1Th 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.
Indeed, but the author of these words is almost certainly not intending the readers to take this literally.
How do I know this? Because, at the risk of appearing immodest, I have done my homework. To wit:
1. I know that Daniel 7, which contains an extended metaphor of a Son of Man character moving
up "on the clouds" to be enthroned in Heaven.
2. I know from knowledge of history that Daniel 7 was well-known to the Jews of Jesus' day;
3. I know that Jesus identified Himself as the Son of Man character from Daniel 7 in his interaction with Caiaphus ("you will see the son of man coming on the clouds").
4. Therefore, the modern image of a Jesus coming
down on the clouds to gather the "raptured" is decidedly at odds with Biblical precedent - Biblical precedent has the son of man going
up "on the clouds", not down;
5. I know from knowledge of history that it was common practice for people greeting an emperor to leave the city walls and meet that emperor "in the open air" outside the city gates. So when Paul writes of meeting the Lord "in the air",
he does not mean that we will literally be in the air - he is drawing on a well-known image of the day that involves no one getting airborne!
There are many other reasons why the concept of the rapture is very weakly supported, if supported at all, in the Bible.
I confess to certain degree of mystification at the unwillingness of many Christians to understand that much Biblical language is metaphorical - not to be taken literally. Somehow the frankly absurd notion that the entire sprawling text of the Bible was written by simpletons who were not able to use literary device to good purpose has taken hold in much of western evangelicalism. I suggest this is clearly a major blunder.