I believe that the scriptures do not teach that there will be any kind of rapture event involving believers leaving the surface of the earth.
Paul’s description of living believers being snatched up in the air in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 is, I suggest, a metaphorical rendering of what he says in two other passages: 1 Corinthians 15:51-54 and Phillipians 3:20-21. Here is the 1 Corinthians 15 passage:
51Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."
When will this happen? At Jesus’s return. From earlier in the same passage:
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. 23But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ's at His coming,
The reference to “being made alive†clearly maps to the raising of the dead to an imperishable state. Now here is the 1 Thessalonians 4 passage:
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever
Clearly the same scenario is being described in both texts. Note the structural parallels. In simplified form we have:
1 Cor 15: Return of Jesus à Trumpet à resurrection of dead à transformation of the living
1 Thess 4: Return of Jesus à Trumpet à resurrection of dead à catching up of the living
It would seem rather clear that there can only be a single “fate†for those who are alive when Jesus returns, the trumpet is sounded, and the dead are raised. Granted, it is characterized somewhat differently in the 1 Thess 4 text as in the 1 Cor 15 text. But, given the trumpet is present in both contexts and the resurrection of the dead is present in both contexts, and the overall scenario is about what happens when Jesus returns, we really must conclude that there is an equivalence between “being transformed†(as per the 1 Cor 15 material) and “being caught in the air†(as per the 1 Thess text). There are simply too many factors in common between the 1 Cor 15 context and the 1 Thess 4 context to allow us to see the “transformation†as being an event other than the same event described as being “caught up in the airâ€.
If the standard “rapture†view is to be sustained in respect to the 1 Thess 4 passage, we are left with the following puzzle: We have 2 different events (the “rapture†of 1 Thess 4 and the transformation of 1 Cor 15) both occasioned by a return of Jesus, both accompanied by a trumpet blast, and both accompanied by the raising of the dead.
I suspect that the way the “rapture theologians†get around this is to posit that there are two “returns†of Jesus – one to rapture people away, followed a later “final†return. And there are two trumpet blasts – one at each return. Finally, there must be two raisings of the dead, one at each return.
That sounds mighty forced and awkward and really becomes highly unrealistic upon analysis. If different “return†events are really being described in both passages, then the 1 Thess 4 “raising of the dead†must precede the 1 Corinthians 15 raising of the dead, if rapture theology is to work. Note the implications of this:
1. In the 1 Thess 4 account, it is only those believers who are alive at the time who are raptured. So the dead who get raised are “left behind†along with those who are not raptured. This is a decidedly odd scenario – the living believers are raptured and the world chugs along with two categories of human beings - the resurrected dead and people, who were neither raptured nor raised from the dead. Do you really think that is sensible?
2. In the 1 Corinthians 15 account, describing Jesus’ 2nd “second coming†on the view I am critiquing, Paul tells us that the dead are raised. Fine. But if there has been a prior raising of the dead, then who are those raised at this 2nd return of Jesus? Presumably those who have died since the first “raising of the dead†– as per the 1 Thess 4 material. But Paul has told us the general resurrection sequence in 1 Cor 15 – first Jesus, then when he returns, everybody else. So has Paul forgotten about those raised at the first return of Jesus (the 1 Thess 4) version?
This whole scenario seems surpassingly contrived and downright silly. To be fair, perhaps I have misrepresented what rapture believers actually believe to be the case. Please advice me if this is so and / or comment on the model I have ascribed to those who accept the rapture model.
I suggest that the raising of the dead is a single discrete event in time. It only happens once. So this really does force us to see the “transformation†as being the same event as the “catching up of the livingâ€. Paul is using the “caught up in the air†image to represent the transformation that will take place in the bodies of those who are alive at the time of the resurrection.
Note how the Phillipians 3 text endorses the 1 Corinthians 15 text in respect to what actually happens to those alive at the time of Jesus’ return (if there is only return) – they are transformed, not snatched away:
20But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body
Both the 1 Corinthians 15 and the Phillipians 3 texts are asserting that those who are alive at Jesus’ appearing will be changed or transformed so that their mortal bodies will become incorruptible, deathless. This is all that Paul intends to say in Thessalonians, but he uses poetic imagery, from biblical and political sources, to enhance his message. Little did he know how his rich metaphors would be misunderstood two millennia later.
In ater posts, I will show that there is sound Biblical precedent to understand the “caught up in the clouds†image as specifically metaphorical.
