12. NT Letters Introduction; Galatians; 1&2 Thessalonians

Good morning, everybody. It’s good to be with you.

Again, we are processing through the New Testament. We are now starting with the New Testament letters. But before we do that, I want to kind of give an overview of some of the things that the Lord was doing with us in the Gospels, and in Acts.

I just want to remind you, of course, that the ministry of Jesus, as biblically unpacked, was foretold. The Messiah was prophesied in the Old Testament. There was a variety of prophecies starting in Genesis going all the way to Zechariah and Malachi. All of the books of the Old Testament point towards Christ, and various specific promises about his work. We see that Jesus was to come on two occasions. The first time or His first coming, he would come according to Isaiah 53 as a suffering servant who had died on the cross, which of course is what he did. All those who would believe in His Name, believe that He’s the Son of God and then receive him personally as their Lord and Savior would become, saved. 

Then the second time His coming would be to judge the earth. He would come with wrath and he would judge the angels that had fallen from him as well as all of those on the planet that had turned from him. And before that time came, there would be a great tribulation, where there would be a great shaking such as the world had not seen. The book of Revelation is going to outline this, but the shaking was foretold by Jesus in Matthew 24, Luke 21, Mark 13, and is what we call the Olivet Discourse, where he spoke of the end-times, the tearing down of the temple.

To, you know, judge there, the dead will be resurrected, those that are alive will be caught up in the air. And so we’ll see this in this lesson today, we’re going to be covering Galatians, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. We are going to talk a little bit about the Day of the Lord, the day of the Lord’s coming, the rapture of the church, what it looks like when the Lord returns. 

So, and then in the meantime, we are to watch, we are to pray, and we are to live our lives faithfully. So that’s sort of the big picture about Jesus Christ.

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