Hey everybody, Pastor Steven Anderson here from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona.
In this video, I'm going to be debunking Pastor Charles Lawson's sermons on the pre-tribulation
rapture. The first sermon that I listened to by him on this subject was called The Rapture
is at Hand. And what's interesting is that he chose 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 as his text,
which specifically states that it's not at hand. Listen to what the Bible says. It says,
Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering
together unto him, that you be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled, neither by spirit,
nor by word, nor by letter, as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive
you by any means, for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that
man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition. And it goes on there. But it says, don't let anybody
deceive you into thinking that it's at hand. So it's kind of interesting that he turns to that
passage. In 2 Thessalonians 2 and verse 1, We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together to him. This is the rapture, that you be not soon
shaken in mind, be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letters, as from us, as that
the day of Christ is at hand. Now let's stop for just a moment. So after reading verses 1 and 2
and giving no comment, he changes the subject to something else totally irrelevant about what he
thinks Old Testament Jews thought about the resurrection, not even talking about the rapture.
Then he comes back and reads the same two verses again, verses 1 and 2.
You be not soon shaken in mind, be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word,
nor by letter, as from us, as that the day of Christos is at hand. That's what the Greek text
will say. If you had a Greek text in your hands right now, and textus receptus in Greek, it would
say Christos. This time he again cuts it off at the end of verse 2 and just goes off on a tangent
about the difference in his mind between the day of Christ and the day of the Lord. Then from that
he literally spends the next 35 minutes just rambling, I mean telling stories from his youth,
talking about the Jews, and just jumping all over the place, just rabbit drop, literally
not even mentioning the rapture. He never expounds 2 Thessalonians 2 in the sermon.
He never goes back and reads verses 3 and 4. He doesn't even talk about the rapture at all
in the entire sermon after this point. He just talks about everything else.
So keep in mind the sermon is called The Raptors at Hand. He uses a text that says don't let
anybody deceive you into thinking that the day of Christ is at hand and then just rambles about
meaningless stuff. So then at the end he basically states, you know, I ran out of time, I'm out of
time, I'm going to have to teach this next week instead. All right, I've been going on here now
for about 40 minutes. I'm going to wait till next Sunday morning and we're going to get into detail
about these mysteries because it's very important to understand that, these mysteries. Yes sir, when
I came back and I was 17 years old when I went in the military, I was, I think I was just, I think
I was, had just turned 18. Okay, so now, you know, I have to download and listen to part two
because, you know, he's going to explain it next week. So I download part two, I start listening
to it. He literally does the exact same thing. We're going to pick up our study now where we
left off the last time. If you'll turn over here to the book of 2 Thessalonians chapter 2.
At the very beginning of the sermon he reads verses one and two,
doesn't explain anything, goes off on the same exact tangent about the day of Christ and the day
of the Lord being different, and then he just spends another 30-40 minutes just rambling again,
different stories, Okinawa, karate, being in the military, the Jews,
Abraham, just all over the place. He's basically talking about everything except the rapture. So
then I download a third sermon by him, a 42-minute sermon called The Rapture Explained, and literally,
I kid you not, by minute seven in this video, he is done talking about the rapture. After minute
seven, the rapture never even comes up again. In this whole sermon called The Rapture Explained,
it's just more rambling this time. He talks about everything from the French Revolution,
the Kabbalah, the Greek philosopher Plato, the Mandela effect, what Lucifer means,
New Age, mysticism, third eye, I mean, he just blah, blah, blah, everything except the rapture.
Now in the first seven minutes, what did he say about the rapture? Well,
he talks about how there are like two or three different raptures.
Now I'm going to do a study with you here in a couple of weeks on the two raptures,
or maybe even three that we find in the New Testament, and we have so much confusion today.
And then he makes this point about how people are saying that the rapture wasn't taught before
Darby, and that's not true because the rapture is in the Bible. Well, no, nobody said that the
rapture wasn't taught before Darby. What we're saying is that the pre-Trib rapture wasn't taught
before Darby. There's no record of it ever being taught before the year 1830, and John
Nelson Darby is known as the father of modern dispensationalism, and he's the first one on
record in modern times to have ever taught this strange doctrine of the pre-Trib rapture.
There are those who erroneously teach that no doctrine of the rapture was ever taught until
the 1800s, and it started with Charles Darby and some other people, Plymouth brethren,
that began to teach the doctrine of the rapture. Here's a big problem with that.
The Bible predates Mr. Darby and all of the rest of these by a long time.
So he creates this straw man that, oh, they're saying that the rapture wasn't taught. No,
we're saying that the pre-Trib rapture wasn't taught. We all believe in the rapture. Okay,
so then I had to download a fourth sermon, okay? And in the fourth sermon, I actually have a little
bit more to debunk. He actually talked a little bit about the rapture and made a few points.
So that's the one I'm going to focus on. It's called the mystery of the rapture, okay? Now,
he starts out by talking about how there were these mysteries that were specifically revealed
to Paul. Supposedly, these are things that were not revealed before this. So, you know,
Jesus and his disciples didn't talk about these things according to him. These are things that
were new with Paul. Not until the church came into being was the mystery of the rapture of the
church given to the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul had the mystery of the rapture of the church
given to him. He had the mystery of the body of Christ given to him. He had the mystery of the
Antichrist found in 2 Thessalonians chapter number 2 given to him. He had the mystery of iniquity
given to him. And he had the mystery of the dispensation of the gospel of the grace of God.
Given to him. So what he teaches is that Jesus Christ supposedly never taught on the rapture.
This is a mystery that was new with the Apostle Paul. That's obviously ridiculous because Jesus
did teach on the rapture in Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 17, Luke 21, lots of places. I mean,
think about the verses where it says two will be in the field. One shall be taken, the other
shall be left. And all these, Christ will come in the clouds in Matthew 24. The trumpet will sound.
He'll gather the elect. But pre-tribbers usually have this dumb argument that Jesus never taught
on the rapture. He was new with the Apostle Paul. But notice he also said that the dispensation of
the gospel of the grace of God is this mystery that's new with the Apostle Paul. He claims that
it's Paul's gospel. The Lord Jesus Christ preached the gospel of the kingdom. But Paul did not. Paul
called it my gospel. He said the gospel that was revealed to me of the grace of God. It does not
have to be preached to the ends of the earth, to the world, to the ends of the world, to all men,
for the Lord to come back, for the Lord to come back for His people. Nothing has to happen except
the Son of Man comes and shouts the names of us who are saved. I do not preach the gospel of the
kingdom. I hope you don't. I hope you preach the gospel of the grace of God, which happens to be
right now running abreast with the gospel of the kingdom of God. Right at this moment it is. And
it will until we enter into the tribulation period. But we're leaving here. So he's a
hyper-dispensationalist who believes that Paul preached a different gospel than what Jesus
preached. And that it was Paul's gospel, the gospel of grace. You know, that's our gospel.
And that Jesus preached another gospel. Folks, this is damnable heresy. Okay. This Charles
Lawson, he's not just wrong about the preacher of rapture. He's a damnable heretic. He's not
even saved. He's preaching lies. He preaches a false gospel. And I, you know, I'm not even
going to go into all the clips of Charles Lawson adding works to salvation, twisting the gospel.
But just this alone where he's claiming that the gospel is new with Paul, think about how stupid
that is in light of the fact that Jesus said, for God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
And then these foolish dispensationalists have the gall to claim that, you know, the gospel
of salvation by grace through faith is new with Paul. Really? Then why did Jesus say,
verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me has everlasting life.
How come Jesus said he that liveth and believeth in me shall never die? How come Jesus said,
verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me
hath everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death to life.
Why did Jesus himself, while walking on this earth over and over again, say that if you believe on
Jesus, you will be saved? I'll tell you why. Because that's the only gospel there is faith,
grace. It's never been by works of righteousness, which we have done that we've been saved. And in
the Old Testament, people weren't saved by being a good person or, or by works. The Bible said,
even as David also described it, the blessedness of the man unto whom God impudeth righteousness
without works saying, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are
covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Think about how David said,
if thou Lord should mark iniquities, Oh Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee
that thou mayest be feared. Salvation has always been by grace. And there is no other gospel
besides the gospel of salvation by grace through faith. Let Charles Lawson be a curse. That is
stupidity to teach that Jesus taught some other means of salvation other than what Paul taught
by grace through faith, the gospel of the grace of God. But not only that, he claims that,
you know, the idea of the church being made up of both Jews and Gentiles is some new revelation with
Paul. That's ridiculous. That is prophesied in the Old Testament. Okay. But Jesus also talked
about it. For example, here's a great verse from John chapter 10, verse 16 and other sheep I have,
which are not of this fold. Them also I must bring and they shall hear my voice and there shall be
one fold and one shepherd. He's saying, look, I have other sheep that are not of this fold,
not of the house of Israel. Them I must also bring one fold, one shepherd. How about when
Jesus said that his house would be a house of prayer for all nations? And we could go on and
on and on about Old Testament scriptures and scriptures in the gospel that talk about the
rapture, that talk about salvation by grace through faith, that talk about the fact that
there's going to be one fold and one shepherd and the Jews and the Gentiles will both be a part of
the house of God. It'll be a house of prayer for all nations. I mean, the Bible says in Acts
chapter 10, to him give all the prophets witness that through his name whosoever believeth in him
shall receive remission of sins. So according to the Bible in Acts 10, the whole message of the
Old Testament prophets, all of them is that whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission
of sins. So this error that Charles Lawson is preaching here, that Paul preached a different
gospel than Jesus, is worse than his teaching of the preacher of rapture because the preacher
of rapture is not a damnable heresy. It's just an erroneous wrong view of the end times. But
when you start preaching that, you know, well, this gospel that we have is just temporary right
now. We're saved by faith and then the tribulation, it's not going to be by faith anymore. And in the
Old Testament, it wasn't by faith. We're just living in this little age of grace. That is
damnable heresy. It's warped teaching.
That the body of Christ was a spiritual body made up of believers, whether they are Jew, whether
they are Gentile, or whether they are of that age where they are alive then, or the future 2,000
years that we've known. They are all members of the body of Christ. And then once he had begun to
understand the nature of the body of Christ, the essence of the body of Christ, who makes it up,
then God began to reveal the Apostle Paul how that body of Christ is going to be caught up to
meet the Lord in the air. For he's going to come back and shout the word, come up hither,
like he did in Revelation 4. He said in 1 Thessalonians chapter number 5 that he hath not
appointed us to wrath. The term wrath in the Bible is not a reference to hell. The term wrath in
scripture is a reference to the tribulation period, the time of Jacob's trouble. That's seven years.
Okay, so there's so much wrong here. Where do I begin? He's trying to say that the word
wrath in the Bible can't be referring to someone going to hell as if that's not the wrath of God
to burn in hell. He's trying to act like the word wrath that's only referring to the seven-year
tribulation period, Jacob. So, well, you know, what does the Bible say? He that believeth on
the sun has everlasting life, and he that believeth not the sun shall not see life,
but the wrath of God abideth on him. So the wrath of God is not just limited to the end times.
People have the wrath of God on them right now, and I promise you that people that are burning
in hell right now are experiencing God's wrath at this time. But to sit there and say, oh, the wrath,
that's the seven-year tribulation period. Look, let me just debunk that very easily with scripture.
Okay, if you take your Bible and look at Matthew chapter 24 verse 29, it says,
immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun shall be darkened and the moon
shall not give her light and the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens
shall be shaken. So in Matthew 24 29, and I don't care what you believe about Matthew 24
and who it's talking to or what it's about. You have to acknowledge that Matthew 24 29
clearly says that after the tribulation, the sun and moon are darkened and the stars fall. Okay,
that's just what the verse says. Now, if we go to Revelation chapter six, we find the one time
in revelation that the sun and moon are darkened and the stars fall. And what happens? It says in
verse number 12, and I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal and lo, there was a great earthquake
and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair and the moon became his blood and the stars of heaven
fell onto the earth even as a fig tree cast of their untimely figs when she is shaken
of a mighty wind. So this is clearly the same event. It's the exact same thing. And then it says
in verse 17 for the great day of his wrath is come and who shall be able to stand. So when the
sun and moon are darkened and the stars fall, it says the great day of his wrath is come and who
shall be able to stand. That means it is come means it just arrived. It's here now. It doesn't
say it has come like it already came a while back. The great day of his wrath is come and who shall
be able to stand. So when the sun and moon are darkened and the stars fall, that's the great day
of his wrath arriving. Okay. So let me ask you this. If the sun and moon are darkened
after the tribulation, according to Matthew 24 29, no matter what viewpoint you take,
if the sun and moon are darkened after the tribulation and then the sun and moon being
darkened is what starts the wrath being poured out because it says the great day of his wrath is come
on that day when the sun and moon are darkened, how can the tribulation and the wrath be the same
thing? The tribulation is before the sun and moon are darkened. The wrath being poured out is after
the sun and moon being darkened. How in the world can you get up and make a statement? Oh,
the tribulation period is God's wrath being poured wrong. Two different things. You have tribulation,
then the sun and moon are darkened. Okay. That's where the rapture takes place.
And then God's wrath is poured out after we're gone. That's why we believe in a post tribulation
pre wrath rapture. Okay. But that next he says, Oh, this is the, the time of Jacob's trouble.
Well, again, where do we find the term time of Jacob's trouble in scripture? Only in Jeremiah
chapter 30 verse seven. And it says, alas, that day is great that there is none like it. It is
even the time of Jacob's trouble, but he should be saved out of it. Okay. That has nothing to do with
the seven year period and the end times that we're talking about. So they're just grabbing
this verse from way out of context, Jeremiah 30 verse seven, rip it out of context and just
make time of Jacob's trouble. Just apply to whatever you want it to apply to. No,
it's a day, a one day that he's referring to not some seven year period of tribulation or whatever.
And then again, this brings us back to, of course, the big problem with the pre-tribbers is that
usually they have a wrong understanding of Israel and the Jews. And they think that the tribulations
all about the Jews is the time of Jacob's trouble. And you'll get a lot of this with
Charles Lawson and the first three sermons I listened to, you know, in a lot of the ramblings
that went on that had nothing to do with the rapture. It's just a lot of Jew, this Jew,
that just Judaizing rambling because he is one of these that thinks that the Jews are God's chosen
people and all that. It's funny in this very sermon, he mentions the spirit of Antichrist.
We don't know who the Antichrist is, but we know that spirit of Antichrist.
But the bottom line is who is the Antichrist preacher? I don't know,
but I know the spirit of Antichrist. The apostle John spelled it out in first John. I know the
spirit of Antichrist. That's what we go by. We're going to stick to the Bible folks.
Okay. But he doesn't go into what that spirit of Antichrist is. And of course what that spirit of
Antichrist is the rejection of the Messiah. Okay. So it's actually the Jews that are Antichrist,
according to the Bible. Let me actually turn there and read for you what he failed to read.
It says in verse number 18, little children, it is the last time. And as you have heard that
Antichrist singular shall come, even now, are there many Antichrists whereby we know
that it is the last time. Then he explains it in verse 22, who is a liar, but he that
denieth that Jesus is the Christ. He is Antichrist that denieth the father and the son. Now, what is
the word Christ means? Well, the Bible defines it over and over again. Christ means Messiah.
It's just a Greek word versus a Hebrew word, but it's the same exact thing. Okay. So when it says,
who is a liar, but he that denied that Jesus is the Christ, what it's saying is who is a liar,
but he that denied that Jesus is the Messiah. Now, in order to deny that Jesus is the Messiah,
you have to believe that there is a Messiah and that it's not Jesus who fits that bill.
Judaism, the Jews believe that there's a Messiah that's not Jesus. So he is Antichrist
that denied the father and the son. Do the Jews deny the father and the son? Yes, they do. Do they
believe that Jesus is not the Christ? That's exactly what they believe, that Jesus is not
the Christ. And then it says, whosoever denieth the son, the same hath not the father, meaning
that the Jews have a different God, but he that acknowledges the son hath the father also. That's
Christians. We have the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost. The Jews have nothing. They don't have
the father because they don't have the son because you can't have the one without the other. No man
cometh unto the father, but by Jesus. So there's a lot of Judaizing in these sermons. Now we have
to admit in this sermon, he did pretty good as far as actually talking about the rapture for like
21 minutes or something in the sermon. Then he goes off into the weird ramblings. And so forth
and so on. It's all over the internet. Now I cannot authenticate how much of all of that is true.
Operation High Jump is true. Something was going on at the South Pole. Something is going on
on this earth. This time we get a 108 year old rabbi making predictions that, you know, the
Messiah is going to come soon. How many of you know about a Jewish rabbi who lived 108 years?
He died in 2006. He was 108 years old. We get into John Hagee's blood moons and how interesting
that is and how he really wants to read that book by John Hagee. Such best-selling books as
The Harbinger, The Ancient Mystery That Holds the Secret of America's Future, Rabbi Jonathan Cahn,
and Four Blood Moons, Something Is About to Change by Pastor John Hagee. I'd be very,
very interested in reading that. Don't you think that these things are happening? Now let me give
you a little story about something that happened. And then we get into how, you know, something's
going to happen most likely between April 2014 and October 2015. You know, he doesn't want to
set a date or anything, but yeah, it's pretty interesting. I think something's going to happen
between April 2014, October 2015. Of course, here we are in December of 2018 and nothing happened.
And I'm sure John Hagee's book is on sale for a great discount now that none of that stuff
happened. And then he gets into how Billy Graham predicted that the second coming of Christ is
coming soon. Just as Noah did in ancient times, world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham
is sounding the alarm the second coming is near. Billy Graham is 95 years old. He's been here a
while. He's been here a while. He's 95. He's saying that he believes that the second coming
of Christ is near at hand. He just blah, blah, blah, goes into a lot of different things.
But anyway, let me give you another sample from one of his other sermons with his Jewish
Judaizing garbage. Here's where he said that we owe a great debt to the Jews, you know, because
I mean, the Bible is just a Jewish book. It's all from the Jews.
We are in an enormous debt to the Jews. For every word, folks, that you read in that Old Testament
is a Jewish book. Pure Jewish. Jewish. They call it the Tanakh. They don't call it the Old Testament.
If a Jew calls it the Old Testament, that's a tacit admission that there's a New Testament.
But it's the Tanakh. So we have a debt to the Jews. I'm so glad it seems like things are changing
up there on Capitol Hill as it relates to this country and Israel. I really am.
You know, this is about as ridiculous as saying that we owe Barack Obama a great debt because
of things that John Quincy Adams did, you know, because he's the president now or something.
What in the world do today's Christ-hating, Christ-rejecting Jews have to do with the Word
of God or the Bible that was written thousands of years ago? Okay, the Jews that God used to pin
scripture have been gone for approximately, you know, two millennia and yet we're supposed to go
thank a Christ-hating, Christ-rejecting Jew or we owe them big time. We don't owe them jack.
That's like saying, oh, you know, we owe Italy a big debt today because of pizza or something.
You know, I mean, that would actually make more sense. Okay, this stuff is just bizarre.
All right, I'll give Charles Lawson the last word here with some more of his
unbiblical teachings on the rapture. God bless you. Have a great day.
In Matthew 24, he's talking about the coming of Christ, second advent,
specifically as he comes back to the Jew themselves. But for us, he said that moment
will not overtake you as a thief or in darkness for at any moment, any time, you can hear a shout
and be gone from here. And that's what I'm waiting for and I'm looking for tonight.