1. THE BASICS
Let’s define what we are going to be discussing.
1. Rapture. What do we mean, first of all, by the term “rapture” ? In my opinion, the term itself, not found in the Bible, is part of the problem we are having to confront. By giving a new label to this portion of the second coming of Jesus, the teachers who promote this message cause their hearers to understand it in a separated way. Different name, different event, they reason. The word itself means the state of being “caught away in body or spirit.” The idea roughly corresponds to the Greek harpadzo, used several times in Scripture, and translated several ways, but always with the idea of taking something away. Consider the following passages (the words in quotes come from harpadzo):
Matthew 13:19 speaks of how the enemy “snatches” what of God’s Word is sown in the heart of man.
John 10:12, in a similar vein, speaks of the wolf who “catches” sheep and then scatters them.
In Acts 8:39, the Spirit of the Lord “caught away” Philip.
II Corinthians 12:2-4 speaks of Paul’s “catching up” into Paradise. Here is a preview of our own “rapture.”
I Thessalonians 4:17 uses harpadzo to speak of the subject at hand, the “catching up” of all believers to be with the Lord.
In Revelation 12:5, the elect child is “caught up” to God.
So, the idea of a “catching up”, from Enoch to Elijah to Jesus, to our own future appointment with Christ, is a legitimate one, and the term “rapture” seen in this light is surely a descriptive helpful word. However it is unfortunate that the catching away of Christ’s Bride has been disassociated from the destination of the believers. We will be caught up. Of this there is no doubt or contention. But when? And then what? We are not left suspended in mid-air, are we? What happens before and after our rapture?
2. Tribulation. Most students of prophecy also believe in the time of “trouble”. It is well documented by prophets, Jesus, and John:
For example, the prophet Jeremiah in his 30th chapter sees a future era he calls “Jacob’s Trouble” (Jeremiah 30:7). The reference is to the father of the Jewish nation, also known as Israel. He says that this time will be unprecedented in its devastation, the same thing an angel who appears in the book of the prophet Daniel says about a “time of trouble” coming to the planet, in association with resurrections and judgments (Daniel 12:1-3). In other words, this tribulation period is at the end of all things.
That same line of thought is repeated by Jesus in Matthew 24:21. Here the word is “tribulation”, but that is simply another translation of the same Greek word translated “trouble” in other passages. Jesus too is speaking of the end of all things, which he says immediately follows this tribulation. And John’s Book of Revelation describes the horrors of God’s wrath, leaving no doubt to the reader that the time he describes is also the time of the end.
3. Pre- or post- ? So there is some major trouble coming. Unprecedented. Final. And, there’s a “snatching up”, a “catching away”, a “rapture,” coming too. The whole issue we deal with here is , which comes first, the trouble, or the flight? If one believes the catching up is first, he is called a “pre-tribulation rapturist”, whether he particularly likes labels or not. If he believes the rapture is after the tribulation and in fact a part of the second coming of Jesus, he is known as “post-trib.”
How did the church ever get divided on this issue? Let’s trace the teaching back to Bible days.
2. HISTORY
What have God’s people historically believed about the “catching away” down through the many ages of the Church? Has it always been like today, with these two major opposing views, drawing people into one group or another? No. Absolutely, no.
A warning here before we proceed. After the Bible, which is apostolic and inspired, there is no perfect book. There is no perfect teacher. In the years that followed the death of the apostles, many men began to write, some building as closely as they could on the revelation in existence, from the apostles and prophets, others veering off from time to time. This “veering off” has left us with a great variety of teachings published in the name of the Lord, making it easy for the promulgator of any new doctrine down to this day, to establish his cause somewhere in the chaos. An appeal to the “church fathers” is often a final say-so to an otherwise shaky point. Now there were good men and good books, but as I say, many of the teachings found in those days were not grounded in God’s Word.
In spite of individual problems in individual teachers, and it seems even the best of men missed it sometimes, there were streams of thought that continued down to us, both in our Scriptures and in the collected works of the great writers. The Deity of Christ, the Second Coming, salvation by grace through faith, it all was picked up and passed on. God had faithful witnesses who were able to see and communicate necessary truth to the next generations. Having said that, we ask, what about the theory of a pre-tribulation rapture historically? In fact, it falls far short of verification. It is found only once from the fourth century all the way to the eighteenth century, and not in any substantial body of literature until the nineteenth. Sadly, this view-point is a newcomer to the world of theology.
Now, the teachers of this doctrine believe they have Scriptural grounds for their beliefs. Surely we will examine Scripture in detail later, but for now, let’s trace the doctrine through history, and I must say, it will be a short journey, for there’s not much there.
Ephraem. We go first to the Persia of Roman Empire days. It is the fourth century. The teacher we shall examine is a dedicated deacon named Ephraem who seems to have been a most holy man. He is said to have been a hermit for the last ten years of his life. Indeed, the record shows he was greatly revered by Syrian, Orthodox, and Nestorian believers, some of the major “denominations” of his day. His writings, evidently quite numerous, were read just after the Scriptures in some churches. One of those writings contains a passage that may indeed be a preview of what will come many hundreds of years later in its fullness. But do remember, three hundred years have passed since the apostles wrote, and this is the first hint of a pre-tribulation rapture.
Ephraem believed the end of the world was near, and that the Holy Spirit confirmed this to him. (Beware those today whose "confirmed words" are contrary to the apostolic words of Scripture.) In his thinking, there was only one sign which remained, “the advent of the wicked one in the completion of the Roman Kingdom.” That actually sounds like a post-tribulation view, but several sentences later he adds:
“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…”
Ephraem here appeals to logic rather than to revelation. No authority is given for his conclusion, though his statement “makes a lot of sense” . This type of reasoning is the fuel of pre-tribulation thinking. There is much “sense” to it, but no solid Scriptural backing.
Morgan Edwards. We must travel 1400 years before we find another word about a pre-tribulation rapture, and the source we find is not altogether convincing. The story goes that Mr. Edwards was in his 20’s at the writing of a certain paper for a college professor. The teacher was asking Edwards to defend the literal interpretation of Scripture, a process not in vogue in that day, at least at that college. To do so, Morgan invented “a new doctrine” which it seems he did not espouse for himself, but rather he theorized as an intellectual pursuit. He even used Acts 17:19, 20 on his title page, a passage you may recall:
“May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears.” Morgan actually quoted the words of pagan philosophers! And Mr. Edwards certainly would have delighted the men of Mars Hill, for not only does he come up with a pre-tribulation rapture, he also speculates that the lake of fire is in the moon, and that all planets in the solar system are inhabited. Some historians looking for the modern beginnings of pre-tribulation teaching discount Edwards altogether.
Margaret MacDonald. So far we have a fourth-century hermit and a Bible college student on assignment espousing the pre-trib view, and they lived 1400 years apart. Not exactly a part of the stream of revelation I was discussing earlier. Why would the Church be bereft of a doctrine so important for all this time?
I suggest that 1830 is a more substantial date for the beginning of this doctrine in modern times. It was during this year that 15-year-old Margaret Macdonald, a prophetess of the newly arising Pentecostal movement in Scotland, described a vision she had seen that stated that Christians were to be raptured just prior to the Great Tribulation.
This event, which has been documented by many, surely causes a whole host of folks, especially the Pentecostals of our own day, to give pause. Surely if something was spoken by a word from the Lord, we cannot take it lightly, they reason. Yet these same people would have to take the words of Jesus and Paul very lightly, to believe Margaret. One sadly lacking gift in the explosion of charisma over the years has been the gift of discernment, whereby utterances can and must be challenged and compared to what God has already said. And when it is discerned that deception is at hand, a further discernment is needed, namely the identification of the spirit coming forth into the meeting and the subsequent repudiation of it along with the teaching it promotes. One doesn’t see this too often. It seems Margaret was not challenged at the time of her utterance and is not now.
Edward Irving. Within a year or two afterwards, Presbyterian pastor Edward Irving, of “Irvingite” fame in London (The Catholic Apostolic Church), heard about Margaret's dream, developed it theologically, and began teaching it to his congregation.
John Darby. At about this same time, the one called the “father of modern Dispensationalism” also got wind of Macdonald’s dream, paid her a visit, also made some changes, and incorporated it into his theories. John Darby was also the “father” of the Plymouth Brethren movement, a church which was openly proud of what they called this “new doctrine.”
Brian M. Schwertley, in Is the Pretribulation Rapture Biblical? says, “The Plymouth Brethren openly admitted and were even proud of the fact that among their teachings were totally new ones which had never been taught by the church fathers, medieval scholars, Protestant Reformers, or the many commentaries.”
It is not clear to me about whom prince of preachers Charles Spurgeon was speaking in the following quote, but one wonders if it was not the “Brethren” themselves. Spurgeon lived in the day when the pre-tribulation rapture was freshly hatched. It is obvious what he thought of the idea. Hear him well:
“...there is a certain troublesome sect abroad nowadays,” said he, “to whom the one thing needful is a perpetual speculation upon prophecy...They plume themselves upon an expected secret rapture, and I know not what vain imaginings beside…” (The Great Mystery of Godliness, preached December 22, 1867).
C.I. Scofield. The creator of the “Scofield Reference Bible” (1917) included Darby’s teachings in his notes. Seeing such things “in the Bible” emboldened many other saints to trust this doctrine as though God had said it Himself.
There followed the inclusion of pre-tribulationism in the curriculums of well-known and greatly loved institutions such as Moody Bible Institute and Dallas Theological Seminary, and in the 1970’s, a book and movie by young people’s theologian Hal Lindsay. There seemed to be no stopping it after that. Today it has permeated much of the western evangelical world. It is far from universal in the church today, and far from historical, as I have shown, but there is, as we say, a very “vocal minority” of believers, mostly Western/American, who swear by this doctrine.
