means A state of being completely overwhelmed by joy or delight, or, in Christian belief, the foretold moment when the faithful are swept up to meet God.

from From Latin raptura, 'a seizing,' from rapere, 'to seize or carry off by force' — the same violent root that gives us 'rapt,' 'rape,' and 'raptor.' The idea was bodily: to be raptured is to be snatched, hauled away whether you like it or not. English borrowed it in the early 1600s, first for the ecstatic kind of seizure — being carried out of yourself by passion or wonder. The end-times sense, of believers physically caught up into the sky, leans on the same Latin imagery (the Vulgate's rapiemur, 'we shall be caught up') but the popular doctrine attached to the word is a much later development.