(Part One)

It has been my experience that many Christians sometimes do not want to hear all the truth of God’s Holy Words as written in the Holy Bible! And if they hear it, they don’t believe it, or can’t be bothered!

I can’t make you believe what I present here, but I believe I have built a pretty good case. And whether you believe it or not, that’s up to you. Disbelief is not going to prevent the event from happening.

If Isaiah 53 is the stumbling block for the Jews, then 1 Thessalonians 4 is the stumbling block for Christians.

Such is often the case when one speaks of the Rapture of the Church.

Yet, what can be more important, more compelling than to know that Christ is coming back for His bride, the Church? And that includes you and me!

Really?

Yes, really. Anytime now.

It is my belief that when God, the Father calls the last person to be saved by faith in Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit, then will Jesus come for His believers at the Rapture, and that will complete the Church Age, the Age of Grace that we currently live in. And thus 2,000 years of Church history will have been completed since its birth at Pentecost in Jerusalem of Judea in the year 33 A.D.

The idea of the Second Coming of Christ is His promise to “Rapture” His church, His true believers to Himself one day, that is, to meet Him in the air above the clouds and follow Him back to Heaven, IS, I Repeat, Is and always has been the Glorious Hope of the church. Like it or not, believe it or not, it is written in the Word of God in the Holy Bible. All God’s words is truth; He cannot lie; He cannot err.

To deny the Rapture is to deny the power of God! And to deny the power of God speaks of an unbelief in your faith.

And this truth of Scripture is set forth primarily in a Gospel (John) and two Epistles (1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians) by the two greatest Bible teachers of all time: Jesus and Paul.

And it is all about Jesus’s love for us and how He would carry out His plan to get us to Heaven after His death on the cross, His burial,. His resurrection from the dead, and His glorious Ascension: the mighty work He will do at the Rapture! As was His almighty power that created all things by His spoken word, so it will be at the Rapture when He shouts it to happen.

This future, prophetic, miraculous event is something only God can co and will do because it hasn’t happened yet, and because He said so, and because He promised, and He will do it! As it is written, all Scripture must be fulfilled.

But it was put in motion when Jesus spoke these words to His disciples during the Last Supper in the Upper Room in Jerusalem just before He was betrayed and sent to His death.

And in all the history of the world there was never anything about the Rapture until Jesus spoke those famous words as recorded in John 14:1-6.

There He gave them the very first words of a future Rapture when Jesus Himself would come back for them, and for all of us, and so answered Peter’s question about where was the Lord going?

His answer to Peter in chapter 13 sets the stage for what He was to tell them in chapter 14.

John 13:36…”Where I am going you cannot follow Me now, but you shall follow Me afterwards.” (The very first hint of the Rapture).

Next comes the first of the three pillars of the doctrine of the Rapture of the Church, His Church, His Bride!

It was at the Last Supper when He said to His disciples gathered there that one would betray Him and one would deny Him three times! And that was like a verbal bombshell that exploded in their midst, and they were highly upset!

Here then is what Jesus said to them (the first pillar of the Rapture) in John 14:1-6:

“Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again (Second Coming, Rapture phase) and receive you to Myself (Rapture), so that where I am, there you may be also.”

“And where I go you know, and the way you know.”

“Thomas said to Him, Lord, we do not know where you are going, and how can we know the way?”

“Jesus said to him, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Don’t you see? None of us is bodily going up tp Heaven except by Jesus. That’s the way He made it to be before the foundation of the world, and that’s the way He’s gonna make it happen by His almighty power, one of these days.

The same idea of this future event was amplified by Paul in his Epistle to the Thessalonians (the Second Pillar of thew Rapture) in Chapter 4, verses 13-17:

“But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep (died), lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.

For the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God.

And the dead in Christ will rise first.

Then we who. are alive and remain shall be ‘caught up’ (raptured) together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

And thus we shall always be with the Lord.”

Someone said “rapture” wasn’t;’t in the Bible, but there it is right there in the two words, “caught up,” or “raptured” taken from the Latin word, “rapturo,” taken from the Greek, “harpazo” in the New Testament bibles.

This is the truth of the Rapture as clearly taught by Jesus and Paul. Grasp it!

Now comes the third pillar of the Rapture as found in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 as Paul tells his church at Corinth what’s going to happen:

“Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.

For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”