On The Rapture and Millennium "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man."-Jesus, Gospel of Matthew (24.36-39) Most Churches of Christ understand the Bible to teach that when Jesus returns, the dead in Christ will rise, those alive in Christ will change, and we all will meet Christ in the air to be with him forever (1 Thess 4.13-18). Historically, our spiritual forefathers varied quite a bit in their understanding of whether there would be a rapture, what it would look like, and whether Jesus would set up a thousand-year kingdom on the earth. In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul tells us that there will be a "rapture." It is the same word used in 2 Corinthians 12.2-4 when Paul talks about the brother that was "caught up" into Heaven. The rapture occurs when Jesus returns (1 Thess 2.19, 3.13, 5.23, 4.15). Every eye will see him (Acts 1.11, Rev 1.7). He will exalt those who have lived and died as believers. He will punish those who did not (2 Thess 1.5-10). Paul doesn't tell us where the Lord will be, but he does say that we will be with him forever. However, things start getting dicey when people forget that Jesus himself said that there would be no signs before that final return happened. They run to the Revelation. They run to Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah. They run to the newspaper. There are people who spend all their time calculating when Jesus will return. Whole seminars are dedicated to telling the uninformed what to watch for-and they are in error because they do not know the Scripture nor the power of God. And Christians have been doing this for hundreds of years; each generation believing that all those OT and NT prophecies were written to them and about their days. A great book about the history of end-time predicting is called The Last Days Are Here Again by Richard Kyle. For centuries people have tried to find signs of the end. As we said before, our own spiritual forefathers wrestled with whether the rapture would proceed, occur during, or follow a Millennial Reign of Christ on earth. Some even doubted whether there even was a millennial reign (a contextual study of Revelation 20 would show that the reign is of beheaded saints, not Christ). Churches of Christ are primarily a-millennialists, those who believe there is no tribulation or 1000-year reign of Christ on earth. This view has been predominant among us since the turn of the 20th century. We don't believe one's understanding of the rapture or of a millennial kingdom is a salvational issue, but a wrong understanding can lead one to waste a lot of time looking for something Jesus said they would never find or be deceived into believing other things that can jeopardize their salvation. And all three basic views (post-millennial, pre-millennial, and a-millennial) agree that how one lives now is the most important issue. So let us say "'No' to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope-the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good (Titus 2.12-14). ~The Elders