For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with God's trumpet. The dead in Christ will rise first,
Now again Paul said I . . . you remember I told you about this. "I testified to you about this. Be honest and fair in your dealings with your brothers." We're not to defraud our brothers. My heart is grieved over the problems that have arisen within the body of Christ, and especially in these days when a lot of the various businesses advertise with Christian symbols, and you expect from a Christian you want to patronize them because, first of all, you want the Christians to have the business. You hope for their success in business, but you also expect honesty, forthrightness. In dealing with a Christian you expect them to be honest.You know the problems of taking a car to a mechanic. There's just a lot of corrupt practices. There's a lot of unnecessary charges; there're a lot of charges for work that isn't done. And so if you find a Christian mechanic, you get excited and say, "Oh, I can trust him." And we should be able to, and so in any business. But, Paul here is warning, "Don't defraud, don't cheat, be square, be honest. I told you this when I was there. I forewarned you that God is the avenger."Now this is the problem, I think, with our society, is that we have failed to take into consideration that there is a day of reckoning coming; that there is a day of judgment coming. People have gotten by with so much. They've been able to get by and, of course, with the leniency of our court today, they're getting by with more and more. Just hope that you don't get arrested for, or pressed by the IRS; that's about the only thing you go to prison for anymore you know. Or like this poor woman Betty DeDe who hid her child because the courts ordered her to deliver him over to her homosexual husband. So she's facing imprisonment, though murderers and rapists can walk our streets. She's a danger to our society hiding her husband from her...I mean hiding her son from her homosexual husband, and not turning him for the visitation rights. And she needs to be dealt with and put in prison and taught a lesson. What a danger to our society, but don't you worry, you know. I cannot understand...there's no sense getting into that. I just...So, don't defraud your brother, because God's gonna judge you. God is the avenger of all such which do that. And we've warned you about the judgment of God that's gonna come. Paul was faithful in warning them, and I think that we need to warn people about the judgment of God; you're not gonna get by. Ultimately God is going to judge. He is the avenger of those that do such things.