Knowing Christianity

  The Dead in Christ First      When the sounds announcing the rapture are heard by believers as the Lord descends from heaven, Paul tells us the first thing that will happen is that the bodies of the believers who died during the church-age will be raised and joined with their perfected spirits, which will have returned with the Lord. These raised bodies will be glorified, incorruptible bodies fit for the heavenly realm. But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? What kind of body will they have when they come?” You fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow—you are not sowing the body that will be, but only a seed, perhaps of wheat or another grain.    But God gives it a body as he wants, and to each of the seeds its own body. Not all flesh is the same flesh; there is one flesh for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly ...

  The Rapture Event While we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13).      There is a great deal of misunderstanding as it relates to the two stages of Christ’s second coming. As stated in the chapters which discussed the signs of the times, the signs I wrote about are not signs that will signal the rapture of the church, which is His return for the saints, but rather His ultimate return with the saints. Much of the misunderstanding comes from confusing these two events. The book of Revelation points out the difference between the two stages of the second coming.      During the rapture, the Lord takes all believers to be with Him in heaven, but at the second advent, when He returns with the saints, He will stay on earth. This advent occurs at the end of the tribulation period and it is when He will establish His millennial rule, His thousand-year reign on ea...