What is your take on Rapture: The Second Coming of Christ?



Answer Request:

What is your take on Rapture: The Second Coming of Christ?


The rapture and the second coming of Christ are two separate events that make up the WHOLE 7-year return of Jesus Christ in the end times.

The Rapture

  • This is the catching away of the people who make up the ‘Body of Christ’, that is, the people who have responded in faith to the grace gospel; trusting in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the atoning work for their right standing before God.

  • This event happens before the signing of the peace treaty by the antichrist with Israel, which initiates the 7-year period of prophesied Tribulation.

  • This event is ‘silent’. There is no fanfare attached to it! No trumpet sound, no graves opening and people being resurrected, no visible meeting the Lord in the clouds. All these visible events happen at the mid-point of the tribulation when Jesus actually appears in the clouds and another resurrection and rapture occurs.

  • Remember, the body of Christ is raptured 3.5-years earlier where they are instantaneously snatched up into heaven to meet the other members of the body of Christ who have died before them (and are already in heaven).

The Second Coming of Christ

  • The second coming of Christ is actually the description one can give to the WHOLE 7-year return of Jesus. It starts with the rapture of the body of Christ before the tribulation, then continues with His appearing visibly in the clouds in the middle of the tribulation, and ends when He places His feet on Mt. Olives at the end of the 7-years. This WHOLE return is in symmetry to how the Lord ascended into heaven 40-days after His resurrection.

  • When Jesus appears in the clouds, there is a rapture of the 144000 and remaining martyrs (their converts). There is also a resurrection of the dead martyrs of the 1st half of the tribulation.

  • At the end of the tribulation, after the 7-years, there is a resurrection of the 2nd half martyrs, as well as a flesh and blood resurrection of Old Testament saints (Ezek.37).

  • The WHOLE return is provided by Paul who was the person who revealed the order and sequence of the return of Christ and the events associated with it. The verse below is not the events that happen only at the rapture of the Body of Christ, as many interpret. It is actually information that pertains to the WHOLE 7-years sequence of events,

1 Thess.4:16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a (1) shout, with (2) the voice of the archangel, and (3) with the trump of God: and the (4) dead in Christ shall rise first: 17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

—Shout = rapture of the Body of Christ

—Voice of Archangel = mid-point rapture and resurrection when Jesus appears in the clouds

—Trump of God = End of tribulation with bodily resurrection of O.T. saints

—Dead in Christ shall rise first = this is a reference to ALL of the ‘righteous’ dead who rise FIRST, as compared to ALL of the ‘unrighteous’ dead who will rise SECOND to judgement at the Great White Throne.




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