When someone is raptured they will completely disappear, body and all. It does sound a bit wierd with the word "corpses," but I believe kp was saying that people (people without God's Spirit, like 99% of people) left behind will have to face the eagles, will have to face judgment because they are spiritually dead.

Something like that.

Anyone else care to add?

Hi, Samuel. The bit you quoted was meant to answer only the questions one might logically have about the "eagles" remark Yahshua made: "Wherever the body is, there the eagles will be gathered together." I didn't really address the "meaning" of "One will be taken and the other left," because it seemed to me to be obvious and straightforward. There's no indication that He's talking about splitting the body from the spirit, but rather He's describing what will happen at the rapture in the most literal of terms. Two people are together, going about their lives in the same way to all appearances: sleeping, working, driving down the street, eating dinner at the same table, riding the subway. Yahshua says that, depending upon whether or not they have a saving relationship with Him, one will be "caught up" (that is, raptured), and the other, who was right beside him, will be left behind flat-footed, wondering what happened.

The key to understanding this is the admonition He gave leading up to it, in verse 32 (actually, the thought begins back in verse 29): "Remember Lot's wife." Here we have two people with different spiritual profiles, walking along the road out of town together. Lot made it out alive, for he had a relationship with Yahweh, but his wife (who was only leaving town because the angel had made her get up and leave) did not. Yahshua explains her mindset in verse 33: "Whoever seeks to save his life (by buying into the world's conventional wisdom, like Mrs. Lot had) will lose it (like she did---she got left behind and got toasted in fire and brimstone or turned into a pillar of salt), and whoever loses his life (as in the worldly "life" Lot voluntarily left behind him in Sodom, if you can call that livin') will preserve it."

Knowing what follows on the heels of the rapture, of course, explains the "bodies" or "corpses" thing---the gathering of eagles, so to speak. Although a few will make it through to the end of the Tribulation alive (and will populate the Millennial Kingdom of Yahshua), most---the vast majority---will not live to see Christ's return. Hope that clarifies things for you.

kp

Right, BiynaYahu. We shouldn't read our 21st century cultural abominations into ordinary first-century life.

kp

30-31"Then, the Arrival of the Son of Man! It will fill the skies—..........
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******************************************************no one will miss it. Unready people all over the world, outsiders to the splendor and power, will raise a huge lament as they watch the Son of Man blazing out of heaven. ********************************************
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At that same moment, he'll dispatch his angels with a trumpet-blast summons, pulling in God's chosen from the four winds, from pole to pole.

Matthew 24:36-39 "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, 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. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him."

Revelation 9:1-6 "The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. And out of the smoke locusts came down upon the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were not given power to kill them, but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes a man. During those days men will seek death, but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them."

I like Matthew 24 in that it says people will be happy and content when the flood (judgment) comes, and during the Tribulation people will be seeking death. Two very different experiences, how people say there is no Rapture I do not know.

Shabbat Shalom,

Let's throw out the baby with the bathwater! Sure we must be prepared to go through the Trib, but ain't it better if we were whisked away? The nicest thing about this is that even those who are not prepared but who have been faithful to Elohim Yahweh and Messiyah Yahushua shall be taken shall have a wonderful surprise. But those who expect it the way the Christians do shall be dumbstruck as they will finally realise the error of calling Him "Master" and yet not do the things He says to do.