What is The Rapture?

The Believers of Jesus Christ, The Body of Christ, are promised safety and eternal security in Heaven after death or by the Rapture. The word Rapture is not in The Bible. The Greek word means “to seize” or “to  means to snatch out/away” The Greek word Harpazo was later translated Rapiemur by Jerome in his fourth century Latin Vulgate. Once the English variants, courtesy of Wycliffe, Tyndale, etc., began to make the English speaking bibles, the word Rapiemur was simply translated to “caught up”. The Latin Vulgate translates the Greek as rapiemur meaning "we will be caught up".  This was later transliterated from its Latin form, into the English word rapture in 1738 by Philip Doddridge.

The rapture of the church is the event in which God “snatches away” all believers from the earth in order to make way for His righteous judgment to be poured out on the earth. The rapture is described primarily in  1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 and 1 Corinthians 15:50–54. For they themselves report about us as to the kind of reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is, Jesus who rescues us from the wrath to come. (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10). For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we will live together with Him. (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10). God will resurrect all believers who have died, give them glorified bodies, and take them from the earth, along with all living believers, who will also be caught up and given glorified bodies at that time. 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: 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 4:16–17).

The rapture will involve an instantaneous transformation of our bodies to fit us for eternity. “We know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). The doctrine of the rapture was not taught in the Old Testament, which is why Paul calls it a “mystery” now revealed: “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed - in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51–52). The rapture is a comfort (1 Thess 4:18).

The Rapture is imminent. (1 Cor 15:51; 1 Thess 4:15). It can happen at any moment. “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Thessalonians 5:9. Church is promised an exemption from divine wrath (1 Thess 1:10; 5:9; Rom 5:9; Rev 3:10; 6:17).

Pre-tribulation rapture theology was popularized extensively in the 1830s by John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren, and further popularized in the United States in the early 20th century by the wide circulation of the Scofield Reference Bible.

However, The "Rapture" is alluded to in the writings of the Early Church Fathers: Tertullian Against Marcion Book V (prior to 220AD). Tertullian On the Resurrection of the Flesh (prior to 220AD). Origen Against Celsus Book II (prior to 253AD). Origen Against Celsus Book V (prior to 253AD). Origen Against Celsus Book VII (prior to 253AD). Irenaeus Against Heresies Book V (prior to 202AD). Tertullian A Treatise on the Soul (prior to 220AD). Tertullian On Prayer (prior to 220AD). Dubious Hippolytus Fragments (prior to 235AD). Expressions of imminency abound in the Apostolic Fathers. Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, The Didache, The Epistle of Barnabas, and The Shepherd of Hermas all speak of imminency. Furthermore, The Shepherd of Hermas speaks of the pretribulational concept of escaping the tribulation. By the fifth century a.d., the amillennialism of Origen and Augustine had won the day in the established Church- East and West. After over a thousand years of suppression, pre-millennialism began to be revived as a result of at least four factors. By the late 1500s and the early 1600s, premillennialism began to return as a factor within mainstream Protestantism. (Greg Kroehnert).

Dr. Andy Woods: RAPTURE OR APOSTASY:
(2 Thessalonians 2:3) Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, (Day of the Lord) except there come a falling away first, (The Greek adjective first, is the Greek word Proto, which means first.) and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; (antichrist) Emphasis added. The Apostasia is not a spiritual departure but a physical departure, a spatial departure.

Reasons for Physical Departure:
1. How could an announcement of a spiritual departure be front page new news, or some kind of definitive sign to relax the worried Corinthians? There have always been doctrinal departures.
2. 2nd Thess. was an early written letter.
3. The definate article before Apostasia.
4. Noun Apostasia can refer to a physcial departure. Liddell and Scott a well-known Greek Lexicon, the terms they use to describe apostasia are: Rebellion against God, apostasy, a departure, a disappearance, or a distance that would refer to the physical removal.
5. The verb form of the noun Apostasia, which is the Greek word Aphistemi, can also mean a physical departure. All saved Believers will be taken.

“Watching” or “Obedience”, or doing “good works”, is not a requirement.