Why The Rapture Isn’t Biblical
The rapture has once again reared its head with people on social media claiming the rapture was coming which led to some more…gullible…people selling their belongings off cheap. Things like this aren’t new. There have been loads of end-times cults over the millennia. But now TikTok is a thing, its ended up in the popular domain. In this blog I’m going be explaining why no one needs to worry about being raptured.
The Rapture Isn’t Biblical
To cut straight to the point, the rapture is not biblical.
The rapture is a 19th-century invention that distorts the Gospel into little more than an escape plan from this world. It is rooted in Platonic ideas and idolatrous dualistic ‘theology’. The Gospel of Jesus teaches something different. God loves matter, became flesh in Jesus, and is making all things new. Salvation is not escape, it’s healing and restoration. It is resurrection. The false teaching of the rapture and of escape from this world has fuelled Christian nationalism, turning fear into a political weapon and supporting wars and global destruction as signs of God’s return.
The Gospel is so much more than this. God’s redemptive, healing, and restoring salvation has begun, here and now, and we are called to join with it.
What is the rapture?
In summary, the rapture is a set of beliefs which include the idea that Christians are going to be taken away from the Earth to Heaven. Sometimes this means people literally flying into the sky, more commonly it means people being kind of teleported into heaven leaving their clothes behind (hopefully heaven is warm!) The remaining people on the Earth will experience great tribulations for a period of time. This idea of tribulation is a key element of the myths surrounding the rapture narratives. Some of those people will then become believers because of the tribulation. Then, at the end of the tribulation, Jesus will return and judge the nations, bringing about the end of all things.
Where does the rapture come from?
It is generally agreed that there was no belief in the rapture as popularly understood before the 1830s. It was begun by John Nelson Darby who would later found the Plymouth Brethren. He brought together Bible verses such as 1 Thessalonians 4 and Matthew 24 and mixed them together with some mystical and false-prophetic visions to make a new eschatological system.
It has been suggested that his interpretation was inspired by a woman called Margaret MacDonald. She put herself into a self-induced trance to have prophetic visions. During one trance she had a vision of the church being pulled out of the world as things in the world became ever more sinful and destructive. She wrote this vision down and it was passed onto John Darby. However, while there seems to be a link between MacDonald and Darby, there is no evidence to prove this claim.
What is certain is that Darby travelled from the UK to the US and taught his new doctrine in a series of lectures. It gained popularity and became known as Dispensationalism. Dispensationalism divides history into six distinct dispensations and God deals with humanity differently in each dispensation. This ‘theology’ gained enough popularity that it was adopted and popularised by Scofield in the later years of the 1800s. Dispensationalism, and thus rapture theology, was spread through the Scofield Reference Bible which placed Darby’s notes on the rapture alongside the Scripture texts. This became a best selling bible, influencing many to adopt this theology.
Rapture teaching gained in popularity throughout the 20th century, particularly through mass-media such as televangelists and the growing trend for prophecy or revivalist conferences. The book, The Late Great Planet Earth published in the 1970s outsold the Bible for much of the decade and made rapture theology more mainstream. It gained its biggest mass engagement through the Left Behind series of novels. A series lacking as much in literary skill as it does in theology.
The Rapture and Paul
The ‘theology’ of the rapture is generally based on Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians where he writes:
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of an archangel and the trumpet of God. The dead in Christ will rise first; then we, who are left alive, will be snatched up with them on clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).
In 1 Thessalonians 4 Paul gives a version of what he says in two other passages: 1 Corinthians 15:51-54 and Philippians 3:20-21.
In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul is saying that at Jesus’ “coming” or “appearing,” those who are still alive will be “changed” or “transformed” so that their mortal bodies will become incorruptible, deathless. This is not about flying off into the sky or being teleported into heaven. This is all that Paul is saying in Thessalonians. He is using biblical and contemporary political imagery to enhance his message and make his point. Paul is the king of complex and mixed metaphors, but I doubt he believed that that two thousand years later people would have been quite as confused as they are about his writing.
We need to consider the context of these verses before unpicking the verses in more detail. Immediately before this section, Paul is talking about the resurrection from the dead. Paul is not talking about ‘end times’ as we might assume. Paul is writing to support and encourage the church with the hope of resurrection in the middle of persecution. Much as the writer of Revelation is doing. Paul is saying to have hope, have confidence in Christ, because death is not the end. Verse 14 is particularly helpful:
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.
Paul makes the parallel between Christ’s resurrection and our resurrection. Death is defeated by Christ, and we share in His victory. Far from being a verse for the rapture, this verse is about the resurrection.
There are three main influences that Paul is drawing from when he is constructing the metaphors in this passage.
First, Paul echoes the story of Moses coming down the mountain with the Torah. The trumpet sounds, a loud voice is heard, and after a wait Moses comes back down. Something significant will happen next, like the moment where God came down to the mountain to meet with Moses. Note that although Moses goes up to the mountaintop, he doesn’t go any higher. This encounter with God invites Moses to mimic God’s own action: moving from an upward space to a downwards space, for the benefit of those below.
Second, Paul echoes Daniel 7, in which “the people of the saints of the Most High” are vindicated over their pagan enemy by being raised to sit with God in glory. The metaphor, first applied to Jesus in the Gospels, is now applied to Christians facing persecution. Clouds symbolize the power and authoritative judgement of God about the rescue of his people.
Third, Paul conjures up images of a Roman emperor visiting a colony or province. This would have been a familiar image for the citizens of Thessalonica, which sat on one of the main roads between Italy and the East. The citizens go out to meet him in open country and then escort him into the city. The Greek word for meet (apantésis) is the same word used when you would go meet an emperor coming into the city. You don’t wait for an emperor to come to you. You go to them.
Paul is using this image to show that the Christians are going to meet with Jesus as he descends. But they aren’t going somewhere else. They are walking with him into the “city”, they are coming back to earth. It is not about Christians going up into the sky. It is about them welcoming and escorting their returning King.
Rapture, as it is popularly understood, is nowhere to be found in this famous “rapture” passage.
The Rapture and the Gospels
A key Gospel passage for rapture theology is Mark 13. However, we should not assume that this passage is pointing towards anything that hasn’t already happened in history. Namely, the destruction of the Temple in AD70. Mark 13 describes Jesus in the role of an apocalyptic prophet, declaring the judgement of God on an unfaithful Israel, and that this judgement would fall on “this generation.” Not our generation, but on the generation of the people actually listening to Jesus. N. T. Wright said:
The gospel passages about “the Son of Man coming on the clouds” (Mark 13:26, 14:62, for example) are about Jesus’ vindication, his “coming” to heaven from earth. The parables about a returning king or master (for example, Luke 19:11-27) were originally about God returning to Jerusalem, not about Jesus returning to earth. This, Jesus seemed to believe, was an event within space-time history, not one that would end it forever.
Like with Paul, this points to Daniel 7. Given the important of the book of Daniel for Second-Temple Jewish eschatology and messianic theology, this should not be surprising. The key link is where the “son of man” comes to the throne of God to be vindicated and placed in a position of authority after a time of suffering. For Jesus, this will be revealed in the moment when the Temple is destroyed, so that Jesus, and by extension Christ’s body on Earth (the Church), will be the only remaining Temple of God. Jesus weeps over this prophecy. This is not something he glories in. It is a sign of the failure of humanity as well as the gracious love and redemption of Christ.
This happened in AD70. The “coming” of Jesus in this passage is about his enthronement, the vindication of his suffering. It will serve as a sign to his hearers, beyond the resurrection, that he truly was the suffering one of God who overcomes his enemies by God’s loving verdict: not the sword. Jesus confirms this in verse 30, saying:
…this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.
Matthew 24 is also used by many trying to argue for a rapture theology. Particularly, where Jesus says that, “One will be taken and the other left” (Matthew 24.40). One way of reading this text is within its historical context of Roman occupation. A great disaster is coming in this generation. A war is coming and the Romans will come to arrest you. This is true.
However, I don’t think this is what Jesus was driving towards. Instead, we need to read the whole context of the section. What’s Jesus talking about? Many Christians assume He’s describing the rapture. But that’s reading into the text. The context tells us that Jesus is talking about His Second Coming, not the rapture. Jesus is drawing on the story of Noah to try and explain what his triumphant return will look like.
In rapture theology, the good people are taken and the bad people are left. But Jesus paints a different picture in this passage. Matthew 24:37–39 compares Jesus second coming to the days of Noah. In the story of Noah, the wicked were taken away. The righteous remained. Then Jesus says that two men will be in the field, and one will be taken, one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill, and one will be taken away and one left.
Who is taken and who is left? The believer is left and the unbeliever is taken away. It is a picture of judgment. The only reason one could read it and say the believer is taken away and the unbeliever remains, is because that person already has the internal bias of rapture ideology. The entirety of the passage itself and its full context gives no reason to interpret it in that way.
Additionally, nowhere in this passage do we read that “taken away” means “disappears.” Again, the text doesn’t say this. It is an assumption because of pre-existing belief, not what the text is saying.
The Rapture is less than Gospel
The biblical vision of the future is physical resurrection in the new creation. This is an embodied future, not a ghostly one in some other place called heaven. Death isn’t the end. We will rise in Christ, just as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4.
The Bible teaches that when Christ comes back, it will not be Tribulation or chaos. Eschatology is more than thst. The “tribulation” has happened and is continuing to this day. Jesus predicted it. Rome destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. Followers of Jesus are persecuted. That is the only future tribulation Jesus had in mind.
To reduce the second coming to the rapture, or to think that salvation is about escaping from this world, is to cut short the majesty and wonder of the Gospel of Jesus. Salvation Jesus resurrection. Second coming means healing and restoration and new creation for this world. The images in the Bible are not about believers being taken away but about the return of the king.
The Rapture isn’t biblical. It’s not authentic Christian teaching according to the long traditions of the Church. It’s not only wrong, it can be actively harmful. It’s time to put an end to rapture theology once and for all as the mistake it is.
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