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Paul wrote in Greek. The verb he chose is harpazo (ἀρπάζω, Strong’s G726): a sudden, forcible seizing, the word you would use for a snatch from danger or a theft in the night. When Jerome translated the passage into Latin in the fourth century, harpazo became rapiemur, from the verb rapio. From rapio the English language took the word rapture. Nothing was invented in the transaction. A Greek word became a Latin word became an English word, and the meaning never moved: caught up, snatched away.
The objection “the word rapture isn’t in the Bible” proves exactly as much as “the word Trinity isn’t in the Bible,” or “the word Bible isn’t in the Bible.” All three are true. None of them settles anything. The question is never whether an English word appears; it is whether the thing the word names appears. It does, and here it is.
| Passage | KJV Text |
|---|---|
| 1 THESS. 4:16-17 | “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” |
| 1 COR. 15:51-52 | “Behold, I shew 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.” |
| JOHN 14:2-3 | “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.” |
Harpazo is not a rare or obscure word. The New Testament uses it for sudden, bodily, God-initiated removals. That is precisely the claim of 1 Thessalonians 4:
| Passage | KJV Text |
|---|---|
| ACTS 8:39 | “And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing.” |
| 2 COR. 12:2 | “I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.” |
| REV. 12:5 | “And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.” |
| JOHN 10:28 | “And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” |
Philip is physically relocated. Paul is taken to the third heaven. The man child is taken to the throne. The verb means what it means. When Paul applies it to living believers at the Lord’s descent, no honest reader can call the concept unbiblical. The only thing not in the text is the Latin loanword we say it with.
The word history settles the vocabulary question, nothing more. It does not by itself settle when the catching up happens relative to the tribulation. That is a separate question with a separate page coming, and serious believers have disagreed on it. What cannot be seriously disputed is that Scripture describes living believers being caught up to meet the Lord in the air. That is the rapture. The word is Latin; the promise is His.
no probability of any prophetic event is computed here, and none ever will be
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