Marcus O'Reillius
Active Member
First of all, "taken" in the Greek is the same word as is used when someone "receives" Christ!brakelite said:
Didn't know that?
The word is paralambano. From my writing:
Another Rapture verb that Matthew uses is paralambano to describe Jesus’ message to the Church’s deliverance. An interesting word, it is rendered here as simply “taken,” it means to take over, to receive, to inherit. It is used in the Greek world to describe how instruction is received from a teacher. Also in context of the Greek world it would mean to inherit secrets, especially by oral means. The ‘taking over’ refers then to a position of idea, rather than a physical carriage from place to place.
In the New Testament, paralambano is used chiefly when one “receives” Christ in 1Co 11:23; Gal 1:12; 1Th 2:13 and 1Th 4:1. In an eschatological sense, Jesus uses this same word in John 14:3 when He will take us to where He is going. So when this word is used here for taking one and leaving the other, it is the one who is taken who is saved. In Daniel 12, which is the first instance in the Bible to show two resurrections, Daniel is told in the last verse to wait rest until he receives his allotted inheritance. paralambano carries just such a meaning here too so that all three definitions of it are included in the action which the authors describe from Jesus’ words.
Here is an explanation for Jesus' cryptic answer: our bodies are exchanged for another leaving the old flesh and blood body behind.
Here again is a longer explanation for you, again from my own writing:
The cryptic passage in Luke allows for some context which may when aligned with the explanation Paul gives, shed some light on this loose end of the Rapture. Previously in the Rapture, Paul stated:
1Co 15:51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed-- 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
It is not often when God actually explains how something He is going to accomplish is actually done, so in this case, it behooves careful examination. That word “changed” is allasso (Strong's 236). The basic meaning is to make different. However, according to the Geoffrey Bromiley in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament - it means both to change, but more importantly, it can also be legitimately translated to mean exchange.
allasso. The basic sense is “to make other than it is,” used in both the active and middle for “to alter,” “to give in exchange,” “to take in exchange,” and intransitively “to change.” The NT uses only the transitive active and passive.
1. The word has the sense of “to change” in Acts 6:14; Gal 4:20; 1 Cor 15:51-52.
2. It means “to exchange” in Rom 1:23. (p.40)
To discern whether allasso should rightly be translated into change, has to then reflect what actual action is being portrayed. For this analysis, a look at some corresponding principles and Bible precepts is required.
If those who have died and been buried for centuries are made alive - which is what Paul indicates happens when the resurrection of the dead comes - and their bodies are long gone - does God have to re-create their flesh and blood bodies so He can then “change” them into something which is imperishable or can God translate their souls directly into new, imperishable bodies? The answer here is no:
1CO 15:42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
The difference between the body which is “sown” into the ground, is raised a totally different body. What was natural, and goes back to the soil and into other living things being organic, is raised as a spiritual body. Thus God does not need to retrieve the natural body in order to create a new spiritual body. Seeing in the systematic theology presented herein that the dead reside or rest in a spiritual plane of Heaven called Paradise; it is from the spiritual bodies that are also recognizable to each person that God will raise up to be on the cloud with Him.
The question then is: What of the living Elect on the face of the Earth? The Biblical principle here is that flesh and blood cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven:
1CO 15:50 I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
So the Elect cannot simply have their bodies lifted up physically to join Jesus. The flesh carries too much sin with it perhaps, or there is something about preserving that which is bound to deteriorate into a Heavenly setting where time is eternal. This then necessitates a change, or exchange. In the case of change, the whole of the flesh must give way. This then requires a wholly new body. Some would insist that allasso would provide for such.
However, with the case of those long deceased, God does not have to reconstitute flesh and blood in order to translate those souls from Paradise to stand bodily in their new spiritual, imperishable, and immortal bodies. So in likewise fashion, a new spiritual, imperishable, and immortal body could await those who are still alive and are left. God could simply lift the soul from its vase of flesh are put it in the new spiritual body. This suggests an exchange is on order, which gets back to the root definition of allasso: “to make other than it is.” In like fashion, the bodies of the living Elect are natural, but what they have on the clouds is spiritual.
Looking at allasso as exchange then provides a very real, literal and physical answer which is cold hard truth: the believers taken by Christ and the Angels are instantaneously translated from one vessel to another. The soul does not experience death because the body is wholly alive when the transformation takes place; it just realizes a new abode which does not have any of the former infirmities or liabilities. The suggestion here would go so far as to say such an experience would be joyful even, and not carry any of the stigma, fear, or pain of death.
However, it would allow logistically for the cryptic statement of Jesus to be proved true. It also would fulfill two small references in prophetic passage which indicate the Harvest has some element of terror for those left behind:
AM 8:1 This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: a basket of ripe fruit. 2 "What do you see, Amos?" he asked.
"A basket of ripe fruit," I answered.
Then the LORD said to me, "The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.
AM 8:3 "In that day," declares the Sovereign LORD, "the songs in the temple will turn to wailing. Many, many bodies--flung everywhere! Silence!"
The element of silence is repeated when the seventh Seal is opened. That’s what makes this passage interesting: the juxtaposition of bodies with silence. This aspect in the sequence of events comes next, but in keeping with the current quandary of having corpses all about for vultures, it is interesting to ponder. Certainly as revealed in the concept of rescue/wrath sequence of events with the Day of the Lord, the set-up for the day the Lord refers to is contained in the second half of the Day of the Lord. The suggestion here because of a lack of hard evidence to peg this particular scene to the Rapture, is that is a like window into the Rapture’s byproduct. Isaiah portrays the scene in just as cryptic terms:
ISA 17:14 In the evening, sudden terror!
Before the morning, they are gone!
The juxtaposition of the sky scrolling revealing light at night is preserved here. The hour of the Day of the Lord is indicated to come at night. This follows all of Jesus’ parables and the whole aspect of the return of the groom in the marriage ritual. The terror is due to the warnings the Angels have given: the residents of the earth are expecting God’s Wrath. Instead, in the morning, they awake to witness a different type of terror: missing persons. They may be missing because they are gone from this earth, and have left dead bodies behind. If the verse said that without indicating any physical harm, then a concrete link could be made, however, the image only matches and is supplied to ask whether or not it might apply rather than dictate that it does.
Now if this teaching for allasso has some saying: ‘My Lord Jesus would never do that to me! He created me and it says He will change me!’ then the reader might want to remember this saying of Jesus and how it was received before its fulfillment:
JN 6:51 “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
JN 6:52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
This teaching also was too hard for those who heard it to bear. However, in the light of faith, Christians understand the interplay between the Bread of Salvation Jesus lifted up at the Passover Meal and the offering of His sinless body on the cross as paving the way for Salvation. Likewise, Jesus gave a literal answer to the Disciples question if one accepts the alternate translation for allasso.
The impact the bodies of the Elect would have would actually compound the fear which has gripped the world. After a dizzying display which few understood, the remaining Christians who had proved so troublesome were seemingly eliminated by the very God they hoped to have return. The public will be talking of Christians in terms of shades of Heaven’s Gates, convincing themselves that the Elect were really kooks as well and even celebrating that they are all dead and done with in the world. This would in turn cause them to ask: If this God of theirs did this to them, what will He do to us?
