4/9/21 Why is this so difficult?

Many today, and I do mean many... hate the truth of the Rapture, that the Lord Jesus Christ will remove His Bride, the true Church, before the terrible times of the Tribulation.

I won't go into the many proof texts in Scripture, that is not my point in this short post.  But I do want to address the first lie that 'they' always put forth in attempting to refute the truth of God's Word.  They always say, 'The Rapture is found nowhere in the Bible... nowhere!'  That is their first lie.

Let's look at the two areas of Scripture where the Rapture is... not just alluded to but actually stated... one refers to the Church while the other refers to one of the Apostles. In Acts 8, the account of the Apostle Phillip when the Holy Spirit commanded him to start walking on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza... by the way, it would have been the same road which is still there and used today... 'Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, “Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is desert. ²⁷ So he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace the queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasury, and had come to Jerusalem to worship, was returning. And sitting in his chariot, he was reading Isaiah the prophet. ²⁹ Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go near and overtake this chariot.”

³⁰ So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah, and said, “Do you understand what you are reading?”

³¹ And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him. ³² The place in the Scripture which he read was this:

“He was led as a sheep to the slaughter;
And as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
³³ In His humiliation His justice was taken away,
And who will declare His generation?
For His life is taken from the earth.”

³⁴ So the eunuch answered Philip and said, “I ask you, of whom does the prophet say this, of himself or of some other man?” ³⁵ Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning at this Scripture, preached Jesus to him. ³⁶ Now as they went down the road, they came to some water. And the eunuch said, “See, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized?”  Then Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.”  And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”  ³⁸ So he commanded the chariot to stand still. And both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him. 

 The next verse is where it gets very interesting: verse 39: 'Now when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away, so that the eunuch saw him no more; and he went on his way rejoicing. ⁴⁰ But Philip was found at Azotus. And passing through, he preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea.'

No one who believes the truth of Scripture doubts that this is saying that Philip was picked up and whisked away, by the Holy Spirit, from where the Eunuch was traveling on his way back to Ethiopia, and then he was dropped down at Azotus ... The Eunuch saw Philip be snatched away and he went away rejoicing.

The other verse to see is: 1 Thes 4:17: ' For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. ¹⁶ For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷ Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. ¹⁸ Therefore comfort one another with these words.'

Both of these Scriptures, 'was caught away' and 'we shall be caught up' come from the same Greek word: harpazo: to seize (in various applications) catch up or away, pluck, pull, take (by force).

The Greek word would be enough but to further prove that Rapture is in the Bible, we look at Jerome's Latin translation, the Vulgate Version, which was the primary translation of the Bible for more than 1000 years.  Jerome used the Latin word: Rapere which means: to snatch, grab, take away.  The two variations of the Latin word, Rapere, which Jerome used are: rapuit and rapiemur.  As any honest person can see... this is where we get our English word, Rapture.

Paul and Luke used the Greek word: Harpazo.  From there, Jerome used variations of the Latin word, Rapere and from there, we find our English word, Rapture.

So the next time someone says, to you, 'Rapture is not in the Bible,' you can show them that it, in fact, is.

Greek: Harpazo... Latin: Rapere... English: Rapture

Oh, and by the way... this is the same Latin word from which we get our English word: Raptor: birds of prey such as eagle, hawk, owl, osprey, etc. which swoop down and snatch away, by force, their prey... just like when the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself, will come down, into the clouds and snatch away by force, His own.

Unfortunately, many who actually hate the teaching of the Rapture have no intention of seeing or hearing the Truth.