Rapture or Second Coming Part II. "Why belief in the rapture should really be left behind"

James-Michael, an M.Div graduated from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary provides useful research proving the doctrine of the rapture as a false doctrine in his article "Why belief in the rapture should be left behind"  http://www.examiner.com/methodist-in-national/why-belief-the-rapture-should-be-left-behind


The doctrine of the Rapture is one that even most non-Christians are familiar with...thanks in part to bumper stickers and t-shirts such as the one on the right, as well as the pop-christian-culture success of books like Hal Lindsay's "The Late Great Planet Earth", the preaching of John Hagee, David Jeremiah and Jack Van Impe, and the multimillion dollar "Left Behind" franchise by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

Given all of the above, it's not surprising that most people--Christian and non-Christian alike--believe that the Bible teaches that at some point in the future Jesus will make a partial return to earth to snatch believers away in a massive invisible worldwide disappearance, leaving behind empty cars, cribs, planes and (presumably) t-shirts! 

But the Bible does not, in fact, teach anything of the sort!

Having previously examined the only passage in Scripture where the phrase "Left Behind" comes from, and seeing that in fact, Jesus was saying the EXACT OPPOSITE of what most people think, we will now look at the most popular passage in Scripture that people who advocate belief in the rapture rely upon.

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.  According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.  After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.  (1Thessalonians 4:13-18)

This passage is where the term "rapture" comes from.  The word translated "caught up" in Greek is "harpazo".  When the New Testament was translated into Latin, the word "rapiemur" was used to render it.  It is from this verb that we get the English term "rapture".

But does this being "caught up" really refer to Christians being whisked away into the clouds in a massive disappearance act, leaving behind a confused world that will then go through 7 years of horrible tribulation until a final Antichrist figure emerges (from somewhere in Europe, according to most versions of Rapture theology!) and attempts to destroy the city of Jerusalem in a massive Chinese/Russian/Iraqi/Iranian invasion--only to be stopped by Jesus' visible return to reign on earth for 1000 years from a throne in Jerusalem??  (Whew!  That's a lot to recount in a single paragraph!)

In short, no.  It does not.

Nor have Christians historically believed this to be what this passage is referring to.  Only in the 1850s did this view begin to emerge.  It later became entrenched within American Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism via the Scofield Reference Bible study notes and the teaching of institutions such as Moody Bible College and Dallas Theological Seminary.  (For more on this view of the End Times, check out the column I guest-wrote for the Christian Worldview Examiner and the links found therein.)

No, Paul is not talking about the mass disappearance of Christians from all over the globe.  He is talking about the final return of Jesus as conquering King and Judge of the Living and Dead.  And he is doing so using the unmistakeable vocabulary of Roman Imperial rhetoric, which his Thessalonian readers would've immediately recognized.  New Testament scholar and historian Ben Witherington elaborates:

[W]hat sort of return is Paul envisioning here? Can it be a secret or invisible return? Do we have some sort of theology of a pre-tribulation rapture here with Jesus not actually coming to earth? The details of the text as well as the use of the language of the royal visit to a city surely rule out such a view....V. 16 also makes as clear as one could want that we are dealing with a public event, one announced not only by a loud command, as on a battlefield, and the voice of the archangel, but also by the trumpet call of God, though these may be three ways of referring to the same sound. The images are martial, as if Jesus were summoning his army.

The meeting place is said to take place in the clouds or in the air, not in heaven. Paul considers the dead in Christ to be persons who can be “awakened” or “addressed.” He is probably drawing on the yom Yahweh ["Day of the LORD"] traditions, which referred to a trumpet blast announcing the event (cf. Isa. 27:13; Joel 2:1; Zech. 9:14; 1 Cor. 15:52). But it was also the case that a royal visit to a city would be announced by a herald (see Ps. 24:7–10) and might well also be announced by a trumpet blast meant to alert those in the city that the king was coming.

This imagery is pursued further in v. 17 with the use of the term apantesin ["to meet"]. For example, Cicero says of Julius Caesar’s victory tour through Italy in 49 b.c.: “Just imagine what a meeting/royal welcome (apantesis) he is receiving from the towns, what honors are paid to him” (Ad. Atticus 8.16.2). This word refers, then, to the actions of the greeting committee as it goes forth from the city to escort the royal person or dignitary into the city for his official visit. “These analogies (especially in association with the term parousia ["presence/arrival"]) suggest the possibility that the Lord is pictured here as escorted the remainder of the journey to earth by his people—both those newly raised from the dead and those remaining alive.

[Church Father John] Chrysostom picked up these nuances quite clearly:

"For when a king drives into a city, those who are honorable go out to meet him; but the condemned await the judge within. And upon the coming of an affectionate father, his children indeed, and those who are worthy to be his children, are taken out in a chariot, that they may see him and kiss him; but the housekeepers who have offended him remain within. (Homily 8 on 1 Thessalonians)"

Paul’s Thessalonian audience may have missed some of the allusions to the Old Testament, but they would not have missed the language used here about a royal visit, indeed an imperial visit. They would remember the visit of Pompey and later Octavian and others in the days when Thessalonike could even be talked about by Pompey as the capital in exile.
[From: 1 and 2 Thessalonians : A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary by Ben Witherington III (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2006)]

Witherington is not alone in seeing this entire passage as Paul speaking not of a "rapture" but of a the final return of Jesus and His followers--both alive as well as those who have died and are resurrected--meeting him upon His arrival and welcoming Him as one would welcome a triumphant ruler returning from victorious battle to sit upon his rightful throne.  Scholars from many denominations and theological traditions recognize what is going on in 1Thessalonians 4 is nothing resembling the current pop-theology as found in scenarios such as those found in the "Left Behind" books/movies, the writings of Hal Lindsay, David Jeremiah or John Hagee, or the various "End-Times Thriller" B-movies released by Christians over the past 40 years or so:

"The picture is that of a group of citizens going out from a city to meet a visiting dignitary and accompany him back. This implies that the Lord returns with his people to the earth. (They certainly do not stay permanently on the clouds playing harps!) This language was probably never intended to be understood absolutely literally; it is describing things that go beyond words. The important thing is that believers, whether the dead or the living, are from then with the Lord for ever."
[From: New Bible Commentary : 21st Century Edition by D.A. Carson, ed. (Inter-Varsity Press, Downers Grove 1994)]

"In describing the second coming of Jesus, Paul uses another cluster of images borrowed from the triumph of the divine warrior. The trumpet call (1 Cor 15:52; 1 Thess 4:16), for example, is reminiscent of the call to battle, just as the picture of the faithful meeting the Lord in the air (1 Thess 4:17) is drawn from the practice of coming out of the city to welcome a returning warrior who has been successful in battle. The use of this cluster of images communicates that Jesus is God’s agent of salvation but also defines salvation, in part, as the defeat of Satan (and all that would oppose God’s purpose) in cosmic warfare. The book of Revelation, of course, continues the theme of divine warfare in relation to Jesus’ return."
[From: The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery by Leland Ryken, ed. (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove 1998), 769.]

"When all the dead in Christ are raised, then the trumpet shall sound, as the signal for them all to flock together to the throne of Christ.  It was by the sound of the trumpet that the solemn assemblies, under the law, were convoked; and to such convocations there appears to be here an allusion.  When the dead in Christ are raised, their vile bodies being made like unto his glorious body, then, Those who are alive shall be changed, and made immortal.  These shall be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air.  8. We may suppose that the judgment will now be set, and the books opened, and the dead judged out of the things written in those books.  The eternal states of quick and dead being thus determined, then all who shall be found to have made a covenant with him by sacrifice, and to have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, shall be taken to his eternal glory, and be for ever with the Lord.  What an inexpressibly terrific glory will then be exhibited!"
[From: Clarke's Commentary: First Thessalonians by Adam Clarke (electronic ed.;, Logos Library System, Ages Software, 1999)]

Pastor and British Theologian, John R.W. Stott--who is something of an Elder Statesman of Evangelicalism--sums up the message of this passage quite nicely:

"Thus the coming of Jesus, Paul seems to be hinting by the mere adoption of this word, will be a revelation of God and a personal, powerful visitation by Jesus, the King. It can hardly be fortuitous that he is writing this to the Thessalonians among whom, at least according to his critics, he had defied Claudius Caesar’s decrees by announcing ‘that there is another king, one called Jesus’?

The Christian hope, however, is more than the expectation that the King is coming; it is also the belief that when he comes, the Christian dead will come with him and the Christian living will join them. For it is the separation which death causes (or seems to cause) which is so painful, both separation from Christ, since the dead have died before he comes, and separation from those who survive them, since they have gone ahead and left the living behind. It is these two bitter separations which the apostle solemnly assures his readers are neither real nor permanent. For the dead will come with Jesus, and the living will not precede them.
[From: The Message of Thessalonians: The Gospel & the End of Time by John R.W. Stott (;  Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, England, 1994), 97.]

So, given the fact that neither Jesus nor Paul ever taught that Christians would be "raptured" out of the world before the final return of Christ, and given that the key proof-texts for such a view teach nothing of the sort, Christians who seek to be faithful to God's Inspired Scripture should see to it that pop-theologies such as that of the rapture are what gets left behind.