This was posted on the mannacabana messageboard. There's talk about the rapture in there, and I replied:

... I don't think the ones that are "taken away" are the ones "raptured" in that context. In verse 38 and 39, you have this:

For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away.

Note who will be "taken away." And then immediately after that verse, you have accounts of other folks who will be "taken away": one will be taken... The ones taken are directly connected grammatically with the ones that are swept away in the flood.

Likewise, the Luke passage has a cryptic response when the disciples ask "to where?" in regards to those who have been taken away: (Luke 17:37) "Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather." This is a picture of those who shall die; Revelation's echo to this is in Revelation 19:17-18:

And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, "Come, gather together for the great supper of God, so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great."