The amazing alignment of Jesus’s and Paul’s statements

We’re told that all of scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit. In other words, the entire Bible has one true author—God himself. It’s amazing when you reread an earlier statement with new information in mind. Here’s what I mean. Paul said the rapture was a mystery revealed to him, but with that new/later (chronologically speaking) information in mind, older passages of Scripture take on new meaning.

Compare Paul’s words in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 with Jesus’s earlier statement in John 14:3. The chart above shows how well they line up. We also have the picture here of the key aspects of ancient Jewish wedding traditions. That’s another topic to cover in depth, but the short version is this: the bridegroom would pay a great price for the bride, go back home to build a house or an addition to his father’s house, then (upon the father’s instruction) the bridegroom would come back at an unknown time to fetch his bride, then take her to her new home. According to Scripture, Jesus is the bridegroom and the Church (all true believers everywhere) is the bride.