Greek Word for "meet" is very important.
For me this important note from Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology was the lynch pin that changed my view on the Rapture and all of the end times. It seems that the word that Paul used was understood in terms of the King coming to STAY, and not to take us away from Earth.
When Paul says that “we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thess. 4:17), he uses the Greek word apantesmis, for “meet,” which is used in Greek literature outside the Bible to speak of citizens going out of a city to meet an arriving magistrate, then to return to the city with him. “The word apantesmis is to be understood as a technical term for a civic custom of antiquity whereby a public welcome was accorded by a city to important visitors” (Erik Peterson, “apantesm is,” TDNT, 1:380). Moulton and Milligan say, “The word seems to have been a kind of technical term for the official welcome of a newly arrived dignitary—a usage which accords excellently with its New Testament usage” (MM, p. 53).
Created over 4 years ago
