The idea of a secret pre-tribulation rapture of the faithful Body of Messiah to heaven before a time of tribulation was a concept introduced in the 19th Century to wider Evangelical Christendom by John Nelson Darby in the 1830s, which developed this concept as part of his dispensational system of Eschatology. It created in the minds of multitudes of Christians the idea of “imminence,” meaning for them that the Lord Jesus could return any moment to rapture His faithful Church and take them back to heaven.
This doctrine created the idea that the Lord Jesus would come two times, first for His Church to take them to heaven and then seven years later return with His Church. However, does God’s Word teach this?
When you examine the scriptures on this matter we find that there are only two comings of the Messiah. In His first coming He came as the suffering Messiah, which we see typified in the character of Joseph. Then in His Second Coming in the future which we see Him typified as the Warrior Messiah in the character of King David. In fact all of the faithful prophets, priests and kings in the Old Testament are all types of the ultimate and perfect prophet priest and king, the Messiah our Lord Jesus.
While the doctrine of the rapture is clearly taught in scripture it is not a secret event that occurs before the revealing of the man of sin (the Antichrist) and the commencement of the time of Tribulation as taught by those in the pre-tribulation camp. This doctrine of the rapture before the time of Tribulation was never taught in the Church prior to 1830. In fact this doctrine doesn’t appear in any of the foundational creeds of Christianity.
It’s absent from the Nicene Creed (325), the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381), the Chalcedonian Creed (451), and the Athanasian Creed (500). It doesn’t show up in the Augsburg Confession (1530), the Canons of Dort (1618-1619), the Baptist Confession of Faith (1644), the Westminster Confession (1646), or even the Methodist Articles of Religion (1784). For over 1,800 years, the faithful Body of Messiah continued to grow and thrive despite terrible suffering and persecution without this teaching. There is no clear evidence of the rapture being taught prior to the 19th century.
The source of this pre-tribulation rapture teaching was from a young woman named Margaret MacDonald (1815–1840) from Port Glasgow in Scotland who experienced a supposed prophetic vision during a wave of charismatic fervour in 1830. MacDonald, confined to her bed, claimed to see a vision of the Church being caught away to heaven before a time of tribulation.
It was an ecstatic utterance that grabbed the attention of many leaders within wider Evangelical Christendom. Among them was John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), a theologian in the Plymouth Brethren in England.
The Plymouth Brethren commissioned Darby to go to Scotland and investigate the situation. He arrived in the middle of 1830 and according to his own testimony twenty three years later actually met MacDonald and heard her prophesy. He returned to England convinced that Margaret McDonald’s view of the rapture was true. He then subsequently made it fit into his Dispensational System of Eschatology.
In the mid-1800’s most of the theologians and church leaders dismissed his ideas and were sceptical of this ‘new’ teaching including the renowned expositor of scripture Charles Haddon Spurgeon. However D. L. Moody and a few other evangelical preachers were open to Darby’s Dispensational system of eschatology.
This doctrine of “imminence” that taught that the Lord Jesus could return at any moment to secretly “snatch away” (harpazo) the faithful Church to heaven for seven years before the revelation of Antichrist and the Tribulation began to spread in some prominent camp meetings and Bible conferences.
This doctrine became cemented and incorporated into American evangelical and even Pentecostal circles through the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909. Its foot notes presented John Nelson Darby’s Dispensational framework as if it were part of the biblical text itself. By the early 20th century, Darby’s ideals were no longer thought to be on the fringe. His teaching became main stream.
Today, Darby’s doctrine of “imminence” is still deeply entrenched in the consciousness of countless numbers of evangelical and charismatic revivalists, evangelists, pastor, Bible teachers and authors. Darby’s ‘doctrine’ is still deeply entrenched in wider evangelical Christendom shaping the expectations of millions of Bible believing Christians across the denominational spectrum.
If the concept of a pre-tribulation rapture was not foundational in Christian theology for over 1,800 years, how did the early believers navigate the intense persecution, trials, and martyrdom they faced?
Today persecution of the faithful Body of Messiah is not just happening in Islamic and communist countries, but spreading its tentacles within western democracies traditionally associated with Biblical Christianity. Today in the west we are witnessing government legislation being formed that will marginalise New Covenant believers from society, despise and reject Biblical truth, and persecute those who preach it.
We know from the Word of God that there will be a rapture and resurrection of that faithful Body of Messiah where every born again child of God will be changed in the twinkling of an eye, receive glorified, sinless, immortal and eternal bodies, and “snatched up (harpazo)” to be gathered around the Lord Jesus in the clouds as descends from heaven to earth.
When this happens there will not be anything ‘secret’ about it, but like the lightening flashing from east to west, and His coming announced to the whole world with a loud trumpet blast, and every eye will see Him!
“Imminence” in relation to the Second Coming then has the idea of a sudden and secret return of the Lord Jesus to sweep His elect out of this world and take them back to heaven for seven years. However, scripture in both Testaments teach only two comings of Messiah, His first and Second Coming.
“Imminence” applies only in the context of when an individual New Covenant believer physically dies. They are absent from the body and present with the LORD (2 Corinthians 5:8). The Lord has come for them. In that sense only we can use the word “imminence.”
The emphasis related to the rapture is not on imminence but on His physical coming again at a specific time being fixed by God the Father in eternity. His appearing will be at a time when He is least expected. It also needs to be mentioned that the rapture and resurrection are the one and the same event. In this whole matter the Word of God speaks for itself. Let’s now look at this in relation to the rapture.
1. The Rapture cannot happen until three things occur.
(2 Thessalonians 2:1-12) In these verses we are told that the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus and our being gathered to Him is the one and the same event being the day of the LORD (Vs. 1-2).
When we see this phrase “the Day of the LORD” used in other passages of scripture in both Testaments, there is nothing “secret” about it. The Day of the LORD in scripture is not a single moment in time when God acts, but a series of sequential events in a very short period of time leading up to and including the Second Coming of Messiah and also including the rapture of the faithful Body of Messiah.
In our text in (Vs.3a) we are told that the day of the LORD which includes our being gathered to the Lord Jesus, cannot happen until three things occur first which will precede this day.
Firstly; we see the apostasy, the falling away that will see multitudes of professing Christians fall away from the faith. One might say “well they were never saved in the first place” however, if they were not saved then what were they falling away from?
The Lord Jesus Himself spoke about this in Matthew Chapter 24 that many would fall away due to tribulation, martyrdom, betrayal by false brethren and because of being hated by society, and that because of the increase in lawlessness (Torahlessness) the love (agape) of most of these will have grown cold. He also said that those who have endured to the end will be saved (Matthew 24:9-13). The word “agape” in scripture can only be used of those who have been saved (Romans 5:5).
Secondly; Paul mentions that the apostasy will open the way for the revealing of the man of sin doomed to destruction who calls Himself God on earth, being Satan incarnated in a flesh and blood man and who sits in God’s Temple (Vs. 3b-4). In scripture God’s Temple can be the physical temple at Jerusalem but also the spiritual Temple made up of living stones being individual believers united as one body by the indwelling Spirit of God (1 Peter 2:5) (Ephesians 2:21-22).
It also needs to be said that when He was on earth that our Lord Jesus referred to Himself as the Temple of God (John 2:19), because the physical temple with all of its furnishings, its bowls and utensils and sacrifices all pointed to Him. When the man of sin is worshipped in the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem in some way he will also be worshipped within wider Christendom and for a time in Israel.
His reign will last for three and a half years, being 42 months, during which He will persecutes faithful Jews and Christians (Revelation 12: 13:5-7) See also (Daniel 7: 21, 25). After three and a half years He and his kingdom will be terminated by the Second Coming of the Messiah our Lord Jesus followed by the inauguration on earth of the Messianic Millennial Kingdom (Daniel 2:34-35, 44-45) (Daniel 7:9-14, 22, 26-27).
Thirdly; just before the return of the Messiah our Lord Jesus there will be an abundance of all kinds of counterfeit miracles, sign and wonders manifesting within wider Christendom with its denominational and ecumenical structures (Vs.9). If the faithful Body of Messiah was to be removed before the revealing of the man of sin then why would he have mentioned it in the way he did? Why would he have even told them to look out for the appearance of the Antichrist? Clearly Paul had no such doctrine as a pre-tribulation secret rapture!
2. The Rapture, being a component of the Day of the LORD, will not be a secret one but an event that everyone still living on earth will see.
(Matthew 24:27) “For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” Clearly He was not speaking about a secret event but one that every eye will see. The apostle John writes; “Look He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him (no exceptions), even those who pierced Him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of Him. So shall it be! Amen (Revelation 1:7). See also (Revelation 6:12-17).
The Lord Jesus told His disciples that if they were still alive on earth when He returned that they, and by implication all believers, would see Him coming in the same way that He ascended into heaven; “Men, Galileans, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, having been taken up from you into heaven, will thus come in that manner you beheld Him going into heaven” (Acts 1:11).
3. The Rapture and Resurrection at the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus will be accompanied by a loud command (shout) from heaven, with the voice of the archangel, and with the blast of God’s trumpet.
(1 Thessalonians 4: 16-17) “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Messiah will rise first. Then we who are alive who and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord”.
It is interesting to note that the phrase “to meet” in the original Greek language has the idea of an important dignitary approaching a city where the people from the city go out to meet him, to gather around him, and return with him to the city. There is only One second Coming!
(1 Corinthians 15:51-52) “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”
Notice that this will occur at the sound of the last trumpet being the trumpet of God announcing the Messiah’s Second Coming including the rapture and resurrection of every true believer.
(Revelation 11:15) “Then the seventh angel sounded; and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Messiah; and He will reign forever and ever.”
Notice that when the seventh and last trumpet is sounded, there will also be heard loud voices coming from heaven and the verbal proclamation heralding the establishment of the Messianic reign on earth. It is also interesting to note that when the Israelites came to the walls of Jericho that all of the armed Israelites were to march around the city for six days with the priests carrying trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day they were to march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing their trumpets.
The seventh and last blast was to be the longest blast accompanied by the loud shout of all the people. When this happened the walls of the city collapsed and the people of Israel possessed and destroyed the city. Rahab and her family were spared and protected and right at the end were saved because of the red cord tied to the window of their house.
In the Book of Revelation you have six seals which correspond to the six day the Israelites marched around the walls of Jericho (a type of this present world). When the seventh seal was opened seven trumpets were sounded and when the last and seventh trumpet was sounded the kingdom of this world became the kingdom of the LORD and His Messiah who will reign for ever and ever.
Rahab was in the city of Jericho while the seven trumpets were blown and when the last and seventh trumpet was blown as the walls collapsed she was rescued out of the city. Rahab and her family metaphorically represent a type of believers experiencing tribulation but that are preserved and kept by the blood of Messiah and rescued out of it at His Second Coming. See also (Romans 5:9) (Exodus 12:13, 23) (Zephaniah 2:3) (Revelation 3:10).
4. The Rapture occurs immediately after the tribulation, not before it.
(Matthew 24:29-31) ““But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.”
Notice several things. The rapture occurs immediately after the tribulation, not before it. It is the Day of the LORD because the constellations in the heavens are shaken. The sign of the Son of Man appears (What the exact sign is we are not told). The people of the earth mourn because the day of their judgement has come (Revelation 6:12-17). Then we see the angels accompanied by a great trumpet blast gathering God’s elect “from one end of the heavens to the other.”
In Marks account of this awesome event God’s angels gather His elect from “the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.” Putting these two accounts together we see that the elect are gathered from the four winds and four corners of the earth. It is a global gathering from the nations. It cannot be restricted to only mean the Jewish people which Dispensational eschatology teaches.
The word “elect” in the original Greek is the standard word used throughout the New Testament for all New Covenant believers in Messiah both for Jews and Gentiles in Messiah. Let’s move on…
5. The Rapture occurs after the faithful Body of Messiah has been preserved or kept by God during the time of Great Tribulation.
(Revelation 3:10) “Because you have kept the word of My perseverance, I also will keep you from the hour of testing, that hour which is about to come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.”(John 17:15) “I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one.”
In both of our texts (Revelation 3:10) (John 17:15) notice the two phrases; “will keep you from” and “will keep them from.” The word “keep” can be translated as being “kept through” or “kept from.” When you put the two texts together one may well ask to be kept from what?”
The “hour” of trial or testing” tells us that this hour of trial that will come about in the whole earth will be quite short and intended to test those who dwell on the earth which is the context.
Those who have kept the Word of the Lord Jesus’ through the power of the Holy Spirit have dwelling in them the perseverance of the Messiah and they will be “kept from” the evil one and not be overpowered by Him. These will be “heaven dwellers” living on earth during this time of testing but be passing the test by the power of God as heaven bound children of God. During this brief hour of temptation and testing (42 months, 1,260 days, a time, times, and half a time) the thoughts and intents of men’s hearts will be laid bare (Matthew 12:36-37).
Things will get so bad in this time of tribulation (thlipsis) unequalled in past history and never to be equalled again, that for the very survival of all flesh and for the sake of the elect saints still on earth at that time, God will cut those days short swiftly and suddenly (Matthew 24:21-22) (Daniel 12:1).
The “Earth dwellers” refers to those who are unsaved and whose way of life is centred in this life down here on earth and all that it offers by way of temporal things, but does not prepare them for eternity. In the Book of Revelation those “who dwell in heaven” are those who are members of God’s Kingdom on earth through the spiritual rebirth from above.
Now it is very important to note that the phrase “to keep you from” or “kept” throughout the New Testament does not mean to be taken out of a trying situation or circumstance, or from a strong temptation or trial, but to be kept in it and through it, and at the end of it to be delivered out of it (1 Corinthians 10:13). The preposition implies this, not a keeping from temptation or testing, but a keeping in the time of it and kept through it, the result of which they shall be delivered out of its power.
In His prayer for His disciples in John Chapter 17:15 the Lord Jesus did not pray for His Father to take them out of the world but that He might “keep them from the evil one.” Clearly the context is not being kept from the hour of temptation but being kept in it and through it because Satan is always seeking to turn God’s redeemed saints from the narrow way and draw them into the wide way which leads to eternal damnation. In the end it will only be a remnant in Israel and in Christendom that will make it out of here (Romans 11:5) (Matthew 7:13-14). The exact same word or phrase “to keep” is used in both of these two texts in Revelation 3:10 and John 17:15.
Satan has the unsaved already, the ones he is after is you and I whom God has rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his unmerited, unearned favour” (Colossians 1:13-14) (Ephesians 5:8) (Ephesians 1:7) (2 Corinthians 4:6).
6. The Rapture will see the wicked swept away in the last judgement but the raptured saints inherit the Messianic kingdom on earth.
(Matthew 24:36-42) ““But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be. Then there will be two men in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one will be left. “Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.”
The prophetic context of this passage of scripture teaches us about what will happen when the Lord Jesus returns to earth. Those who are taken away is not a reference to a pretribulation secret rapture, but refers to the wicked being swept away by the judgement of God just as the people in the time of Noah were swept away in judgement. This idea corresponds with scripture (Proverbs 10:25) (Psalm 28:3) (Zephaniah 1:2-3) Proverbs 21:7) (Psalm 73:19) (Psalm 58:9) (Psalm 90:5) (1 Samuel 12:25).
Just as Moses and his family was left to inherit the earth so those who are the LORD’s and kept in the ark of salvation will enter into the Millennium and the blessings of the Messianic kingdom.
The emphasis of this passage of scripture is not on “imminence” but “watchfulness,” staying spiritually alert, discerning the days we are living in and being prepared for the Second Coming even though we do not know the day or the hour when He will return with great power and splendour, an event no one will miss seeing!
Epilogue:
We have established from scripture that there will be the rapture but it will not be a secret pre-tribulation rapture, but a component of the Day of the LORD being sequential events on earth culminating with the rapture occurring at the Second Coming of Messiah.
This study has not presented an exhaustive apologetic on this subject but has sufficiently shown that scripture does not specifically teach a pre-tribulation rapture.
When approaching any subject in God’s Word we always begin with what is clearly and plainly taught before we look at what may or may not be implied in a text. Then we must always consider the context of the passage we are studying in light of its co-texts. We then need to see what it meant for the time that the writer lived in and the situation he faced, and then see how it applies to our present situation practically and prophetically.
This principle of interpreting scripture also applies to studying eschatology. As we compare scripture with scripture a pattern of events will immerge which will not result a set system of Bible prophecy, but rather a pattern of end-time events that is expanded and enlarged in our understanding as we compare scripture with scripture, and see how what happened in past history teaches us about what will happen in future history. This is how the writers of both Testaments handled the scriptures.
The blessed hope of every born again blood washed, blood redeemed child of the Living God from the first century down to the present day is the appearing of our Great God and Saviour being the second and visible coming of the Messiah our Lord Jesus.
As we read; “For the grace of God has appeared (in the person of the Lord Jesus physically present on earth), bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Messiah Jesus” (Titus 2:10-13).
The word “appearing” denotes a physical second coming of the Lord Jesus. This is affirmed how the word is used in other texts of scripture in light of their context. See (2 Thessalonians 2:8) (1 Timothy 6:14) (2 Timothy 1:10) (2 Timothy 4:1) (2 Timothy 4:8).
The rescue is coming and as New Covenant believers we should not be expecting “imminence” but discern the times, staying watchful and spiritually alert, and with an expectant faith that will be rewarded when the Messiah comes back to rescue His Body the faithful Church, to save Israel and to judge the nations!
Our blessed hope includes the rapture and resurrection but the focus of scripture is the visible return of the Messiah our Lord Jesus! This was the blessed hope of the first century Body of Messiah and ours as well knowing that when He returns He will rescue His elect and establish His Messianic Millennial reign on earth of which we will be a part!
See the four-part study on this website titled; “Will there be a Pre-Tribulation Rapture?”
