FreeGrace2 said:
What you lack is any evidence that Jesus raptures people and takes them to heaven. NONE of the rapture verses mentions any trip to heaven.
The verse doesn't say anything about transformed believers being taken to heaven.
Oh, but it does! You are just refusing to link the scriptures together and acknowledge truth. This is why God put in multiple scriptures regarding the same subjects, so that scripture supports scripture.
Here are the scriptures again:
"But our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to subject all things to Himself,
will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body."
The reference to transforming our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body, is referred to in both I Thess.4:16-17 and 1 Cor.15:51-53, when the Lord returns to get us. And the reason for that, is because we need to be changed immortal and glorified before we can go back to heaven with Him.
"Now I declare to you, brothers, that
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must be clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality."
"For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will be the first to rise. After that, we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord."
So when it says, we (dead and living believers) will changed into our immortal and glorified bodies and then caught up to meet the Lord in the air, where do you think we go from there? That would be back to the Father's house. At some time that promise must be fulfilled. In addition, the fact that the other scripture states that our citizenship is in heaven and that we await a Savior from there, where at which time He will transform our bodies to be immortal and glorified, in order to inherit the kingdom of God in heaven, because these flesh and blood bodies cannot inherit the kingdom of God as the scripture states
So, we have a promise from the Lord that He went to the Father's house (heaven) to prepare places for us and that He is coming back to gather us to take us back to the Father's house, as revealed in John 14:1-3. I Thess.4:16-17, which is a detailed account of that event.
Then in Philippians 3:20, we have Paul stating that our citizenship is in heaven and that we eagerly await a Savior from there, who is going to transform these perishing bodies immortal and glorified.
Honestly, If you can't make these simple scriptural connections, then you have no business teaching anything regarding end-time events. But I believe that the Spirit wrote it this way purposely, because it weeds out those who are truly looking for the truth of His word and those who aren't. You and others always reject what the Spirit has revealed to others, distorting and circumventing His word. There is no scriptural reasoning or logic with you people. And you refuse to learn from those who have studies and continue to study this information.
I'm not against you! I'm saying open your eyes and consider what is being revealed to you, being like a Berean searching the scriptures to see if what we are telling you is the truth. Stop rejecting this information just for the sake of rejecting it!