The Rapture

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Parts 4 & 5.

The Dead in Christ

We have briefly looked at three of the four spectacular things God will do just before the rapture of the church: (1) “the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout;” (2) “the voice of an archangel [Michael]” will be heard; and (3) “the trumpet of God” will sound. Then—and what an event this will be—all “the dead in Christ will rise” (1 Thess. 4:16, NKJV).

Who are these people? They are people who have believed in Christ since the church began nearly 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 1-2). They include men, women and children from many people groups from around the world, speaking many hundreds of languages and representing a vast spectrum of cultures.

Everyone who has died as a little child will also be resurrected, for the Lord Jesus made special provision for them. “Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven. Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:10; 19:14).

This truth was revealed a thousand years earlier to King David, for when his baby boy (by Bathsheba) died, he was comforted with this assurance: “I shall go to him” (2 Sam. 12:23). David also knew that a person’s life begins at conception (cf. Ps. 51:5). Millions of people who have been killed—aborted—before birth are now in God’s heaven.

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

The Glorification of Dead Christians

The most detailed description of the rapture of the church is found in Paul’s first letter to the persecuted Christians whom he left in Thessalonica. He wrote this letter from Corinth, where he confronted much confusion about the personal destiny of believers. Some Christians in Thessalonica had already died (perhaps by martyrdom), and the saints there were concerned that their dead loved ones would miss out on the second coming of Christ.

But dead Christians will not be forgotten by God at the second coming. In fact, they will be the first humans to experience glorification since the Lord Jesus. Yes, Christ was “the firstfruits.” He is the first and only human ever to have been glorified. But “afterward”—nearly 2,000 years already—members of His body and bride, namely, “those who are Christ’s,” will share His glory “at His coming” (NKJV, 1 Cor. 15:23).

Now Paul was emphatic in his letter to the believers in Thessalonica on this one point: Dead Christians will be glorified even before living Christians!

Read Part 1, Part 2.

Corinthians and the rapture

The church which Paul (and later Apollos) established in Corinth had a special problem with the doctrine of bodily resurrection. Like all Greeks, they rejected this concept because they wanted to be free at last from all physical limitations in the afterlife. That is why we read of the Athenian philosophers: “When they heard [from Paul at the Areopagus] of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked” (NKJV, Acts 17:32).

So Paul, as the apostle to the Gentiles (cf. Gal. 2:7-9), devoted a large section of his first letter to the Corinthians to the nature and reality of Christ’s resurrection and the resurrection of all believers (1 Cor. 15:3-56).

But the climax of his entire discussion is the rapture of the church. “Behold, I tell you a mystery [Greek: mysterion—something previously unknown but now revealed]: We shall not all sleep [die], 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” (1 Cor. 15:51-52).

The night our Lord was betrayed by Judas Iscariot, He encouraged the remaining 11 disciples with these words: “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” (John 14:1-2).

Then the Savior made a spectacular promise: “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” (John 14:3). The disciples could not have fully understood at that time what the Lord Jesus was referring to. Would it be resurrection from physical death? Yes, this will be part of the event, but every true Jew knew this already (cf. John 11:24—“Martha said to Him, ‘I know that (my brother) will rise again in the resurrection at the last day’ ”). Would it be entrance into the Kingdom at His second coming? No, for He will bring all glorified saints with Him from heaven on that great day (cf. Rev. 19:14).

What our Lord was referring to was much more than bodily resurrection, great though that will be. It will be the glorification of living Christians who will never experience physical death—a “blessed hope” for the true body and bride of Christ, the church, a hope which Israel never shared. It is born-again Christians who are “looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Tit. 2:13).