Multitudes of denominational church members sit enthralled listening to their pastor’s excited teaching about the Rapture - seven years before Christ’s second coming (Hebrews 9:28), when "every eye will see him" (Revelation 1:7), there will be a secret and hidden return, visible only to the dead saints resurrected and the living saints transformed. "His appearance in the clouds will be veiled to the human eye and no one will see Him. He will slip in, slip out; move in to get his jewels, and slip out as under the cover of night" (Oral Roberts. "How to Be Personally Prepared for the Second Coming of Christ," p. 34, apud Steve Singleton, Gospel Advocate, Oct. 1996, p. 30.

Starting excitement will prevail when tombs in cemeteries burst open and in the streets, havoc.

"I was driving down the freeway and all of a sudden the place went crazy … cars going in all directions … and not one of them had a driver. I mean it was wild" (Hal Lindsey. The Late Great Planet Earth, p. 125).

Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ book, Left Behind, begins with a 747 jet flying over the Atlantic Ocean as 100 people on board are caught up in the Rapture, leaving clothes, jewelry and pacemakers in their seats.

The movie Rapture pictures living saints transformed and rising into the clouds, including Billy Graham. Bumper stickers show how seriously many people anticipate the Rapture: " In case of Rapture, this car will no longer have a driver" or "The Rapture: The only way to fly."

Rapere, which means "to carry away," is not in the Bible. So who has given the Rapture advocates the right to say that, after the shouted command when the Lord comes down from heaven (1 Thessalonians 4:16), a 1,007-year span will intervene before the loud noise on the day of the Lord (2 Peter 3:10)?

Who has given the Rapture advocates the right to say that, after God’s trumpet when the Lord comes down from heaven (1 Thessalonians 4:16), a 1,007-year span will intervene before the last trumpet when the dead will be raised (1 Corinthians 15:52)?

In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, the one Bible passage from which the Rapture advocates build their theory, the word "asleep" (v. 13) is not to be understood literally but only as a gentle way to refer to deceased Christians in cemeteries. Jesus used the same word to describe Lazarus, and then He spoke "plainly. Lazarus is dead" (John 11:11-14).

Paul used the word "asleep" to console the living Christians at Thessalonica who were grieving at the loss of their loved ones in death. "[I]f we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with him" (1 Thessalonians 4:14 ASV).

What Jesus has done changes a Christian’s viewpoint. Life is not over when the body is placed in the tomb. While Jesus’ corpse lay in Joseph’s tomb, His spirit was very much alive in Paradise (Luke 23:43, 46). Then because Jesus conquered "him that had the power of death, that is, the devil," He delivered those "who through fear of death were all their lifetime" without hope (Hebrews 2:14-15).

Two important ideas about the ones "asleep" are in Paul’s words: 1. Dead bodies (v. 13) and 2. The spirits that had left their bodies (v. 14) and had gone to Paradise, "the third heaven" or "Abraham’s bosom" (2 Corinthians 12:2, 4; Luke 16:22). The spirits of deceased Christians were only asleep as far as their earthly relatives were concerned but really alive with Christ in Paradise, which is far better than living in the flesh in this world (Philippians 1:23-24).

But Paul inserts a difficulty by saying the "natural body" will be raised "a spiritual body" (1 Corinthians 15:44). How that new spiritual body becomes one with the spirit, with which every human is born (Zechariah 12:1; Ecclesiastes 12:7), and which Jesus at His coming will bring back with Him is not revealed. What we know is that Jesus will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, according to the power that enables Him to subject all things to Himself (Philippians 3:21).

Rapture advocates say that Jesus at "His appearance in the clouds will be veiled to the human eye and no one will see Him. He will slip in, slip out … as under the cover of night" (Roberts, p. 34).

But Paul said that Jesus will "descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God" (1 Thessalonians 4:16). It does not seem that the alleged Rapture will be quiet and secretive.

Paul said that the Christians who are alive at the coming of the Lord will be caught up together with the resurrected Christians to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:15, 17). Biblically, "in the air" is as close to the earth as Jesus will ever be again. Indeed, He would be a weird Jewish king coming to reign on the earth if He will never be known again after the flesh (2 Corinthians 5:16).

The so-called Rapture in the clouds with the Lord in the air by the righteous separates them, preachers say, from the wicked down on the earth. But Jesus taught that there is no separation between the wheat and the tares, between the good fish and the bad fish until the end of the world (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43, 47-50).

Jesus also taught that the sheep and the goats will not be separated until they go into life eternal or everlasting punishment (Matthew 25:31-46). Thus there will be no 1,007 years of eternal life for the sheep before the goats go to everlasting punishment.

The gospel is to be preached by Jesus’ followers to the end of the world (Matthew 28:20), but if they are raptured up in the air above the earth for seven years, who is to do the preaching?

If the coming of the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:15) in Paul’s inspired mind will be the beginning of the alleged seven years of Rapture, why does he write that His coming is the end, when He delivers up the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 15:23-24)?

Rapture-believing preachers say that there will be two resurrections from the dead: the first of the righteous only; the second of the wicked, 1,007 years later. But, biblically, there are not two resurrections. There will be a "resurrection both of the just and unjust" (Acts 24:15), but the just will not come out of their graves 1,007 years before the unjust. Instead, the just will come out of their graves on the last day (John 6:39-40, 44,54). There can be no days after the last day.

Not only did Jesus specify the last day, but even the hour of that last day in which, not just the just only, but "all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment" (1 John 5:28-29).

Support for the Rapture error is sought in the original Greek. Advocates say that the Holy Spirit especially inspired the two words parousia and epiphaneia to describe two phases of the Lord’s second coming. However, neither word is special, and both are used in a variety of ways.

The word parousia is used of the coming of human beings (2 Corinthians 7:6), of the man of sin (2 Thessalonians 2:9), of the Lord’s first coming at Bethlehem (2 Peter 1:16), and of the Lord’s second coming at the end of the world (1 Corinthians d15:23).

The word epiphaneia is used to describe the first coming of the Lord in Bethlehem (2 Timothy 1:10) and His second coming at the end of the world (1 Timothy 6:14). Paul asserted that the epiphaneia, brightness, belongs t the parousia, that it is a word describing the way the Lord will look at His parousia (2 Thessalonians 2:8). For his "brightness" to appear seven years after His coming is awkward.

In addition at the parousia, when, according to the Rapture error, He should be coming for His saints, actually He will be coming with all His saints (1 Thessalonians 3:13; 4:14). The saints coming with the Lord are those who sleep in Jesus (1 Thessalonians 4:14), and so they are the spirits of dead Christians returning from Paradise to be reunited with their physical remains and then transformed to be like the Lord’s glorious body (Philippians 3:21). They are no longer in the flesh, having departed at death to be with Christ (1:23-24), and then they will accompany Jesus at His second coming (1 Thessalonians 3:13; 4:14).

But the coming of the spirits of deceased Christians with Christ does not make His coming a special epiphaneia different from His parousia. The epiphaneia describes the parousia and is part of the parousia (2 Thessalonians 2:80.

There are not two future comings of the Lord, seven years apart, one private and quiet, and one visible and audible. In the one and only second coming, "as the lightnig cometh forth from the east, and is seen even unto the west; so shall be the coming of the Son of man" (Matthew 24:27).

One can describe going to be with the Lord in heaven as a Rapture, but to Paul its duration was always, not for seven years (1 Thessalonians 4:17).