THE GREAT SEPARATION

Dr. W.A. Criswell

Luke 17:36

3-4-84    10:50 a.m.

I tell you that in that night there shall be two men in one bed; one shall be taken, and the other left. 

Two women shall be grinding together at a mill; one shall be taken, and the other left. 

Two men shall be working in a field; one shall be taken, and the other left.

[Luke 17:34-36]

The great separation, the world without a Christian: when I turn to the Bible, the Word of God, one of the first things to be noticed about it is that it is divided into time periods, into different sections and ages.  For example, I open my Bible here at the time between the Testaments. On this side, they call it the Old Testament, the Old Covenant.  On this side, they call it the New Testament, the New Covenant.  It’s divided into ages, into time periods. 

When you look at it closely in the Word of God, you will find that each one of them closes with a judgment.  The Edenic dispensation, time period, closed in death and dismissal and expulsion from the garden of Eden [Genesis 2:16-17, 3:1-24].  The antediluvian time period closed with a great flood that destroyed the world [Genesis 7:1-23].  The patriarchal time period closed with a burning slavery in Egypt [Exodus 1:5-13].  The Mosaic time period closed with the destruction of the Jewish nation [2 Kings 25].  In the New Testament there are likewise those time periods, those administrations.  This age in which we live, the age of grace, the age of the Holy Spirit, the age of the church, the age of the preaching of the gospel, the world missionary fellowship, this age shall close in a great judgment, in a separation and a tragic tribulation [2 Thessalonians 2:1-14].

This time period in which we live, this dispensation of grace in which our life and lot are cast; it began secretly; it began in the quiet, silent womb of a virgin girl named Mary, who lived in Nazareth of Galilee [Matthew 1:20-2:1].  And it began secretly and silently, quietly, in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from among the dead [Matthew 28:1-7]; no one saw that.  He was raised and He went out of that tomb quietly, silently, secretly.  This age began in secret.  This age shall close publicly.  This age shall end quietly and secretly.  This age shall close in the quiet secret of the rapture, the taking away of God’s people [1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, 5:2].  Nobody shall know.  It will be unheralded and unannounced.  It will be clandestinely and furtively, like the coming of a thief in the night [1 Thessalonians 5:2].  The day shall close secretly.  It shall also close publicly.  As its beginning was secret and public with the coming of Pentecost and the announcement of the gospel of Christ to the civilized world [Acts 2:1-47], so the end of this age will be secret in the rapture, and it will be public.  As Matthew 24:27 says, Like the bosom across, like the lightning cleaving the bosom of the sky.  It will be public.  It will be seen. 

The great text of the Revelation in 1:7 is, “Behold, He cometh with clouds.”  That’s not atmospheric clouds, that’s the shekinah glory of God.  “Behold, He cometh,” with the clothing and the garments of the light of heaven.  “Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also who crucified Him: and the families and tribes of the earth shall wail because of Him” [Revelation 1:7].  This is the age in which we live.  It began secretly and publicly.  It closes secretly and publicly. 

When you study it further, you will notice there is a common denominator, whether the age closes secretly or whether it closes publicly.  There is a common denominator in both of them.  It is this: there is a great separation, a great separation.  Whether it be at the end of the secret [1 Thessalonians 5:2], or whether it be the end of the public appearing of our Lord [Matthew 24:27]; both of them are characterized by a tremendous separation.  If it is secret, there is the rapturing away of God’s sainted people [1 Thessalonians 4:16-17].  There is a great separation between those who are caught up to meet our Lord in the air and those who are left behind to suffer the awful agony of the tribulation, written so largely, described so vividly in the Apocalypse [Revelation 4-19].  And if we look at the end of this age, in its public, dramatic closing—when the Lord shall come with His saints to be glorified before all the world [Jude 1:14]—once again there is a great separation.  When the Lord comes, He is coming to judge Israel.

Down here in this present age, we live together.  The Lord sometimes would speak of that as a field; the wheat and the tares are growing up together [Matthew 13:24-30].  The Lord would speak of it sometime as a great sea, and the fish good and bad, live in that sea together [Matthew 13:47-50].  Sometimes the Lord would speak of it as a pasture, and the sheep and the goats are there, grazing together [Matthew 25:31-33]. 

But the day is coming, says our Lord, when there will be a dividing between the wheat and the tares, and the tares thrown into unquenchable fire [Matthew 13:30].  There will come a time in the division of the fish caught in a net between the good and the bad [Matthew 13:47-50].  And there will come a time of a great judgment day, when the sheep are separated from the goats [Matthew 25:31-46].  The great separation: God says we face that inevitable day and that certain judgment: a great separation; the earth without a Christian!  

When I turn to the Revelation and read of the awesome judgments that awaits those who are left behind, I can scarcely enter into the vivid and dramatic portrayals of those tragic, anguishing hours. 

For example, in Revelation 9:6, “And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; they shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.”  So tragic are those days of judgment and visitation that men will cry to God that they die.  Like a woman who is violated, and then violated, and then violated, and then violated, and then violated, finally, in her desperate anguish and hurt and ravishment, she prays to God to die before another violating ravishment.  It will be exactly like that in this coming tribulation; facing an awful outpouring of the judgment of the seals [Revelation 6:1-8:1]; of the judgment of the trumpets [Revelation 8:2-11:19], of the judgment of the vials, the bowls of wrath [Revelation 15:1-16:21]. 

Now what amazes me and surprises me in reading of those coming days is that for all of the plagues, they repented not [Revelation 9:20-21; 16:9-1-11].  They were scorched.  They were burned.  They blasphemed God.  Their pains and their sores brought them not to repentance and to faith.  I cannot understand that.  The awesomeness of the judgments of Almighty God and yet men were as hardened, and obdurate, and obstreperous, and incorrigible in their spirits toward God as they were before the judgment began to fall. 

 But I look around me; by the thousands and the thousands of these in the city of Dallas, the millions in our nation, the billions that are in our earth, they face the inevitable judgment of death, and of separation, and finally, the great assize before God, and they don’t change, they don’t repent [Revelation 20:11-15].  They don’t kneel before the Lord in the asking of mercy and forgiveness and salvation.  I don’t understand it.  The only explanation that I can read for it in the Bible is in the third chapter of 2 Peter, that great first apostle said, in the third verse of that third chapter he says, “In these last days, there are scoffers saying, Where is the promise of His coming?  for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation” [2 Peter 3:3-4].

That’s the only explanation that I know for it.  Scoffers who look up into heaven and say, “I don’t believe there’s a God,” or, “If there is a God, I dare You to come down here and intervene in my life.”  They live without God.  They don’t believe in God, and they certainly are not preparing for the great judgment day of Almighty God.  They live as though there were no God and certainly not any God that they know of will intervene in their lives. 

Now Simon Peter says, “Though they scoff and they say that, God will surely intervene.”  And he gives a dramatic instance of that: he gives the instance of the Flood, the days of the Flood, when God intervened in antediluvian civilization [2 Peter 3:5-6; Genesis 7:1-24].  Simon Peter could also have given an illustration pointing to Sodom: God intervened in the life of Sodom and the cities of the plain [Genesis 19:24-25]. 

He could also have used the illustration of Israel in 722, when God destroyed the nation of Israel—sent them into captivity and into oblivion—because of their unrepented sins [2 Kings 17:6-8].  Simon Peter could have pointed to Judah who in 587 was carried away captive into Babylon [2 Kings 25:1-11].  He could have pointed to 62 AD, when Pompey, with his Roman legions took advantage of the warring factions of the Maccabee princes and made the kingdom of Israel a part, a province of the Roman Empire.  Or he could have spoken of what the Lord did when He left the temple for the last time.  And the disciples pointed out to Him the great enormous stones of that magnificent architectural creation.  And the Lord replied, “You see these stones; great, tremendous stones?  You see these stones?”  Some of them seventy‑five feet long; some of them eighteen feet high, weighing thousands of tons, “You see these stones, a part of this magnificent temple? The day is coming,” said our Lord, “when not one will be left on top of the other” [Matthew 24:1-2; Mark 13:1-2].  The Lord left the temple for the last time.  He left the people to their own devices, and they never heard from His lips another appeal for repentance. 

O Lord, does God intervene?  Within about thirty years after the Lord said those tragic words, Vespasian—and then his son, Titus—came with their Roman legions and destroyed the nation and destroyed the city, and if you’ve been to Jerusalem, you’ll not find one of those stones left on top of the other.  God intervenes.  God intervenes!

It’s just for a moment that we have an opportunity to bow before the Lord and plead His mercy and His grace [Ephesians 2:8; Titus 2:5].  The intervention of God in human history is an astonishment to me!  There is no one, there is no organization, there is nothing outside, removed from the possibility of the judgment of Almighty God.  There’s not a man, there’s not a church, there’s not an institution; all of us are alike before the intervention of God. 

I think of the great fathers of the churches: if you read human history at all, the churches—the great churches of the ancient world—were in northern Africa; they were in Egypt, they were in Palestine, they were in Syria, they were in the Anatol, they were in Asia Minor.  And those great fathers—Eusebius, Augustine—those great men of God—Origen, Athanasius—those men were great preachers in those Eastern churches.  Chrysostom, John Chrysostom—pastor at Antioch—said one time, he had one hundred thousand members of his church there in Antioch: the tremendous, great, mighty witness for Christ in all of that Eastern, Near Eastern world. 

Have you been over there?  Have you visited that part of God’s world?  Have you?  You’ll not find a trace, you’ll not find a sentence or a syllable or a stone of that vast Eastern church; those gilded domes and those glorious cathedrals, and those golden arches, and those resplendent vestments, and those marvelous rituals, and those glorious, glorious assemblies. 

What did God hear?  God heard from those sacerdotal lips, He heard salvation by sacraments, and He heard the mediation of the needs of man by human priests, and He heard the access to God by human merit.  And God finally said, “I have heard it for the last time!”  And there came the great wave of the Mohammedan, and the unsheathed sword of the Saracen, and finally the terrible visitation of the Ottoman Turk.  And there’s not a vestigial remnant left in all of that vast Orient of the church of Jesus Christ.

Why doesn’t it fall upon the nations of the world now?  “But there is a day coming,” says the apostle in the next verse, “it will come as a thief in the night,” unheralded, unannounced, “in to which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” [2 Peter 3:10].  The day is coming when God will look down upon this earth and behold the funeral pyre of the great cities of this world and behold the whole earth consumed in flame and in fury and in fire. 

I have supposed that when the Bible says that in those days “The sun shall be blackened like sackcloth of ashes and the moon will turn to blood” [Revelation 6:12], I have supposed that that is but a reflection of the burning, smoking planet Earth that blots out the sun and the flaming red fire that makes the moon look like blood.  It’s the longsuffering of God that prevents that awesome day of judgment [2 Peter 3:9].  But someday, “Someday,” Paul says, “Someday,” Simon Peter says, there is to be a taking out.  There is to be a separation from this world of all of God’s people [1 Thessalonians 4:16-17], and when that day comes, that judgment, that intervention will inevitably fall [2 Peter 2:9].  O God, now men can shake their fists in God’s face.  Now men can scoff and blaspheme the name of God, but it is just for a while.  It’s just due to His longsuffering and tender mercies that the intervention does not fall [2 Peter 3:9].  There is salvation and deliverance and freedom.  There is heaven, there is rapture, there is paradise; there is glory for those who find refuge in Jesus our Lord [Matthew 11:28; Revelation 21:22-23]. 

And that is our invitation to your soul today.  This day is a day of salvation.  It’s a day of grace, a day of invitation, a day of open door opportunity.  With your family come, “Pastor, this is my wife, and these are my children.  All of us are coming today.”  Or just a couple you, you and your wife, you and a friend, “We’re coming today.”  Or just one somebody you, “The Lord has spoken to my heart and I’m on the way.”  Down one of these stairways from the balcony, down one of these aisles in the throng and press of people on this lower floor, “Pastor, I have decided for God and here I am.”  May angels attend you in the way as you come.  May the Holy Spirit make you glad and happy in the decision to give your life, and every future day, and every tomorrow’s hope, give it to Jesus [Romans 10:8-13].  Come!  A thousand times welcome as you come.  In this moment, we’ll sing a song of appeal.  We’ll be praying.  We’ll be waiting.  And God bless you as you answer with your life, while we stand and while we sing.