Summary: TEXT: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 Last week, we began looking at the topic of the Rapture. That is the next step in the time line of the last days, when Christ will call his church out of this world and up into glory to be with Him. We saw what Christ is doing in Heaven while he tarries -- he is “preparing a place” for us to join him one day soon. First Thessalonians 4:13-18 is the passage in the Bible which tells us most clearly about the Rapture. Let’s look at this passage and see three truths that God wants us to know about this great event. 1. Death is not really death. Paul writes to the Thessalonians, “I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep...” The Thessalonian believers were expecting Jesus Christ to return quite soon, and they had become concerned about those Christians who died before the Rapture. They were under the impression that those believers had missed out on the rapture because they died before it happened. Paul writes them to set their minds at ease regarding this matter. 2. We will rise physically as Jesus rose physically. Verse 14 of our passage states, “If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." This is one of the greatest truths in all of Scripture. Just as death could not hold Jesus, death cannot hold us. Just as Jesus rose from the dead, we will rise again as well. 3. Christ will return in person to take us out of this earth. Verse 16 of our passage states, "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God..."
