future end times tribulation that won't happen for thousands of years, what comfort does this promise offer the people actually reading the letter? Any interpretation of a biblical promise has to reckon with its original recipients. The Philadelphian Christians weren't reading this wondering about a future rapture. They were being excluded and cut off from social, economic, religious life right now. And Jesus is saying, the testing you're experiencing and the greater testing that's coming, I will keep your faith intact through it. That's a promise for them. And it remains a promise for us. Fifth, and uh maybe most profoundly, uh the greatest Christian victories in Scripture are not one by extraction, they are one by endurance. Revelation 12, 11 puts it plainly that believers will overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they love not their lives even unto death. Not raptured to safety, faithful unto death. That's the posture of the overcoming Christian in Revelation. Not rescued from the storm, but anchored through it. Now, why does any of this matter practically? Well, let me suggest two things. One is that it reframes what faithfulness looks like. If you believe you're going to be extracted before things get difficult, you will unconsciously develop a theology of escape. You'll treat the Christian life as something to endure until the evacuation comes. But if you understand that God's promise is preservation through trial, not removal from it, then suffering stops being evidence that something has gone wrong and starts being the terrain on which faith actually gets forged. Charles Simeon preached in the same pulpit for 54 years while his own congregation tried to shut him down. He didn't wait for extraction, he just kept going. That's not an accident. That's the posture that Revelation calls, keeping the command to endure patiently. And second, it makes the promise more beautiful, not less. The pre-trib reading on Revelation 3.10, if you think about it, makes God's faithfulness essentially passive. He keeps you from suffering by removing you from the situation. That requires nothing of you and reveals nothing particular about the character of God in the middle of your life. But the promise of preservation through trial, that is a different kind of faithfulness altogether. It means that when the furnace is hot, he is in it with you. When the flood rises, the ark holds. When the plagues fall on Egypt, Goshen is protected. God's faithfulness isn't proven by the absence of trial, it's demonstrated in the middle of it. So Jesus is saying, I will also keep you from the hour of trial. That's not, I will remove you so that you never feel it, but rather I will be with you in such a way that it will not destroy you. The church in Philadelphia had little strength. They were small, marginalized, excluded by people who should have known better. And Jesus doesn't say to them, Don't worry, I'm coming to get you out of this. He says, Hold on, I'm coming, I will keep you. That's the promise. Not escape, preservation, not extraction, presence. And for a church that's learning to endure, that promise is more than enough. And so that's uh just a word of commentary on Revelation 3.10. A couple other questions that came in, good ones. Let me be quickly uh quicker with these. Do you think there are any Old Testament covenants made with Israel that have carried over now, or did Christ fulfill them all, or did Christ nullify them all? Um well, that's kind of a hodgepodge answer uh to that. We could start with the the first, we could start with the Noahic covenant, Noahic covenant, God's covenant with Noah and his family. That no uh Old Testament covenant continues because it governs the preservation of the world. That was the heartbeat of the covenant. It's a promise that the earth will not again be destroyed by flood. That remains in effect. So we've got an old covenant, old testament covenant that continues. We've got the Abrahamic covenant. What was that? Well, it was that through Abraham's seed, all nations on earth would be blessed. Through Abraham's seed, all nations on earth would be will be blessed. That is an enduring covenant on the one hand, but you could also say it's a fulfilled covenant through Jesus as the promised offspring, the seed of Abraham. It is through Jesus that all nations on earth are blessed. So, on the one hand, I could say the Abrahamic covenant continues because Jesus is its fulfillment, and the content of that covenant is valid. It's still operationally effective. Jesus and the gospel are continuing to be a blessing to all nations. Got the Davidic covenant, I'm skipping Moses, I'll come back to that in a minute. Got the Davidic covenant that's fulfilled in Christ as the Davidic king who reigns forever. So just like the Abrahamic covenant, I could say that the Davidic covenant is both fulfilled in Christ and continuing to this day, because the substance of that covenant was that there would be a king to rule his people that has found its fulfillment in Christ. It's not over with, it continues in Christ. So we've got these three Old Testament covenants that are still uh operational. Um the Abrahamic and Davidic are both operational but also fulfilled in Christ. Now, when we get to Moses, this this is really, and I would say this is important for all of them, but this is where understanding the Old Testament in light of the New Testament becomes exceedingly important. Um this is where it really helps us to pay attention to how the New Testament writers use the Old Testament. Um, on the one hand, we could say that the Mosaic Covenant has been, I wouldn't say necessarily nullified as the right word, uh, because it's been fulfilled in Christ. Fulfilled and then in some ways obsolete. Uh maybe that's just plain semantics. The clearest verse is Hebrews 8, and speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one, it's a reference to the Mosaic covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. So we could say that the Mosaic covenant is no longer operative, but this is where we have to get into the substance of the Mosaic covenant. What was the substance of the Mosaic covenant? Well, most people probably think of the Ten Commandments. That's certainly a big heart of it. Um, are the Ten Commandments null and void? Well, yes and no. Um one of the things that we we tried to do when we did the series of good life when we preach through the Ten Commandments is to show how or in what way the New Covenant or New Testament establishes or re-establishes the Ten Commandments. Um at least nine of the ten carry over into the New Testament. So they're reiterated. So there's in some ways you can say the Mosaic Covenant is still operative. It's still working because the Ten Commandments are not null and void. We've been called to those. Uh, but obviously there are other aspects of the Mosaic Covenant, like the sacrificial system, which is part of the Mosaic Covenant, um, that is no longer in effect because Jesus is the once and for all sacrifice. Um, so the you know, the law of Moses, this is where you know the moral law, the civil law, the ceremonial law, uh I think they can be a bit artificial. Yeah, the Bible itself just doesn't group them that way. But on substance, you really get the sense that that's that's kind of how the New Testament works out the law of Moses in light of the work of Christ. Um, there are aspects to the law of Moses that are still in effect. And how do we know which ones? Pay attention to how the New Testament talks about the law of Moses, but there are also large chunks of the law of Moses that are no longer in effect because Jesus has fulfilled them, and um, they no longer need to be practiced. To practice those would be kind of a functional denial of the work of Christ. Uh so there's a way to think about the Old Testament covenants. There's one other one, it's kind of building on talking about the people of God, Israel, the church. Uh, I'll be very preliminary, uh, very brief on answering this. The question was: is modern Israel established, that was established post-World War II, is that the same Israel of the Bible? Well, let's understand that in the Bible the word Israel refers to descendants of Jacob. So if someone is saying, modern Israel, that is only those who are descendants of Jacob, then yes, that's the same Israel of the Bible. Everybody living in Israel today is not an Israelite. Uh, not everybody living there is a descendant of Jacob. So just understand when you're using the term Israel, um, are you using it as a geopolitical nation in the 21st century, or are you using that term the way the Bible understands it? The Bible understands it as anybody who's a descendant of Jacob. Uh, not everybody in Israel, not everybody part of the geopolitical nation called Israel today is a descendant of Jacob. Does modern Israel still represent God's chosen people? Well, again, depending on how you answer the first question, um, it may be yes, it may be no. Uh, and some of it depends on how you're understanding the word chosen. Romans 9 to 11 clearly indicates that God has an end time program, end time plans for a remnant of ethnic Israelites. I don't know how you can read Romans 9 to 11 and not think that God has got something in mind for a remnant of ethnic Israelites. We don't know who those are. Maybe some of them don't know who they are. God does. Um, but to say chosen people, see, that's that's the question mark. Um what do we mean by chosen people? I think the new covenant clearly establishes that there is one people of God, that is who are those who are joined to Christ. There's one people of God. Now, if if we're saying people of God and chosen people are synonymous, then does modern Israel still represent God's chosen people? No, um, it doesn't. But you you gotta understand that they're probably ethnic descendants, descendants of Jacob, ethnic Israelites who have become believers in Jesus as Messiah. They are part of the people of God. Um so some of this depends on how you're defining Israel. How are you defining chosen people? Uh in Romans 9, Paul re-ups something that I went through with these passages from Romans 2, Galatians 6, Philippians 3. Paul says, it is not the children by physical descent who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. Okay, children of the promise. That's very important. That is very messianic. All right, so it's it's not enough to say that someone's an ethnic descendant of Jacob. They, Paul is saying they are not children, uh, they are not God's children, unless they are children of the promise. That is, they have come to embrace Jesus as Messiah. And then the third question that was partnered with all this are we right to support Israel still? Well, that gets beyond me. That's a foreign policy um issue. That is um, there is no um, in terms of group identification before God, there is no incumbency on any nation to be a protector of Israel. That is there because no other geopolitical nation has a covenant with God. The United States does not have a covenant with God. Um the only the only covenant with God today's people is the church. The church. So one political nation, the U.S., supporting Israel, that's not a theological question. That's that's a geopolitical, that's a foreign policy uh question. Now you could say, you could leave the world of covenant language and go into the world of ethics at this point and say, do stronger nations have a moral obligation to protect weaker nations? And if you want to make that argument biblically, go for it. Go for it. Good arguments can probably be made. But in terms of because, say, for example, the United States has a special relationship to God, Israel has a special relationship to God, therefore we are um uh under God, we are mutually responsible for one another. No, I don't uh I don't think that's that's the case. Um, but again, if you want to make the case that does a stronger nation have an obligation to defend a weaker nation, if you want to make those arguments on ethical grounds and biblical grounds, you can go for it. But I actually don't think that that's what this person is asking about. Um, we're gonna get into the church in Israel relationship and what is God's plan for Israel. We're gonna be getting into that quite thoroughly as the series and revelation unfolds. Um, hope you enjoyed trying to digest all that. And uh thanks for tuning in. Thanks for asking the questions, and we'll see you next time.