1 Thess, 4:16-18.States "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. Wherefore comfort one another with these words."

Now I am confused for two reasons.!!
1) I was lead to understand when you die you go to heaven (this belief has for many years brought comfort to me when remembering long gone friends) But to me that’s sounds like when you are dead you just wait till the Lord comes and gets you?
2) Dose this also mean that one day I will wake up and half the people I know will have just vanished.
Please if one of the learned scripture students can explain or make more clear I would be grateful.

Were humans, were meant to stick to the Earth, and yeah, it says he'll come like a robber in the night. I talked to someone about this a lot and he says Jesus will take our bodies to heaven, turn them into the same material angel's bodies are made of, and keep us in heaven until its done. But one thing I think you should understand is that heaven isnt in outer space, its a completely different dimension i think. same with hell. But if your scared then your saved, because the one thing you should do is fear God. But umm, the question was a little unclear, just a little. And after its all done were supposed to come back to Earth with our new bodies and new "shells" i guess you could say. One cool thing i heard about though with those bodies is that you can materialize and de-materialize whenever you want so i think you can go through anything and you can survive in space, move faster than light (sorta like Instant Transmission if your into DBZ , and my favorite i heard, go planet hopping. Buuuuuuut this is just what i heard, no one knows for sures man. But yeah it was prophecized so id take the bible's word for it.

The first part of your question I myself have asked I would hope your soul goes to heaven and when Jesus returns you will be reunited with your body, The dead shall rise first.
Your second question , the answer is yes. After the rapture tribulation will begin. Jesus' return will be known but some will try and discredit it.

It was my understanding that when a person dies that the soul goes to Heaven and the shell shall turn to dust. So, therefore, I don't believe that God will raise the dead as they are dead. The souls is what will accompany God.

That is sooooo wrong, as for the bodies that can .... I have never heard of such, Where are you getting your information? To fear God does not mean your saved.
When the Lord comes and the dead rise forst I take that to mean the graves will open up and the dead will rise to meet Jesus, now if its flesh or soul form I am not sure . Pandroid Android once explained this and made it very simple maybe he will post and answer better than I can.

yeah i get carried away and dont read over what i write usually but yeah, mind body spirit and soul, and i thought it was spirit that goes to heaven. and yeah you might be right but if only the soul goes then that means bodies are left behind right? so were gonna have a lot of graves to dig when he comes back for the rapture but im pretty sure about the body thing. and i got the info from a very reliable source. at least i think so, the guy scored a 170 on his IQ test and is pretty old and has studied the bible and a little more about religion.

No I am not scared, according to 90% of the different spiritual groups around here I am going to Hell, die a bad death and or have my austral life force spread across the universe never to return.. I even had a catholic priest tell me if I returned he would have me arrested for trespass. But recently I have had a large amount of friends die and this is where my train of thought is from



well that is what i mean, if it is only the soul that goes are they in the grave waiting or have the already gone?? but then why say he will open the grave and take the dead first.. and then the living bit....:/. are they going to die to be sprirts to go to heaven leaving a lot of dead bodys? or do they leave with the body..
as you can see I am totaly confused with this and hate not being able to understand it even a little...

Please don't believe these people you have encountered. God loves you. Don't be discouraged because some show you the wrong side of religion or God. I will PM you and talk to you. I can't believe a preist would do such a reprhensible thing please know that is just one person. You are asking about God and eternal life and that tells me your interested and God is speaking to you, please follow that.

.................<<>> Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:8- To be absent from the body is to be in the present with the Lord. This means when you die you go straight to be with Jesus. Also Jesus told the criminal on the cross in Luke 23:43- Assuredly I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise. So when you die you go straight to Heaven.

and all of it is nothing more than opinion. no one knows and jesus was supposed to come back during the life time of the jews he was physically speaking to at the time !

And your statement is also just an opinion nothing more but In my heart I know my opinion to be right and true and your opinions are true to you, That does not make Jesus a lie or his life a fairy tale. SO what if some don't believe, Thats God's department not mine but this opinion that Jesus was suppossed to come back in the life of the jews is mere spulation too . Your quick to point out that you think its all a hoax but then counter with nothing more than the opinion your so against. God knows when Jesus Christ will return and when all the people left behind are going through tribulation then maybe that will serve as some proof an if not hey doesn't matter to me I will be in heaven with theLord because I trust in God and God's word that has been around for a long time and won't be going anywhere any time soon.

I don't believe the Rapture will happen. The belief about the rapture comes solely from this one passage in 1 Thessalonians. There is not a shred of supporting evidence elsewhere in the bible. People take this one verse and apply it to a particular time in prophecy (End Times, right before the anti-Christ and False Prophet). The truth is there are many other ways to look at this passage. In fact, it was only in the 19th Century that the concept of "the Rapture" first came into Christian thinking - you will not find it in any ancient writing before this. That means for nearly 1800 years after the writing of 1 thessalonians, people who read that passage had different views on it.

The Rapture, imo, is a dubiously supported concept that hinges on a literal view of the highly symbolic book of Revelation. There are three primary beliefs concerning Eschatology ("Eschatology" means the "Study of of End Time prophecy"). Only one of these supports a Rapture. My opinion on Eschatology is that we are already in the End Times, and have been ever since Jesus was resurrected, and now we await for his return. There won't be a literal anti-Christ (there are many anti-Christs, says the Bible).

That said, I think it is quite impossible to say exactly when you go to heaven when you die. God lives outside of Time, so when we die and reach heaven we will be in a realm that does not hold to our linear view of existence. One thing is for sure though, when you die, it will feel instantaneous in reaching heaven - whether this means you go straight to heaven when you die, or if you go through some kind of "soul sleep", it is unclear. There isn't a concept of "waiting" for heaven when you die. You won't hang around stuck in a dead unmoving body and going crazy out of your mind (is that possible if you already are out of your body).

Hope this helps with your question

~ Regards, PA

just as in my heart I know my opinion to be right and true.

Am I understanding you believe Jesus will return but the events such as the description of the rapture are different? If we are in the end times and revelations is orrect then how do you explain the end time events and Jesus not return for us?

There are three primary views about End Times Prophecies from Revelation:

Pre-millenialism - Link
Post-millenialism - Link
A-millenialism - Link

My views allign closest to Amillenialism. Only pre-millenialism has a concept of the Rapture. I think we are already in the End Times, Jesus' resurrection chained the Devil (he has no control over us), and that one day in the future, Jesus will return, and usher in the New Creation. Have a read through the links I've given above - they should provide a good overview of the three views of Eschatology

~ Regards, PA

Thanks for the links I have looked over some and got your meaning and will finish reading them. I do ave some questions but I will wait until I am done with them all, Thank you,

When Christ rose from the dead it was body and soul.

When Christ rose to be with his father it was body and soul.

Critical Faculties

The rapture debunked

By Christopher Shea | December 5, 2004

The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has declared war on the "Left Behind" series, the hugely popular apocalyptic thrillers that "depict Jesus returning to slaughter everyone who is not a born-again Christian," as Kristof put it on Nov. 24. In that column and in one in July, the columnist condemned the "bigotry" in the bestsellers, quoting passages in which a warrior Jesus hurls Muslims, Jews, Hindus, agnostics, and virtually all other non-Christians "howling and screeching" into everlasting fire.

"If Saudi Arabians wrote an Islamic version of this series, we would furiously demand that sensible Muslims repudiate such hatemongering," declared Kristof, who has himself frequently denounced what he sees as liberal condescension toward evangelicals. "We should hold ourselves to the same standard."

Tim LaHaye, coauthor of the "Left Behind" series, responded to Kristof via email, after the July column, that he and other Christians would experience "no glee" in watching unbelievers die, and that those who perished would be only the most corrupt sinners who had rejected every last chance to repent. "We don't choose to live next door to such people in this life," LaHaye wrote. "Do you really want to spend eternity with them?"

So is the Left Behind debate yet another example of the all-too-familiar standoff between secular types and traditional believers? Actually, for the last year, one of the people doing the most to debunk the worldview of LaHaye and others who believe in the Rapture (when Christians will be pulled up into heaven) and Tribulation (the seven years of supposed horrors that follow, during which the "Left Behind" series is set) has been a woman who labels herself a conservative theologian: Barbara R. Rossing, an associate professor of New Testament studies at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago.

"Today's Christian fixation on Armageddon and war is a sickness even while it may be thrilling and entertaining," Rossing said by phone, a few days after she preached on the theme of the Second Coming for the first Sunday in Advent.

Rossing, who has a doctorate from the Harvard Divinity School, says she wrote her latest book, "The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation," which came out earlier this year, because "more and more I was talking to Lutherans and evangelicals and even Catholics who had read the [Left Behind] novels and gotten the impression this was what the Bible teaches." In news stories on the Left Behind juggernaut, she has been quoted condemning the ethical implications of the "beam-me-up" aspect of Rapture theory, which she says "invites a selfish nonconcern for the world." But the heart of the book is Rossing's effort to go toe-to-toe with the Rapture theorists in Scriptural readings.Continued...

The Rapture theory itself is quite new, she argues -- one reason to be suspicious. It was largely invented around 1830 by a British evangelical named John Nelson Darby. One key proof-text, then as now, is Daniel 9:24-27, which speaks of "seventy weeks of years" between the time "the word went out to restore and build Jerusalem" and the second coming. Theologians disagree on when the clock should start for the countdown of those 490 years (70 times seven). After the 69th week, however, Daniel says a "prince" will come who "shall destroy the city and its sanctuary" through war and flood.

Rossing and other mainline biblical scholars believe this last is a historical reference to an emperor named Antiochus, who desecrated Jerusalem's main temple in 168 BC by erecting a statue of Zeus. However, the Rapture theorists say this can't be what Daniel refers to, citing a lack of the all-out "desolation" described in Daniel. Instead, they say, the 490-year countdown continued into Jesus' time and stopped when he was crucified. Therefore, the Earth still awaits one more week of years, or seven years, of the prophecy: first, the destruction of the Temple (which at this point must be rebuilt, on the site where the Dome of the Rock now stands) and then seven years of war and flood.

Rossing calls the purported 2,000-year clock stoppage -- unmentioned in Daniel -- a "complete fabrication." Additionally, she says, the Rapture theorists strain to impose a two-part Second Coming on the New Testament. The gospel of Matthew says, "Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left." But Rossing says those lines don't even make it clear which person is being saved, let alone specify a seven-year gap between the two events.

The Book of Revelation, with its hail and fire and plagues and blood, provides the grist for much of the Left Behind books' depiction of the Tribulation. But Rossing calls Revelation an allegorical vision of a possible future -- "a wakeup call" for first-century Christians. (She says it's not unlike the frightening vision of the future that Marley's ghost shows Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol" -- another future that didn't have to happen.) And despite blood and gore, the centerpiece of Revelation, she says, is still the "Lamb" of God, who "conquers" only through love.

To Christians wondering which Biblical reading to believe, Rossing says: "I would just appeal to their experience of God in their lives. Is he a God who wants to destroy the world or who wants to redeem it and who gives us a vision of hope?" Tensions between secular elites and heartland believers have been getting a lot of ink lately. But Rossing's book shows that intellectual battles within Christianity can be just as heated -- and, given that they can shape Christian responses to, say, Middle Eastern wars -- just as consequential

Continued... http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/art...ebunked/?page=2

Christopher Shea's column appears in Ideas biweekly. E-mail: critical.faculties@verizon.net.
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
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Okay now I found this one first so his soul is God's. SHOOOOO MLOR