The entire book of Romans is pure doctrine and it’s the doctrine of the hope that we must have, of the fact that we must wait with perseverance, of the fact there is coming a day when not only the souls, not only the spirit, our body is going to be redeemed out of this world.
1 Thessalonians 4, “I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.” He said, Guys, even if some of our brothers and sisters died, if they are believers, thank you Lord, because you don’t have that lifestyle of having no hope like so many. He said, “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.”
When Paul said, “For this, we say to you by the word of the Lord,” Paul basically said, Okay, I’m telling you exactly what God is speaking. Okay? It’s not my opinion, it’s not my theology. Look what God says. He says this. He said, “That we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no mean precede those who are asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with a voice of an archangel and with a trumpet of God and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore,” he said, “comfort one another with these words.”
Every day, remind yourself that your citizenship is not here anymore. You have heavenly citizenship. When you die, you don’t die. You go home. Going home where you belong. When somebody dies here, he just falls asleep. And it’s interesting, when your child falls asleep in the living room and you take him all the way to his bedroom, he wakes up in his bedroom. We fall asleep here, we wake up there. Good deal.
And that’s the comfort. We need to comfort one another with these words. Don’t listen to those naysayers. Don’t listen to those... They are scoffers and they’re mockers. The easiest thing to mock in our faith is the rapture. Why? Because it sounds really out of this world. I mean, think about it. We’re gone. But, hey, was the parting of the Red Sea not something else? Why is the rapture your only problem? I mean, wasn’t Jesus taken in the cloud? What about Elijah with all that amazing drama? I mean, what about the Jordan River rolling all the way back and piling water all the way to the sky as a pillar, letting a million, almost a million and a half Israelites cross at the same time? How come you have a problem with the rapture of the church and you can accept all the other things? Isn’t God the God of miracles?
I mean, you want God to just be an ordinary God and just the world to be an ordinary world and things as they always been. This is like putting you to sleep.
While denying the rapture is quite popular today, one of the main arguments made by the rapture deniers is that no one believed or taught it early in church history and only in the last 100 or so years was it popularized.
Not only is this untrue, it is a denial of scripture. The early church fathers, as this group of deniers likes to refer to them, are not the litmus test of whether or not the Bible teaches the rapture. The whole reason for the epistles was that churches were getting things wrong. So a person’s proximity to the time of Jesus is not a valid test for doctrinal accuracy. Biblical consistency is the only way to test doctrine.
Some say the Bible doesn’t use the word rapture. However, if you were reading from the Vulgate, the Latin Bible, you would find the word “rapere” (the source for the word “rapture”) used in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 where it is translated as “caught up” in English Bibles.
Beyond that, one of the most overlooked passages that confirms the Rapture as sound biblical doctrine, is recorded in John 14 where Jesus said:
John 14:3
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.
The Greek word translated as “receive” is paralambanō and it means “to take up or to take away”. It can also mean “to take to join to one’s self”.
There is another famed passage where we find this huge Greek word:
Matthew 24:40-42
Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left. Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.
The word paralambanō, “to take up, to take away, to join with oneself”, is translated in this passage as “taken.” One will be taken up and the other left and this will happen at an unexpected time.
Romans 8:23-24
Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?
Don’t you have to be alive to groan within yourselves and eagerly wait for the redemption of our body? This hope came with our salvation and the object of hope is obviously in the future since hope has no role once something comes to pass.
What does this mean?
1 Corinthians 15:50-52
Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. 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.
Not everyone is going to die, but everyone is going to be changed. The dead in Christ will be changed and Christians alive at the time of the Rapture will be changed into immortal, incorruptible beings. If this is not aligned with the Rapture, what does it mean?
Rapture deniers may abound today and expect to go through the Tribulation, but that is actually what you don’t find in the Bible – Christians facing God’s wrath.
One day we will wake up and it will be the day of the Rapture and every day is a candidate for being that day. So let’s make sure we are living like time is running out and have a desperation for the perishing around us because it seems possible that the trumpet that signals the Rapture may already be pressed against the angel’s lips assigned to blow it.
Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus,