Today’s Front Page
Today, The Bible & You
The Nation’s Christian Newspaper
August 2026
The Event that will change
the world forever
The Snatching Away of Christians in the Rapture
The Rapture is the promised future event when Christ will return from heaven to snatch away His church, gathering all believers to Himself. God describes it as a mystery that was previously unrevealed, but now made known, declaring, “Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” (1st Corinthians 15:51-52).
The term rapture comes from the Latin rapio, a translation of the Greek harpazo, meaning to seize or snatch away, as found in Paul’s statement that believers will be “caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1st Thessalonians 4:17). This supernatural snatching away involves the bodily resurrection of deceased believers, the transformation of living saints into their glorified bodies, and the collective meeting of the entire church with Christ in the air.
According to Bible teacher Charles Ryrie, “At the rapture, some mortals (living) will only need to put on immortality, while those whose bodies have seen corruption (dead) will need to put on incorruption through resurrection. Both routes to heaven involve change; the living need to be translated and the dead raised. The last generation of Christians will not experience death.” (Charles Ryrie, A Survey of Bible Doctrine, p. 166).
This is not to be confused with the second phase of the Second Coming, where Christ visibly descends to the earth in judgment and to establish His earthly kingdom, ruling the entire earth from the city of Jerusalem (Revelation 19:11-16; Zechariah 14:4). God emphasizes this comfort by saying, “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore, comfort one another with these words” (1st Thessalonians 4:16-18). This event is imminent, meaning it could occur at any moment, without warning signs, in keeping with Jesus’ promise: “I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:2-3). Fruchtenbaum states, “As each day ends, it brings one day closer to the time when the Rapture may occur. Because of this imminency, it is time for believers to awaken out of sleep and to live a life consistent with the position of being sons of light.” (Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, The Footsteps of the Messiah, p. 154).
The snatching away of the born-again believers is not just an end-times doctrine, but the greatest promise our Lord Jesus gave. He promised to come for His Bride before the world enters its darkest hour. This is not a vague Biblical doctrine; the two phases of the Second Coming are the second most discussed subjects in the entire Bible. In the New Testament alone, there are 318 verses about it. Think about that number: 318. That’s roughly one out of every 30 verses pointing forward to the moment our Lord Jesus comes back for us.
The latter days are a special time for our Creator. The 7-year period the Bible calls the tribulation is the most described time period in all of Scripture. More verses describe it than describe the 3 and 1/2 years of our Lord’s own ministry on Earth. If God devotes that much of his Word to this, why don’t we? God doesn’t waste words.
There is no Earth yet, no sun, no stars, no time as you know it. There is only God: Father, Son, and Spirit. And in that eternity before everything, a desire is spoken.
The Father wanted a bride, a bride for his Son, so that the Son and his bride could rule everything he was about to make, together forever.
The Bible makes it clear that God is seeking a bride for His Son. God tells us in Revelation 21:2, “And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”
We read in Revelation 21:9, “And there came unto one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come here, I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” Revelation 22:17, “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”
When we look for the spiritual picture of a woman in the Bible, most of the time she is a picture of the Body of Believers, the Bride of Christ! For example, at the end of time, when Christ is coming back, when the Bride of Christ is going to be His Wife, we read in Revelation 19:7-8, “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife has made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.”
The second coming is what the universe has been moving forward to before the world began. There’s a specific kind of wedding hidden inside everything our Lord Jesus ever said. His first listeners caught it instantly; we’ve completely forgotten it. And it is the most important thing. The wedding hidden in plain sight. So much of what our Lord Jesus said was wedding language. He talked like a groom constantly, and his listeners caught every word of it because they’d all been to these weddings. The customs were in their bones, and the meaning that landed for them sails right over our heads 2,000 years later. When a person understands the traditional Jewish wedding ceremony, they will totally appreciate the application of the fulfillment of our Lord’s sacrifice for His Bride.
In the ancient Jewish world, a marriage didn’t begin with a proposal; it began with a journey. The groom left his own home and traveled to the home of the woman he wanted, and he came carrying two things: a contract, which they called the ketuba, with the terms written out. And second: a price, a bride price. Because everyone understood that taking this daughter would pull her from her father’s house, and that cost something, and the groom was willing to pay. These prices were real. When David wanted his bride, the price was 100 trophies taken from the Philistines. When Jacob wanted Rachel, the price was seven years of his life working for Laban, and then, cheated, seven more, 14 years for a wife. That’s the weight of it.
The groom sits down with the family; he lays out the contract, they come to terms, and then they seal it the way covenants were sealed: they pour a cup of wine, and they drink. And in that moment, they are betrothed. Our word for that is too weak. We hear betrothed and think engaged, fragile, breakable, somebody changes their mind in a few months. That is not what this was. Betrothal in those days meant you were married, bound. The only thing that could end it was a divorce. It’s why when Joseph hears Mary is pregnant, he plans to put her away, to divorce her quietly, before they ever live together a single day.
A contract is just ink on a page until you see the price written next to it. Because the bride price, the cost the groom’s family paid to win her, has a name in your story: it was the blood of Jesus. The Father himself paid the price for a bride for his Son, and the price was the precious blood of his own Son.
The groom is about to do something that’s going to sound very, very familiar. After the cup of wine, the groom and the bride do something strange to us: they separate. He goes back to his home; she stays at hers. And during the wait, each of them has a job. Watch both, because our Lord Jesus walks straight into both.
The groom’s job is to build an addition to his Father’s house and adds on a room, a bridal chamber off his Father’s existing house, so that when the wedding comes, he’ll have a home ready to bring his bride to. Before the death of our Lord Jesus, the night before he died, Jesus said in John 14:3, “In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.” The disciples weren’t confused by that; we get confused by it. They heard a groom describing a wedding: I’m going to my Father’s house to build the room, and then I’m coming back to get you. But a room is just real estate until you hear who it’s being built for; it’s being built for you.
The bride prepares herself in two ways. She makes her wedding dress with her own hands over the months of waiting, stitch by stitch. Remember that dress; we’re going to need it, and what it’s made of is going to stop you cold. Then, she undergoes the mikvah, a public immersion in water that declares to her whole community, “I am betrothed, I belong to him now.”
Now comes the detail about timing: the groom does not get to pick the wedding date. By custom, only one person could send the groom to go get his bride: his father. The son built the room and worked and waited, and every so often he’d want to go, and the father would say, “Not yet, it has to be ready.” This knowledge makes the words of our Lord Jesus easy to understand, words that have confused people for 2,000 years. Matthew 24:36, “But of that day and that hour knows no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” That was never God being mysterious to keep you nervous; it’s a wedding. The Father gives the word. It was meant to be a wedding you stay ready for, because you never know which night the call will come.
When the Father finally says, “Go get her.” Everything changes in an instant. The groom gathers his groomsmen, and they set out for the bride’s village in the dark. Then comes the epic scene. The groom chooses to come often at midnight, on purpose. The whole thing is built to be a surprise. They come with torches blazing, they come blowing the shofar, the ram’s horn; they come shouting and clapping, sweeping into the bride’s community in the dead of night. The sound wakes the household; the sound wakes the bridesmaids. And if you’ve ever wondered why our Lord Jesus told that strange story about the 10 virgins, five wise and five foolish, waiting in the night for a bridegroom, now you know. They were waiting for this: the midnight cry. Five were ready and five were not, and the difference was everything.
And in the middle of that noise and light and joy, the groom does the thing the whole night was built for: he snatches his bride away. The trumpet, the shout, the light in the dark, people caught up in an instant, gone before the world could blink. That midnight procession, the torches, the shofar, the shout, the snatching away, the rapture. It was before us all the time; people read the story, understood it in its immediate context, and yet were not able to make the connection. Our Lord Jesus was describing his own wedding.
There is more to this beautiful story we will all participate in as born-again believers. The groom brings his bride into the chamber he built, the chuppah, and they’re together at last. Then comes the feast, seven days of celebration. And only when the seven days are complete does the groom bring his bride out and present her in radiance to everyone waiting. God’s Word tells us that when Jesus returns to this earth in power, he comes with tens of thousands of his saints. He doesn’t come back alone; he comes back with his bride to set up his kingdom and reign. A snatching away, then a coming back after the bride is taken, the seven days unfold, which represents the 7-year-tribulation, and then the king and his bride come out together.
This is what our Lord was saying in 2nd Corinthians 11:2, “For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” This is the wedding we were made for. The empty room in your Father’s house already has your name on it; our names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. The wedding is just a story, beautiful, ancient, a little distant, until you realize you’re in it. That means you need to know exactly what the moment itself looks like, chapter and verse.
What does God want us to do with this information? Comfort one another with these words. God reveals this to us in 1st Thessalonians 4:18: “Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” This was always meant to be the comforting part.
But comfort is just half of it.
These words are meant to do just that and more. We read in 1st Corinthians 15:1-52, “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, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” In a moment, the twinkling of an eye, faster than thought. That’s the flash you saw in the opening; that’s how fast. And what do we become in that instant? 1st John 3:1-2, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” We shall be like him.
God has given us a wonderful Book to live by. The more you read and study it, the more precious it becomes. The word meet, as found in 1st Thessalonians 4:17, “caught up to meet the Lord in the air,” is used two other times in the New Testament: Matthew 25:6 and Acts 28:15.
In both of these places, it is a group of people going out to meet someone and accompanying them back to the place they just went out from. This is exactly what we will be doing. We will be snatched away to meet the Lord in the air, and then after seven years, we will be returning to Earth to rule and reign with our Lord Jesus when He establishes His kingdom on Earth for 1,000 years.
Friend, there is one great, glorious second coming of the Lord in our future. He will come once more to give relief to his church and judgment to his adversaries and to establish his kingdom. Surely you are ready to shout out with me the next-to-last verse of the Bible: “Come, Lord Jesus.”
Printed with permission of Today, The Bible & You, located at P.O. Box 1722, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma 74013, Phone Number (918) 279-1136, the name of the original article in the August 2026 issue of Today’s Front Page was “The Event that will change the world forever.” wwwJohnBarela.com
