TXT: When is the rapture?

Question: will God’s people be taken away when Jesus comes back or before?

Answer:

  Among all who believe in the physical, bodily rapture of believers, I do not think that there is any debate on this question.  All will agree that God’s people will be raptured (taken up physically to meet Jesus) BEFORE Jesus comes back.

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord.  (1 Thess 4:16-17)

Paul is pretty clear that there will be a point when Christians who have not died will rise from the earth and meet Jesus in the air.  The only question is WHEN?!

Of that particular day, no one knows (1 Thess 5:2, Mark 13:32).  Of the general timeframe, there is much debate…  Is it pre-trib, mid-trib, pre-wrath, post-trib?  Personally, I’m hoping/praying/expecting a pre-tribulational rapture, but I’m not dogmatic that everyone has to agree with me on this.