1 Corinthians 15:51-53 “Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed-- (52) in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. (53) For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”
In the above passage of scripture the Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul also describes the event of the catching away of the church. In this passage He tells us that not all Christians will taste death, for He says that not all shall sleep. The saints that will not physically die are the saints that are alive on the earth when our Lord Jesus returns to the earth. I will not go into the timeline of our Lord’s second coming in any detail as that falls outside the scope of this teaching, but let me mention that when our Lord returns that He will not descend to the earth immediately. For the scripture teaches us that we will meet Him in the air. The “air” referred to in scripture is the realm where Satan and his angels currently reside, for he is called the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2). As we saw earlier, Satan will no longer be in that realm, for Michael and his angels would have already cast Satan and his angels to the earth. It will be during our time of being with our Lord in the air that the church will be judged by the Lord. And it is during that time that the wrath of God will be poured out on the earth. At the end of that period we will descend to the earth with our Lord Jesus and our Lord will begin His millennial reign on the earth. And so we see that even though the scripture teaches us that it is appointed to men once to die and after that the judgement (Hebrews 9:27), that God has made an exception in the saints that will be alive when our Lord returns. We also see in this passage that every saint will be changed, both those who are alive and those who are dead, for those who are dead will be raised from the dead. And from that moment on the saints will become like angels for they too will become immortal.
Michael E.B. Maher
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