Heaven Bound

“If He snatches away who can stop him? Who can say to him what are you doing?” Job 9:12

The pre-tribulation rapture. The blessed hope those found in Christ Jesus are waiting for. That moment when (as the scripture says) –

“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 remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever.” 1 Thess. 4:17

I was reading in Job the other night when I came across the verse above. “If he snatches away …. who can stop him? This immediately drew my attention because the word “caught” in the verse from Thessalonians as quoted above literally means to “snatch” away which is the same word used in the NIV translation of Job 9:12. Snatch.

“If he snatches away … who can stop him?”

To double check myself I went to Strongs Concordance to view these words in their Hebrew and Greek translations. And sure enough they match. In Job 9:12 the Hebrew word for “snatch” is “chathaph” which means to “clutch or to take away”.  In 1 Thessalonians 4:17 the word for “caught” is harpazo which by definition in Greek is to catch (away up), to seize, pluck, pull, or take by force. So you can see the similarity in thought between these two verses. They are literally quite one and the same.

I happened to be reading Job 9 the other night due to something Ray Vander Laan had said on one of his videos from his series “That the World May Know”. He said something that really struck me (Ray does that a lot for he’s a phenomenal Bible teacher) …. but he was talking about when Jesus walked on the water and He pointed out something that I had not previously known ……that there was a verse in Job that says this very thing … that God would walk on water!

“He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea”.  Job 9:8

Wow! This verse is not allegory as I might have assumed before, but literal. For as Ray says, the “Bible does not authenticate Jesus but rather Jesus authenticates the Bible and there is nothing that Jesus said, did or will do that cannot be found in scripture.

Get that?  Read it again.

There is nothing that Jesus said, did or will do that cannot be found in scripture!

So to find a reference to the rapture as far back as the book of Job further testifies to the truth of the soon snatching/catching away of the Church. Just as it did when it spoke prophetically of something that Jesus would do (walking on water) many centuries later.

Therefore if the Bible says he will tread the waves …. and, he did. Then we can be just as certain that when it says he will “snatch away” ……  that is exactly what he will do.

The image of the hand in the photo above is pretty good, don’t you think? It really captures the idea of snatching away (I found it on Google Images). And with the rapid fulfillment of prophecy today … breakneck speed you might say, our catching away must be very, very near. I don’t know about you but I’m excited. The word of God never ceases to amaze me. We live in unprecedented times. My hope and prayer …. be ready!

“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem they shall prosper who love thee” Psalm 122:6

Watching and waiting with YOU for the soon return of Jesus! Cindy