The Rapture and The Second Coming Series – Misconceptions about Heaven and The End Times

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ Jesus,

This message will begin the first in a series of messages speaking to various aspects of The Rapture and The Second Coming.  There are a significant number of misconceptions in The Body of Christ about these two distinct and separate events.  Nestled between these two events is The Tribulation, a third event.

Why am I taking time to address these prophetic events?  We’ve heard about them for generations, but nothing has happened or is happening.  What about all those prophets, preachers, and teachers who said Jesus was coming back during this time or that time, and it didn’t happen.  There are even preachers and teachers that deny The Rapture and or deny The Second Coming.  And some are Believers!  Why is there so much confusion and division about these events?  You get three guesses and the first two don’t count.  Yes, satan, the great deceiver is, and has been, at work discrediting God’s Word since the Garden of Eden.  But take great joy because we will see from The Scriptures, God’s Word, beyond a shadow of a doubt, this generation, the very generation I was born into, will close out the 2,000 years of The Church Age.  We’re on the precipice Sisters and Brothers.  It is SO exciting!

Let’s dive into these events and during this series I pray any misconceptions or questions we may have will be answered.  And, you know me.  If The Scriptures don’t support it, I will not teach it.  We will start this first message in the series by addressing three very common misconceptions about The Rapture and The Second Coming.  We’ll speak to them at a high-level and then dive deeper into them in the subsequent messages.

FIRST MISCONCEPTION:  The first misconception is where we go when we die, saved and unsaved, is where we’ll remain for all eternity.  This is not true.

Prior to Jesus Christ’s resurrection, all “saved” Old Testament and early New Testament Believers went to “Abraham’s Bosom.”  “Abraham’s Bosom” was in the earth in a place called “Sheol.”  “Sheol” was divided into two parts separated by a great chasm.  Jesus describes this vividly in Luke 16 in His speaking about the rich man and Lazarus the beggar.  One part of Sheol is “Hell,” which still exists today, and one part of it was “Abraham’s Bosom” which does not exist today.  Prior to Jesus’s resurrection, Saints were saved, but they could not be “born again.”  Why?  Because Jesus hadn’t yet been sacrificed and His blood had not washed away all sin.   Once Jesus resurrected in Hell, His first stop was “Abraham’s Bosom” to preach The Gospel to the Saints.  They received Him as their Messiah, were ‘born again,” and Jesus led them to Heaven.  How all this happened, how Jesus presented the Saints to His Father, we’ll talk about in another message.

From the resurrection of Jesus Christ to the end of The Rapture, when a Believer dies, or is caught up in The Rapture, they go to Heaven.  However, the unsaved, upon death, immediately go into Hell.

When Believers die today, we go to Heaven and will remain there until the end of The Tribulation.  We will then return and rule and reign with Jesus on this earth for 1,000 years, which is known as the Millennial Reign.  And yes, there will be mortal “saved” and “unsaved” people living on the earth that came through The Tribulation.  When the “saved” die during the Millennial Reign, they no longer go to Heaven, they are “translated” upon earth into their redeemed bodies and souls.  Again, I’m introducing this in this message, and we’ll discuss it more in the coming messages.

The bottom line is when we, as Believers, die now and through the end of The Rapture, we will reside in Heaven until we return with Jesus for the Millennial Reign.  Once the Millennial Reign begins, all Believers will remain on earth upon death.  All the unsaved will go directly to Hell up to and through The Rapture and The Millennial Reign.  At the end of The Millennial Reign, The Great White Throne Judgment of the unsaved will take place.  They are cast, along with satan, the fallen angels, and the demonic spirits into the Lake of Fire where they will remain for all eternity in utter darkness and torment, completely shut off from God The Father.  We’ll see this in Scripture as we continue the messages.

SECOND MISCONCEPTION:  The second misconception is Heaven is “ethereal.”  “Ethereal” means it is lacking physical substance.  We are not going to be spirit beings floating around with wings, sitting on a cloud with a harp singing all the time.  And get the garbage teaching of humans becoming angels out of your thought life and beliefs.  Angels are a completely separate class of creation.  Nowhere in The Scriptures does The Holy Spirit teach this.

Heaven is not ethereal.  We will have our five senses, recognize other people, interact with material things, and receive redeemed bodies (flesh and bone, no blood) at The Rapture.  Our redeemed bodies will be multi-dimensional just as Jesus’s redeemed body was during the 40 day and 40 nights He was on the earth after His resurrection.  The limited physics of time and space don’t apply to the redeemed body.  The Scriptures describe Heaven as a magnificent city with streets of gold, gates of pearl, and walls made of precious stones.  This imagery suggests a physical, well-defined environment rather than a purely Spiritual one.  Additionally, Jesus said Heaven has mansions where we as Believers will dwell, reinforcing the idea of a structured, livable space.

The Scriptures also describe Heaven as a lush paradise with flowing rivers, beautiful buildings, and gardens. These descriptions emphasize its richness and vibrancy, making it feel more like a tangible place rather than an abstract concept.

THIRD MISCONCEPTION:  The Rapture is The Second Coming of Jesus Christ.  

The Rapture is not the second coming of Jesus Christ.  It occurs before The Tribulation and every Believer that has put their trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, both dead and alive, shall be caught up with Jesus in the clouds, in the air, and taken to Heaven to be with Jesus Christ forever.  Not in Heaven forever, but we will be with Jesus Christ forever.  Wherever Jesus is, there are we.  The Rapture does not start the Tribulation.  The signing of the peace treaty between the Antichrist and Israel starts it.  This occurs after The Rapture.

The Second Coming of Jesus is at the end of the seven-year Tribulation.  The first order of business is Jesus will destroy those nations that have gathered against Jerusalem at the Battle of Armageddon, and then He will descend to the Mount of Olives and usher in His 1,000-year reign on earth from Jerusalem.  Again, we’ll speak more about this in the coming messages.

One thing to be careful of is not to confuse the Battle of Armageddon with the Final Battle or the Battle of Gog and Magog in Revelation 20.  These are two distinct and separate battles, both ushering in “new” periods of time in prophetic history.

Attributes of The Rapture and The Second Coming

The first of the three prophetic events I introduced in the opening of this message, The Rapture, kicks off everything else.  The Rapture is Jesus coming for His “Bride,” The Church.  No, it is not a denominal church, and it certainly won’t be any manmade church on this earth that purports to have God’s intermediary running it.  There is only ONE intercessor, ONE advocate, ONE mediator, and ONE intermediary between God and man, and it is Jesus Christ.  Everything else is antichrist.   The Scriptures are emphatically clear about this.  “The Church” is descriptive of all persons who have put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ, as The Son of God, and their Redeemer.  We will dive into The Rapture in the next message.  What we learn should make us excited, but it should also create a GREAT urgency in us because we have family, friends, and associates who do not know Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  We should not want them to have to go through The Tribulation.  It will be TERRIBLE.  Also, we have Sisters and Brothers in Christ Jesus who are trapped in the bondage of religious traditions, rudiments of this world, and have been deceived with wrong preaching and teaching.  They need to be loosed from this bondage so they can operate the way Jesus intended for us to operate in The Kingdom of God.  We will learn that while we are in Heaven, we will receive our rewards for what we’ve done for Jesus, with pure hearts and pure intentions, and from wisdom gained through being students of God’s Word and being led by The Holy Spirit and not some man or woman.

Faith moves mountains, discipline moves you.  Discipline is the soil in which faith grows.

Much love in Christ Jesus,

Larry