What Is Meant by the Parable of the Dragnet?

What Is Meant by the Parable of the Dragnet?

Last time we saw that the believers who are alive on the earth at the Second Coming of Christ will go into the next period of world history, namely, the Millennial Kingdom age of world history. That’s the order of the Second Coming. All the unbelievers removed from the earth in judgment at the Second Coming of Christ and the believers who are alive at that time left here to go into the next period, namely, the Kingdom.

Jesus taught the same order for His Second Coming again in what’s called the Parable of the Dragnet. We read in Matthew 13:47, “Again the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea and gathered of every kind, which, when it was full they drew to shore and sat down and gathered the good in the vessels but cast the bad away.”

Now, here Jesus gives the application of that parable to His Second Coming. “So shall it be at the end of the age. The angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the just.” The angels are going to in essence cut out the wicked, remove them, from among the just, the righteous, “and shall cast them into the furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

Notice the same order for His glorious Second Coming immediately after the seven-year Tribulation period. His holy angels will remove all the unbelievers who are alive on the earth at that time from the earth in judgment and put them into a horrible place of judgment character­ized by fire where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. But the good fish, representing the believers, are left here to go into the Kingdom.

He’s teaching that the order of things at His Second Coming will be just the reverse of the order at the Rapture. At the Rapture it’s all the believers who are removed from the earth and blessing to meet Christ in the air to return with Him to His Father’s house in Heaven and it’s the unbelievers who will be left here on the face of the earth.