Today’s Topic: The Return of the Lord: Royal Protocol
Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 4:16
Greetings Kingdom Citizens
Now there are those who believe after the gathering, planes will crash and cars will crash and millions of people will just be missing all of a sudden and nobody will know what happened to these millions of people. Movies have tried to portray this but let us turn to the scriptures and look at what will happen before the Lord returns and when He returns. Let us go back to 1 Thessalonians 4:16 because this is vitally important to understanding exactly what will happen at this time.
1 Thessalonians 4:16 - “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. So before the Lord returns the archangel blows the trump of God.
The trumpet call will get everyone’s attention and everybody will stop in their tracks where they are. Now it is royal protocol before a king enters any area, let alone the throne room that a page or messenger is sent before His physical entrance to blow the trumpet which get’s everyone’s attention to stop what you are doing because the king is about to enter. Then there is an formal announcement of the king to enter the throne room or that area. Has it happened before in the Bible? Absolutely! Let’s go back to Matthew 3.
Now you have to identify the players to see that this is protocol and God established this and what was done in Matthew 3 was to symbolize what will be done upon the return of the Lord. John is that messenger that comes before the people to get their attention to let them know that the Kingdom of Heaven is near. After making his announcement he tells the people, including the Pharisees and Sadducees to prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight. Now to understand this, before royalty comes in, everybody tries to fix themselves up make all of the streets and their homes look great just in case they get visited by the King. But John here was not talking about physical land preparation, he was talking about preparation of the heart and the mind to repent and get ready to experience the King and the Kingdom. Now at this time Jesus had not entered on the scene. But John is trying to let the people know who is coming and what He will do. Now once Jesus appears, John makes the announcement in John 1:29,30 that Jesus is the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. Now of course we knew also that John, because of his family lineage was of the Levites, was a Levitical priest and when they get ready to make a sacrifice for the sins of the people, an announcement is made declaring this sacrifice is the appropriate one for the atonement of sin. Like we stated John is the messenger that introduces the King who introduces the Kingdom to the world.
Let’s go forward to 1 Thessalonians 4:16. We have the archangel blowing the trump of God to get the attention of Heaven and Earth to the arrival of the King. The dead in Christ rise to greet the King and then there is a formal announcement of His arrival and upon His arrival the saints are gathered up and meet him in the air. What a phenomenal picture if you can picture it for yourself.
In the next message we are going to look at this trump of God because throughout Revelation you will see these trumpets being blown and a trump will be blown to raise the dead and announce the return of the Lord. What is significant about these trumpets?
At the Father’s Service,
Elder Calvin Calhoun Jr.
