Rapture: Literal or Figurative?

I THESSALONIANS 4:16-17"For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will 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."

I CORINTHIANS 15:51-53"Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye ... for this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality."

I'm going to resolve a controversy here in less than a minute. Wish me luck.

The scene is usually something like this: The world is careening toward Armageddon and the Antichrist is about to be revealed to the world. Suddenly, millions of Christians around the world, along with those long dead who pop out of their graves, fly up like rockets to meet their Lord. Then, depending on who you ask, they stay up in heaven with the Lord for 7 years or else come right back with Him. In both cases, they fight the final world battle with Him, and, of course, win.

Another spin on these scriptures is that they are simply a metaphorical picture of a spiritual reality. There is no physical resurrection going on here; this is just a picture of what takes place when Christ comes into His people, whether as a past event or an ongoing feature of the unfolding of God's plan in the church.

When we arrive at the mysteries in scripture, we have two basic approaches to interpretation: literal or figurative. One way we can sometimes clarify which is the best approach is by considering context. We can also examine original Greek meanings of the words being used in the passage.

Whenever we approach these mysteries, we may actually have an agenda, or at least a preference as to how we think the interpretation should be conducted. But whenever we become exclusively either literal or figurative in our approach, we are probably just digging our own nice little comfortable cubby to live in. We are also creating a stand-off with our fellow believers who prefer a different kind of cubby-hole. Stand-offs have a way of escalating into full-scale wars and private encampments that sometimes develop into movements and then denominations.

I am finding that in most cases, mysteries yield to BOTH basic approaches, again, literal and figurative. There is no reason to suppose that either the literal or figurative explanations of the "rapture" are the last word. There are good reasons to believe it is a literal future event: even though literalists often get too head-strong about their particular imaginary scenarios. There are also good reasons to apply these verses in a more figurative way, gleaning meaning from them, but careful not to get too dogmatic about symbolism as the ONLY true approach here. Please.

In the end, we are straining to have the last word, and in doing so alienating the other guy who is trying to nail it down. Who cares and what does it matter? We end up straining at gnats and swallowing camels.

I usually say to those who want to press the futurist rapture,"Hey, you could die at any moment. Is that IMMINENT enough for you?" My personal rapture will come when I pass on. And it won't cause any divisions in the church.

Paul maintained that he was revealing these things to COMFORT the saints, who at that time were under extremes of persecution. Living the Christian life was no walk in the park.

Basically, yes, Christ in us right now is a kind of rapture, and we ought to focus on the here and now. But we are also looking toward a clear, future change, and an amazing transformation of all creation. We needn't get too anal about possible interpretations. We can all be friends.

For the figurative argument on rapture, click this.