First of all I love your sight, I just found it a few weeks ago and can’t wait to read it everyday. I am confused about the verses in 1 Thes. 4:13-17 I believe that when a born again Christian dies their spirit and soul goes to be with the Lord. My confusion is if the dead are already with the Lord, and we all get new bodies, why in verse 14 will God bring them with him and then rapture them back up?
Comparing 1 Cor. 15 and 1 Thes. 4 shows that the dead in Christ don’t receive physical (resurrection) bodies until the Rapture when the living are transformed. Until then they exist in a spiritual dimension. They would be invisible to us but from what little the Bible reveals are apparently visible to each other with individual characteristics such as we have. When Paul speaks of the dead rising, he’s talking about them getting their new physical bodies, just before we get ours.