By: Will BashamI grew up hearing a lot about the return of Jesus. My pastor would always talk about signs pointing to the worsening of morality in the world and he would say, “get your duds packed,” as a reference to get your affairs in order to leave this world. Even though I heard references to the fact of the second coming often, I never heard much about how the second coming would happen. Many people seemed more concerned with when Jesus would return rather than how he would return.
Perhaps because of the difficult nature of this doctrine and the lack of clarity of some of the details in scripture, many bible teachers around me did not deal as much with the how. There is also a myriad of end times views that are held and some level of controversy and disagreement among Christians. These factors lead many pastors to shy away from teaching about the end times.
To be certain, there is grace and plenty of room to disagree on the finer details of events that haven’t happened yet. However, it is important for the Church to teach about the return of Jesus. The second coming of Christ is mentioned in 25 of the 27 New Testament books in a total of approximately 300 references. The apostles viewed this doctrine as very important. So as a young man, I began to seek resources on this important doctrine, and I found a very popular fictional series on the topic called Left Behind.
The Left Behind book series is a volume of fictional novels that follows characters in a hypothetical future at the end of days. Author Tim LaHaye wrote the series to detail the dispensational, premillennial view of eschatology in a fun and creative way. The books are predicated on the idea of a futurist interpretation of the book of Revelation and other apocalyptic texts in the bible. The characters in the story remain on earth after a rapture (a snatching away of the people making up the Church from earth) has taken place, beginning a series of events known as the great tribulation.
At the time, this view made sense to me, and I was entertained by these novels. Also, everyone that I knew seemed to hold to a dispensational, premillennial view. (For more detail on two differing views of the rapture, visit The Rapture Question - The Gospel Coalition .) It wasn’t until I became a pastor myself that I began to reconsider my views on the rapture. A pastor that was mentoring me challenged me to be able to defend my eschatology better. He specifically spent some time studying the Olivet Discourse with me.
The Olivet Discourse is a teaching by Jesus to his disciples found in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. The teaching is in response to questions from the disciples that arise when Jesus prophesies that the temple will be destroyed. Importantly, the disciples ask Jesus two questions: when the temple would be destroyed (which happened in 70 A.D.) and when Jesus’ coming would be. Jesus gives signs and apocalyptic teaching to describe a great tribulation and persecution and then the destruction of the temple. I had always understood this language to refer to the end of time, but the more I studied the bible and history, the more I saw the Olivet Discourse (and the book of Revelation) pointing to things that happened in the first century.
Another striking observation was the teaching from Jesus that his followers would have to endure wrath that is brought to the earth by God. Jesus says that no one knows when the second coming will be, so the disciples don’t exactly get the answer that they’re looking for, but what is noticeably absent from the Olivet Discourse is any hint that God’s people will be taken out of earth before any persecution, tribulation, etc. In fact, Jesus only mentions the elect being gathered at the time of his return (Matthew 24:31).
This led me to rethink the rapture. I began to read and study other eschatological views, rather than merely dispensationalism. I studied historic premillennialism (the position I hold to today), amillennialism, and postmillennialism. (For an overview of the main views on the millennial reign of Christ, visit Views of the Millennium - The Gospel Coalition.) What I began to doubt was the doctrine of a “secret rapture” — God removing the church from the earth seven years before the second coming of Jesus. The idea in dispensational teaching is that God will spare the church from any end times persecution. The Olivet Discourse had caused me to wonder if that were true and throughout the Old Testament, I saw prophets like Jeremiah and Habakkuk walking with God’s people through intense tribulation.
The rapture, surprisingly enough, is not mentioned in the book of Revelation. The doctrine is almost exclusively built from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and no one throughout church history held to the rapture view until the 19th century when it was popularized by a fellow named John Nelson Darby. It was troubling to me that such a widely taught doctrine had not been believed for thousands of years and it was seemingly grounded in just one passage. To that end, let’s examine that passage.
1 Thessalonians 4:15 says, “For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.” (Emphasis added.) The word rapture comes from the Latin word raptura which means a “seizing or snatching.” Paul gives us the setting of this “snatching” of the church in verse 15: “the coming of the Lord.” It’s important that Paul doesn’t call this a rapture. He calls it the coming of Jesus. He’s referring to the return of Jesus in this passage. Verse 14 says that God will, “bring with him those who have fallen asleep.” This passage is about coming and bringing more than it’s about a snatching.
Now, there is a snatching that happens. We see it in verses 16-17: “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” We will meet the Lord in the air. The bible clearly says that. The “snatching” is clearly communicated in verse 17 — “caught up.” But verse 16 makes it clear that the Lord is descending. We meet him in the air, only to immediately return to the earth with him as he brings wrath upon unbelievers. I became convinced that this entire passage was referring to the second coming, rather than a rapture. Tradition holds that in ancient cultures, it was normal to leave your city when a victorious king was returning from battle. The people would leave the city to greet their king and return into the city behind their king. I believe this is what Paul is describing in the second coming: we are caught up in the air with the Lord as he returns to earth to rightfully reign as king.
Furthermore, the purpose of the letter to the Thessalonian Church had a lot to do with their concern about end times. In Paul’s second letter to them, he reassures them about their eschatological questions. 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 says, “Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.” Paul continues on for several verses on this topic (I encourage you to read it), but he makes no mention of the church being absent for these end times events. If the rapture were going to happen, we would expect Paul to say, “Oh, Thessalonians. You are worried about times that you will not experience. Jesus will rapture us out of the world before times of tribulation.” But instead, we see Paul exhorting them to be watchful and ready, once again indicating to me that a pre-tribulation rapture is not what we should expect.
After accepting this view, I began to better understand other parts of the bible. When Jesus says the elect will be gathered at his appearing (Matthew 24:31), I know longer had a difficult time interpreting the timeline. It now made sense that a rapture wasn’t mentioned in Revelation. I recently preached through 2 Peter chapter 3 at our church, and it made sense that there is no hint of the church being absent of earth at the time of the second coming. It made sense that less than 200 years’ worth of bible teachers had taught about the rapture in the 2,000 year New Testament history.
Now, if you’ve made it this far into this article and still believe in a rapture, that’s completely okay! There is plenty of room for faithful Christians to disagree on this issue. But there is an important lesson to learn here, regardless of your eschatological leanings. Rethinking the rapture was a helpful theological exercise for me because it showed me that much of what I believed wasn’t a conviction that I held at all; it was merely an assumption that was handed down to me. Thankfully, most of the Christian faith that I grew up in has been reassured by my studies and experiences time and time again: things like the doctrines of trinity, resurrection, salvation by grace alone, etc. But rethinking the rapture taught me to spend important time studying God’s word for myself, rather than merely accepting a view that was handed to me. My prayer for you is that you would do the same thing with all doctrine: study it, love it, and affirm it. May the Lord keep us in his word until the day we live forever in the presence of his Word.