For purposes of this essay we are presuming a few things as fundamental truth from the Bible. Some of these presumptions may not be acceptable to a reader or three but that ought not prevent reading through the entire essay to the conclusions.
We are presuming the following points for discussion purposes:
+ All that is real is in the Universe God has created and all that is not in this created Universe is God and only God;
+ Jesus came to Earth as God With Us, as prophesied in the Old Testament and realized in the New Testament;
+ When the Jewish leaders rejected Jesus and His offer to begin The Kingdom on Earth, God opened the Age of Grace which set aside a differentiation between Jews and non-Jews, such that God's salvation was opened to all of humankind descendants from Adam;
+ The Age of Grace will come to an end and then God will resume His dealings with Israel, putting an end to sin in Israel as prophesied by Daniel in the Book of Daniel;
+ The Departure of the Body of Christ Believers ends the current Age of Grace building of the Body of Christ believers;
+ The Spirit of God indwells every individual member of the Body of Christ Believers, as the born again, born from above 'experience' Jesus spoke of with Nicodemus;
+ The Body of Christ Church is not a denomination but a complete list of all who have been born again by the Spirit of God based upon their individual faith alone in Christ alone as Savior and Redeemer;
+ The Body of Christ Believers might be thought of as one would identify the entire student body of a particular school and this Body of Believers has been accumulating since Peter preached on the Day of Pentecost;
+ During the Age of Grace, God is putting His seed of eternal life IN the spirit of every believer in Christ alone as The Redeemer.
+ Instead of using 'dimension' to identify aspects of space and time, we will be using 'variable expressions' to identify discrete aspects such as length, width, height for variable expressions of dimension Space, and past, present, and future as variable expressions of dimension Time; all the dimensions of the Universe God has created are IN the Universe He has created.
The Age We Are In
We are living at the end of the Church Age. The moment the Age ends is the Great Departure of the Body of Christ. Within every member of the Body of Christ there is The Seed of God, the Seed of The Holy Spirit ( 1 John 3:9 ). Only the members of The Body of Christ have God's Seed in their human spirit., making the Age of The Church complete Body of Believers by faith alone in Christ alone a unique phenomenon, apart from the Law since God in us fulfills the character of the law of God in us.
What follows in this essay is a concept of 'what and how' the Great Departure happens. The hallmark of members of The Body of Christ Believers is the Presence of God in that Believer, and where God's Seed is there is eternal Life, not indeterminate life but eternal life ( Philipians 2:13; 1st Thessalonians 2:13 ). When God fulfills His Promise, there is no going back to before He fulfilled His Promise.
We are the generation of Believers who have the necessary History of human knowledge required to conceptualize aspects of the 'how' which previous generations could not even guess at.
Our generation has developed the understanding that there are more variable expressions of Space and Time than sensed by us in our 4D existence, in our three of space and one of time reality. We can know that such 'other' dimensional variables exist because the Bible exhibits them through scenes such as Daniel 5, with the seemingly disembodied hand writing on the wall in Palace Party Central, Babylon.
That hand was attached to a being 'standing' in another set of spacetime coordinates not sensed by the partiers or the king. That real physical being had variables of space and or time not shared by the partiers or the king. That being reached into the limits of the partiers to write visibly upon the wall.
Another clear example of the real existence of this other coordinate system is found in 2 Kings 6:14-16 where the Prophet Elisha asks God to 'open' the eyes of the student so he can see who is for the protection of the prophet and his student. God opens the young man's eyes and he sees the vast army encamped upon the hills surrounding the valley where the offending force seeking the seizure of the prophet are encamped.
There are scenes from the New Testament which display this 'other' coordinate system of variables of time and space, such as Jesus walking on water; Jesus passing 'through' the mob seeking to throw Him off of a cliff and stone Him; Jesus leaving the burial wrappings behind as He exited a rock hewn tomb blocked by a large stone, without removing the stone; Jesus appearing in the locked and shuttered Upper Room following His resurrection, without coming through a door or window; Philip disappearing from the presence of the Eunuch and reappearing miles away; Peter visited by an Angel, coming from a where/when Peter could not sense but a place of space and time nonetheless.
There are two axiomatic expressions which were keys to my own comprehension of this space and time reality beyond our sensing but real in space and time having more variability than our 4 dimensions / variables of space and time:
Without time events do not occur in the Universe God has created
Without space a thing is not existing in the Universe God has created
These two axioms brought sense to what was percolating in thoughts regarding the scenes from the Bible. If an object is not occupying space it is not in the Universe of God's creating. [ A stream of photons can all land on the same spot on a wall, seeming to occupy the same space without piling up like a stream of bullets; the photons are in the Universe God has created, so we might say they occupy a variable expression of space not in our sensing range. They are not outside the Universe God has created. ] For these two axioms to be true for the entire Universe there must be spatial coordinates in all levels of reality, even the reality where Angels dwell. Everything IN the Universe God has created has to have existence relative to Time and Space. All that is the Universe has been created by God. There is only God outside of the Universe of His creating. That is, God The Father Almighty must, by definition of God the Creator, be greater than that which He creates.
The Where / When
With that foundation of details, we would ask how this relates to The Rapture Departure of the Body of Christ Believers?. Only in our generation can the aspects be brought together to make sense, to express reality that is about to happen. Our generation embraces the notion of 'other' variables of space and or time. This allows us to assign coordinate system reality to the 'place' our soul and spirit have real substance which can be effected by command from God, as with what Paul describes in 1st Thessalonians 4:13-17.
At this point, if you don't believe in the Rapture of the Body of Christ Believers, keep reading anyway. God illuminates His Word and He has something amazing to share with us.
Jesus told Nicodemus ( John 3 ) that in order to 'see' the Kingdom of Heaven one must be born again. Of course Nic, having a very limited understanding of reality, asks how a man can enter again into his mother's womb and be born again. Jesus replies with a rhetorical question: 'You are a teacher in Israel and don't comprehend spiritual reality?' I am paraphrasing because that is what God's Spirit relates to my mind when I understand the scene more fully. Nic's mind leaped to reality in his 4D understanding, and Jesus expanded the discussion to encompass a greater Universe of reality which includes the very real existence of the soul and spirit of man.
The soul and spirit are real, they have existence and are somehow attached to the 4D vehicle body of the individual but we do not know how they are connected. They exist IN the Universe God has created. They have a real relationship to the physical body in space and time but exist in a coordinate system of space and time which we cannot sense with out touch, taste, sight, etc. This is, in a way, a protective arrangement God has designed into our existence, possibly because the spirit exists in a time coordinate system which does not allow sin to go on existing eternally, so we are protected from our spirit sinning once we are dead or born again (1 John 3:9 ).
We are humans by God's design and so long as we remain human our spirit is the way God has designed it, albeit we inherited our spiritual state of 'deadness' from Adam with our spirit existing but without the illumination of God's Spirit. It might be that our spirit has spatial reality with greater spatial variability than our body, but 'it' lacks temporal movement. [ That notion will be more clear further on. ]
So what Jesus says is essential to our 'seeing the kingdom of God', that we must be born again. He is not referring to something outside of the Universe God has created. Even the Kingdom of God is IN the Universe because Stephen was granted the ability to see the Throne Room right before he was stoned to death! The Throne Room has space and time variability in a coordinate system far beyond our 4D realm, but it does exist in the Universe God has created. Paul was in some fashion ( 'in the body or out of it, I know not which' 2nd Corinthians 12:1 ) given access to that reality of space and time, briefly. John was given the blessing to visit Heaven while alive on the Island of Patmos. Enoch walked with God and was taken rather than dying in our 4D realm. Elijah left this 4D realm to enter a greater coordinate system, disappearing from Elisha's sight. Greater variables of space and time are real and they are IN the Universe God has created.
When God makes us born again by His Spirit in response to our faith in Christ alone, Life comes to the human spirit, God Life, eternal life, by His Promise which glorifies Him not us. It is The Gift of God, restoring the human spirit inherited from Adam back to the state God began the connection, within His creating Adam, meant for all Adam's descendants. God's Word tell us in more than one place that once born again it is God Who is in the human spirit, to will and do of His good pleasure, to transform our fallen nature by the renewing of our mind, the mind of our soul.
The soul is the behavior mechanism of the individual. God intended that our spirit be the driver of the behavior mechanism. But with Adam's rebellion that relationship was stopped. In our regeneration by God due to our faithing in Jesus as Lord of our spirit, God restores the relationship between soul and spirit under His guidance, but only to the extent that we bow to His Lordship over our behavior mechanism ... some Christians, though born again, have so little relinquishing to His leadership in the soul, their behavior mechanism.
The Physics Lesson
Now we delve into the reality and reason of the rapture, how it happens.
We have reasoned that the spirit exists and is connected to the human soul and thus the human being by an as yet undetermined method of God's creating. The state of our aliveness is such that we have a body, a soul, and a spirit, albeit the spirit is not 'alive' in the sense which it existed in Adam before the rebellion.
The spirit in Adam did not go out of existence, it ceased to function. In the Hebrew meaning of 'ded' is the notion of non-action, in active; not gone out of existence. The spirit of every human is an eternal thing, existing in a coordinate system with eternity as the temporal / time variable! The word of God indicates that every spirit of humankind will exist eternally, alive by the Power of God's Presence in that spirit, or existing in eternal deadness, sensing torment but not being extinguished in that torment ... forever. That is a sobering thought, to put it mildly! The human spirit exists in a coordinate system where the temporal ( time ) reality is eternity.
The spirit bodies of humans who have rejected the Life God offers do not go out of existence, because the temporal coordinate of their spirit is eternity. The spirit of those who have accepted God's Grace in the Sacrifice of Jesus for our salvation also exist in an eternal coordinate system of time, but those will also have a real physical body in which to operate in the Universe of God's creating! At the Rapture departure of The Believers making up The Body of Christ. According to Paul's learning, there is a spiritual body, a spiritual spatial existence of some shape, but it is not inhabiting more 'layers' of reality than the spiritual, but it can experience torment in the spiritual level of reality, eternal torment according to its temporal ( time ) orientation.
Just as the being writing upon the wall in Babylon's Palace has real physical reality, we too will have real physical reality. We will exist in more than just the spiritual layer / coordinate system of reality! John tells us, almost as an aside, that when Jesus appears for the Great Departure we shall see Him as He really is in His Glorified body, because when He appears we shall have been transformed to be like Him in His glorified state. [ 1 John 3:2 ] To understand this better we should look back at John 14, where Jesus gives His closest friends a sort of Physics lesson.
The disciples wanted solid proof that Jesus was Whom they had been shown He was, God with them. Philip ( the one who was later on snatched / raptured from the presence of the Ethiopian Eunuch to a spot miles away in the Gaza ), having witnessed miracles that only God can do, was still confused. So Jesus tried to upgrade their comprehension, albeit without the background of centuries of growing understanding of how the Universe is fashioned in God's creating ( a benefit we enjoy in these last days, a fund of knowledge we may draw upon regarding the nature of reality as having dimensional variables beyond what we sense with our bodies ). Philip declared that if Jesus would show them The Father that would convince them of Jesus's 'Messiahship'.
Jesus asked Philip, “Have I been so long with you and yet you still do not know that all you can see of the Father is where I am. If you have seen me you have seen The Father for I am in the Father and The Father is in me. All you can see of The Father is where He intersects the coordinates of your sensing abilities.' That is my paraphrasing, but it is I believe an accurate rendering of what Jesus was conveying to the disciples ... and to us.
The only place you could sense God The Father Almighty is where He is intersecting your space and time coordinate system of your sensory abilities ... as Jesus, God with us. God did not make us with the ability to sense a magnetic field, yet it exists and is important to our very physical reality. Many birds sense magnetic fields due to God incorporating a region in their brains which is magnetized on a very small scale and thus by interaction with magnetic fields they are able to sense magnetic fields like that of the earth and use that ability for navigation.
Owls have a more sensitive visual acuity which allows them to see in the light spectrum what we cannot see. God has made us to have limits of perception which I believe is a protective orientation allowing for 'faith' on a level greater than just the 4D realm. A dog or horse exercises primitive faith when it crosses a bridge seeing water below. I exercise primitive faith when I drop my poundage onto a chair. But our limits under intellectual capabilities is a limit which requires faith in God's Promises without physical evidence streaming into our senses. This glorifies His Promises not our efforts.
Put in different terms, the Physics lesson was that all the disciples could see of the greater reality that IS God was where He, God, was intersecting their 4D limits ... as Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us. If I could sense only length and width of space, there is no way for me to comprehend or even sense a pencil except where that pencil would be passed through my length and with limits. A three spatial ( length, width, and height ) sphere cannot be sensed by a length and width only 'plane dweller' except where the three variable sphere is passed through the plane, making a dot then expanding circles, then diminishing circles and down to a dot then disappears. God, as Jesus, came into our limits and died for our sinfulness, so that He can give us the Righteousness of Jesus, regenerating life into our dead spirit.
We Are Transformed In A Moment, In The Twinkling of an Eye
In the beginning, God spoke and world's leaped into existence. In the beginning was The Word and the Word was with God and was God in the beginning. God brought the Universe into existence by His voice. His voice accomplishes His creating, both to create the realm of space and time and to create within the Universe He has created.
Under inspiration of The Holy Spirit Paul tells us about the snatching away of the Body of Christ Believers ( 1st Thessalonians 4:13-17 )
. In 1st Corinthians 15:50-58, Paul further explains that a transformation of each alive Believer happens in the twinkling of an eye. That time span is approximately how long it takes a beam of light traveling at the speed of light to pass from outside the eye to inside the eye. How can this be? I will be transformed in an instant? Into what? By what means? To what reality? And what of those who have died in Christ, born again in spirit but no longer having a physical body? ... Let's dig into the answers for those questions! Similar questions were probably voiced in the Thessalonians' minds, to which Paul wrote the second letter to the Thessalonians, answering some of the questions, albeit indirectly.
First, what of the dead who no longer have a physical, active body? Well when they were born from above God enlivened their spirit, their spiritual body. [ See Paul's referencing the spiritual body, 1st Corinthians 15:44 ] That spiritual body of the dead in Christ is present with the Lord until it is brought with Jesus back to the 4D Earth to receive new glorified physical '4D plus' bodies.
It might help to reread the 1st Thessalonians 4 passage again here:
For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are [d]asleep. 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. Therefore comfort one another with these words.
The order Paul describes is as follows: those who have died in Christ will God bring with The Christ ( traveling in their spiritual bodies, in a space and time coordinate system we cannot directly sense ), for The Lord Himself shall descend from the Throne Room to the first heaven around the Earth. [ 'Descend from Heaven with a shout' ... reminds us that God's voice created in the beginning, eh? ] Could it be that the shout causes new glorified individual bodies to leap into existence? I think so, I think that the shout creates new bodies in a greater coordinate system for the spiritual bodies of those who have been born again. Then there is the voice of the Archangel ... can this be the transformational command which transforms me from a dying 4D dweller into a glorified greater coordinate system being for my eternally alive spirit to join?
But how is this possible you might be asking; perhaps? Well, it is a thing known as 'resonance'. If you have a non-vibrating tuning fork tuned to the same note of another tuning fork, and you set one of these to vibrating at its note, it will start the other tuning fork to vibrating. The two forks are said to be in resonance.
The born again spirits of the alive members of the Body of Christ have God's 'seed' abiding in their new spiritual existence ( 1 John 3:9 ). That Presence in the born agains resonates with the command from God, resonates with the voice of God's creating power, the Shout creating instantly new glorified bodies for the returning individual spiritual bodies.
Perhaps the voice of the Archangel transforms rather than creates, so that we who are alive and remain are transformed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye.
Then the Trumpet of 'move 'em out' sounds and all we new bodied beings are caught up together into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air! The Israelites had such a 'move 'em out' last trumpet as their last trumpet when moving the encampment in the desert.
Summary Conclusion
Every one of Adam's descendants has a body, a soul or behavior mechanism ( mind, emotion, and will ), and a spirit. We have a spirit body which can be alive or in a state of unutilized / none functioning / dead. The state of deadness is not a 'going out of existence' because God made the spirit to be in a time state of eternal, eternally alive with His seed of Life, or eternally in deadness without dissolution. The body returns to the dust of which it is made ,,, the atomic and molecular dust. The spirit body is not made of atomic and molecular dust. It is made of stuff which has eternal existence in the Universe of space and tune God has created.
Because the seed of God Life comes to abide in the born again spirit, a member of the Body of Christ has the seed of the Spirit inside their spirit body. When the Lord descends to the first Heaven around the Earth, God's shout instantly creates new physical bodies for the individual spirit bodies returning to the Earth with The Lord. Then the voice command of an Archangel transforms the physical bodies of alive members in The Body of Christ Believers, giving them glorified bodies like that of the returnees. With the 'move 'em out' trumpet, we join in the rising up into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and return to the Father's House where Jesus has been preparing many rooms for us, there.
Anecdote
When I was a little boy living in Fairlington, Virginia near the Pentagon, there was an Army Colonel who lived with his family in the first apartment in our four apartment building. He had a big Grey car which he washed on Summer weekends in the parking lot in front of his apartment. Instead of a hose to run water to the job, he used canvas buckets. These buckets were standard issue for tanks and trucks during Wprld War 2 because they took up so little space. When empty they collapsed down to two metal rings sewn into a wide strip of canvas for the body of the container.
When the buckets were filled with water they sweated liquid through the sides. If filled to the top I could push my finger into the side of the canvas and water would spill over the top ring.
This canvas bucket is a sort of metaphor for the human spirit body. When we are not yet born again our bucket, er, I mean our spirit body is empty and not functioning as God intended. Like an empty canvas bucket our spirit body is not fulfilling God's purpose for that spirit body. But when the water is ... er, I mean when the spirit life is in our spirit body we function as a whole if the 'filling' is used for proper intent.
In scripture water is often used to signify Holy Spirit. When we are born again God puts the first 'water' in our spirit body, and we are containers of His Presence, filling up to over flowing to the extent with which we seek His filling us.
