O Rapture!

I have been away from Substack for a while, recharging. I thought I would touch on a Christian topic of interest in these outrageous times. The “secret pre-tribulation rapture”, which I will refer to below as simply “the rapture”.

The rapture has been a topic of conversation in the Church the entire forty plus years I have been saved. Yet, for most of that time, it was more of an academic exercise.

We all liked to cite Paul, that we were nearer to His return than when we first believed (Rom 13:11). We all knew we ought to look for Christ’s imminent return, for “the night was almost gone, and the day seemed at hand” (Rom 13:12). But things hadn’t quite lined up. It was more like dusk for the last few decades, not quite like midnight. Yes, society was sick and getting sicker, but we all knew it could get worse.

Life these last few generations, at least for the Church in the First World, has been pretty good. Talk of the end time trouble was a little like talking about winter while enjoying a fall harvest. Well, winter has descended on us. “Coming trouble” has arrived – and is probably worse than most of us imagined. Nor was it the troubles of the Third World that flooded in. Instead, demonic influences in the First World have hatched waking nightmares the Third World is blissfully free of. I don’t think they are mutilating children in hospitals in Africa. They aren’t assembling humanoids without a human egg or human sperm in the hinterlands of Asia.

And yet, as bad as things are today, we have plenty of reason to think even worse things might spill onto the scene tomorrow or next month. Maybe the next horror will wait for the new year, but it’s coming. Gird your loins, Theophilus!

Whole segments of society are now criminally insane. Brazen, open demonism is on the march in Western societies. They’ve put a whole new meaning to armies being on the offensive. It’s as if western society is in a boat on a river. The stream keeps picking up pace and the water keeps getting choppier. Is that the sound of a huge waterfall up ahead that I hear?

So, thoughts of the rapture are intensifying and coming into sharper focus. If He is going to rescue His church from the worst of things and from His judgment on those things, then the rapture could take place at any time now, right?

I would certainly appreciate being raptured out of the tragicomic farce that is modernity. I would love to see my precious grandchildren spared all that so ominously looms on the near horizon. I just don’t believe in “the rapture”. I don’t see it in scripture. In fact, I see it refuted, not just by scripture, but by Jesus Christ Himself.

Please don’t walk away if you disagree with me. Iron ought to sharpen iron. The following paragraphs won’t bite. “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (Prov 18:17). If you have heard the case for the rapture, yet have not heard the case against it, please take a few minutes to consider what I am about to say.

I believe in a rapture, but not a secret, pre-tribulation one. I fully accept Paul’s declaration to the Thessalonians, that we “will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thes 4:17). Yet, the verb for "meet" in that verse is “apantesis”. It is used to greet and welcome, like meeting someone at your front door. It's also the verb used of the Christians from Rome who met Paul “at the Forum on the Appian Way” (Acts 28:15). What happened after that meeting? Did they leave with Paul to go somewhere else, or did Paul come with them? We know the answer because the next verse tells us: “When we arrived in Rome…”

I believe Christians meet the Lord in the air and are changed in a “twinkling of an eye” at the meeting. I say we meet Him who has come forth as described at the opening of Revelation chapter 19. We will join His angelic host and come to earth. That is how we shall be with Him, per the assurances of Paul.

The next scripture to consider that ought to give pause to the popular notion of the rapture is this: “Yet a little while and the wicked man will be no more; You will look carefully at his place, and he will not be there” (Ps 37:10).

I marvel that an entire business model regarding “the Rapture” exists that employs the reverse scenario of Ps 37:10. That industry has sold millions of books. It has also produced popular movies based on those books. The premise of their profitable productions is it’s the righteous who can’t be found. It’s the wicked who do the looking, not the righteous.

It’s as if someone took the verse, “Jesus wept” (Jn 11:35) and wrote a book stipulating that Jesus laughed until He cried. But the book itself wouldn’t be the craziest thing about my hypothetical. No, the millions of copies sold to “bible believing” Christians would be the craziest part.

Another common theme of “the rapture” is millions believe God will catch us away soon to keep us from the evil that's coming on the earth. I’m all for it. It certainly sounds reassuring. But Jesus specifically covered this idea in chapter 17 of the gospel of John, where He prayed to the Father on our behalf:

“I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled” (Jn 17:11-12)

“I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one” (Jn 17:15)

Jesus’ prayer in John 17 is sometimes referred to as His “last will and testament”. Jesus virtually made a dying request of His Father, that He keep us from evil. Yet He also requested the Father not do it by taking us out of the world. Therefore, I say Christian thoughts regarding a rapture before big trouble is idle daydreaming that is contrary to the will of Christ. We’re supposed to take such thoughts captive, not indulge them.

I want to end by considering the clear teaching of Christ on the unfolding of the end. I am referring to Jesus Christ's parable of the Wheat and Tares (Matt 13:24-30, explained in Matt 13:36-43). Jesus teaches on end times in that parable. He tells how, even though good seeds are planted, weeds from bad seeds emerge among the good plants.

A reasonable question is then posed to the Master of the field, 'Should the weeds be gathered out early?' (Notice, this query is in line with Ps 37:10: the weeds are assumed to be what would be gathered out early). The answer is given: 'No'. The field is left as is until the end - when it will finally be harvested. It is the weeds that will be gathered out first in that single end-time harvest, but only just prior to, and to facilitate, the desired crop being gathered in.

Theophilus, I have now made my case to you, presenting my primary points for why I do not believe a secret, pre-tribulation rapture is scriptural. Please feel free to comment. I only ask that we not talk past each other about this. I ask, rather, that you consider what I have said and pray about it before retorting. God bless you!