All of a sudden, people – mostly in the United States – are making claims that they are having “rapture dreams.”
Are they actually having these dreams? Are they lying? Are they confused? Have they been misled concerning 1 Thess 4:13-18? Is rapture discussed in Scripture? If God’s Kingdom is supposed to “come” down to the earth, why are they going up into heaven? Who will be here to inherit the earth? Will those who believe in the rapture have an experience different from or greater than that of the Master, Jesus [the] Christ? If so, they are greater than their Master.
Scripture teaches that no slave is greater than his master. (John 15:20) If Christ died and was buried or entombed, so will his followers. If he was raised to life again (resurrected), so will his followers.
The Apostle Paul says at 1 Thess 4:14 that
We believe that Jesus died and rose again.
The event of Jesus having died and being raised up again shows a time element spent in the grave. Jesus spent time in the grave. We, too, when we die must spend time in the grave BEFORE we are raised up from the dead. “We believe that Jesus died and rose again.”
The rapture teaching does not have a time spent in death; rather, it shows never dying at all and meeting the Lord in the air while alive.
The first lie Satan told the woman Eve was that she would not die if she ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The rapture teaching mimicks that first lie as it teaches one will not die.
What hope did Christ and his Apostles say we are to have, a rapture hope or something else?
The eventuality of all of mankind is that it will die. There are no exceptions. Even the Son of Man was not an exception. Our belief is that Jesus died and rose again (had a resurrection) and not that he was raptured. (1 Thess 4:14)
Thus, our hope is to be in the promised resurrection Jesus stated at John 5:28-29 and not the lie and deception of something he never taught called the rapture.
