Watch: Are You Ready? (En Español) "The Rapture"
Rapture" comes from the words "caught up" in I Thessalonians 4:17. In the
Greek the word is harpazo - "to seize upon by force", "to snatch up." The Latin translators used
the word rapturo. Some people claim that "rapture" is not a Biblical term. This is untrue, unless they
want to say that "God" and "Jesus" are not Biblical Terms. Almost all words in our English Bible are translations
of Greek or Hebrew expressions, and are, therefore, not in the Bible in the form we know them. "God" is a proper
and meaningful translation of certain words in the original languages, and "Jesus" is a good translation for us
of His name (Yeshua, "Joshua," "The Lord Saves," in Hebrew). In the same way, the English word
"rapture" which means "to be caught up" is an excellent translation for the Greek harpazo.
Three Events That Happen at The Rapture
The
scriptures of First Thessalonians 4 and 5 are familiar to most Christians as a description of the so-called "rapture
of the church." The rapture can be thought of as a point in eternity which will protrude into our historical time frame
at some fixed point on God's calendar. However, as we have seen, God has not given us the date.
Three specific
events take place at the time Jesus calls his church out of the world:
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven
(a) with a cry of command,
(b) with the archangel's call,
(c)
and with the sound of the trumpet of God.