What happens to the earthly body when we die, and what changes if the rapture happens first?
At death the earthly body, a temporary tent or tabernacle, dissolves and returns to the earth from which it came. The real person—mind, will, emotions, personality—continues eternally. If the rapture occurs first, the earthly tabernacle is not dissolved but simply changed, and the believer receives an eternal, permanent building from God in the heavens.
Les teaches from 2 Corinthians chapter 5 that the earthly house is the body, described in the Greek more like a tent—a temporary dwelling place. The body is only a dwelling for the real you and the real me, that invisible part made up of mind, will, emotions, and personality, which goes on into eternity. This earthly tabernacle is going to dissolve and go back into the earth from which it came, unless the rapture takes place; then it will just be changed. Either way, the earthly tabernacle Paul is talking about is the body of flesh. The believer then has a building of God, not a tent, but something permanent, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.