“Caught up... to meet the Lord in the air”
the dead in Christ will be the first to rise. After that, we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17 BSB)
What it sounds like today
The evacuation reading: believers whisked away from earth.
The cultural key
The load-bearing word is 'meet' (apantesis), which named a civic ceremony every reader knew: when a dignitary approached, the citizens streamed out of the city to meet him on the road, then escorted him back in with honor. The New Testament's other uses run exactly that way: the virgins go out to meet the bridegroom and return with him to the feast (Matthew 25:6), and the Roman believers walk out to meet Paul and accompany him into Rome (Acts 28:15, the same word). On that pattern, the meeting in the air is the welcome party, and the movement finishes at earth, with the King. (Some scholars resist loading the term this heavily, hence the tag; the escort custom itself is not in doubt.)
Recovered meaning
The dead rise, the living join them, and together they go out to receive the arriving Lord the way a city receives its king: not an escape from the world but the honor guard of its rightful ruler's arrival.