AT SOME time in the not too distant future there will be a Rapture and every genuine believer in Jesus Christ will disappear just as Jesus said they would.
“One shall be taken and the other left” (Luke 17:34-36).
Those who are “taken” are taken in mercy and those who are left are left for judgment. The original Greek word translated “taken” literally means, “to receive to ones self” and when the disciples asked Jesus “where Lord, would they be taken?” Jesus answered, “Where the (living) body is, there will the eagles be gathered together”.
Jesus likened the Rapture to eagles rising higher and higher catching the warm updrafts till they reach heights as great as 20,000 feet!
The Greek word translated “body” in Luke 17 is soma which is a “living body” and comes from another Greek verb sozo meaning “I save”. It is a saving body to which we are caught up in the sky just as Paul indicated:
“For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ” (1Thess.5:9).
Salvation comes in three ways. We are created in the image of God, body, soul and spirit. When we believe on Christ we receive forgiveness of sins. We are justified in God’s sight and God the Holy Spirit comes to permanently dwell in us. God makes us “a new creature in Christ” but we still struggle with the flesh i.e. the desires of the body. As Paul wrote: “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Rom.8:22-23).
At the Rapture our bodies are finally changed to be perfect in likeness to Christ’s resurrection body.
Adoption, in Biblical times, was when a person achieved full maturity as an adult. Before this time they were considered a child under “tutors and governors” (Gal.4:2).
Our salvation is eternally secured by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross the moment we believe on Him but our salvation is not complete until the Rapture when our bodies are changed into His likeness. Thus we can understand Paul’s statement that at the Rapture all believers will “obtain salvation” (1Thess.5:9). At the Rapture we will no longer be tempted by the desires of the flesh. John wrote:
“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1John3:2).
The “wrath” to which God has not appointed us cannot be hell or the lake of fire because the context is all about the wrath of the Day of the Lord which is the Great Tribulation.
Placing scripture into the right context is vital to understanding any verse of scripture and this verse is placed in the context of the Day of the Lord.
In chapter 4 of 1 Thessalonians Paul described the Rapture, or catching away of all who are “in Christ”. Then in chapter 5 he proceeds to indicate when the Rapture will occur. They had
“turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come” (1Thess.1:9-10).
“The wrath to come” was the Day of the Lord or the Great Tribulation. These believers knew they had been delivered from it and that the Rapture must occur first. But when time had passed and some had died, Paul had to explain what would happen to the deceased saints when the Rapture took place. He comforted them with the words:
“The dead in Christ shall rise FIRST…”
Then in chapter 5 Paul states that even though the world is talking “Peace and safety” sudden destruction will come on an unsuspecting world. However THAT DAY would not overtake the believers. He urges the believers to take “for an helmet the hope of salvation”. The helment protects the head where our thoughts are generated. The helmet of salvation is the hope of salvation – the assurance that the Rapture was before the Tribulation. They were not appointed to the wrath of the Day of the Lord but to obtain salvation!
These Thessalonian believers were already saved and assured of a place in heaven but should they be alive when the Tribulation came they would be spared by being caught up to meet the Lord in the air together with those believers who had died.
Today many fear the terrible things that could occur at any time. The thought of being here when God’s wrath is poured out on an ungodly world can be terrifying. But if the Rapture occurs before the Day of the Lord we have nothing to fear and should “comfort one another with these words” (1Thess.4:18). Paul concludes that “whether we wake (are alive) or sleep (die)” it will make no difference because all believers shall be “caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air”
Confusion about Prophecy
As we draw closer to the Rapture of the Church it seems that Satan is redoubling his efforts to disturb and unsettle Christians. He wants to rob them of the “helmet, the hope of salvation” i.e. the Rapture before the Tribulation.
There are some who claim to be Bible teachers who say that Christians must go through the seven years of Great Tribulation. Others teach we will have to go through the first half of the Tribulation while others teach that we are only rescured from a brief period of Wrath at the end of the Tribulation.
Other Bible teachers suggest that Christians must be purified by affliction before the Rapture but they fail to understand that the Church is not Israel and the 70 sevens of years are determined on Daniel’s people (the Jews) and his holy city which is Jerusalem. This confusion is not new. False teachers were doing the same thing in Paul’s day and he wrote his second epistle to the Thessalonians to correct that error. Paul wrote:
“Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto
him, That ye 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 (now present). 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…” (2Thess.2:1-3).
False teachers at Thessalonica had forged letters and even signed Paul’s name on them stating that the Tribulation had already come.
Now Paul had taught that the Rapture would occur BEFORE the Tribulation so if the Tribulation had already come then they must have missed the Rapture and this called into question the whole matter of whether they were ever saved!
Nothing could be more unsettling to a believer than to have his relationship with Jesus Christ called into question! And so Paul wrote “Let no man deceive you…” All of these teachers who deny the pre-Tribulation Rapture are deceivers. It matters not what protestations they come up with or how eloquently they can preach, or how many followers they can rally, in God’s sight they are deceivers!
A deceiver is one who takes away from God’s Word or one who adds to God’s Word and in Revelation 22:18-19 John concludes his prophecy with the solemn warning to such. God will add the plagues written in Revelation to those who add their own interpretations to this book and will “take away his part from the book of life” if they “take away from the words of the book of this prophecy” (Rev.22:19).
It is no light matter to tamper with Bible prophecy!
Paul is absolutely emphatic, “that day (of the tribulation) shall NOT COME” except there comes two events!
“there shall come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed” (2Thess.2:3)
The original Greek here is very clear and the words “a falling away” is better translated, “the departure” and it comes FIRST. Departure is the noun form of the verb translated elsewhere in the KJV Bible, “to depart”. Before any of the Tribulation judgments can fall on this wicked world “the Departure” must occur and then the man of sin, the Antichrist, must be revealed.
Paul goes on to say that someone is hindering the appearance of Antichrist and until He is “taken out of the way” the “Wicked One” i.e. Antichrist, cannot be revealed!
The Hinderer is the Holy Spirit indwelling the Church and when the Rapture occurs the Church will no longer be here to hinder the revelation of the “man of sin”.
Jesus promised that after He returned to heaven He would send “another Comforter” to dwell in the Body of Christ, to guide us into all truth (John 16:13). While the Church is here, indwelt by the Holy Spirit Antichrist cannot appear.
The Tribulation begins with Antichrist signing a covenant with the nation of Israel and both events must occur before the Tribulation begins. Israel’s last seven years before the nation is blessed in the Kingdom of God can only begin with the Departure of the Church and the revelation of the man of sin!
The Testimony of the Apostles
In Acts chapter 15 the early Apostolic Church reached a crisis. On the day of Pentecost Peter preached to the Jews and God gave the gift of Gentile languages signifying that henceforth a change was taking place and God was going to turn to the Gentiles. No longer would salvation be “of the Jews” (John 4:22). Israel would be put aside until the end of the age but when the “fulness of the Gentiles” had come in the nation of Israel would be saved (Rom.11:25-26).
When Peter was told to go to the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurian, he objected but had to learn that God was turning to the Gentiles.
Then when Paul and Barnabas came to Jerusalem declaring the conversion of Gentiles the Apostles gathered to consider this dramatic change of direction. James summed up after some discussion. The concept of a Church that included converted Gentiles and Jews was new and in Acts 15:14-20 James outlined God’s program.
- God was taking out of the Gentiles a people for His name and that was the Church. One day the the Father will determine that the “fulness of the Gentiles has come in” and the Church will Depart.
- After this the Tribulation will come and “so all Israel shall be saved”. The Lord will return and “build again the tabernacle of David”. The throne of David and the nation of Israel would again be restored in the kingdom of God.
- The Gentiles will be blessed in the Kingdom of God when Christ reigns.
Thus we have God’s plan for the future. We live in the Church age when God is calling out from the nations a Church. But when the Church is complete she will be removed and Israel will be restored. Christ will sit on the throne of David reigning over the entire earth and for 1,000 years Gentiles will be blessed in the Kingdom of Christ.
Daniel prophesied that God has determined 70 sevens of years upon Jews and Jerusalem (Dan.9:24) and the last seven years, when the nation will be repentant and restored, has been deferred to the end of the age. It is “the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it” (Jer.30:7). That seven years is the Great Tribulation detailed in the Book of the Revelation chapters 6 to 18.
The “fulness of the Gentile Church” and the blindness of the nation of Israel cannot co-exist. God will determine the number of Gentiles that will make up the Church and when the Church is complete the Bride of Christ will “depart” for heaven. The marriage of the Lamb and the judgment seat of Christ will follow. Christ must “return from the wedding” (Luke 12:36)
BY John Ecob
