All of my readers know this but will repeat it again for any new readers; the word rapture isn’t in the Bible, but the word Harpazo is in the Greek translation and that word was translated from the Latin word, Rapturo, where we get the English word Rapture. It’s such a crazy and exciting idea that God is going to send Jesus into the atmosphere of earth and call His bride (all followers of Christ) to come meet him in the clouds! On our way, we will swap our sin-filled flesh for eternal flesh that is capable of living in many dimensions. This flesh will be the same type of flesh Jesus has been living in since the resurrection over 2000 years ago. So how many harpazos have already happened and been recorded in the OT and NT? Read on to find out.
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A lot of people find the idea of a rapture, a snatching away of people to heaven without dying, very difficult to accept. It seems too strange and too bizarre to be true. “After all,” they say, “nothing like that’s ever happened before!” But that’s actually not true.
It may surprise you to know that there has been a rapture before. In fact, there are several in Scripture. Six of these raptures have already occurred, historically foreshadowing and helping to shed some light on the final rapture still to come.
So, what are these six previous raptures, and what do they tell us about the final rapture that’s to come?
The rapture prior to the New Testament had not been clearly revealed. The Rapture in First Corinthians 15 is called “the mystery.” Now, “mystery” in the New Testament is not something spooky or hard to understand. It means a truth that’s never been revealed before. However, there are still three Old Testament rapture events that help serve as types, illustrations, foreshadows, previews, or patterns of the future rapture to come.
The Rapture of Enoch
The first is the rapture of Enoch. The first of these raptures involved a man named Enoch, who lived before the global flood. We find his story in Genesis chapter five.
Now, I like to call Genesis chapter five “God’s obituary column.” Adam and Eve sinned, and they died spiritually and were separated from God, but they didn’t die physically until hundreds of years later. When you get to the fifth chapter of the book of Genesis, we begin to see the results of the fall.
The words “and he died” appear eight times. It’s like a sad refrain. Adam died, Seth died, Enos died, Cainan died, Mahalaleel died, Jared died—but then suddenly and shockingly, in the midst of all this death and decay, there’s a striking change in Genesis 5:21-24: “And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah: And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.”
Enoch walked with God for 300 years during the Dark Ages of the spiritual corruption before the flood, and then God took him directly to heaven without dying. To make certain there was no misunderstanding about what happened to Enoch, Hebrews 11:5 confirms Enoch’s rapture to heaven, saying, “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.”
There’s a little story I heard years ago. It’s kind of corny. It’s about a little child who heard the story about God and Enoch going on a walk. “Enoch loved to walk with God every day,” he reckoned. “They would go on these long walks fellowshiping together, and one day, they had walked so far that God turned to Enoch and said, ‘Enoch, we walked so far today. We’re closer to my house than we are to yours. Why don’t you just come home with me today?’“
Enoch is a powerful example of the importance of walking with God in difficult days, like those before the flood. We, too, need to walk with God in these days before the coming of Christ.
Enoch also serves as a very graphic illustration of the suddenness of the rapture. He was there, and then a moment later, he was not there. The Bible tells us we will be taken up “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).
The Rapture of Elijah
The second Rapture in Scripture is the Rapture of Elijah in the book of Second Kings. 2 Kings 2:1, 11 says, “And it came to pass, when the Lord would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal…. And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.”
Elijah and Elisha are there together, walking along, and suddenly Elijah is caught up to heaven without dying. All Elisha could do was look on in amazement.
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