Pre-Tribulation Rapture

¹³And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope.

¹⁴For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died.

¹⁵We tell you this directly from the Lord: We who are still living when the Lord returns will not meet him ahead of those who have died.

¹⁶For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the believers who have died will rise from their graves.

¹⁷Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever.

¹⁸So encourage each other with these words.

¹⁸Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.

¹⁹For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are.

²⁰Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope,

²¹the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.

²²For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

²³And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.