The rapture

If you grew up afraid of coming home to an empty house and wondering whether you had been left behind, you are not alone, and Scripture has a gentler word for you. Christians have always hoped for Christ’s return, and the Bible speaks of believers being “caught up” to meet him. The idea of a secret rapture before years of tribulation is a particular reading of those passages, first spread in the 1830s, and the historic churches do not teach it. Christians who believe in a pre-tribulation rapture hold that belief sincerely and read Scripture closely, and their longing for Christ’s coming is one the whole church shares.

What does the word “rapture” mean?

“Rapture” comes from the Latin Bible. In the Vulgate, the ancient Latin translation, 1 Thessalonians 4:17 says “rapiemur,” meaning “we will be caught up.” The Greek word Paul used, harpagēsometha, also means “we will be snatched” or “caught up.” Here is the passage in English:

For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever.

1 Thessalonians 4:16–17, NRSVUE

So the image of being caught up is in the Bible, and the question is what Paul meant by it.

What is Paul describing in 1 Thessalonians 4?

Paul wrote to a young church in Thessalonica that was grieving members who had died. They feared the dead would miss the Lord’s coming. Paul’s answer is that the dead will rise first and the living will join them, and he ends, “Therefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18). He wrote to comfort people in grief, and his words still comfort anyone who has buried someone they love.

The scene Paul describes is loud and public, with a cry of command, an archangel’s call, and God’s trumpet. Nothing in the passage suggests a secret disappearance.

The phrase “to meet the Lord” translates the Greek eis apantēsin. The same phrase appears in Acts, when Christians from Rome walk out along the road “to meet” Paul and then travel back with him into the city (Acts 28:15–16). It appears again in the parable of the bridesmaids, who go out “to meet” the bridegroom and then go in with him to the wedding banquet (Matthew 25:6–10). Many scholars therefore read Paul’s picture as believers going out to welcome the coming Lord, who then comes to earth with them.

Where did the rapture teaching come from?

The pre-tribulation rapture was developed and spread by John Nelson Darby (1800–1882), a former Church of Ireland clergyman who became the leading figure among the Plymouth Brethren. At a series of Bible conferences at Powerscourt, Ireland, in 1831–1833, Darby described his views on the end times, including a rapture of the church before a time of tribulation. His larger system is called dispensationalism, which divides history into distinct periods, or “dispensations,” in which God deals with humanity in different ways.

The teaching reached millions of American Protestants through the Scofield Reference Bible, which Cyrus Scofield published through Oxford University Press in 1909. Its notes printed a dispensational reading of prophecy alongside the biblical text, and by the end of the Second World War it had sold more than two million copies.

In the late twentieth century, the Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, beginning in 1995, turned the scenario into popular fiction. Britannica reports that the series had sold more than 65 million copies by 2017.

What does “one will be taken and one will be left” mean?

Rapture teaching often cites words of Jesus in Matthew 24:40–42. Of two men in a field, and of two women grinding at a mill, Jesus says, “one will be taken and one will be left,” and he ends, “Watch therefore, for you don’t know in what hour your Lord comes.”

The verses just before compare the coming of the Son of Man to Noah’s flood, when people “didn’t know until the flood came and took them all away” (Matthew 24:39). In the flood story, the people taken away were the ones lost, and Noah’s family was left. Many interpreters therefore think being “taken” in this passage refers to judgment. On any reading, Jesus ends with a command to watch and be ready.

When will Jesus come again?

Jesus said that no one knows: “But no one knows of that day and hour, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only” (Matthew 24:36). Paul said the day of the Lord “comes like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). Setting dates for Christ’s return runs against these words.

The church has always confessed Christ’s coming. The Nicene Creed says he “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” At Holy Communion, many Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopal congregations proclaim, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” The hope is the one Revelation gives in God’s own words: “Behold, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5).

The Eastern Orthodox liturgy holds this hope in a striking way. In the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the prayer over the bread and wine “remembers” the cross, the tomb, the resurrection, the ascension, and “the second and glorious Coming,” as though Christ’s return were already as sure as his rising. Orthodox worship treats the Second Coming as the completion of Easter.

Christians hold this hope in different ways. Some expect a visible, future return of Christ in the sky. Others understand the Second Coming as the church’s confidence that God will bring all of history to its completion in Christ. Both confess with the creed that Christ’s kingdom “will have no end.” (See What is the Book of Revelation about? and Should we read the Bible as literal fact?)

What do the mainline churches teach?

The Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed, and Methodist traditions teach one future coming of Christ, as the creeds do, and no separate rapture before it. The ELCA, the PC(USA), the United Methodist Church, and the Episcopal Church all stand in that tradition. (See What is a mainline Protestant church?)

Rapture teaching is common among many evangelical and Pentecostal churches. They point to Jesus’s promise, “I also will keep you from the hour of testing which is to come on the whole world” (Revelation 3:10), and to Paul’s words that “God didn’t appoint us to wrath” (1 Thessalonians 5:9). Other Christians read these verses as promises that God will keep the faithful safe through every trial. Both readings rest on the same trust in God’s care.

Should Christians be afraid of the end times?

Scripture speaks of the end with hope. Paul wrote about Christ’s coming to encourage grieving people, and he closed with the words “exhort one another, and build each other up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11). Jesus told his followers to “keep alert” (Mark 13:33), and in the scene of judgment that follows in Matthew 25 he shows what readiness looks like: feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, and visiting the sick and imprisoned, because “you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). Being ready for Christ’s coming means living in his love today. The one who comes to judge is Jesus himself, and Paul’s hope for the end is that “God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28).

Near its very end, the Bible gives a prayer of longing that Christians have prayed ever since. When Jesus says, “Yes, I am coming soon,” the church answers, “Amen! Yes, come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20). You can pray those words with joy, because the one who is coming is the one who loves you.