in the end

We shall be caught up in the cloud) The Cloud, the Shekinah Glory, and God's Presence

The cloud of God's presence (the Shekinah) occurs for the first time in the Exodus account (13:21), though some would trace it back to the rainbow "in the cloud" in Genesis 9:13-16. God was present to the children of Israel during the exodus as a pillar of cloud by day and a fiery, cloudy pillar by night. Moses went up on the mountain where "the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days" (Ex. 24:16). Interpret that in poetic Hebrew parallelism and one realizes that "the glory of the Lord" and "the cloud" are synonymous. Each is simply a reiteration, an amplification of the other. The cloud represents the presence of God. Note that God called to Moses out of the cloud (24:16), descended as a cloud (in a cloud?) on the tent where Moses was (33:9), and descended in a cloud and spoke to Moses when he went up a second time for the stone tablets (34:5). Scripture says that Moses' face glowed and that people could see that glow after he had been in the cloud, in the presence Of God.

Other places in Scripture also refer to the presence of God as a cloud. When Isaiah had his vision in the temple, suddenly the room was full of "fiery cloud" or smoke (Isa. 6:4), a reference to the perceived glory of God. Ezekiel, speaking of the ineffable and ultimately indescribable glory of God, refers to a cloud (Ezek. 1:4) and ends by saying that his description of God's glory is thrice removed. What he has described is not God, or even the glory of God, but only "the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord" (1:28), God's glory is beyond words.

Paul speaks of the people of Israel being under the cloud, all of them being baptized in the cloud and in the sea (1 Cor. 10:1-2). At the end of time, Paul says, we will be caught up in the cloud and will be forever in the presence of God (1 Thess. 4:17). Again the cloud and the presence of God are together. (what you didn't learn in Bible College)