We continually hear new dates predicted for the so-called “Rapture” when Jesus supposedly will secretly rapture Christians. Over and over these predictions, and there have been many of them, fizzle. But that does not deter in the least all of the so-called prophets from conjuring up new dates that they have somehow calculated from the Scriptures. 

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It surprises some people that the word “rapture” is not in the Bible. But they hear preachers, and people who believe these preachers, talk so much about “the rapture” that they assume it must be in the Bible. But truthfully, it isn’t! 

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Yes, the Bible certainly does teach that Jesus will come again, and when He comes, He will raise the dead, who, with Christians, living at that time, will ascend up to meet Him. For example, this is taught in 1 Thess. 4: 16-17 which says: “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead 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.” Far from being some secretive rapture or snatching away of the saints, as the rapture-theorist teach, when Christ comes again there will be nothing secret about it. The Lord will descend with a shout and the trumpet of God and voice of the archangel.

 

The Bible definitely teaches the second coming of Christ, and the resurrection of the dead, and the ascension of all the saved. However, what is often called the “Rapture” is different from Bible teaching. The rapture theory, with the imagined “Great Tribulation,” from which the Rapture is supposed to deliver us, and “the millennial reign of Christ on the earth,” are but fabrications, and part of a complex theory called Pre-millennialism. It is always important to distinguish between what the Bible really teaches, and what some people, like Hal Lindsey in his “Late Great Planet Earth” are teaching. Think on these things. 

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Dennis Abernathy