Rapture

[LMR]

Hi everyone, I am still trying to get use to this site so bare with me. Wondering if anyone can give me scriptures on where in the Bible it talks about the rapture? When does it say this rapture will take place.

[Last Daze]

32 minutes ago, LMR said:

Hi everyone, I am still trying to get use to this site so bare with me. Wondering if anyone can give me scriptures on where in the Bible it talks about the rapture? When does it say this rapture will take place.

The rapture is described in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 and 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 and mentioned as the first of two reapings in Revelation 14:14-16.

According to scripture the rapture happens:

• after the resurrection
• at the last trumpet
• on the day of the Lord
• after the apostasy
• after the man of sin is revealed
• like a thief in the night
• after the armies gather for Armageddon

The church should be prepared to go through the great tribulation.  There is no great escape.  For those interested, I've compiled a pdf booklet on the subject available here.

[Marilyn C]

Hi LMR,

The above is one view. Though many of us believe that the `catching away, ` the rapture is BEFORE the tribulation.  Others will give you more scriptures but I just want to say that Christ died for everyone, (as you would know) & that He made specific groups for specific responsibilities. The Body of Christ is the first purpose that will be fulfilled & when complete, mature, will be caught away to its eternal setting in the third heaven where we shall judge the world system & fallen angels.

- caught away, (1 Thess. 4: 13 - 18)

- in the third heaven, (Rev. 3: 21)

- judging the world system, (1 Cor. 6: 2)

- judging angels, (1 Cor. 6: 3)

 

It is Israel & the nations that will go through the tribulation. This time is for Israel to turn again to God & for the rebellious of the nations to come under God`s punishment. People can still call out to God & be saved, though they will not be in the Body of Christ as that will have been completed & gone to its reward.

 

Blessings, Marilyn.

 

 

[Last Daze]

There are really only two passages that you need to understand to realize that the church will go through the great tribulation.

• For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.  But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming, then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power.  1 Corinthians 15:22-24

• Then I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was given to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received the mark on their forehead and on their hand; and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.  The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed. This is the first resurrection.  Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years.  Revelation 20:4-6

The first passage declares that there are two immortal resurrections yet to take place.  The first resurrection includes the rapture and occurs at His coming.  The second one takes place at the end, after the 1000 year reign of Christ.  This is affirmed in the second passage.

The second passage states that the first resurrection includes those who were martyred during the great tribulation.  The resurrection / rapture that occurs when Christ returns must of necessity happen after the great tribulation in order for it to include those who were martyred during it.

• Five of them were foolish, and five were prudent.  Matthew 25:2

The prudent ones were in it for the long haul....something to think about.

[Guest]

This is not meant to be a complete commentary on 2 Thes. 2. Instead, I want to demonstrate that Paul had to have taught the Thessalonians that the rapture of the Church would precede the End Times judgments.

By most accounts Paul stayed in Thessalonica for only about 3 weeks and during that time he founded a Church and taught them the doctrines of salvation and sanctification, the Trinity, the nature of man, the assurance of pardon, and the Day of the Lord. He continued teaching them after he left with his first letter, written from Corinth in 51 AD, in which he introduced the doctrine of the rapture (1 Thes. 4:16-17).  Shortly after that they received another letter appearing to be from him, announcing that the Day of the Lord had come.   They reacted with fear and confusion and immediately sought clarification.

“Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus and our being gathered to Him, we ask you brothers, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy report or letter supposed to have come from us saying that the Day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.” (2 Thes 2:1-3)

From Paul’s response it’s clear the letter they were concerned about had been a forgery, sent by someone pretending to be him and designed to frighten them.  It worked.  The Greek words for unsettle and alarm literally mean to agitate, incite, and frighten. Something in the letter had contradicted their understanding of his teaching and they were upset. Reading 2 Thes 2:1-3 we see that the forgery must have disputed Paul’s teaching on events leading up to the Day of the Lord.  This is the only logical explanation for his 2nd letter to the Thessalonians.

Notice that right from the beginning Paul separated the coming of the Lord from our being gathered to Him. That’s because they’re two different events.   We can’t tell their relative timing from this, but we can tell they’re not the same thing.  The Second Coming is when He comes back down to Earth to be with His people here, while from 1 Thes. 4:16-17 we know the rapture has us going up to meet Him in the air and continuing to Heaven to be with Him there (John 14:2-3). The 2nd coming will be witnessed by everyone (Matt. 24:30), but the rapture is an instantaneous disappearance of believers only (1 Cor. 15:51-52) that happens without warning.

The quote above is from Romans 15:4.  It tells us that Paul wasn’t just writing to the Thessalonian believers.  He was also writing to us.  Think about it. The Day of the Lord is a term that always refers to the End Times and most often to the Great Tribulation. If Paul had taught them to expect a post-tribulation rapture would they have been agitated and frightened upon receiving the forgery?  No!  It would more likely have made them think the 2nd coming was only a few years away and many of them would live to see it.

The only justification for their fear and confusion would be if Paul had taught them a pre-trib rapture. In that case a letter telling them the Day of the Lord had come would mean they had missed the rapture, and that would mean they weren’t saved.  Now we can see how they would be agitated, angry and afraid. Imagine how you would you feel in a situation like that.

From 2 Thes 2:1-3 we can begin to construct Paul’s teaching on the chronology of events leading up to the Day of the Lord. Remember, there’s an abundance of proof from his other letters showing that Paul taught the doctrine of eternal security, aka once saved always saved.  Some of the most obvious references are Romans 8:38-39, 2 Cor 1:21-22, 2 Cor. 5:5, Ephes. 1:13-14, and Ephes. 4:30.  In all of them Paul taught that true believers cannot fall away from faith for any reason.  He said the Lord guaranteed our inheritance and sealed the Holy Spirit inside us as a deposit.

But Paul spoke of a rebellion (falling away) in 2 Thes 2:3 that would have to precede the Day of the Lord.  The Greek word translated rebellion is apostasia, from which we get apostasy.  It means people would abandon something they once considered themselves to be part of and the context implies that it’s the church.  You can’t fall away from something unless you first think of yourself as being part of it.   But true believers can’t fall away at all.  Therefore this rebellion or apostasy has to involve those who thought of themselves as being part of the church, but weren’t really saved.

Don’t be confused about this.  We see believers-in-name-only leaving traditional churches to join the Emerging Church all around us, but rebellion is as much attitude as it is action and they don’t think they’re rebelling against God.  They see themselves as still being in the Church.  In fact they think they’re the best part of it.  Far from being rebellious, they call themselves followers of Christ, not just believers in him, and doers of the word, not just hearers.  They’re not sitting in Churches on Sunday listening to the same tired old messages on sin and salvation and coming forward to be born again.  No.  They’re out there in the world, thinking they’re changing it for Jesus.

These advocates of the so-called social gospel don’t realize it’s not what you do for the Lord that matters, it’s what you believe He’s done for you.  The only work the Lord requires of us is that we believe in the one He sent (John 6:29).  That means to believe God chose to send His Son to Earth to die for our sins so we can choose to live with Him in Eternity (John 3:16).  The righteous work of a thousand lifetimes will not suffice in place of this belief.

When these believers-in-name-only discover the true Church has disappeared while they’ve been left behind, that’s when they’ll rebel against God and join the other side.  By the time the anti-Christ makes his claim to deity, the whole world will follow him (Rev. 13:8) and they’ll be right in the forefront.

The End Times According To Paul:

"He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God." (2 Thes. 2:4) After the rapture and the falling away of believers-in-name-only into His world-wide counterfeit religion, the anti-Christ will be revealed for who he really is by proclaiming himself to be God.  Remember, the sequence Paul gave was first the apostasy, and then the man of lawlessness will be revealed.

For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming (2 Thes. 2:7-8).

Here Paul confirmed this sequence, saying a restrainer is currently holding things back.  After the restrainer is taken out of the way the anti-Christ will be revealed.  This restrainer is the Holy Spirit, sealed within the Church.  After the rapture, the Holy Spirit will be out of the way, the rebellion will take place, and the anti-Christ will be revealed.  These things can’t happen until the church is gone.

The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.  For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness (2 Thes. 2:9-12).

Most likely, the anti-Christ will already be known as a great statesman and leader, but by declaring himself to be God he’ll be laying claim to Planet Earth. This claim will kick off the Great Tribulation (Matt. 24:15-21) and will be accompanied by all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders that will deceive those who have fallen away into thinking they have finally found the truth. But in reality they will have rejected the truth and embraced a lie.  At the end of the Great Tribulation the Lord will return to over throw the anti-Christ and destroy him by the splendor of His coming and those who believe the lie will perish as well.

In his letters to the Thessalonians Paul didn’t reveal the actual timing of the Rapture except as it relates to other events. It may be one of the things he was forbidden to speak about (2 Cor. 12:4).  All we know is for reasons of His own the Lord has never given us a specific date for the rapture.  But by carefully studying passages describing it and maintaining the view that the Bible cannot contradict itself, the astute believer can obey the commandment to “know the times and seasons” and construct with some assurance the correct sequence of events. Paul criticized the Thessalonians for not figuring this out back then (2 Thes 2:5) and would even more strongly criticize the church today for the same reason.

[OneLight]

LMR, there are 171 threads with the word Rapture in the title.  Being new, you may not know how to do a proper search on the subject, so here is a link to help.  http://www.worthychristianforums.com/search/?&q=Rapture&type=forums_topic&search_in=titles

[missmuffet]

Question: "What is the rapture of the church?"

Answer: The word rapture does not occur in the Bible. The term comes from a Latin word meaning “a carrying off, a transport, or a snatching away.” The concept of the “carrying off” or the rapture of the church is clearly taught in Scripture.

The rapture of the church is the event in which God “snatches away” all believers from the earth in order to make way for His righteous judgment to be poured out on the earth during the tribulation period. The rapture is described primarily in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 and 1 Corinthians 15:50–54. God will resurrect all believers who have died, give them glorified bodies, and take them from the earth, along with all living believers, who will also be given glorified bodies at that time. “For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17).

The rapture will involve an instantaneous transformation of our bodies to fit us for eternity. “We know that when he [Christ] appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). The rapture is to be distinguished from the second coming. At the rapture, the Lord comes “in the clouds” to meet us “in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17). At the second coming, the Lord descends all the way to the earth to stand on the Mount of Olives, resulting in a great earthquake followed by a defeat of God’s enemies (Zechariah 14:3–4).

The doctrine of the rapture was not taught in the Old Testament, which is why Paul calls it a “mystery” now revealed: “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51–52).

The rapture of the church is a glorious event we should all be longing for. We will finally be free from sin. We will be in God’s presence forever. There is far too much debate over the meaning and scope of the rapture. This is not God’s intent. Rather, the rapture should be a comforting doctrine full of hope; God wants us to “encourage each other with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18).

http://www.gotquestions.org/rapture-of-the-church.html

[missmuffet]

The rapture of the Church and the second coming are two separate events

The important differences between the rapture and second coming are as follows:

1) At the rapture, believers meet the Lord in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:17). At the second coming, believers return with the Lord to the earth (Revelation 19:14).

2) The second coming occurs after the great and terrible tribulation (Revelation chapters 6–19). The rapture occurs before the tribulation (1 Thessalonians 5:9; Revelation 3:10).

3) The rapture is the removal of believers from the earth as an act of deliverance (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17, 5:9). The second coming includes the removal of unbelievers as an act of judgment (Matthew 24:40-41).

4) The rapture will be secret and instant (1 Corinthians 15:50-54). The second coming will be visible to all (Revelation 1:7; Matthew 24:29-30).

5) The second coming of Christ will not occur until after certain other end-times events take place (2 Thessalonians 2:4; Matthew 24:15-30; Revelation chapters 6–18). The rapture is imminent; it could take place at any moment (Titus 2:13; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 1 Corinthians 15:50-54).

Why is it important to keep the rapture and the second coming distinct?

1) If the rapture and the second coming are the same event, believers will have to go through the tribulation (1 Thessalonians 5:9; Revelation 3:10).

2) If the rapture and the second coming are the same event, the return of Christ is not imminent—there are many things which must occur before He can return (Matthew 24:4-30).

3) In describing the tribulation period, Revelation chapters 6–19 nowhere mentions the church. During the tribulation—also called “the time of trouble for Jacob” (Jeremiah 30:7)—God will again turn His primary attention to Israel (Romans 11:17-31).
 

http://www.gotquestions.org/difference-Rapture-Second-Coming.html

[MorningGlory]

19 hours ago, LMR said:

Hi everyone, I am still trying to get use to this site so bare with me. Wondering if anyone can give me scriptures on where in the Bible it talks about the rapture? When does it say this rapture will take place.

I think that OneLight gave you an excellent piece of advice; do the search and read up on the Rapture.  There's a LOT of material on this site.  Oh, and welcome to Worthy!

[WilliamL]

2 hours ago, bopeep1909 said:

The rapture of the Church and the second coming are two separate events

The important differences between the rapture and second coming are as follows:

1) At the rapture, believers meet the Lord in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:17). At the second coming, believers return with the Lord to the earth (Revelation 19:14).

False dichotomy: 1 Thes. 4:15 calls this rapture event "the coming/parousia of the Lord." The word parousia typically referred to the presence of royalty. At this point, God begins his personal intervention into history, which presence will continue throughout the whole period of his wrath against the people of the world for their rebellions against his Way and his Messiah. His wrath is concluded in the events of Rev. 19.

2) The second coming occurs after the great and terrible tribulation (Revelation chapters 6–19). The rapture occurs before the tribulation (1 Thessalonians 5:9; Revelation 3:10).

False. 1Thes. 5:9 says "God did not appoint us to wrath." It does not say that God will not allow us to undergo great tribulation. The two terms are mutually exclusive, and saying that they mean the same thing (while supplying no biblical evidence whatsoever) is pure deception. More on this below.

3) The rapture is the removal of believers from the earth as an act of deliverance (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17, 5:9). The second coming includes the removal of unbelievers as an act of judgment (Matthew 24:40-41).

True; note that "includes" is underlined.

4) The rapture will be secret and instant (1 Corinthians 15:50-54). The second coming will be visible to all (Revelation 1:7; Matthew 24:29-30).

First sentence is false, second one true. Nothing in 1 Corinthians 15:50-54 speaks of a secret rapture.

5) The second coming of Christ will not occur until after certain other end-times events take place (2 Thessalonians 2:4; Matthew 24:15-30; Revelation chapters 6–18). The rapture is imminent; it could take place at any moment (Titus 2:13; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 1 Corinthians 15:50-54).

First sentence is true, with the caveat that the coming comes right after the 6th seal is opened, as witnessed by the quote from Rev. 6:17 above. Second sentence is false: nothing in the three passages cited speaks of a secret rapture.