"...for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth."
That's soul sleep.
What should we do to prepare for the rapture?
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That's soul sleep.
11. Dressed and Ready — What the Master Does When He Finds You Watching
Every warning in this study builds toward a single moment: the master's knock, and the servant's readiness to answer it immediately. What actually happens next is stranger and more generous than most readers expect. "Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them" (Luke 12:37).Read that again slowly. The master does not simply commend the servants for their diligence and move on to his own rest after a long evening out. He reverses the household order entirely. He dresses himself — takes on the role of the one who serves — and personally waits on the very servants who spent the night watching for him. This is an almost scandalous inversion of the normal relationship between master and servant, and it is offered here as the specific reward for readiness.
This detail should reframe the entire motivation behind watchfulness. The point of keeping your lamp burning is not primarily to avoid punishment for being caught unprepared — though that danger is real throughout this pattern, as Eden, Sinai, and the temple of Dagon all make clear. The deeper point is what is being offered to those who are ready: not merely survival, but an intimacy and honor that flow directly from the master's own hand. The servants who refuse the false wedding's invitation, who keep their garments clean, who tend their lamp through however long the night stretches, are not simply spared judgment. They are seated, and served, by the One they waited for.
This is what makes readiness worth pursuing as more than caution. It is not white-knuckled vigilance against a threat. It is anticipation of a reunion so significant that the returning Master himself chooses to serve rather than be served. Every discipline this study has named — remembering first love, refusing compromise, keeping garments unsoiled, standing as a pillar rather than leaning — is not merely defensive. It is preparation for that specific moment: the door opening immediately at the knock, and the Master, finding you ready, sitting you down at His own table to serve you Himself.
Yes,I know.
Have you read Ecclesiastes 12?
7. "And the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit (the breath of life from God) returns to God who gave it".
John 5:28 Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,
29 And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.
You have pointed out in your posts that this is resurrection, not "rapture", and I agree with you.
Big difference.
Notice that ALL come fourth from their graves, including the damned, to be judged by Jesus.
I still struggle to see however, how you get this into two separate events.
Read Rev. 20:5 - "But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. " The first resurrection at the beginning of the millennial kingdom, the condemned at the end.
Luke 12 also has a lot to tell us about what "watching" actually means.
V. 3 Watch your speech, V.4-7 watch who you fear, v.9 watch that you do not deny Jesus, v.10 watch that you continue to believe, v.11 and 12 watch that you trust God to protect you, vs. 15-34 watch that you do not become covetous!
Vs. 35-36 watch that you work to glorify God.
Watching the news headlines to figure out when the "rapture" is coming has been going on since before the Titanic, and is not a good preoccupation.
It takes the attention away from responsibility and accountability before God and makes the concept of improving the world around us seem meaningless.
It also may cause people to abandon the younger generations.
In any case, the next prophesied event I am expecting to happen in the world is the second and final coming of Christ.
Revelations 20:5 But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.
Ok, I see now.
We are reading that with different assumptions, but all good because we will find out anyway.
For me I see the kingdom of Jesus as being present and heavenly, not future and earthly.
That would mean that some souls that were beheaded for Christ are reigning with Him right now.
That's false preterism, which assumes that Jesus had symbolically returned at AD 70, since then he's been reigning in heaven. Nope, the Lord will physically return and reign on earth. Until then, the dead remain dead, because the Great Commission is still in progress.
When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then a white robe was given to each of them; and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer, until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed.
I do not fall into the box of assuming that Jesus symbolically returned at AD70, but I do think He has been reigning in heaven since He ascended to be on the right hand of God (Acts 2:23).
When we come to the Revelations 20 passage about the thousand years, we must not forget everything else that we already know about the nature of Jesus kingdom.
An earthly king who wished to get established would call his angels and start a big bloody war, but Jesus has told us that He is not that sort of king.
"My kingdom is not of this world" John 18:36.
Just as importantly, the gospel of Christ is not that sort of gospel.
Romans 10:15 How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the GOSPEL OF PEACE
Lol, why do the clothes get left behind? Are we getting raptured naked?
Whether you are like me only expecting the second coming or the "rapture", the dress requirements are pretty much the same.
Thankfully the Bible gives us a lot of detail on that.
Ephesians 6:13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;
15 And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
He's not reigning on earth - yet. That's the point. He's not reigning in heaven neither, because God the father is seated on the throne, he's at the right hand. He will though when he receives and opens the scroll.
The Hebrews 6 Key: Two Stages of the Christian Life
Hebrews 6:1-3 lays out something most believers read past too quickly: a "foundation" and a further stage called "perfection." The foundation is repentance, faith, baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment — the basics every Christian holds. Perfection (Greek teleiotes) doesn't mean sinless. It means completed, finished, brought to the end of a process. It's the same word used in Hebrews 12:23 for "the spirits of just men made perfect."The book of Job is a divinely arranged picture of exactly this distinction. Job himself — restored, vindicated, and interceding for others by the end of the book — pictures the perfected company: those who have been tried and have come out the other side into the completion Hebrews describes. His three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, ask real and legitimate questions about hope, love, and faith. They aren't villains. They understand what's required of sinful men without yet having the full revelation of Jesus Christ as our righteousness. They picture tribulation saints — genuine believers who hold the foundational doctrines but who must be carried through a period of trial before reaching what Job already possesses.
This matters because it answers a question a lot of Christians never think to ask: is every believer in the same spiritual condition at any given moment? Scripture says no. Some have entered into a finished, covenantal union with Christ as a present reality. Others are Spirit-indwelt and genuinely saved, but still walking through the foundation. That distinction is the key that unlocks who is raptured, when, and why — the subject of everything that follows in this series.
Elihu, the fourth friend, is different again. He receives no answer from God at all — not rebuke, not restoration. He's simply passed over. He pictures something else: a religion that has replaced the living Christ with self-sufficient performance.
Nobody will judge you if you just admit that Jesus is the king in heaven.
I think you already know that in your heart.
He is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit (1Jhon 5:7)
He is "by the right hand of God exalted" (Acts 2:33),
He has authority to forgive our sins right now (1John 1:9),
His kingdom is everlasting in nature, eternal, meaning without time (2Peter 1:11)
He is the king even in this generation (psalm 145:13)
Satan was for the first time cast out of heaven when Christ rose (Revelations 12:10 and John 12:31)
Philippians 2:9 Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:
10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
11 And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
It is probably fair I give you my understanding of Revelations 6:9-11, as you quoted it to me.
These are the saints and prophets murdered by the Pharisees.
Jesus had promised that He would avenge them:
Luke 18:7 And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?
8 I tell you that he will avenge them speedily
Among them are those that were slain previously, but it is that generation of pharisees and their followers that will pay:
Mathew 23:35 That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.
36 Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.
Matthew 27:25
Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.
Notice that the Angel said "they should rest a little while".
That means a little while, not thousands of years.
Revelations 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must SHORTLY COME TO PASS.