Rapture

This is a convenient word, inasmuch as it is used to distinguish the coming of the Lord for us into the air (1 Thess. 4) from His public return to the Mount of Olives (Zech. 14:4-54And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. 5And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee. (Zechariah 14:4‑5)). It is called “the rapture,” because it is in fact the sudden seizure or snatching of a number of living persona (as well as a raising of the bodies of the saints) out of this world in the twinkling of an eye, and that secretly; no such event marking our Lord’s public return, which is of a stately and judicial nature (Rev. 19).