Asked Jesus Who Will Be Taken in the Rapture — His Answer Will STUN You
Asked Jesus Who Will Be Taken in the Rapture — His Answer Will STUN You
What if everything you’ve been told about the rapture is only half the story? I’m not talking about the theology debates.
I’m not talking about pre-trib versus post-trib. I’m talking about something far more personal, far more urgent.
Something that when I sat with it in prayer, really sat with it in silence, just me and Jesus, the answer I received wasn’t what I expected.
And honestly, it shook me in the best possible way. My name is Jonathan Roumie, and today I want to share something with you that I’ve been carrying in my heart for a while now.
This isn’t a theology lecture. This isn’t a debate. This is a conversation, the kind you have at 2:00 in the morning when you can’t sleep and you find yourself on your knees asking God the questions you’re almost afraid to ask out loud.
Stay with me because what I’m about to share with you will completely change the way you see the rapture, and more importantly, the way you see yourself in relation to it.
Let me take you back to a moment. It was late, the kind of late where the world goes quiet and the noise of the day finally settles.
I’ve been reading the gospels, Matthew 24 to be specific, and I came across a passage I had read probably a hundred times before.
But this time something stopped me cold. Jesus says in verses 40 and 41, “Two men will be in the field, one will be taken and the other left.
Two women will be grinding with a hand mill, one will be taken and the other left.”
And I remember sitting there staring at those words. And I thought, I genuinely thought, “Wait, who is being taken here?
Who is being left? And more importantly, which one am I?” Now, if you grew up in a church that taught the rapture, you probably have a picture in your mind already.
The taken ones are the believers. The left ones are those who didn’t make it.
You’ve seen the bumper sticker, “In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned.” You’ve maybe read the Left Behind series.
The image is clear. Or so we think. But when I started really digging into this, really praying through it, studying the original Greek, sitting with scholars and saints across centuries of Christian thought, I discovered something that stopped me in my tracks.
The story is not that simple. And the question Jesus is really asking us, it goes so much deeper than a theological position.
Before I go further, let me tell you exactly what we’re going to explore together today.
We’re going to look at what Jesus actually said, not what we’ve been culturally conditioned to hear, but what the words mean in their original context.
We’re going to sit with the stories he told right alongside that passage because Jesus never spoke in isolation.
Every [clears throat] word was surrounded by meaning. We’re going to talk about what it actually means to be ready.
Not perfect, ready. And we’re going to end with something I genuinely believe will transform how you approach your faith, your life, and your relationship with Jesus, starting today.
This is for everyone. Whether you’ve believed your whole life, or you’ve just started asking questions, or you’re somewhere in between, this conversation is for you.
So let’s go back to Matthew 24 because Jesus is sitting on the Mount of Olives.
His disciples have just pointed out the temple, this magnificent, awe-inspiring structure that was the center of Jewish life and worship.
And Jesus says something that shocks them to their core. He says, “Not one stone here will be left on another.
Everyone will be thrown down.” You have to understand, for those disciples, that was like someone saying the entire world was about to collapse.
The temple wasn’t just a building. It was the presence of God. It was the axis around which their entire understanding of reality turned.
So they pulled Jesus aside privately and they ask him, “Tell us, when will this happen?
And what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
That question, that desperate, searching, terrified question from people who loved Jesus and wanted to understand what was coming.
That’s our question, too, isn’t it? 2,000 years later and we’re still asking it. When?
How will we know? And Jesus, will we be ready? And what does Jesus do?
He doesn’t give them a date. He doesn’t give them a checklist. He tells them stories.
He paints pictures. He invites them into a way of being rather than just a way of knowing.
Now, here’s where it gets really interesting. And I want you to hold on to this because what I’m about to share completely reframes that one taken, one left passage.
Right after Jesus says those words, he tells three stories in a row, three parables.
And they are each in their own way answering the question, “Who will be taken?”
The first is the story of the faithful servant and the wicked servant. The second is the story of the ten virgins.
And the third is the parable of the talents. I want to sit with the ten virgins for a moment because I think it is one of the most searingly honest things Jesus ever said and one of the most misunderstood.
“At that time, the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.
Five of them were foolish and five were wise.” Ten virgins, all of them invited, all of them showing up, all of them with lamps, all of them waiting for the same bridegroom.
Do you understand what that means? These aren’t people who rejected Jesus. These aren’t people who mocked the faith.
These are people who showed up, people who believed enough to come to the door, but five of them ran out of oil.
And here is where I had to stop and be very still before God cuz I asked myself, honestly, painfully honestly, “Am I the kind of person who carries oil?”
Oil in the scripture is often associated with the Holy Spirit, with that deep, abiding, intimate relationship with God that isn’t just Sunday morning attendance or knowing the right answers or saying the right prayers, something cultivated, something personal, something you either have or you discover in a crisis moment that you don’t.
The five foolish virgins didn’t run out of oil because they were evil people. They ran out because they didn’t prepare.
They assumed the oil would be there when they needed it. And what happened? The bridegroom came at midnight, the moment of glory, the moment everyone had been waiting for.
And five of them were locked outside. And the bridegroom said to them, “Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.”
Not I hate you. Not you were terrible people. Just I don’t know you. That line, that line lives in me.
Now, I want to pause here for just a moment because I know what some of you might be feeling.
You might be feeling a kind of spiritual anxiety creeping in. That low-grade fear that whispers, “What if I’m not enough?
What if I’m one of the five?” And I want to speak to that directly because I’ve felt it, too.
Jesus isn’t telling these stories to terrify us. He’s telling them to wake us up.
There’s a difference between terror and urgency. Terror paralyzes. Urgency activates. And what Jesus is doing here, and what he’s always doing, is looking at the people he loves and saying, “Don’t sleepwalk through this.
Don’t assume. Don’t coast. Be present. Be alive to this. Be in relationship with me.”
That’s it. That’s the whole thing. And this for me was the first part of the answer I received when I asked Jesus, “Who will be taken?”
It’s not about theological boxes you’ve checked. It’s not about which denomination you belong to.
It’s about this, do you know him? Does he know you? Let me tell you about a moment that hit me deeply, one that I think might resonate with some of you.
I was on set during the filming of The Chosen, and we were in the middle of a scene that required me to be fully present, fully surrendered to the moment as Jesus.
And I remember between takes just sitting in the quiet, still in costume, and a crew member, not a particularly religious person, walked over to me and said something I’ve never forgotten.
They said, “You know, when you’re in character, I actually believe you.” And I thanked them.
But inwardly, I felt something shift in me. Because the truth is, I don’t want to just play someone who believes.
I want to actually be someone who believes, someone who doesn’t just speak the words, but lives inside them.
And I think that’s what Jesus is asking of all of us. Not a performance of faith, an inhabitation of it.
The ones who will be taken, I believe with everything in me, are the ones who have made a home inside their relationship with Christ.
Not perfect people. Not people who never doubted or never struggled, but people who kept showing up, people who kept filling their lamps, people who said, even in the dark, even at midnight, “I know you, Lord, and I trust you.”
Now, here’s the pattern interrupt, the thing that completely changed my understanding of this passage.
When scholars look at Matthew 24:40-41, “One will be taken and one will be left.”
In the original Greek, the word used for taken is paralambano. And most of us, shaped by modern rapture theology, assume this means taken up, snatched away to heaven, rescued.
But paralambano also means to be taken alongside someone, to be received, to be welcomed in.
And some of the earliest Christian interpreters, long before the rapture theology that developed in the 19th century, read this passage differently.
They saw the taken as those received into the presence of Christ at his coming.
And the left behind, not necessarily people who missed the boat, but in some readings, the survivors, the ones who remain on the earth during what follows.
I’m not asking you to throw out your theology. I’m asking you to hold it with open hands because the more I sat with this, the more I realized, it’s not about cracking the code of who goes where, it’s about the condition of your heart when the moment arrives.
And here’s the thing about Jesus that I find endlessly beautiful. He always meets us exactly where we are.
Let me take you deeper into the parable of the talents now because I think it holds a key that most people walk right past.
In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the story of a master who goes on a journey and entrusts different amounts of money, talents, to three servants.
One receives five, one receives two, one receives one. And when the master returns, the first two have doubled what they were given.
The third one buried his in the ground. He was afraid. He played it safe.
He didn’t lose it, but he didn’t grow it, either. And the master’s response to the one who buried his talent is almost shocking.
“You wicked and lazy servant.” Not because he stole. Not because he was immoral. But because he was afraid.
Because he hid. Because he took the gift he’d been given and refused to do anything with it.
I sat with that for a long time because I think there are a lot of people, good people, sincere people, people who love God, who are burying their talents, burying their gifts, burying their calling out of fear, out of insecurity, out of the feeling that they’re not qualified, not ready, not enough.
And I have to tell you, I have been that person more times than I’d like to admit.
There was a season in my life when I felt completely invisible. Years of auditioning, years of rejection, years of wondering whether any of it meant anything.
And in that season, the temptation was to bury everything, to stop hoping, to stop showing up, to protect myself from the pain of expectation by having no expectations at all.
But Jesus kept pulling me back, not with thunderclaps, not with visions, with this quiet, persistent, deeply loving presence that said, “You are seen.
What you carry matters. Don’t bury it.” And that is part of the answer to who will be taken.
The ones who will be taken are the ones who said yes to the life they were given, who took their gifts, however small they seemed, and offered them back to God, who lived faithfully in the ordinary, mundane, sometimes frustrating middle of life, trusting that the master would return and that it would have mattered.
Now, I want to re-engage with you for a moment because what I’m about to share is the part of this conversation that I find most personally transformative, and I don’t want you to miss it.
Stay with me because we’re about to move from theology into something that I believe will land right in the center of your daily life.
There’s a question I get asked a lot. People will come up to me at events, after screenings of The Chosen, in airports, and they’ll say, “Jonathan, do you think the rapture is real?
Do you think it’s going to happen in our lifetime?” And my honest answer is I don’t know.
I genuinely don’t know the timing. No one does. Jesus himself said that even he, in his human nature, did not know the day or the hour.
Only the Father knows. But here’s what I do know. I know that something is coming.
I know that history is moving toward something. I know that every page of scripture breathes with this sense of expectation, that the story isn’t over, that the arc of creation is bending toward a moment of completion that we can barely imagine.
And I know that in light of that, however it comes, whenever it comes, the only question that matters is the one Jesus keeps asking in parable after parable, “Are you ready?”
Not theologically ready. Not argumentatively ready. Not defensively ready. But relationally ready. Is your lamp full?
Are you using your talents? Are you in the field? Are you at the mill?
Are you showing up every single day to the life you’ve been given, doing it in his name, for his glory, in relationship with him?
Because that’s who gets taken. That’s the answer I received. Not the perfect ones. Not the ones who had all the doctrine figured out.
Not the ones who never doubted or never fell, but the ones who kept coming back.
The ones who kept saying, “Lord, I don’t always understand, but I trust you. Lord, I fell again, but here I am.
Lord, the oil is running low, and fill me again.” Here’s something that I think will shock you, and I mean that in the most beautiful way possible.
In Luke 18, Jesus tells the parable of the persistent widow, a woman who keeps coming to an unjust judge over and over demanding justice, and she wears him down.
Not because she was powerful, not because she had status or influence, but because she refused to stop showing up.
And Jesus uses that story to talk about prayer, about faith, about the people who keep coming to God even when it seems like nothing is happening.
And then he says something extraordinary. He says, “And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night?
Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.”
And then, right after that, he asks a question that I think is one of the saddest and most searching questions in all of scripture.
“However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Will he find faith?
Not buildings, not denominations, not programs. Faith. The living, breathing, persistent widow at the door kind of faith.
That question has stayed with me. It lives in me, and I think it’s meant to.
I think Jesus asks it not to make us afraid, but to make us present, to make us take seriously the call to keep the flame alive.
Who will be taken? The ones in whom he finds faith. The ones who kept coming.
The ones who didn’t give up. I want to tell you something personal now, something I haven’t said in a lot of interviews or public settings, but that feels right to share here with you.
There was a period, not so long ago, when my own faith felt like a candle in a windstorm.
It wasn’t that I stopped believing. It’s that I wasn’t sure my belief was enough.
I wasn’t sure I was doing enough, being enough, giving enough. And I remember praying this desperate, slightly tearful prayer, and just asking, “Jesus, if you came right now, would I be ready?”
And what I felt, not in words, but in that deep inner knowing that I think every person of faith has experienced at some point, what I felt was this.
“You’re already mine. Stop trying to earn what I’ve already given you.” That was it.
That was the moment. And it didn’t make me complacent. It made me free. Because when you know, truly know that you are loved, that you are held, that you belong to him, everything changes.
You stop performing faith, and you start living it. You stop being afraid of the rapture, and you start being excited about the reunion, because that’s what it is at its core.
The return of Christ is not a cosmic punishment for the people who didn’t make the cut.
It’s a reunion. It’s the bridegroom finally arriving for the one he loves. And the question Jesus keeps asking, the question behind all the parables, is simply this.
Will you be there? Will you be at the door? Will your lamp be full?
Will you be in the field, working, faithful, present? Let me bring you to the part of this conversation that I think will completely reframe everything.
We’ve talked about who will be taken, but I want to ask a different question now.
What kind of person do you become when you actually believe this? Because I think the rapture, whether you understand it as a literal event or a metaphorical framework for the return of Christ, has a purpose in our present tense lives, not just in our future ones.
When you genuinely believe that Jesus is coming back, that history has a destination, that this story has an author, and that author has a plan, it changes how you live on a Tuesday afternoon.
It changes how you treat the stranger at the grocery store. It changes how you handle conflict with your spouse or your colleague.
It changes what you do with your pain, your disappointment, your grief. The early church lived with this electric sense of expectation.
They didn’t know when, but they believed it was soon. And that belief made them extraordinary people, generous people, people who shared everything, who loved radically, who went to the margins and brought people in.
They had found the treasure hidden in the field, and they sold everything they had to buy that field.
That’s who gets taken. Not a demographic, not a theological tribe. People who have been so transformed by their encounter with Jesus that their entire orientation toward life has changed.
And now I need to say something that I think is really important, maybe the most important thing in this whole conversation.
If you’re watching this and you feel a kind of spiritual anxiety about all of this, if you’re scared that you’re not going to make it, that you’ve made too many mistakes, that you’ve wandered too far, I want to speak directly to you.
Jesus told a parable about a shepherd who had a hundred sheep, and one of them wandered off, and the shepherd left the 99 and went to find the one.
The one, not because the one was the best sheep, not because the one deserved it, but because it was lost.
And the shepherd’s heart could not rest until it was found. That’s you. That’s me.
That’s every human being who has ever felt lost or unworthy or too far gone.
And this is the part of the answer that I think undoes people in the most beautiful way.
The ones who will be taken include the prodigal sons and daughters who came home.
The ones who hit the wall of their own emptiness and turned around and started walking.
The ones who said, “I’m not worthy to be called your son,” and found the father already running toward them before they finished the sentence.
That’s the gospel. That’s the wild, reckless, beautiful, grace-soaked gospel. And any theology of the rapture that doesn’t have room for that kind of love isn’t fully representing the Jesus I encounter in scripture.
Let me give you the pattern interrupt I’ve been building toward. Here’s what stopped me completely when I was studying this.
In the original context of Matthew 24, Jesus is not just talking about a future event.
He is talking to people who are about to face the destruction of Jerusalem, a cataclysmic, terrifying, world-ending event that would happen within a generation.
The disciples’ question was as urgent as life and death, because for them it was.
And Jesus, knowing what was coming, knowing the suffering, the siege, the exile, told them, “Stay awake.
Be faithful. Keep the oil in your lamps. Use what I’ve given you. Keep coming to the Father.
Don’t give up. Not because those things would prevent the storm, but because those things would carry them through it.
And I believe that is the word for us today. The world we’re living in right now feels like midnight.
There is division and fear and confusion on a scale that is genuinely unprecedented in many of our lifetimes.
And in that context, in that midnight, Jesus is saying the same thing he said to those terrified disciples on the Mount of Olives, “Stay awake.
Be faithful. Fill your lamp. I am coming.” And you? What do you feel when you think about this?
When you really sit with the question, uh “Will he find faith in me?” What comes up for you?
Is it hope? Is it fear? Is it a quiet confidence? Or is it that restless feeling that maybe it’s time to go a little deeper, to fill the lamp a little more, to stop burying the talent and start investing it?
Write it in the comments. I genuinely want to know. I read them. I think about them.
Your story matters to me, and I believe it matters to Jesus. So, let me bring this home now.
I asked Jesus, “Who will be taken in the rapture?” And the answer, the real answer, is not a list.
It’s not a demographic. It’s not a denominational affiliation or a theological position or a perfect track record of church attendance.
The answer is the ones who know him and the ones he knows. The ones who filled their lamps, not all at once, not perfectly, but consistently, persistently, honestly, going back again and again to the source.
The ones who used what they were given, however little it seemed, however humble the setting, and offered it back to God with open hands.
The ones who kept showing up at the door of God’s presence even when it felt like the door wasn’t opening because they trusted that the judge is not unjust, that the father is not distant, that the bridegroom is not late.
The ones who, when they fell, when they did fall, we all fall, got back up, turned around, started walking home, and found him already running toward them.
That’s who gets taken. That’s the stunning answer. Not stunning because it’s complicated, stunning because it’s so simple.
Stunning because it’s available to every single person watching this right now. Not because you’re perfect, because you’re his.
And here is what I want to leave you with because I think this is the transformation that this whole conversation has been moving toward.
Stop treating your faith like a fire insurance policy. Stop engaging with the rapture as an anxiety-producing theological puzzle to be solved.
Start treating it for what Jesus intended it to be, a horizon of hope that reshapes your present.
Live like someone who believes Jesus is coming back. Not in a way that makes you abandon the world, but in a way that makes you love it more deeply, serve it more faithfully, and hold it more lightly.
Live like someone who has nothing to hide and nothing to lose because your treasure is already stored somewhere that moths cannot destroy and thieves cannot steal.
Fill your lamp every day with prayer, with scripture, with community, with the quiet, persistent, daily choice to turn toward Jesus rather than away from him.
Use your talent, whatever it is, teaching, serving, creating, building, encouraging, healing, listening. Use it.
Don’t bury it. The master is coming back and he wants to say to you those words that I believe every human heart is longing to hear.
Well done, good and faithful servant. Come and share your master’s happiness. That’s the invitation.
That’s always been the invitation and it’s extended to you right now, today, wherever you are, whatever you’ve done, however far you feel you’ve wandered.
