For this installment of Eagles in the Bible, I want to concentrate on the Rapture of the Saints.
Psalm 91:14 is God speaking about a believer, and says, “Because he has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him securely on high, because he has known My name” (NASB).
The psalm can be seen as God the Holy Spirit, in the figure of a mighty eagle, training and rescuing believers. This verse seems to speak of the Rapture, when believers will be taken to heaven at the end of the current age.
Eagles belong to an order of birds known as raptors. The English word raptor designates a diurnal (hunts during daylight) bird of prey that seizes and carries off its prey. The Latin word that provides the root is raptare, which literally means “to seize and carry off.”
Similarly, the English word rapture is often used to apply to the translation of the saints, living and dead, to be with the Lord Jesus Christ upon His return (1 Cor. 15:51-52; 1 Thess. 4:16-18). The word translates a word used in the Latin vulgate of the Scriptures, raptus, the past participle of the root word rapere, which has the meaning of “being snatched up and carried away.” This word translates the Greek harpagesometha (pronounced har-pag-e-so’-meth-ah) of 1 Thessalonians 4:17, which means “caught up.” The root words for raptor and rapture actually come from a common Latin root rapio.
The Bible certainly records many instances where the Holy Spirit carries someone off as a mighty eagle does its prey:
- “Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away” (Gen. 5:24). The Hebrew word laqach ( pronounced law-kakh’) used here means both to grasp and to take away.5
- Evidently, it was well known that the Spirit of God transported Elijah at times. In 1 Kings 18:11-12 Obadiah says to Elijah, “But now you tell me, go to my master and say, ‘Elijah is here.’ I don’t know where the Spirit of the Lord may carry you when I leave you.” Being taken away by the Spirit may also explain Elijah’s rapid disappearance form the palace of Ahab in Jezreel (I Kings 17:3).
- “And as they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up into heaven by a whirlwind” (2 Kings 2:11).
- Ezekiel wrote, “The Spirit then lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness and in the anger of my spirit, with the strong hand of the Lord upon me” (Ezek. 3:14 – see also 8:1-3; 37:1; 40:1).
- “I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day that he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the Apostles he had chosen” (Acts 1:1-2)
- “And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip” (Acts 8:39 KJV).
- “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).
- “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. So will we be with the Lord forever.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).
- Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians 12:2-5, saying, “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know – God knows.”
- John the Revelator tells us, “After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, ‘Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.’ At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it” (Rev. 4:1-2).
Of course, The Rapture of the Saints is that event alluded to in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 and 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, cited above. The disappearance of true believers who are caught away by the Spirit of God will be a sign to all the earth that the Bible has prophesied the truth about the Last Days, and that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world. The fact that the seven Biblically ordained feasts of Israel give an accurate picture of salvation history is strong evidence that The Rapture occurs prior to the seven-year reign of Antichrist and the Tribulation.
Passover pictures Christ’s crucifixion and atonement. The Feast of Unleavened Bread pictures His laying broken in the tomb. First Fruits is a picture of the resurrection, and Pentecost is the day that the Holy Spirit is given to the Church.
Each year, nine days prior to the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur (pronounced yom ki-poor’), the sixth feast in the Jewish calendar, trumpets are blown on Rosh Hashanah (pronounced rohsh’-hah-shaw’-nah), the Feast of Trumpets (the fifth feast). There are 100 notes sounded in the synagogue by the trumpets in use. These notes take different forms, but the last in a series of notes is called the tekiah gedolah (pronounced te-kee-yah’ ghed-oo-law’), a long blast. The basic order for blowing the trumpet or shofar starts with thirty blasts following the reading of the Torah and Haftorah in the morning service. This is followed by another series of thirty blasts following additional readings. Finally, forty blasts occur at the conclusion of the morning service.
This last trump of the one hundred appears to be what Paul is talking about when he speaks of the Rapture occurring “at the last trumpet” (1 Cor. 15:52). This pictures the Rapture taking place prior to the “Day of the Lord,” which is portrayed in Scripture by Yom Kippur (Joel 1:15, 2:1-32, 3:14; Zech. 12:1-13:1), and which encompasses the seven year tribulation period.
The seventh and last feast that is Biblically ordained in the Torah is Succoth (pronounced soo-koht’), or Tabernacles, and is strongly connected with the thousand year reign of Christ following the tribulation (Isa. 2:2-4; Zech. 14:16-19).
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