We will use them to check and confirm whether the people in the 7 times Rapture actually fits.
Israel in the wilderness was called by Stephen, in Acts 7:38, The Church in the wilderness, showing that God’s dealings with them concerns us deeply. See also 1Cor. 10:1-6.
The termination point for Israel was the Promised Land, ours is heaven; but God lumped both together with one phrase, GO OVER in Joshua 1: “Now after the death of Moses the servant of the LORD it came to pass, that the LORD spoke unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying, Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel.” (Josh 1:1-2)
The word GO OVER is used as Cross over in NLT , but that is just one of the meanings. As you check Strong Lite Hebrew Dictionary, the NO.6 set of meanings has everything that describes the New Testament Rapture: to pass away to emigrate,
leave (one’s territory)
to vanish
to perish, cease to exist.
Now compare this to the words used to describe Rapture:
The Greek word anistēmi is SHALL RISE found in 1 Thess.4:17… the dead in Christ shall rise first. It means among other meanings:to cause to rise up, raise up
raise up from laying down
to raise up from the dead
to raise up, cause to be born, to cause to appear, bring forward
of those who leave a place to go elsewhere…
The Greek word harpazō is what we know as caught up in 1Thess.4:17 “Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
It means to seize (in various applications): – catch (away, up), pluck, pull, take (by force). The words pluck, pull, take by force describes HARVERST which involves plucking fruit or uprooting yams with force. This matches the description of Rapture as Harvest. ‘The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness” (Isaiah 57:1,2).
He ‘perisheth,” from the Hebrew word ovad, means “to disappear or vanish.” The context suggests that his disappearance is curiously unaccounted for.
“Merciful men “ (men of loving kindness) are said to be ‘taken away, “ from the Hebrew term usaf. It means, “to harvest, or gather up.”
“Woe is me! for lain as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grape gleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat: my soul desired the first ripe fruit.
“The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood,’ they hunt every man his brother with a net” (Micah 7:1,2).
Here, we once again see a picture of the harvest, a representation of the end of the age. It is found in the word, “gathered, “where the Hebrew term usaf, is used in exactly the same context as that found in Isaiah 57.
Micah also uses the term, perished,” again from ovad meaning “to disappear or vanish.” He is saying that the good man has disappeared … simply vanished.
There are 2 more words describing Rapture that matches the ABAR – Go over in Joshua. They are found in 1 Cor.15 :”Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” (1Cor 15:51-52).
The 1st one is to change, to exchange one thing for another, to transform. That’s from the Greek word, allassō. Here, there’s movement- motion and change of existence.
The other one is even more direct – raised. It’s from the Greek word, egeirō : to arouse, cause to rise
to arouse from sleep, to awake
to arouse from the sleep of death, to recall the dead to life
to cause to rise from a seat or bed etc.
to raise up, produce, cause to appear
to cause to appear, bring before the public.
As you go through the 7 Rapture recorded in Bible history, you will see that the principal men described – the ones that God took up alive fits into at least one of these descriptions of the Hebrew or Greek words used for Rapture.