Rapture

Overview
Rapture is the Christian dogmatic concept that all saved Christians will be raised up into heaven at, or some time before Jesus returns. Rapture spawns as an interpretation from the Bible, 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, in the New testament:

"For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel and the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first."

The context and timing for this even is highly disputed among followers and theologians. Generally, the timing is considered to be unknown, because of a passage in Matthew 24:36:

"But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only."

However, many Christians continue to speculate concerning when the rapture will happen. There are three main timeframes within which the rapture is believed to happen. The first is pretribulation, which holds that saved Christians will be rapture before the inhabitants of the earth begin to suffer. [Midtribulation] holds that the rapture of saved Christians will occur halfway (often interpreted as 3.5 years) into the tribulation. [Posttribulation] holds that saved Christians will suffer with the rest of the earth's inhabitants through the entirety of the tribulation, and will be raptured before the millennium-long reign of Satan.

The Rapture is related to Armageddon. Different doctrinal groups of Christianity have different takes on the events, but generally, the Rapture, the Tribulation, the Millennium, and the final battle (Armageddon) will happen in one continuous sequence.

External link

 * The Rapture will happen (1 of 3)


 * The Journeyman Heretic's refutation of the Rapture doctrine as a valid theological system