The Rapture (B)
Mark Odell
Along with the biblical admonition of Jesus to “not judge,” the concept of the Rapture is one of the few Christian ideas known to a large percentage of non-Christian Americans. The seeds of this awareness began to seep in earnest into the American subconscious as a result of religious revivals and theological developments in the nation in the decades following the Civil War, specifically the spread of what has been called New Premillennialism, which was embraced by a wide swath of Protestantism, especially among fundamentalists and evangelicals (those who held to historical Christian orthodoxy, vs. modernists who had begun to chip away at various dogmas). With the publication in 1970 of Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth, and the distribution of the 1972 film, A Thief in the Night, the secular public was again exposed on a larger scale basis to a systematized vision of what was presented as the biblical prophecy of the End Times, with an urgency of those times being now. Viewers of the film saw an enactment of Mt. 24:40-41’s “one will be taken, and the other left,” a memorable and sensational depiction of the Rapture. Readers of the book, assisted by many preachers and seminars on the topic, learned of the theology and interpretations of both OT and NT passages unlocking the “code,” with the Rapture a significant feature. Since that time, a lot of additional material has been poured into the secular American mind, updated along the way (e.g., Lindsay highlighted Islam as the greatest geopolitical and theological threat to Israel, replacing his previously identified 1970 enemy, Russia, in his eschatological book, The Everlasting Hatred: The Roots of Jihad, published in 2002) even into the last few years (e.g., Rolling Stone magazine publishing in 2020 an article entitled, “Donald Trump: The End Times President”). It is important to note, however, that beyond the non-Christian public, among American Evangelicals this vision is believed by many to be the correct eschatological framework, even with or despite its constant updating—the Rapture is a central element.
In that vein, the niche of eschatological Christian fiction, epitomized by the multi-volume, best-selling Left Behind series from 1995 to 2007, but including less well-known books like The Seven Last Years (1980), A Light in the Darkness (1982), and The Time of Jacob’s Trouble (2020), routinely starts off with the Rapture, the event whereby Christians are taken suddenly to heaven, disappearing “in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Cor. 15:52) and leaving even their clothes behind. Moreover, as these disappeared people are literally in the middle of doing all of the ordinary things people do—some of them quite public—like driving vehicles, flying planes, doing surgery, teaching, doing live TV, having phone conversations, cooking, etc., their disappearance immediately creates all kinds of mayhem across the globe, initiating an international panic response that paves the way for the creation of a one world government that is ultimately led by the Antichrist, who is assisted by the False Prophet, and the Beast, presumably individuals prophesied about, albeit cryptically, in Revelation, and eventually all aligned against Israel. Parenthetically, one could look at the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2023 as a kind of dry run to see how the world would respond to some kind of unexplained cataclysm leading to attempted global governance and policy-making…
Further, the Rapture is the kickoff of a 7 year clock known as the Great Tribulation, a period of the rise of unprecedented evil and persecution against everyone who comes to faith in Christ (now that the Church and the Holy Spirit are out of the world), the international focus on and hostility toward the nation of Israel (God’s original covenant people), in which the Mosaic sacrificial system is re-established in the rebuilt temple, and at the end of the 7 years culminating in the Battle of Armageddon (from Rev. 19:19ff), at which time Jesus’s second coming occurs. The battle is a non-event, Christ is victorious, and immediately establishes his millennial kingdom (Rev. 20:1-6), ruling for 1,000 years with his saints in Jerusalem over the whole earth. After that, the Devil is freed for a short time, and then defeated with finality and the last judgment of all occurs at the Great White Throne before eternity begins with the New Heavens and the New Earth and the New Jerusalem.
This basic but specific storyline is the foundational expression of the eschatological hermeneutic of Dispensational Premillennialism (DP), the fount of New Premillennialism and the dominant system in American Protestant Evangelicalism and Protestantism since the middle of the 1800s. Its prominence in Evangelicalism and secular culture accelerated greatly with the re-establishment of national Israel in 1948, but its promulgation within the American Protestant church goes back further into the early 1860s. While there are other hermeneutic perspectives that are worthy of serious consideration that eschew the foregoing scenario, the questions remain about the what and the when of the Rapture, specifically what the Bible says about it and what the Church throughout history has believed.
The Rapture in Prophecy: What is Clear in the Bible
Trying to penetrate the Rapture in eschatological prophecy without a preconceived eschatological hermeneutic is a little like developing a secure password on a website: there are requirements that constrain the available choices, such as the password must be between x and y characters long, it must have at least one capital letter, one lower case letter, one number, one special character, etc., to gain access to the site. Similarly, the scriptures offer some specific statements that, taken together, form the basis of our understanding of the Rapture. And taken together, it is possible to arrive at some degree of confidence about it, from which the view of the larger issues of the Eschaton can be considered. This could be called a biblically sound “rapture password.”
First, the word itself has its own interesting history. The term “rapture” does not appear in the Bible’s original Greek and Hebrew texts. Rather, it is the English translation of a Latin word, raptura, from the Vulgate translation of the Greek NT (The Vulgate is where we also got words like justification, salvation, and scripture, among others). We know it as the “rapture” because of the Vulgate’s dominance as a translation in our own history as western Christians, i.e., those whose heritage is Roman Christianity. The Vulgate was produced beginning in the late 4th century AD, primarily by Jerome, whose expertise with the original languages of the Bible was unsurpassed among his contemporaries, including Augustine, and was finalized after the contributions of many others sometime in the 6th century. As the main language of the Roman Empire was Latin, the Vulgate was an effort to make the scriptures more accessible to the masses (recall the printing press is still about a thousand years in the future), and over time, it became the main translation used in all of Western Christendom, up to and through the Reformation. English translations were also made using the Latin Vulgate as a “primary” source, so this is how we have arrived at the term as it is.
The original Greek word, translated into Latin, is harpazo, meaning to seize, snatch away, carry off, to take by force. This word (harpazo/raptura) is used in 1 Thess. 4:17, a clear teaching of what came to be called the Rapture, from which the term has been generalized. Here, the Apostle Paul says that we who are alive at the time of Christ’s return will join those who have already died and who are instantaneously resurrected, and together we will all be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and be with him always. It will occur (v. 16) subsequent to the Lord’s command, with the voice of an archangel and the trumpet of God. That’s pretty clear—it’s our first two password constraints—and this verse goes into our larger understanding of the end. It’s not symbolic or allegoric, it’s literal (see the comments made at Jesus’s ascension by the angels in Acts 1:11).
But is it so literal that the day has to be cloudy? Or will clouds appear suddenly? Can it be at night; after all, half the planet is in darkness at all times? The Lord’s return is often described as coming in the clouds (besides these passages, also see Matt. 24:30 and Rev. 1:7) And what does the trumpet sound like? Is this the last of the 7 trumpets from Rev. 11:15ff? It certainly could fit, especially if what comes in Rev. 16-18 is a recapitulation of the judgments earlier in the book (consistent with the hermeneutic of partial preterism or possibly even modified idealism; it does not fit the hermeneutic of DP).
It’s also noteworthy that Paul’s language implies he expects to be alive when this happens; about 10 years or so after he wrote 1 Thessalonians, he wrote Philippians, and his language there suggests he believes he may not be alive when the Lord returns, perhaps suffering martyrdom. Regardless, such an expectation of the imminence of Christ’s return was assumed in the early church everywhere, which is part of why understanding Revelation’s, and other eschatological verses’, sequence of events got difficult when it did not happen as they thought. As frustrating as it may have been to believers who have gone before us, and to us today, to not be able to reach clarity about interpreting the specifics of the Rapture, or the rest of eschatology, it is of even more comfort, in my opinion, to rest assured in the assertion that eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered the mind of man the things that God has in store for those that love him (1 Cor. 2:9). Whatever inferred conclusions we draw beyond the clear words of the Bible (when they are clear; they aren’t always), we should hold them very loosely. When we’re certain, we’re certainly wrong.
There are other passages in the Bible addressing the Rapture. One of these is 1 Cor. 15:51-52. In this passage, the larger context has to do with Paul’s argument for the literality of the resurrection of the body, but in this verse, like 1 Thess. 4:16-17, he says he is declaring a mystery (which means we will not fully comprehend it, not that it’s something to be solved with clues and deduction), that not all believers will die, but that those who are alive at Christ’ return (from 15:23) will be changed in an instant into an imperishable form. We will take on immortality, with bodies that are like the resurrected Christ’s (1 John 3:2), likely including supernatural abilities that Jesus himself demonstrated after he rose. Paul reiterates this, almost in passing, like it’s yesterday’s news, in Phil. 3:20-21. This is another constraint added to our “rapture password” setting: it will include permanent physical change.
Other supporting passages that are relevant: Matt. 24:30-31 and its parallel, Mark 13:27. Part of the Olivet Discourse, Jesus tells the disciples that he will return in the clouds and send his angels to gather the Elect (i.e., believers) from the “4 winds,” across the whole of the heavens. There is no distinction made between living and resurrected believers, but the use of the word “heavens” can cover both; it means the whole world. What happens next and where they go or what they do is not stated. But an answer to that question is offered in John 14:1ff, where Jesus says he is going to prepare a place for his followers in his “Father’s house,” and he will come back and gather them to himself (v.3), echoing Paul’s “always be with the Lord” from 1 Thess. 4. Is this the Heavenly kingdom, or the realm of Heaven? Very likely, but not necessarily exclusively. To his disciples and other Jews, the Father’s house was understood to be the Temple, and Jesus, by going to the cross (going where the disciples could not come [John 13:33]…yet) opened up access to the Father directly (recall the veil in the Holy of Holies in the Temple was split during the crucifixion [Mt. 27:51]), and he told them that he is the only way to Father, so the place is just as much a condition of ongoing perpetual fellowship directly with the Father through the Son, enabled by the Comforter (Holy Spirit) that Jesus promised to send to them in the meantime (14:6); this passage is strongly Trinitarian! Believers are with the Lord always from the moment of salvation, with the specifics of the second coming still a mystery beyond the certainty of their being gathered to meet the Lord in the air and their bodies changed.
The Church’s Historical Understanding of the Rapture
The “rapture password” we have clearly spelled out in scripture, that the Church has always understood, is that, within the context of mystery, 1) there will be a literal instantaneous change of substance of the resurrected and still alive believers’ bodies from the whole earth, 2) a literal catching up in the air of all believers to meet the returning Lord, associated with the sounding of an archangel’s voice and a kind of trumpet, and 3) the subsequent permanence of being with the Lord, where he is, always. These three constraints have been understood since the early 5th century as the Bible’s explicit teaching on the Rapture, even before it had that name, because it was interwoven with Jesus’s second coming in glory, and probably one that did not require a literal millennial reign (what came to be known as Amillennialism).
Further, by the time Chiliasm and Idealism had lost their prominence and Amillennialism ascended in the late 4th and early 5th centuries, the Church moved to a position of interpreting eschatological prophecy with an eye for meaning and encouragement to the believer at the time, and strongly discouraged efforts to develop any kind of chronology, given how efforts thus far had failed. The aforementioned “rapture password” was not added to until the rise of DP’s framework, even though efforts, ultimately failing, to identify persons, events, and places as the fulfillment of prophecy continued all along—this is Historicism in action.
The early Church believed that the 1 Thess. 4 passage referred to Christ’s second coming as judge, and that the believers’ meeting him in the air was a repeat, correctly and not subject to change, of the initial Triumphal Entry of his first advent during Passion week. In that case, the crowds changed from “Hosannah” to “Crucify him” in the space of a few days, but this second time, no such change will be possible. Indeed, the theme of mourning, lamenting, and great fear among the nations is highlighted in several places (e.g., Mt. 24:30, Rev. 1:7, 6:16 [implied]). As well, it was customary among the ancients to receive a triumphant king returning from battle by coming outside the city to welcome him and escort him into the city, as was done for Jesus during Passion week. His second coming, from the air this time, would parallel that by adding the resurrected believers and the changed still-living ones being “caught up” to meet him in the air, and then accompanying him back to the ground, now to establish his kingdom in finality of judgment (not necessarily, but possibly in a literal millennial way, but also possibly in the “new heavens and new earth” [Rev. 21:1, 2 Pet. 3:13, Is. 66:22, etc.]).
Issues Pertaining to a DP Understanding of the Rapture
If the DP eschatological hermeneutic is accepted, some questions about the Rapture immediately come to the fore. First, where is it implied in the Bible, and second, where in the eschatological timeline may it be? The DP system attempts to locate the Rapture with specific verses besides the 1 Thess. 4 passage because it requires a separation of the Church from Israel, premised on an insistence that some OT prophecies made to Israel have not yet been fulfilled, and a literal, future 7 year tribulation and literal 1,000 year millennial kingdom. While there is some disagreement among New Premillennialists about the separation of Israel and the Church, the attempt to locate the Rapture scripturally remains for them. Some argue that the command to “come up here” given to John in Rev. 4:1 is really a generic command given to the Church, signifying the Rapture, after which the Tribulation can begin. This is known as the Pre-Tribulation Rapture position. Not surprisingly, this flows from DP’s orientation about Revelation that everything from ch. 4 onward is future. Others argue for a Mid-Tribulation Rapture, i.e., after 3 and a half years, pointing to the command to the resurrected Two Witnesses, who are believed to be symbolic of the Church even if they are individuals, of Rev. 11 to “come up here” (v.12). There is a Post-Tribulation position as well, with Rev. 21:9 offered as a pointer.
Furthermore, the DP view of both Pre- and Mid-Trib Rapture possibilities separates it from the second coming in that Jesus calls the Church to him in the air, but then goes back into Heaven to return at the end of the Tribulation. This means that Jesus’s return is actually in two separate stages. The first return does not require Jesus to actually touch the Earth, but only to come as far as to meet the Church in the air (again, from 1 Thess. 4:17). This belief originated with American Lutheran pastor Joseph Seiss in 1864 in “The Difficulty Solved: Two Stages of the Advent,” published in the journal Prophetic Times, and became the established version for DP adherents (except for Post-Trib people). An additional difficulty with DP’s understanding is that once the Rapture occurs, Jesus’s second coming in glory will occur exactly 7 years later, which arguably contradicts Jesus’s comments that the hour of his appearing is known only to the Father (Mt. 24:36) and will come at a time that will not be expected (Mt. 24:44). The retort is that it is the Rapture’s timing that is unknown, but after it the timing of Jesus’s return, 7 years, is known. But if the Rapture doesn’t really “qualify” as a second coming, as some insist, then there is a problem of contradiction with Jesus’s words.
Related to this obviously is the question of whether the Church will have to endure some or all of the Great Tribulation. And also obviously, if there’s an option to prefer, the answer would be “no,” consistent with a Pre-Trib position. Support for this contention is found in interpreting Rev. 3:10, the letter to the church at Philadelphia, as applying to the Church as a whole as being preserved from the “hour of testing” that will soon come upon the whole world. Additional support is offered in 1 Thess. 1:10 and 5:9, where Paul says that the Church is not subject to or destined for wrath, so the conclusion is that the Church must be taken up before God’s wrath explodes. Contrary to those verses, however and again, the Olivet Discourse has Jesus saying that believers will be subject to tribulation, persecution, and even martyrdom, but also that for the sake of the elect, the Tribulation will be cut short, else no life would survive. A heavy NT theme, and in particular Revelation, is that believers need to stand firm till the end, which suggests strongly that the Church will experience the Tribulation. Furthermore, Jesus’s own rebukes of several of the Revelation churches in chs. 2 and 3 include warnings of things that sound wrathful—removed lampstands, making war, killing the unrepentant ones’ children, and being spat out of Jesus’s mouth.
It is also worth considering more closely what the wrath of God is. The phrase (in some variation) appears 24 times in the Bible (11 OT, 13 NT), so it’s not infrequent. If the terminology is broadened to include God’s anger and God’s fury, we find more references to it than to his love and mercy. The word wrath (Gk. orge) comes from a root word that means to swell over time with continued input against a foundational limit; in other words, it is an immovable opposition against something that provokes and provokes and eventually causes a dramatic and powerful response. While it may seem sudden, it is not; it is the result of a buildup over time and repeated offense. It is the end result of a continuing provocation. God’s wrath is his response to evil, to the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth (from Rom. 1:18); his wrath is not like a person flying into a raging emotional tantrum over a minor issue. As Paul describes it in Romans 1, God’s wrath is being revealed. It is an ongoing and present reality now in the fallen created order, and we know that in the future a final day of judgment and wrath is certain. Likewise, the suppression of truth is an ongoing thing. For now, however, the wrath of God is evident in the natural consequences of sin specifically, in the lives of individuals for sure, but also in the trajectories of whole nations and cultures. God’s wrath is revealed also in the form of natural evil—disasters that destroy, that foreshadow what eternal damnation portends.
The Gospel is what gives us the escape from God's second and ultimate manifestation of wrath, eternity in Hell, the final Great White Throne judgment and the second death. The Thessalonian passages above are referring to that manifestation of God's wrath (the same word, orge), from which Jesus keeps us, which is described in Rev. 20:10ff. Rev. 6-19 is God's wrath against humanity's evil world system, symbolized as Babylon, which is currently happening (again, Rom. 1) and has had and will have specific manifestations in history, to which Revelation's visions may pertain more than once. Nowhere are we given reason to believe that we will be protected from what that world system does and how it is impacted by God's ongoing wrath against it--we will go through that manifestation of God's wrath (though it's not directed at us), and more than that, we will be persecuted and God will not prevent it completely or routinely pull us out of it. That underscores for me the urgency of strengthening believers to stand firm and persevere, no matter what.
Furthermore, from the beginning Christians have been persecuted for their faith, and even more in the last several decades than in all of history before our time. The call to endure has never been more timely, and it would be odd to believe that such a requirement is conveniently removed for those yet to come, especially as suffering for Christ is one of our faith’s highest honors (e.g., Acts 5:41, Rom. 5:3, James 1:2, 1 Pet. 4:13). Should we desire to skip that destiny? I would hope not…but I wouldn’t be surprised if I did. Thank God that he promises to give us our defense before the hostile authorities we may face (Lk. 12:12), and even more that a major theme of Revelation is the call to overcome and stand firm, a call he will empower.
Sources
Davidson, Ivor. (2005). A Public Faith: The Baker History of the Church, vol. 2. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.
Gorday, Peter (Ed.) (2000). Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Colossians, 1-2 Thessalonians, 1-2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, New Testament, vol. IX. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Hummel, Daniel. (2023). The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.