Rapture the Coming Rapture Although the Word

Rapture The Coming Rapture Although the word "rapture" itself, nor the doctrinal explanation of "rapture" in its strictest sense, is not to be found in the scriptures of either the Hebraic or the New Testaments, this does not invalidate its truth. It is true as well that the idea of the coming even where all the faithful will be physically taken up into the spiritual bosom of Christ is not specifically and literally cited in scripture, either.

But the idea of rapture as expressed in the Christian community today amongst the faithful is an idea that is manifest throughout the Holy Bible. As early as the Old Testament, prophetic book of the wild man Ezekiel, in 36:25-28, the Lord says to the prophet, "Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.

Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of partial stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances." The Lord then takes up the prophet into a chariot, in an act of immediacy and lifting that prefigures the lifting of all of God's children in the coming rapture.

Thus, the rapture is a physical action that is prefigured in the Old Testament, but also the Hebraic scripture makes reference to what will occur during the rapture, that is a cleansing and a removal of the faithful from the world of idols into an equally physically manifest world of heavenly life. In John 14:2-3, Christ foretells his coming back to the earth after the crucifixion and resurrection of his body, saying that "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. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, [there] ye may be also." During the coming rapture to be, Christ will thus, after making proper preparations for those who will be received in his Father's house, accept those who are expected and worthy of his followers into the house of his Heavenly Father.

One cannot be entirely certain what hour that will be: "but of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone..." notes both the Gospels of Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32. Before the coming Rapture, the Biblical testimony suggests, there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall," tribulation, even greater, perhaps, than the Holocaust or World War II.

But such references indicate that Jesus intended to convey to his followers a sense of imminence of relief from suffering as well as to prepare them for even greater suffering than they had witnessed. Over and over Christ suggests that the world as it was and as it will be is not a good place entirely, though it is and remains a world created by a good God.

In terms of what men and women do, that there was much to be criticized and much that was chancy in its nature. But because of this, he suggests, his followers should, in whatever era they live, always be filled with a sense of preparation for something to come that was unexpected and strange, like a Chariot from heaven -- something immediate and yet wonderful, as they were taken up to the holy house of heaven, of Jesus' father.

In Matthew 24:29 Jesus refers to this sense of immediacy by saying "but immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars.