33..RAPTURE
The dictionary defines rapture "as a state of overwhelming, usually pleasurable, emotion". By this definition, I've experienced it numerolus times making love to my wife.
But if we're considering the "religious" connotation it means that certain people will be carried up into the heavens..at the return of Jesus Christ. Revelation speaks of this occurring with great fanfare.
Many people will be very disappointed, knowing that they won't be transported into the heavens, when He returns, and that their minister has been "selling them a bill of goods".
In my play, ROAD TO BETHAANY, I speak of the "way" being narrow and afterwards they'll beat on the door, saying, "Let me in. I ate and drank in your presence, You taught me in the streets". And He will say, "Go away, I do not know you"".."there will be great wailing and gnashing of teeth".
It's the "born again's", that are anxiously anticipatimg this event, who will be devastated to learn that the "train" has passed.
Who, then, will experience the so-called rapture?
That's a good question, and I know what I'm about to say won't come as a surprise.
Those who are followers of Paul..those who are part of the body of Jesus Christ.
This is nothing that accrues to us, for anything we've done. We haven't earned the trip. God has selected us, because we believe what He is teaching through Paul. He has given us the grace to understand..understand "truths", that fly in the face of traditional belief!
Further, we were chosen "before the disruption of the world"!
Here's how Paul explains what will happen (from the Concordant Bible)"That the Lord Himself will be descending from heaven".. "and we will be snatched away togerther in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air"!
What's revealing, in how he explains it, is that he believed that it would happen in his time!
We know that he was misled, just like so many others as to when these events will occurr.
Like our Lord said, "Only the Lord our God knows the time and the place"..paulnbob