Rapture

• 1. Introduction

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  The Rapture is the belief that believers, living and dead, will one day be lifted skyward together, "in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air." Some Christians hold this belief, and it is especially strong within American evangelicalism. Most Christian denominations, including the numerically largest, do not use the word as a theological term at all. Two readers can study the same short passage in a letter to the Thessalonians and picture entirely different futures. One sees a sudden departure that leaves much of humanity behind to face an ordeal known as the Great Tribulation. Another sees a quiet gathering of the faithful with Christ in Heaven. This documentary asks where the word came from, and how old the idea really is. It asks why believers argue so fiercely about the timing, and what became of the people who named an exact day.

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• 2. A Word For Snatching

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  In the Koine Greek of 1 Thessalonians 4:17, the fate of the faithful is expressed by the verb harpagēsometha, meaning "we shall be caught up" or "we shall be taken away." Its dictionary form is harpazō, which the New Testament also uses in Acts 8:39, in 2 Corinthians 12:2-4, and in Revelation 12:5. The Latin Vulgate rendered the Greek as rapiemur, from the verb rapio, which means "to catch up" or "take away."

  The English word rapture travelled a longer road. It comes from Middle French rapture, which came from the Medieval Latin raptura, meaning "seizure, kidnapping." That in turn traces to the Latin raptus, "a carrying off." The idea of being carried off is in the word's bones.

  English Bibles chose their own verbs. Wycliffe's Bible of 1395, translated from the Vulgate, said believers would be "ravished." The Tyndale New Testament of 1525 chose "caught up," and so did the Bishop's Bible of 1568, the Geneva Bible of 1587 and the King James Version of 1611. That phrase survived into the American Standard Version of 1901, the Revised Standard Version, the English Standard Version and several editions of the New International Version.

  The linguist Douglas Hamp points to the Greek scholar Spiros Zodhiates, who lists a related noun, harpagē, as meaning plundering or spoil. Hamp argues that Paul chose this family of words to echo Isaiah 24:3, which says "The land shall be entirely emptied and utterly plundered."

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• 3. Older Hopes, Newer Word

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  Eusebius, the early church historian, recorded that Papias of Hierapolis expected a stretch of some thousand years after the resurrection of the dead, with Christ's kingdom set up on this very earth. Eusebius added that many later Church Fathers, including Irenaeus, adopted a similar view because of the age of the man who taught it. The nineteenth-century scholar Schaff called this chiliasm, or millennarianism, the most striking point in the eschatology of the age before the Council of Nicaea.

  Two schools of interpretation then collided. The Alexandrian school traced its roots to Philo, a Hellenized Jew who tried to reconcile God's truthfulness with what he saw as errors in the Tanakh. Its theologians read the Millennium as a symbolic reign of Christ from Heaven. Through Origen and Augustine, both trained in that school, allegorical reading became the majority view for more than a thousand years. The rival Antiochene school insisted on literal reading, yet it did little to dent the symbolic Millennium.

  Joachim of Fiore, who lived from 1130 to 1202, revived the literal hope in the twelfth century. He wrote a commentary on Revelation, insisted the end was near, and taught that the Jews would be converted and the Millennium would unfold on earth. His teaching influenced much of Europe.

  In 1590 the Jesuit Francisco Ribera taught futurism, which is surprising because the Catholic Church does not generally read Daniel and Revelation as strictly future-facing. Ribera also described a gathering of the elect, similar to what is now called the rapture. He placed it 45 days before the end of a tribulation lasting 3.5 years.

  The seventeenth-century American Puritans Increase Mather and Cotton Mather pictured believers caught up in the air, then judgments on earth, then the millennium. Robert Maton, Nathaniel Holmes, John Browne, Thomas Vincent, Henry Danvers and William Sherwin voiced related ideas in the same century. Later, Philip Doddridge and John Gill used the word rapture in their New Testament commentaries, expecting believers to be caught up before judgment fell on the earth.

  An 1828 edition of Matthew Henry's An Exposition of the Old and New Testament used the word "rapture" while explaining 1 Thessalonians 4:17.

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• 4. Irving, Lacunza, Darby

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  Edward Irving, who lived from 1792 to 1834, turned his attention to the study of prophecy in 1825. He accepted the one-man Antichrist idea held by James Henthorn Todd, Samuel Roffey Maitland, Robert Bellarmine and Francisco Ribera. Then he went a step further. Irving began teaching a two-phase return of Christ, whose first phase was a secret rapture before the rise of the Antichrist. Edward Miller summarized the scheme as three gatherings. First came the first-fruits of the harvest, the wise virgins who follow the Lamb. Next came the abundant harvest, and last came the assembling of the wicked for punishment.

  A second thread runs through Manuel Lacunza, a Jesuit priest who lived from 1731 to 1801. Writing under the pseudonym Juan Josafat Ben Ezra, he produced an apocalyptic work titled La venida del Mesías en gloria y majestad, or The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty. It first appeared in 1811, ten years after his death. In 1827 the Scottish minister Edward Irving translated it into English.

  Morgan Edwards, a Baptist, had already published an essay in Philadelphia in 1788 that articulated a pretribulation rapture. Yet John Nelson Darby is the figure credited with first solidifying and popularizing the idea, in 1827. Vague notions had appeared among a few Puritan theologians before him, but Darby was the first to set the idea inside a larger theological framework. The doctrine as defined in dispensational premillennialism is generally traced to the 1830s.

  Some proponents, such as Grant Jeffrey, look much further back, to a seventh-century tract called the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Ephraem the Syrian. Different authors have proposed different versions of that text as authentic, and opinions differ on whether it supports a pretribulation rapture. One version reads, "For all the saints and Elect of God are gathered, prior to the tribulation that is to come, and are taken to the Lord lest they see the confusion that is to overwhelm the world because of our sins." The Apocalypse of Elijah and The History of Brother Dolcino also say believers will be removed before the Tribulation. Thomas Ice adds that belief in the imminence of Christ's return appears in various Church Fathers.

  Darby's view was accepted among many other Plymouth Brethren movements in England. Their writings would shape American Christianity, especially its teaching on end times and fundamentalism.

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• 5. Bestsellers And Conferences

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  The Niagara Bible Conference began in 1878 as a gathering open to both historicist and futurist premillennial views. Over time, conferences in the Bible Conference Movement led to growing acceptance of futurist premillennialism and the pretribulation rapture. Presbyterian, Baptist and Congregational members were especially affected.

  Print carried the message further. William E. Blackstone published Jesus is Coming in 1878, and it sold more than 1.3 million copies. The Scofield Reference Bible followed in 1909 and 1919, and it was revised in 1967.

  Today a pretribulational view is most commonly found among American Baptists, Bible churches, Brethren churches, certain Methodist denominations, Pentecostals and non-denominational evangelicals. Its teachers include Jimmy Swaggart, Robert Jeffress, J. Dwight Pentecost, J. Vernon McGee, Perry Stone, Chuck Smith, Jack Van Impe, Skip Heitzig, Chuck Missler, David Jeremiah, John F. MacArthur and John Hagee.

  In the 1970s, belief in the rapture spread into wider circles, in part through the books of Hal Lindsey. His book The Late Great Planet Earth has reportedly sold between 15 million and 35 million copies. The film A Thief in the Night took its title from a scriptural phrase. Lindsey proclaimed that the rapture was imminent, citing world conditions of the time.

  In 1995 Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series pushed the doctrine further. The books sold close to 80 million copies and became several movies. They also inspired four real-time strategy video games.

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• 6. Seven Years, Many Calendars

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  Dispensationalists read 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 as describing a preliminary event, separate from the return described in Matthew 24:29-31. They base this on a literal reading of Paul's words. Most premillennialists distinguish the Rapture from the Second Coming, and some dispensationalists describe a single return in two stages.

  The debate over timing leans heavily on two passages. Matthew 24:37-40 compares the coming of the Son of man to the days of Noah, when a flood took people away. It adds that of two men in a field, "one is taken, and one is left." Some say this describes the Rapture. Others answer that neither church nor rapture appears in Matthew 24, and that the two texts differ significantly.

  Pretribulationists place the rapture before a seven-year tribulation and the second coming at its end. They often say Jesus comes for the church at the first event and with the church at the second.

  Midtribulationists split the tribulation into two halves of 3.5 years each. They cite the phrase "time, times, and half a time." The saints endure the first half, then are raptured before the severe outpouring of God's wrath. At the midpoint, the Antichrist commits the "abomination of desolation" by desecrating the Jerusalem temple. Harold Ockenga, James O. Buswell and Norman Harrison taught this view, which remains a minority among premillennialists.

  The prewrath view puts the rapture later still, after the sixth seal of Revelation is opened and the sun is darkened and the moon turns to blood. By then many Christians will have been killed as martyrs. Only afterward does the wrath of the seventh seal, called the Day of the Lord, fall on the ungodly.

  Partial rapture theory says obedient believers who maintain close fellowship with God will be raptured before the great tribulation. Ira E. David summed up one form of the idea: "The saints will be raptured in groups during the tribulation as they are prepared to go." Supporters include Watchman Nee, Hudson Taylor, G. Campbell Morgan and Robert Govett.

  Posttribulationists hold that the church will go through the tribulation and meet Christ in the air just as he returns to earth. They cite the promise that the dead in Christ rise first. Defenders include Pat Robertson, Walter R. Martin, John Piper, George E. Ladd, Robert H. Gundry and Douglas Moo.

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• 7. Churches Without A Rapture

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  Thomas Aquinas, in his Compendium Theologiae, borrowed from Augustine to argue that nobody is spared death. On his reading, believers alive at the Lord's coming will die and rise again in the very moment they are taken up. That is a gathering, but not an escape.

  Historically, the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican and Reformed churches have no tradition of a preliminary return of Christ. The Eastern Orthodox Church favors an amillennial reading and so rejects a preliminary, premillennial return. Most Methodists do not hold the dispensationalist view.

  Amillennialists see the millennium as the present age, which began when the church was founded on the day of Pentecost described in Acts. They treat the number "thousand" in Revelation 20 as symbolic. In their view Christ already reigns with his saints through the Eucharist and his church. They do not consider rebuilding the Jerusalem temple necessary, since animal sacrifices were fulfilled in Christ's sacrifice on the cross. A mystical gathering with Christ coincides with the second coming. This is the position of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Anglican churches, and of mainline Protestants such as Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and many Reformed congregations.

  Loraine Boettner stated the postmillennial hope plainly: "the world will be Christianized, and the return of Christ will occur at the close of a long period of righteousness and peace." Postmillennialists treat the rapture and the second coming as one event. They say the great tribulation was already fulfilled in the Jewish-Roman War of AD 66-73, which destroyed Jerusalem. John Bunyan, Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney supported this view.

  The Victorian Congregationalist J. Stuart Russell proposed a preterist rapture. In his view it had already occurred in the lifetime of St John, leaving an empty husk of an institution. The church, he held, was not restored until the Reformation.

  Even the destination is disputed. Dispensationalists see Heaven as the immediate destination of the raptured, and the Catholic commentator Walter Drum identified Heaven in 1912. The Anglican N. T. Wright instead identifies a specific place on Earth, an interpretation sometimes linked to Christian environmentalist concerns.

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• 8. Dates That Passed

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  William Miller predicted that Christ would return between the 21st of March 1843 and the 21st of March 1844. He then claimed to have miscalculated the Bible and moved the date to the 22nd of October 1844. When that day passed, the result was the Great Disappointment. Miller's theology gave rise to the Advent movement, which later produced the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Followers of the Baháʼí Faith believe Christ did return in 1844, with the advent of the Báb.

  Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Watch Tower Society, and many of his successors predicted the Second Coming for 1914-1918 and 1925. His Bible Students Association was later renamed the Jehovah's Witnesses. These dates concern the Second Coming, which may or may not refer to the rapture.

  Predictions aimed squarely at the rapture came later. Chuck Smith said in 1981 that Jesus would probably return by that year. Edgar C. Whisenant published a book titled 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988.

  Radio evangelist Harold Camping named the 6th of September 1994. He later revised his prediction to the 21st of May 2011. After that date passed without apparent incident, Camping said on the radio that a non-visible "spiritual judgement" had occurred. The physical rapture, he said, would come on the 21st of October 2011, when the "whole world will be destroyed."

  Christian numerologist David Meade based a prediction for the 23rd of September 2017 on astrological theories. All of these predictions failed. The most recent date on record is the 23rd and the 24th of September 2025, predicted by Joshua Mhlakela.

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