Welcome to our study on DEBUNKING THE MYTH OF RAPTURE 3, today we want to look at HOW THE DEAD ARE RAISED as part of our Rapture study. Please your comment is most welcome on our study so far,do stay connected as we unveil another dimension of God’s knowledge on our study
HOW THE DEAD ARE RAISED
Let us look at our popular text 1Thes 4: 15-18:
“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.1 Thessalonians 4:15 (KJV)
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: 1 Thessalonians 4:16 (KJV)
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 Thessalonians 4:17 (KJV) Wherefore comfort one another with these words”. 1 Thessalonians 4:18 (KJV).
Question:
Can this happen without a rapture, a physical trumpet being blown, then people seeing Jesus in the cloud, etc. I’m somehow confused. Can you help out?
Answer:
1 Thessalonians 4:15-18.
Firstly, Paul was talking about resurrection not rapture. From vs 13, don’t be ignorant about those who sleep or have died in faith, in the Lord, they will be raised at His ‘Coming’ then vs 15 explained how the dead would be raised to life. We that are alive and remain at His coming.
Paul in Verse 16 of 1Thes.4 explained how the dead are raised to life not rapture. The Lord Himself first descends. Now, understand that it’s not a physical coming because the Lord is Spirit. No physical eyes can see a spirit. Scriptures say, “And the LORD is that Spirit, wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty”. Since it is the Lord Himself that is a Spirit, so, the whole matter is spiritual. Jesus had problems with the Jews of His days because they lacked spiritual comprehension. In John 6, He told them that if they don’t eat His flesh and drink His blood, they have no life and they will die. It was hard for them to believe it because they didn’t understand what it meant. His physical body and blood would not be enough for the Jews of that time, let alone of it reaching us now to feed on and drink but they couldn’t understand that He was talking about offering himself up as a sacrifice, the Passover lamb that all families had to kill and eat during the feast of Passover(Exo 12:1-4) .
Jesus was the fulfilment of it . They have no need to kill another lamb. He is about to present His body to be killed, blood will flow out and humanity will be saved. Jesus told them, “except you eat this which I offer to you, my body and drink my blood, except you accept me, my sacrifice for sin, you shall yet die like your parents who ate manner in the wilderness which Moses gave them but I am the true bread sent down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread of life, shall not die. What a statement! Very hard sayings; will this man give us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink? They lacked spiritual wisdom and revelation, they did not understand but I liked what Jesus said in verse 63 of John 6, “….It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profits nothing. The words that I have spoken, the things I am saying to you, they are spirit, they are spiritual and they are life, they give life”.
This implied that He wasn’t talking about eating His physical body or flesh and drinking His blood. He was talking about spiritual matters. Paul says a carnal man, ordinary man using his 5 senses cannot understand and receive spiritual things, they are foolishness to Him. No wander Paul prayed a heart moving prayer in Ephesians 1:15-23 that God should grant and bestow upon the church at Ephesus the SPIRIT of Wisdom and Revelation. My friend, are you not persuaded that this whole stuff is a spiritual matter?. What man knoweth the things of God, is it not the Spirit of God? Now the Spirit of God reveals the deep things of God unto us. Sorry to say that people without the Spirit will find it hard to understand this things. They will give it mere literal or physical interpretations. That’s why we see all these confusion in the body of Christ. People making claims that they are spiritual, yet not allowing God to teach them, allowing their carnal mind to explain spiritual things. This is error!
The presence of God is a reality. John 14, Jesus said, “…I will not leave you comfort less, I will not leave you as orphans, I will ask the father to send another comforter, the Holy Spirit…” Remember, we had clarified that The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. 2 Corinthians 3:17. Paul even said there is one God, one Lord, one Spirit. That’s Ephesians 4:4. So, 1 Thes 4:16 says, “…the Lord Himself…” The Spirit of God will descend from heaven (Greek-ouranus) the region above the sidereal heavens, the seat of order of things eternal and consummately perfect where God dwells and other heavenly beings. “perhaps from the same as G3735 (through the idea of elevation, mountain, throne.” The church is heaven, heavenly Jerusalem, it’s also called the mountain of the Lord, the church is in the heavenly places. We are raised and seated together with Christ in heavenly places (Eph. 6:12). Jacob called Bethel in Gen 28:17, the gate of heaven which symbolically represents the Church, the house of God. The gate of a house cannot be in the earth and the house in the sky. Is n’t it?
Think about it! So heaven is not somewhere beyond the skies. It is the realm which God dwells. God dwells in us and we dwell in Him. We live, move and have our being in Him. This is another hard saying and the carnal mind cannot fathom or understand it. But when we know it, death is abolished because where God lives, sin, sickness, diseases, depression, death, etc are abolished. Oh that we come to know this truth. The presence of God is real my friends. So Jesus the Lord, the Spirit descends from heaven with a shout, a command. We His messengers have received a commandment to bless, to reconcile the world unto God not to impute sins on them. Ps 133 speaks of the commanded blessings.
The shout is a decree. David said, I will declare the decree of the Lord (Ps. 2:7). Friends, whatsoever thing we shall decree shall be established. Shout! Shout! for the sound of the king is in the midst of her. Now this shout is from the trumpet, the gospel message of the archangel, the chief messenger, this is a corporate messenger, these are the fivefold ministry gifts in the church. God comes in the ministry gift. The gifts of ministry is the hand of God, the mouth, the eye, the feet, the mind or heartbeat of God expressed to His people. When the ministry gifts operate effectually, the dead, spiritual and physical are raised to life. We that are alive and remain at His ‘coming’(the Greek word is Parousia meaning presence, nearness) do not prevent them. May the Lord grant you understanding as the study proceed in Jesus name Amen. Do well to follow us daily and God bless you.
