THE RAPTURE

UNDERSTANDING THE DOCTRINE

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

13 Now we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest who have no hope.

14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also we believe that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep as Christians.

15 For we tell you this by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep.

16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be suddenly caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.

caught up - (harpazō) = snatch, seize (Mt 13:19; Jn 6:15; Ac 23:10; Jude 23); a rapture to God and glory (Ac 8:39; 2Co 12:2, 4; 1Th 4:17; Rev 12:5+)

James Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament) (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997).

18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

The rapture is an eschatological event in which Christians purportedly will rise into the sky to join Christ as he returns to earth.

The word “rapture” is derived from the Latin translation of 1 Thessalonians 4:17. English translations translate the key word in that verse with “caught up” or “snatched up.”

The Tribulation is a seven-year period that will occur at the end of the age.

The Tribulation is considered to be the unparalleled time of trial and judgment just before Christ returns to earth.

The main question centers around the rapture of believers and whether it will occur before, during, or after the Tribulation.

The nature of the Tribulation or, more properly, the “seventieth week” of Daniel, is based on a prophecy about a future seven-year period in Daniel 9.

Speaking in the context of the seventy-year captivity in Babylon (9:2), Gabriel declares that “seventy sevens” (of years) will be determined on Israel (v. 24).

Jesus referred to this passage in the Mount Olivet Discourse, giving a basic outline of its events (Matt. 24:4ff.), but only Revelation spells it out in detail.

Norman L. Geisler, Systematic Theology, Volume Four: Church, Last Things (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 2005), 597.

Daniel 9:24-27

 “Seventy weeks have been determined concerning your people and your holy city to put an end to rebellion, to bring sin to completion, to atone for iniquity, to bring in perpetual righteousness, to seal up the prophetic vision, and to anoint a Most Holy Place.

25 So know and understand: From the issuing of the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until an anointed one, a prince arrives, there will be a period of seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. It will again be built, with plaza and moat, but in distressful times.

26 Now after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one will be cut off and have nothing. As for the city and the sanctuary, the people of the coming prince will destroy them. But his end will come speedily like a flood. Until the end of the war that has been decreed there will be destruction.

27 He will confirm a covenant with many for one week. But in the middle of that week he will bring sacrifices and offerings to a halt. On the wing of abominations will come one who destroys, until the decreed end is poured out on the one who destroys.”

Most conservative scholars agree that the first sixty-nine “weeks” or “sevens” are the 483 years between Cyrus’s “decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem” and the time “the Anointed One [was] cut off” (the Crucifixion).

The following may be derived from Daniel 9:

(1) There will be a seven-year period (sometime after Christ’s advent) in which the prophecies God gave about Jerusalem (“your holy city,” vv. 24–25) will be completely fulfilled.

(2) This period will be established by a “covenant” (treaty) made between the Jews (“your [Daniel’s] people” in the “holy city,” v. 24) and “the prince who is to come” (v. 26 nkjv).

(3) A temple will be rebuilt in which animal sacrifices and offerings will again be made for the first half of the seven years (v. 27); the treaty will be broken after three and one-half years, and an “abomination” that causes “desolation” (v. 27) will occur in the temple.

Norman L. Geisler, Systematic Theology, Volume Four: Church, Last Things (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 2005), 599.

Dr. Thomas Ice research (Pre-Tribulation):

Critics of pretribulationism frequently state that belief in the rapture is a doctrinal development of entirely recent origin. 

They argued that the doctrine of the rapture or any semblance of it was completely unknown before the early 1800s and the writings of John Nelson Darby.

While it is clear that pretribulationism was not widely known since the days of the New Testament writers, there have been clear examples of some form of pretribulationism sprinkled throughout church history.

Dr. Charles Ryrie has rightly said, “The fact that the church taught something in the first century does not make it true, and likewise if the church did not teach something until the twentieth century, it is not necessarily false.”