The First Rapture?

The First Rapture?

Revelation 14

Michael H. Koplitz

Chapter 14 brings us to a point where I need to explain a common problem in biblical studies. It is called harmonizing. When we read a story in the Gospel of Mark, it is normal for us to recall what the other gospels say about the same story. Then we tend to blend the different versions in our minds and project stories from one gospel onto the gospel that we are reading. The problem with doing this is that we also project the theological ideas from one writer onto another. In doing this, we can lose the meaning that the writer of the work that we are reading is trying to communicate to us.

I had an Instant Messenger conversation with my pal Lew in Bethlehem a couple of days ago. I asked him if he knew where the rapture occurred in the book of Revelation. I asked him about this because I was having some difficulty determining what the 4 scholars whose work I was reading was saying about whether or not the first rapture was in chapter 14. Ok, to add to the troubles, let me throughout the question, is there more than one rapture in Revelation?

Lew sent me an e-mail with his understanding of the rapture. He made no references to Revelation but instead several references to Paul. In Paul’s letters, especially 1 Thessalonians, he is very clear that the rapture of the living who belong to Christ will occur at the parousia when Christ returns again. Therefore, Lew’s conclusion was that the rapture occurs in Revelation much later than chapter 14 because Christ hasn’t returned yet.

Lew was doing exactly what several scholars were doing in some of the commentaries. They were projecting their Pauline theology into the book of the Revelation, thus harmonizing 1 Thessalonians and Revelation. I would be bet that many of you do the exact same thing. We speak a lot about Paul in church and Sunday School but rarely preach on the Revelation. So it would make sense that we tend to impose our view of the end times that we learned from Paul onto the book of Revelation.

We need to remove our Pauline glasses from in front of our eyes and to see what John of Patmos is saying to us. We have already seen that his theology is different than Paul’s. So we really shouldn’t be surprised at what we are finding in chapter 14.

The parable of the reaping here in chapter 14 is the first rapture. God will separate the people into the righteous and the unrighteous. According to John of Patmos, the righteous will be taken into heaven. But wait, there is more. Since John describes a second rapture, which we will look at in a couple of weeks, we can deduce that not all righteous people will be taken into heaven at the first rapture. After all, God will need some righteous people here on earth to help the heathens to find their way into the churches. Remember, in chapter 3, the letter to the church at Philadelphia, we are told that Jesus tells the church that the sinners will come to them to offer repentance. Therefore, someone has to remain behind to help the repenters.

As individuals, we will have to decide which sequence of events we believe will occur at the end of time. The Bible presents two options. The first is found in the Pauline letters, and the second is found here in the book of Revelation.

Bible scholars use the term literary criticism to name the way we are looking at Revelation. If you were to read a novel, you wouldn’t go to the end of the book to find out what happens. You also can’t bring information into the book from other books unless you read a series, like the Lord of the Rings. To fully understand what John of Patmos is saying in his vision, we have to read Revelation as a stand-alone piece of literature. Only through literary criticism can we filter out the voice of Paul and others and truly understand what John is saying. I encourage you to not only read the Revelation this way but to go back and read each gospel as a separate novel. Read the gospel as if you had no knowledge of the other gospels. You will find some fascinating insights as you are reading.

A quick word about some symbolism can be found in chapter 14. I do hope that you will read the entire chapter today. In chapter 14 is the only reference in the Revelation about God the Father of the Lamb. The opening of the chapter is at Mount Zion with the 144,000 people who bear the mark of God on their foreheads. This is a picture of salvation that is found in Isaiah 2 and Micah 4. Virginity is linked directly to the state of impurity, which is a magnification of Leviticus 15:18. The impure are not allowed into heaven in the same way they were not allowed into the Tabernacle as told to us in Exodus 19:15.