Welcome to Episode #185 of the Way of the Bible podcast. This is our first of eight episodes in our Twenty-Fourth mini-series entitled The Return of Jesus Christ [3]. On today’s episode, I will introduce the Great Snatching Away of the Church, the Harpazo [Greek], or Rapio [Latin]; aka the Rapture. A snatching away before tribulation, the great tribulation and wrath, and the Day of the Lord.
The first mini-series of this trilogy primarily addressed Jesus’ return to judge the world and establish his millennial kingdom. The second mini-series primarily addressed the role of Israel in the world today prophetically, in specific regard to the return of Jesus to end the trampling of Jerusalem by the Gentiles. This third and final mini-series addresses primarily the first of two phases of the Return of Jesus Christ.
The first phase will be an aerial return of Jesus to snatch away his bride, the church, from before the coming judgment of God, which involves global tribulations and wrath. The second phase of Jesus’ return will be physical on the Day of the Lord when he vanquishes his enemies with just a word from his mouth. We are going to focus on the first of these two phases: the aerial return for the taking away of the Bride of Christ.
A snatching away is not unfamiliar in the scriptures. It was recorded twice in the Old Testament (Enoch and Elijah), and five times in the New (Jesus, Philip, Paul, the body of Christ, and John). This is perhaps the most exciting yet most misunderstood or most forgotten teaching in the Bible. And when you think of who is blinding the minds of unbelievers, it is not a mystery why this critical message of the Bible is ignored in the church even today.
We have to understand with our heart and soul that heaven is a real place. A supernatural place beyond dimensionality where God dwells. We and all of creation of the cosmos with us, experience existence in a four-dimensional space-time reality. Where we observe, you live, you die, and that’s it. We live in a world where entropy rules; where everything is subject to corruption and decay.
Yet, recent scientific discoveries and theoretical calculations suggest that what we are experiencing is actually a projection from another dimension beyond the four we exist in. What the Bible is teaching is God has made a way from the beginning to get us from our captivity within these four-dimensional walls to the heaven of heavens, beyond dimensionality, where God himself resides. That’s what we’re going to talk about on this mini-series.
The key-word for this concept in the Greek New Testament is Harpazo. In the Latin translation this Greek key word is translated Rapio from which we get the common term Rapture. This word is used many times in the New Testament. The two main uses are found in 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15, both of which we’ll introduce on our next episode. Today, we’re going to focus on some of the background for this coming event.
The word harpazo in Greek is defined as: to seize, carry off by force, to snatch out or away. What we are going to be discussing during this mini-series is Jesus coming back aerially in the sky to snatch out of this world his bride, the church, before the wrath of God is unleashed on the earth in tribulations which eventually culminate in the great tribulation and the Day of the Lord
As I’ve described in the past, the position I am presenting is commonly called the premillennial pretribulation return of Jesus Christ. It is the oldest view in the church. I encourage you to do your own research on this topic as we’ll discover, knowing his return could be imminent makes a huge difference in how we view our lives today. And with that big word dropped, let’s get started.
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