Rapture

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REVIEWWhat is the rapture?Church fathers widely understand the rapture to be a future physical meeting of Christ and Christians in the air. Origen gives no indication of a hidden meaning in Paul’s words in 1 Thessalonians 4:17. He simply writes that both the dead and alive in Christ will rise: Those whom we spoke of as dead have special need of the resurrection, since not even those who are alive can be taken up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air before the dead in Christ first rise. (Commentary on John, 20.233) Rufinus of Aquileia clearly indicates a physical reunion with Christ in the sky: And do not marvel that the flesh of the saints is to be changed into such a glorious condition at the resurrection as to be caught up to meet God, suspended in the clouds and borne in the air. (Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed, 46) Augustine says that living Christians will “both die and rise again at once while caught up into the air”: And why should it seem to us incredible that that multitude of bodies should be, as it were, sown in the air, and should in the air forthwith revive immortal and incorruptible, when we believe, on the testimony of the same apostle, that the resurrection shall take place in the twinkling of an eye, and that the dust of bodies long dead shall return with incomprehensible facility and swiftness to those members that are now to live endlessly? (City of God, 20.20) When will the rapture occur?Church fathers routi[...x]