1 Thessalonians 4: 15 – 17: For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. 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.
1 Corinthians 15: 51 – 52: Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
The Rapture is a term applied to the last days when Christians will escape horrible persecution and go to be with the Lord Jesus without seeing death. Such a scene is often depicted in paintings as a whole lot of people ascending upward into the skies, toward a glorious parting in the clouds, where the Lord Jesus, with open arms and surrounded by thousands of trumpeting angels, eagerly awaits for them to reach where He is. Then there are film cinematics that depict the Rapture as millions of people instantly disappearing, causing aircraft to fall from the sky (the pilots having vanished), and trains, cars, and trucks to crash (their drivers having vanished too), as well as all kinds of other chaotic scenes that make it to the world news.
All of the above is comical nonsense and in no ways has any connection to what the scriptures actually teach on the subject. The word “rapture” comes from the Greek “harpazo,” meaning to snatch away, to take by force, or to catch up. “Harpazo” appears in 1 Thessalonians 4: 17 when Paul writes that we shall be “caught up” (harpazo) to meet the Lord Jesus in the air. What is so interesting about Paul’s writing of the Rapture, is that he states that the Lord Himself shall firstly descend, and after He has descended, then we shall be caught up to meet Him in the air. What a paradox! So before we can ascend to meet Him, we must firstly recognize how He has descended to us!
The descent of the Lord Jesus to the earth is narrated in Revelation 10: 1: And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire: This is King Theophany Jesus as the Word, as the invisible Pillar of Fire in our midst whilst His corporal body is still in Heaven, because it is not until Revelation 19: 11 – 13 that Jesus visibly descends in His corporal body with His Bride to set up His kingdom on the earth. When Jesus is descending to the earth as King Theophany, His descent is described by Paul as a Shout, a Voice, and a Trumpet, and it is these three parts that constitute the Rapture and are what most of Christendom have failed to see and recognize.
A shout, a voice, and a trumpet are all connected with sound, but their sound is largely missed because so few people are attuned to identify the significance of what the sound represents. It takes the Holy Ghost to not just hear the Shout, but to understand that the one who shouted was a God-sent prophet (Malachi 4: 5; Revelation 10: 7), declaring that Christ is here in our midst and for us to unite in a personal relationship with Him. A shout is a thought becoming word, so if the Word for the age had not been proclaimed by the prophet to the world, then there could be no catching away of the elect to follow it. But if we respond to the Shout of the prophet’s message, then we can move into the second part of the Rapture which is the Voice. The Voice is what we become as a result of our uniting with Christ. It is us not settling for just the Shout of God sending a prophet and that Christ is here in our midst, but is us coming to personally know the Christ who sent the prophet to us.
There is only one Archangel, and that is Christ (Michael; Jude 1: 9), so when we move into the second part of the Rapture by our entering into a personal relationship with Christ whereby He makes His mind and will known to us, then we become the living and physical expression of the invisible Christ to the world. In other words, Christ is walking with our feet, He is speaking through our lips, He is thinking with our mind, and He is working with our hands. The Mighty Angel who descended in Revelation 10: 1 was declared to the world by the prophet in Revelation 10: 7, and we who responded to the great prophetic message and united with Christ, then go forth as a continuation of what the prophet was, declaring and displaying to the world by the life we live that Jesus Christ is here in our midst according to Revelation 10: 8 – 11: And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey. And I took the little book out of the angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter. And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings. This great uniting between Christ and the Bride is what makes Her the final voice to the final age under her messenger.
The third and final part of the Rapture is the Trumpet. The blast of a trumpet whilst Israel was camped during their wilderness journey had special meaning. The first blast was to tell the people to begin packing-up their possessions and prepare to move, the second blast was for the people to line-up, and the third blast was to announce that the camp was now on the move. The blast of a trumpet was also to call Israel to a feast and to warn them of an approaching enemy so that they might prepare for battle.
The Trumpet as the third and final part of the Rapture is ultimately representative of the actual catching away or translation when we change dimensions and go to be with the Lord Jesus, seeing Him in His glorified corporal body. But at the same time, under the Voice of the Archangel, we are making preparations here now to change dimensions, we are feasting on the richness of spiritual food in due season, and we are in a spiritual battle against Satan and his devils. So the Trumpet is making a certain sound now (1 Corinthians 14: 8), and culminates with the catching away of the Bride.
The Rapture as a whole, and the three parts of Shout, Voice, and Trumpet that constitute it are all necessary, for the Rapture is the mode of transportation by which we as the married Bride of Christ will arrive at the great heavenly hall for the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. It was the prophet that announced the coming of the Bridegroom, and it was the prophet that acted as the marriage celebrant to wed us to Christ; thus if we have not been wedded to Christ by an invisible union with Him here on the earth, then we can in no ways be translated out of here, for the translation is only for the married wife to reach the place of the Marriage Supper!
For the trumpet to sound and the dead in Christ to rise, the Voice must precede it, because the Voice of the Archangel is the Voice of the resurrection, like when Jesus in John 11 cried with a loud voice, and Lazarus came to life out of the grave; and again in Matthew 27, the resurrection of the Old Testament saints was preceded by Jesus’ cry on the cross. In the message “The Rapture” (December 4, 1965), the prophet told us that the Rapture is a revelation; this is because the love secrets Christ whispers to His Bride gives Her an ever-increasing charge of faith concerning Her identity and position, and will eventually bring on the resurrection of the sleeping New Testament saints and change Her own body to a glorified state.
It will be the living saints that call the sleeping saints forth from the grave because the Voice of the Archangel, which is the Voice of the Resurrection is now in the living Bride. As God called Adam’s body from the dust of the earth and it was quickened to life, so the Bride will speak, and the sleeping saints of seven ages will pick up the dust of their flesh bodies and be quickened back to life again. This will be the bringing forth of sons and daughters by the first covenant of Spoken Word creation, like what should have been in Eden.
As the sleeping Old Testament saints appeared to the living saints in Jerusalem after Jesus’ resurrection (Matthew 27: 52 – 53), so the sleeping New Testament saints will return to the earth and appear to the living saints shortly before we are all translated together into Glory. These sleeping saints will not be visible to anybody else, for God will allow the living Bride to see into the supernatural realm and behold the sleeping saints in their theophanies now walking in our midst, even as Elisha was able to see the thousands of angels that surrounded Dothan in 2 Kings 6: 17, whilst Elisha’s servant and the Syrians could not see them. To put it a little more clearly, we shall take a step closer to their dimension, and they shall take a step closer to ours. Such a sight will supercharge our faith and change our bodies in their atoms to a glorified condition, and we, along with the sleeping saints who have since picked up their flesh bodies and become glorified, shall all be caught up and translated together.
As the sound of the Shout and Voice have gone largely unheeded by the masses, so the sound of the Trumpet will be missed by all when the living saints and the sleeping saints are collectively translated into Glory to be with the Lord Jesus. She will move toward Him and He will come from Glory to meet us halfway; this is why Paul would write that we shall meet Him in the air, and afterward shall go with Him to the glorious world that awaits us. There will be not be small piles of empty clothes or isolated titanium joints and false teeth lying about, nor will there be falling planes from the sky, nor crashing cars, trucks, and trains, and other mayhem. God is not the Author of confusion, but will skillfully use the confusion that exists in the world (especially that which follows the sinking of Los Angeles by the earthquake) as the perfect camouflage for the few living saints to be translated away from this world shortly before the Great Tribulation sets in.