"the stars of the sky fell to the earth…"

A picture of the rapture.

¹⁴ but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” – Matthew 19:14

^40″ Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left.” -Matthew 24:40

¹⁶ “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 

¹⁷ Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” – 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17

I would like to paint a picture of the rapture. A picture that as I know it is true to scripture and yet perhaps different and more terrifying than we’ve imagined before.

What is the rapture. The rapture is when the angel over the Earth with a rainbow over his head swings his sickle and reaps the children of God from the Earth. Who are the children of God? Who are marked for salvation? Firstly, it is those who of an age of accountability before God and can be held to judgment for their lives. The judgment of God is this, do you love my Son? The Father is the judge and the only requirement for Salvation is love for His beloved Son. We call it faith, as people who cannot see our faith is our evidence of our love for Him. We believe because He first loved us, and called us. We are the Chosen, the Beloved Church. The blessed priesthood. Then we have the lost of the world who through no fault of their own, never were capable or did encounter the truth of God the Gospel of His Son Jesus Christ. These are the thieves on the cross, those who come to judgement against who there was no law. The Son who purchased the Sin of ALL mankind is therefore free to choose those who although guilty of the law were out of it’s jurisdiction. Those included in this group are the unreached tribes, the unreached people who through no fault of their own never encountered the gospel of Jesus Christ. These also include those who although were of an age of accountability were mentally handicapped to that of a child. So we have so far the adult believers of the Gospel, we have the unreached, and the mentally incapable. Next we have those under the age of accountability. The children who through their youth were incapable of accountability before the law or the gospel. I am not going to debate about the age of accountability. I have heard people say it is the age of 13, I have heard that it is once the child reaches puberty. We do not know of what age a person is accountable before God, we just don’t. What I do know, is that the children will be taken up to the LORD and will not undergo the judgment of the world, the Great Tribulation. This means from the moment of conception through birth and to an age that God considers their minds accountable before Him. I believe the rapture will include all of these ages of children. So again these are the groups on earth that I believe will be included in the rapture, just to reiterate once again: The Church, the Unreached peoples, the Children.

The effects of the rapture will be instantaneous and devastating in an incalculable amount of ways. If life were a movie, the rapture would be the apocalypse in of itself. It will devastate every aspect of life of Earth, the economy, the people, the governments, the religions, the sciences, the politics, everything will be touched. This moment will be the largest event to ever occur on planet Earth up to that point. With that said, I want to focus more on a few different scenarios and aspects of it that put it into perspective.

The first scenario I keep envisioning when I think of the rapture is a maternity ward. As a father of my own children having been in maternity wards several times I think of this. A mother in active labor 10 CM pushing the baby out. The Dr prepares to catch the baby and guide it’s head into the proper position. The baby comes out the Dr catches it and the baby disappears. Down the hall, the newborn mother and her baby both disappear mid conversation with the nurse checking on baby. Immediately in panic the nurse leaves the room and there is a loud noise, people shouting all over and she goes to look for her colleague at the nurses station and her clothes are strung on the chair, her shoes sitting there on the floor. Mothers begin to scream, where is my baby. Pregnant women who were being wheeled in suddenly with empty wombs.

Every pregnant woman on the planet who was not raptured themselves are suddenly and instantly not pregnant. Every mother who is the same, unraptured who was cuddling with their kids on the couch and suddenly the kids are gone. The father holding his infant in the air as the baby smiles at it’s father and the baby is gone. Every scenario with every child or every baby everywhere on Earth suddenly gone, ended.

We tend to focus on the Christians, the believers of Jesus as the main object of the rapture. However in reality, the much greater and bigger event is the rapture of mankind’s children. The children of all religions, all ethnicities from all nations, from all tribes and people groups everywhere. Yes we will notice things like planes crashing without pilots, car accidents all over the world, Drs operating in surgery rooms gone in the blink of an eye. Yes the workers will be in the field and one will be taken and one will not. They will be in their offices at their desks, they will be on zoom calls and teams chats, and then they will be gone, they will be on a call and in mid conversation and then silence.

Another aspect we don’t consider much is that the dead in Christ will rise first. We do not know how much time before the dead will rise than the alive will be raptured. We do not know if it will be almost imperceivable with how soon after the first than the later. But I feel as though we treat the time difference clearly established by placing one event first before the other as so close together we do not even distinguish the two events from each other. The problem with that is that God does, scripture does. The dead in Christ will rise first, then those of us who remain alive. Now let’s use our imaginations and break from the nonsensical position of the two event’s occurring at such a proximity in time from each other that we won’t have time to recognize the first one before the second one occurs. Let’s imagine for example the dead in Christ rise one day and the next day the Rapture of those who are alive on Earth. The rapture of the dead and of the living is the Resurrection of Christ, the moment we put on new bodies and new clothes in Heaven. So therefore at the Resurrection of the Dead, the bodies of the dead are also resurrected and made new just as the LORD’s body was and is now. Which means, we will almost instantly begin to see stories and accounts and videos of the Resurrection of the Dead at a time that is recognizable before the Rapture of the Church.

This means those who have died and were believers, their bodies will be disappear first. We will see on the news, body in car accident disappears, patient in ambulance who was deceased disappears, bodies gone from the morgues. There will be families mourning their loved ones at the funeral home, looking down in the casket and the body will be gone as they are staring down crying. All around the world the stories will be going viral, the news will pick it up, mass panic will set in. The Christian at this time will huddle together. They will gather at their churches and remain in prayer through the night, full families together sleeping on the floor. There will be much prayer, the Church of Christ will be in unison awaiting the rapture and are gloriously called up to God in Heaven. The remainder of the unexpecting world will now begin the tribulation and the first apocalypse of the rapture will be only it’s beginning.

Now that was one day difference, I do not know and nobody does how great that length of time will be. However scripture does hint that the time is unexpected. At first look this makes us think that the very moment of the rapture will be unexpected and it will be, but what if the time difference between the dead rising and the rapture is to a point where we know it’s coming even if it’s only a day, only an hour or not at all because the news of the resurrection of the dead never reached us. What if we zoom out with that “at a time that is unexpected” and let it mean at a time in history, at a time of mostly unexpected. It goes back to no one knows the day and hour, and that is is true of His return and of the rapture. However, what if the Resurrection of the Dead is the sign recognizable to the Church so that many may enjoy a beautiful waiting moment with ready lamps expecting the groom of the party so that they might enter in the middle of the night. What if the rapture of the Church is like the parable he told us of the end.

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.² Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. ³ For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, ⁴ but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. ⁵ As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. ⁶ But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ ⁷ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. ⁸ And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ ⁹ But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ ¹⁰ And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. ¹¹ Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us’  ¹² But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ ¹³ Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. ” – Matthew 25 1-13

Since we do not know the day or the hour I say we watch, I say we fill our lamps with the oil of prophecy so that when the appointed signs come we can see and enjoy the arrival of our departure.