Welcome to Episode #187 of the Way of the Bible podcast. This is our third of eight episodes in our Twenty-Fourth mini-series entitled The Return of Jesus Christ [3]. On today’s episode, we will continue expanding upon the greatest news for the church, the Great Snatching Away, harpazo/rapture, the resurrection/translation of the bride of Christ.
We’ll start with a quick context reminder and then hit our lesson for today, which will be the first half of 1 Corinthians 15. But before then, why the harpazo/rapio, the great snatching away? The reason for the great snatching away in the Bible is to remove the church from the world before God judges the world with great tribulations and wrath. We will address that near the end of this mini-series.
The New Testament writers, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, clearly wanted the body of Christ to know that Jesus was coming back and to anticipate his return at any moment. The normal Christian life, as described in the epistles, is not sitting on one’s hands in regard to one's faith life while playing with trinkets in the world, passing away the time to break the boredom of communing with God. The normal Christian life is to live your new life in the kingdom, a holy and righteous life of love for God and neighbor as we wait for our Savior, the bridegroom, to appear in the sky above to take us, his bride, home.
John the Baptist spoke of the church and Jesus in John 3:29 – The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.
In the New Testament, Jesus is the bridegroom, the church is the bride, and the Old Testament saints, including John the Baptist, are friends of the bridegroom. It says of the bride of Christ in Revelation 19:6-8 – Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. 7 Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. 8 Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.” (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of God’s holy people.)
Jesus spoke to his disciples in the Upper Room discourse about his wedding preparations to bring home his bride. John 14:1-3 – “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
We know that Jesus, our bridegroom, went away physically on the day of his ascension into heaven. Acts 1:10- They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
As Jesus went up in the ascension, so shall he return in like manner. We see that in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 – For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God.
That catches us up on what we need to know for today’s episode. We’ll do some tying up of loose ends after our next episode, where we finish an overview of 1 Corinthians 15. And before we get to the first portion of 1 Corinthians 15 for today, let’s put what Paul is about to address in context.
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