Signs in the heavens, Pt 2.

In the previous post, I introduced the concept of "the Rapture", and we discovered, from God's Word, that there will be a departure we will make at that climactic event - a departure that is certain, and that will be sudden.

However, we must also consider the destination we shall have.  “… we shall be caught up … to meet the Lord in the air.” (I Thess.4:17).  We won’t depart merely in order to wander around, aimlessly, in space like rogue satellites, or even disembodied spirits!  We will have a destination, a goal, to which we will go.  And that destination will be the Christ Himself! 

There will be a Person we will meet.  And we will meet Him “in the air”.   Since the air was thought of, in Paul’s contemporary culture, as being the abode of all manner of evil spirits; since the devil is even designated “… the prince of the power of the air,” (Eph.2:2); it is a measure of the complete supremacy of the Christ, that He should meet His people in that region.

So, although I would contend that these words be taken literally, they also have a symbolic meaning pointing, as they do, to the majesty and power of the victorious Jesus.  He is the Person we shall meet. 

But there is also a perfection we will gain.  No matter how faithful a disciple of Jesus I might be( and oh, how I wish that I were more faithful!), I am still, while dwelling in this mortal body, imperfect.  There is, raging within me, that battle of which Paul wrote to the young church in Rome: “I cannot understand my own behaviour.  I fail to carry out the things I want to do, and I find myself doing the very things I hate.  When I act against my own will, that means I have a self that acknowledges that the Law is good, and so the thing behaving in that way is not my [converted] self but sin living in me.” (7:15-127; Jerusalem Bible). 

The devil continues to exert pressure on us; we are tainted by the influence of the world around us, from which we cannot really escape.  Sanctification (also dealt with in "Great Words of the Faith"), the process of “perfecting” for the disciple of Jesus, is only completed when we enter the immediate presence of the Lord – either at our physical death, or at the Rapture.  But then, we shall be perfect, even as He is perfect. (see I John 3:2).

So, at the Rapture, there is a departure that disciples of Jesus will make; there is a destination we will have; and, as we shall discover next time, there is a delight that we shall know.