Are You Ready? The Rapture

Imagine with me a day where hundreds of millions of people vanish from all around the world. The magnitude of the situation is difficult if not impossible to imagine. Can you see it? There would be cars careening
out of control because they have no driver. Jet liners would plummet to the earth below because their pilots were suddenly gone. Patients would be left on operating tables because their surgeon had disappeared. School classrooms would be without teachers or without many students. Law enforcement agencies would be left with only skeletal crews. Suddenly, society would be plunged into utter and complete social, spiritual, and economic chaos.
Make no mistake. What I have just described will happen! And yet it
will be a thousand times worse. The chaos that will follow the rapture of the church will be unprecedented in human history.
What is the rapture of the church? In English the word rapture can
have the idea of ecstasy of emotions. In biblical or theological terms
the word rapture comes from the Latin word rapturo derived from the Greek word harpazo. It literally means “caught up” or “snatched away”. In I Thessalonians 4:17 it describes Christ’s coming in the clouds to take home Christians to be with Him in His Father’s house.
The two main passages dealing with this prophetic event are I Corinthians 15:51-58 and I Thessalonians 4:13-18. John 14:1-3 also addresses the rapture but in a much more abbreviated way. In today’s message, we
will extract some observations about the rapture of the church. And
most importantly discover what difference this doctrine should make
in our lives.

Pastor Jeff Nyberg, Ph.D.