“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. 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…For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 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” ( John 14:1-3; 1Thesalonnians 4:16-17). The rapture is the greatest event that the church has been waiting for. It is the catching away of all saints in Christ to meet the Lord in the air. Christ, at the end of His first advent, was in in like manner taken up in the air to go and prepare a place for His own. The promise made by God when Jesus was going back to heaven was that He will return in like manner to receive His ‘Bride’ to be with Him forever.
There’s difference between the rapture and the second coming of Christ. At rapture, our Lord Jesus Christ will appear in the air. He will not be visible to the inhabitant of the earth. His goals then will be to resurrect all the dead saints, and the living believers, will put on immortality and shall be caught up to be with the Lord (1 Corinthians 15:53-55). Rapture event will take place in the twinkling of an ‘eye’ before the great and terrible day of the Lord, when the wrath of God will be poured down from the His cup of indignation without mixture – an event fitly called the Great Tribulation. The time of the rapture is unknown, even by the angels (Matthew 24:36). The rapture will be heralded by the voice of the Archangel and the blowing of the trumpet signaling the end of the church age (1 Thessalonians 4:13-15). The rapture was a mystery to the Old Testament saints and prophets. In the Old Testament, rapture was illustrated in Enoch and Elijah, the two living saints who did not taste death but were translated in a moment of time and caught up in the air (Genesis 5:24; 2Kings 2:11-12). Second, it was clarified in Christ in the New Testament. He died, was buried, and resurrected. While He talked with His disciples on Mount Olivet, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight (Acts 1:9-11).
God of mercy interrupted His program for Israel with the interpolation of Church age. Christ the Messiah came for the people of Israel, but they rejected Him (John 1:11), and God turned to the Gentles to take a people for Himself. The rapture will mark the end of this special period of grace. After the rapture, God will resume His program with Israel, thus ushering in the beginning of the Seventieth week in Daniel’s prophecy (Daniel 9:24-27). Christ, answering a pertinent question asked by His disciples on “… what shall be the sign thy coming …” (Matthew 24:3),gave in details what would be happening on earth shortly before His coming (Matthew 24:5-12, 30-39). He highlighted the following as what to expect:
Many false Christ’s will arise to deceive many unsuspecting believers. There will be wars and rumors of war, there will be international wars, famines (global recession), pestilences, and earthquakes in divers’ places. There will be severe persecution of true believers in Christ and some cases of martyrdom. The emergence of many false prophets, backsliding from the faith on the increase, and many people given to pleasure and merry making than those seeking the Lord.
To qualify for the rapture, one must be born again, live a transparent holy life, walk in the light, do service for God, watch daily, pray always with all prayers, and maintain these experiences at the time of the rapture or at the time of death as the case may be. But the sinning church members will not be able to go at the rapture, though saved before and baptized in water. Careless preachers will miss the rapture; it does not matter what Christian work they may have done in the past. All such people together with backsliders and sinners outside the church will be left behind to face the great tribulation.