Let’s recap from our companion post about the `tribulation`. The Bible seems to say that, before Christ returns as King, human history will face its final crisis. God will briefly allow humankind the independence from His control that we’ve wanted, and to see the full consequences of what it means to live lives fully separate from God.
(This is an extended post.)
So with no divine restraint left, evil, unhindered, bears fruit in a poisoned world, in extremes of disease, famine and natural disaster, along with global war and dire totalitarianism. And might this be soon? Possibly. As we said in the companion post, there is a real possibility that we or our children may be called to be the ‘hero generation’.
Or we may not! Apparently the majority of Bible Christians worldwide see it very differently. So here’s the question for this post: Will we as believers live through the final crisis or not? (Or in theological terms: What’s all that stuff about the ‘rapture’, and when would it be?)
Here Christians disagree. There’s lots about this that Scripture doesn’t make clear; perhaps deliberately.
Probably the crucial passage describing the ‘rapture’ is 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, which describes Christ’s return, ‘the coming of the Lord’ (v15). Here it is: `For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord for ever.`(NIV) (1) So when indeed he does `come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven’, as the angels promised at the ascension in Acts 1:11, any of us who are believers on earth at that time will suddenly be ‘caught up in the clouds’, and be with Him in glory beyond our imaginations forever! (Thank you Lord!)
This much is marvellously clear. There is, however, a problem if we start to look at the details of the timing. Passages like Matthew 24:36,42-44 seem to present Christ’s return to us as a completely unexpected event erupting into history: ‘The Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him!’ In contrast, some of the passages we’ve considered in the tribulation post describe a very difficult period before He returns, specifically limited to 1260 days or three and a half years, which will contain plenty of pointers that His second coming is near. But those passages might imply that we believers live through this period.
Bible Christians treat this problem in at least three different ways.
1. Brothers and sisters who see the prophetic passages in more ‘non-literal’ terms, and so see the references to this frequently described, horrific 1260-day period as somehow symbolic, may say that the problem only arises if we press the Bible text into an inappropriately exact precision. However, the posts on this site are designed to set out the approach that takes all these passages fairly literally – and, for me at least, this is vindicated by the fact that it makes interesting sense of so many passages that are obscure, hence often almost ignored, in the more ‘non-literal’ approach. Within the more ‘literal’ approaches, however, there are at least two further options.
2. Many Christians believe that Christ’s second coming is in two phases, and that the Bible is saying we believers will never pass through the horrendous `tribulation`. First, at any moment, at a moment when we don’t expect (Matthew 24:44), God will take His people out to be with Himself. This is the ‘rapture’ and it’s what 1 Thessalonians 4:15-18 describes, and possibly Matthew 24:36-42 too. Christ takes all His people away; and only then, with all true Christian input and restraint removed (the preservative ‘salt of the earth’ that arrests decay, Matthew 5:13), and with God ceasing to hold back the disastrous consequences of our insistence on our autonomy, will all hell briefly break loose on earth.
2 Thessalonians 2:6-8 speaks of the end-time satanic dictator and says `You know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendour of his coming.` In this understanding, the removal of ‘the one who now holds it back’ means – and personally I haven’t found any alternative very plausible(2) – the removal of the Spirit’s influence through His people.(3) This finally creates a situation where evil can break loose unhindered, until eventually the Lord says, ‘Enough’, and comes back openly to reign on earth.
Imagine; it’s all too easy to see how removal of the ‘salt’ would have that effect. If everyone truly living Jesus’ way were to be pulled out of business, politics, economics, the media, the world’s religious systems, the police, it’s not surprising if all hell were to break loose. And if this ‘removal’ could happen at any moment, that too is a very powerful thought. If we’ve accepted Christ and His forgiveness and lordship, we will be rescued ‘from the coming wrath’ (1 Thessalonians 1:10); if not – well, it’s not clever to get left behind to face the final agony of history. And as Jesus says in Matthew 24, it will happen when we don’t expect. (‘But at least it won’t happen tonight!’ Precisely.) So God snatches His people out before the ‘wrath’ comes; the final crisis doesn’t happen till Jesus’ people – and their influence – are gone. And therefore there is no sign to say ‘The End is near’: we simply ‘do not know the day or the hour’ when Jesus will take us (Matthew 25:13). In contrast, as the final crisis then proceeds there will be plenty of signs that the second phase, Christ’s coming openly as King, is ‘near, right at the door’, when finally He is going to take full control and say ‘Enough!’ to all the evil (Matthew 24:22,33).
3. The third understanding is that Christ’s second coming consists of only one event, at the very end of the 1260 days; but that event does begin with Christ’s persecuted followers being caught up to meet Him and coming back immediately with Him, visibly vindicated as His beloved people.(4) Then the Bible verses about it happening at a time when we don’t expect are seen as God’s warning that it’s all too easy to miss the signs.
So there are various possibilities. What then would the rapture, the sudden disappearance of all true believers, be like? Books like LaHaye’s hugely popular Left Behind series have had a field day describing planes crashing because the pilot has suddenly been taken to heaven; motorway pile-ups caused by cars whose drivers have vanished; and family members coming home to find that their parents or (especially) children have totally disappeared. Or long before LaHaye, Larry Norman was the #1 bard to the Jesus Movement, which made a huge impact for the gospel on Western youth culture when the 1960s hippie dreams were fading.(5) In his most well-known and memorable song, ‘I Wish We’d All Been Ready’(6), based on Matthew 24:36-42, he embodies this disastrous experience, of suddenly realising that your spouse or companion has been taken, disappeared, and you yourself are left; that your life choices to reject Jesus have now become catastrophically permanent…
Why believe in a `pre-trib` rapture?
Besides the passages just quoted, what are the key reasons for believing in a ‘rapture’ coming before the final tribulation crisis (the ‘pre-trib’ position, to quote the popular shorthand)? To my mind there are eight at least that are thought-provoking (and another is included in this post’s endnotes), particularly in the way they resolve some puzzling enigmas in the biblical text. Some of these are slightly technical, but they matter because it matters whether the ‘next big event’ we should live expecting is our sudden departure to be with Christ in glory forever, or (first) the coming to power of the satanic dictator, the Animal. So see what you think…
1. Christians believing in a ‘pre-trib’ rapture remind us of Jesus’ teaching that the ‘next big event’ will occur suddenly, when we least expect it (look at Matthew 24:44). However, the catastrophes and persecutions described in Revelation will clearly herald the End to the godly people enduring them (see also Matthew 24:33: ‘When you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door’). It’s hard to imagine that believers who live through those events would find the Lord’s coming in glory so unexpected. (History actually suggests the opposite, that when believers come under pressure, we are usually all too quick to assume that the Lord’s coming is imminent.) Indeed, in the light of God’s repeated words about 1260 days or forty-two months being the length of the final crisis, we can imagine those desperately persecuted believers having the blessing of being able to guess with some accuracy when Jesus their Rescuer will come.(7) (And Matthew 24:32-33 could seem to be encouraging them to do so.)
So how do we explain the very sudden shift from the predictability of Matthew 24:33 to the unforeseen coming of verse 44? On the one hand, verse 33 indeed says Christ’s followers should sense ‘these things’, the climax of history, coming. But the following verses, particularly verses 38-41, seem to present people living in a more ‘normal’ life situation, and therefore emphasise repeatedly that the second coming, ‘that day’, will happen exactly when they aren’t expecting it.(8) It’s hard, therefore, to see those verses as referring to exactly the same event or the same time as the ‘great distress’ of verses 15-22: if such unprecedented horrors are taking place, will Jesus’ disciples (‘you’, v44) really have no sense of His impending return? The simple explanation is that verses 36-44 are describing the rapture and the time before it, and that these prophetic verses will be fulfilled before the very obvious ‘great distress’ of verses 15-22, after which Christ returns openly. So the ‘pre-trib’ argument, that these verses describe a period before both the rapture and the tribulation, has some real force. The problem disappears: verses 30-33 are referring to Christ’s open return in glory and the events that will happen before it, and verses 36-44 to the earlier, unforeseeable ‘coming of the Son of Man’, the rapture, when one will be taken and the other left (vv40-41); when (like Noah, v37) God’s people are taken out to safety before the judgement comes. Logically, then, it makes sense that the world-shaking finish of the carefully numbered 1260 days, with Jesus’ final victorious and (24:33) not unpredictable return in glory, is a quite separate and distinct event from the ‘coming of the Son of Man’ described in verses 36-44, which we can’t foresee and don’t expect. (And for us now, therefore, the unexpected event Jesus speaks of in vv36-44 is the ‘next big one’.)
It is of course true that in this case Jesus is not spelling out the relationship between this event and His open return. Instead, the disciples are being presented with a complex ‘mystery’ (cf 1 Corinthians 15:51 talking about the same event) that will be clarified later; just as Old Testament prophecies like Isaiah 61:2 or Zechariah 9:9-13 sometimes have an unexplained complexity as they combine allusions to both Christ’s first and second comings, which likewise turned out to be separate events.(9)
2. This – our deliverance in the rapture coming before the ‘tribulation’ – would also explain why the emphasis of the famous parables with which Jesus follows His great discourse on the end times in Matthew 24 is not, ‘Gear up and prepare yourselves for the coming savage persecution,’ but, ‘Be ready and prepared for your Master’s unexpected return.’ That does certainly seem to be what He is presenting in these parables as the next major event.
Importantly, we find the same in the words of 1 Thessalonians 5 about the ‘day of the Lord’, the horrific time at the end of history. Here, too, Paul’s emphasis is not on cultivating the faithfulness and unshakeability that will be needed in a future time of horrendous trial, but on ‘being alert’, right now. Indeed, 1 Thessalonians 5:9 tells us explicitly that ‘God did not appoint us to suffer wrath’ (Jesus’ coming from heaven ‘rescues us from the coming wrath’, 1:10); and we might think that Paul is referring there to the last judgment and hell, until we notice that this promise’s context in chapter 5 is most probably (vv1-4) the destruction that happens on earth in the end-time ‘day of the Lord’.(10) We won’t face the ‘wrath’ of that terrible final crisis of history, Paul may well seem to be saying, because (as he’s just said) Jesus will come back first and take us up to be with Him before it happens.(11) We’re ‘not in darkness’ (v4) in the sense of being unsaved and outside Christ, and therefore in God’s mercy we won’t be left behind. So then the (pre-trib) rapture described in the immediately preceding verses (4:15-18) is why Paul can say, ‘Therefore encourage one another with these words’ (4:18, emphasis mine); it’s our ‘hope of salvation’, of deliverance and rescue (5:8); encourage one another (5:11) in the light of that deliverance, rather than gearing up for massive persecution.
3. A more minor enigma that the `pre-trib` position resolves: It’s somewhat odd, if the rapture happens as a dramatic, ‘post-tribulation’ deliverance where God’s people are snatched out right at the climax and end of the 1260 days of unequalled distress – somewhere around the time of Revelation 6:12, for example, or 16:16, or particularly before their triumphant reappearance in glory in 19:11 – that it’s not clearly described in any of these.
(But there are possible answers to that. Is that what Revelation 11:12 is about? Could Revelation 14:14-16 be hinting at a rapture right at the end of the tribulation, coming as it does not long before the book’s narrative doubles back to start a new section in 15:1?(12) Or, if Jesus’ warning comparing His return to the coming of a thief (Matthew 24:43-44) refers to the rapture, might not the rapture likewise be in view when He says ‘Behold, I come like a thief!’ in Revelation 16:15, just before the final battle (v16) and the End (v20)? Are these passages at least hints of a ‘post-trib rapture’ in Revelation?)
4. Another minor enigma that the ‘pre-trib’ approach resolves is that whenever the rapture occurs, it seems to involve Christ’s followers being caught up from the earth to meet Him in the air, leaving behind all the unbelievers, whose rejection of Jesus has now left them trapped in the final horror. But in contrast, in Christ’s words about the ‘end of the age’ in Matthew 13:40-43, He seems to be bothering to make clear that then things will be the other way round: the angels are sent out to ‘weed out’, take away, the wicked ‘first’ (see also 13:30); it is the righteous who are left behind for the ‘kingdom’ time that will follow (v43). This again suggests that the rapture of 1 Thessalonians 4 and the absolute ‘end of the age’ of Matthew 13 are two separate events.
5. Now a larger-scale issue. On the one hand the New Testament often seems to emphasise that the Lord may come for us at any moment: ‘The Judge is standing at the door!’(James 5:9). But then there also seem to be some things that have to happen before the Lord returns in glory, which implies that actually we can know His return in glory won’t happen quite yet. However, if the rapture and Christ’s open return in glory are two separate events, so
that those things happen in between them, this is another enigma solved.
Let’s give two examples. As we saw in the previous chapter, Paul, writing in a calm, thoroughly nonapocalyptic way in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, presents as a crucial sign of the End the final dictator coming to power and setting himself up to be worshipped in God’s temple. As we’ve seen, it’s hard to read Paul’s words here in any way other than that, by the time the satanic end-time dictator emerges, the temple will have been rebuilt in Jerusalem. (But not necessarily by the will of God, be it noted.) Right now, however, that temple does not exist; and if we believe that the ‘next big event’ we face will only happen after it’s been rebuilt, it does become hard to feel the force of Jesus’ challenge that He will come just when we don’t expect (Matthew 24:42-44). Unless we know there is some time after the rapture when the temple can be rebuilt, we might well assume that Jesus will not come for us yet.(13)
A second example of this comes in Acts 3:19-21 which seems to say clearly (look at it for yourself!) that, before Jesus returns and God ‘restores everything’, there must be widespread repentance on the part of the Jews. (Presumably because in some way the ethnic Jewish nation has a vital part in the ‘restoring of everything’, as Paul makes clear in Romans 11 [see vv15,23,25].) We could have imagined that by refusing God’s call here in Acts 3, the Jews shut themselves permanently out of God’s plan for them to bring blessing to the nations (Acts 3:25). But Paul’s whole argument in Romans 11 makes clear that that isn’t so, and God still has a central, life-giving place in the plan for the ethnic Jews as they repent (eg 11:12-15). Again, however, this suggests that Christ’s second coming as King to restore everything has certain major developments necessarily preceding it; and that too implies that it must be separate from a completely unexpected rapture happening somewhat earlier.
On reflection, however, this isn’t a totally conclusive argument. Although Jesus taught His disciples that His coming would be at an unexpected time, they also knew that certain things must happen before the ‘next big event’ occurred: particularly the death of Peter (John 21:18), which obviously had to be before the rapture, otherwise he wouldn’t have been on earth to die; and, much greater, the completion of their calling to preach the gospel to every
nation before the End would come (Matthew 24:14). So even if they had been taught (by Jesus or Paul) to expect an ‘unexpected’ rapture, they knew that there were things that had to happen before it. There might be other such things, and these could include the rebuilding of the temple and the repentance of large numbers of ethnic Jews. Evidently what Jesus said about the unexpectedness of His coming for His people doesn’t inevitably mean there has to be a period after His coming for these things to happen.
6. A more substantial argument perhaps: If there is no ‘pre-trib’ rapture, if what we believers are looking ahead to is living through a time of unparalleled evil on earth, then the mentality we would be left with seems almost inevitably very different from the buoyancy with which the early Church talks about the future. It’s hard not to accept LaHaye’s point(14) that, if the next event we are to look forward to is indeed the rapture when Christ comes to ‘rescue us from the coming wrath’ (1 Thessalonians 1:10) and ‘take [us] to be with [him]’ (John 14:3), then we see why Paul describes our outlook as our ‘blessed hope’ (Titus 2:13).(15) If, in contrast, what we see ahead of us is only a time of unparalleled horror ‘unequalled from the beginning of the world until now … How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers!’ (Matthew 24:21,19) – ‘blessed hope’ will not be the obvious way to summarise what the future means for us. Something we may approach with grim determination and firm trust in God’s strengthening, yes; but while we can make up our minds to ‘eagerly await’ Christ’s return (Philippians 3:20), we do so only as we look beyond the massive evil that will come first. And perhaps this is indeed the mentality we find celebrated in, say, Hebrews 10:32-39. But Christ’s coming at the end of this evil time might not be the most obvious thing to hope for; might not the most obviously ‘blessed hope’ be that we and those we love should die and go to be with Christ before these days come? If, however, the rapture is the ‘next big event’, then ‘blessed hope’ makes complete sense as what should characterise our whole Christian attitude to the future. But how can that be if the rapture is ‘post-trib’, and the future before Christ’s return for us is seriously intimidating?
7. Or put this another way: To summarise what the future holds for us as a ‘blessed hope’ does seem to express a very different set of expectations from those facing the believers who (we are told) will live through the time of unequalled distress in Matthew 24:17-22, or who will suffer martyrdom en masse as in Revelation 13:15. How does it make sense to describe these people as ‘rescued from the coming wrath’ in the way that God promises us (see 1 Thessalonians 1:10)? So, then, do we not need to think of two separate groups: we who will be kept from the hour of trial (Revelation 3:10, perhaps) and rescued from the coming wrath by the ‘blessed hope’ of the ‘pre-trib’ rapture, and some separate group living for God after the rapture as the ‘hero generation’?
8. But then who might these godly people be who live in that horrific period after the rapture? Here in fact is another argument for seeing the rapture as taking out the Church as we know it before the time of unequalled distress. There do seem to be biblical reasons to think that, in the final drama of our era, the global Church is no longer the centre of the picture, and God’s purposes on earth have centred again on His people among the ethnic Jews, in the way spoken of in Romans 11:11-29.
In a companion post we’ll explore more thoroughly just what Jesus meant by the ‘times of the Gentiles’ being a period that has an end (Luke 21:24), presumably ending when, as Romans 11:25 says, the ‘full number of the Gentiles’ has come into God’s people and, with that, ethnic Israel’s ‘hardening’ ceases. But we should at least note here the way that Revelation 7:3-8 is careful to flag up 12,000 people from each of the historic Jewish tribes as ‘servants of our God’ with some crucial (albeit mysterious) role in this final crisis period; the way Daniel 12:7 tells us that it is the ‘breaking of the power’ of Israel as a nation that triggers the final crisis; and also Jesus’ very specific concern in Matthew 24:14-21 to forewarn those living in Judaea (v16; people who for whatever reason are keeping the Sabbath meticulously, v20) about events which aren’t totally easy to interpret but again do seem to be part of the final 1260-day crisis of history (vv14,21-22,29).(16) All this suggests that with the ‘times of the Gentiles’ over (Luke 21:24), the godly Jews are now, temporarily at least, at the epicentre of God’s purposes. And that in turn might well imply that the Church as we currently know it has been lifted out of the picture beforehand, by the rapture, to begin her heavenly destiny.(17)
Well, it may be so. But enough of the arguments; let’s catch the glory of what this implies. The belief that Jesus may come (the rapture may happen) at any time, breaking forcefully into whatever we are doing – ‘Maybe Today!’, to quote a poster from the Billy Graham Association’s Decision magazine – is a very powerful motivation for radical holiness. If what we’ve just outlined is true, here is the point: none of us who are believers may be alive at home tomorrow night! And all that will matter then will be what we’ve invested in the kingdom; everything else will be gone. We will see what has lasted (Matthew 6:20; 1 Corinthians 3:12-15) and what was really significant among our fears, our priorities, our goals, our efforts, our concerns. Tonight Jesus may say, ‘Enough!’ – it’s time for the climax of history; three and a half unmistakeable years to prove to humanity what centuries so far have failed to do; and then everything put right – everything bursting into joy and glory beyond our imagination. Thank You, Lord!
And if we’re not sure we’re Christians, it’s not clever to risk getting left behind for the horrendous days of the Animal, and worse still, left out of the glory to come. (Isn’t that possibility something to tell people about?) We have no idea what heaven is like – we’ve never tasted infinite love and joy. But it wouldn’t be clever to suddenly find out (just when we don’t expect it) that we’ve missed out on all that really matters in existence.
‘Maybe today’?!
Why disbelieve in a ‘pre-trib’ rapture?
What we’ve just said about the rapture doesn’t command universal agreement, even among Christians who take the more ‘literal’ approach to what the Bible says about the future (let alone the more novel approach of Tom Wright(18)). Many Bible Christians are not convinced by this ‘pre-trib’ position (to quote the popular shorthand), that God snatches His people out before the final crisis. Instead, they see what we’re told about the rapture as being illustrated by what citizens of that era would do to welcome a respected ruler – as he drew near they would go out of their city to meet him, and then come back with him, sharing the joy and glory of his arrival. So for the ‘post-trib’ position, the rapture of 1 Thessalonians 4 is not the ‘next big thing’, because it happens at (or almost at) the end of the 1260-day crisis; we are caught up to meet the Lord in the air right when He returns to earth to reign.
There are three poor arguments for this ‘post-trib’ position for us to get out of the way before we turn to the significant ones.
1. All this about the pre-trib rapture is just too American. That attitude’s racist, and we should discount it; but that doesn’t mean we don’t sense it sometimes in the background to debates on this topic.
2. A gut feeling that all this stuff about planes and cars crashing just feels far too sensational, like B-movie science fiction. Well, so it may, but the end of history as we know it might well have a sensational feel! Ah, but wouldn’t the ‘leftovers’ (as the Sky Atlantic series called them), the people ‘left behind’, be panicked into mass repentance if such dramatic things had happened? Possibly, but we know our own stubborn hearts; rather than admit we’ve
been catastrophically foolish, we may well accept any possible alternative explanation. Indeed 2 Thessalonians 2:11 speaks of God allowing a ‘powerful delusion’ at this time. (And no doubt the authorities would clamp down on any realisation of what had really happened, in the interests of keeping the peace.)
3. Belief in the rapture is sometimes seen as accompanying a selfish disinterest in the kinds of social, political and environmental engagement that are our biblical responsibility: because we may not be around in this world for long, there is no point in getting too involved in its affairs and needs. Perhaps there are some ‘pre-trib’ adherents who (probably from other motivations) think that way. But we can never dismiss a belief just because some of its adherents have drawn unwise and unnecessary conclusions from it. The fact that we are only temporarily in this world, and indeed may suddenly leave it, is not a reason for living anything but Christlike lives every second we are here. If as Christians we are renting a house only temporarily, that is not a justification for trashing the place. Global poverty and trade justice, climate change and care for the environment (the judgment of Revelation 11:18 is specifically stated as God ‘destroying those who destroy the earth’), sex trafficking, internet pornography, the arms trade, sanctity of life: these issues and the others must be on our agenda simply because we are called to love our neighbours as ourselves, however long or short may be our residence here. Matthew 25 tells us that when the Son of Man comes in His kingdom, a big question will be, what did you do about the hungry, the immigrant, the sick, the imprisoned?
But now for five further arguments for the rapture being ‘post-tribulation’. (As Paul says, ‘I speak to sensible people; judge … what I say’!(19) )
1. First an argument that is again not directly from Scripture, but it does carry weight for me. Christians holding the ‘pre-trib’ position have a clear sequence of events: rapture, then tribulation, then Christ’s coming in glory, followed indeed by the millennium. I haven’t forgotten sitting with my brother-in-law on the grass in a Berlin park where he pointed out tellingly that this sequence of events, so regularly (and, apparently, necessarily) set out in ‘pre-trib’ books and charts, simply doesn’t appear in the Bible. That is true; and if the ‘pre-trib’ position is correct, it seems (to me at least) strikingly odd.
2. There are at least three specific passages that can seem quite challenging for the ‘pre-trib rapture’ point of view. The first two are again in 2 Thessalonians.
Look at the NIV of 2 Thessalonians 1:6-8. Paul encourages the church there in Macedonia that God `will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.` (Emphasis mine)
Again we may choose to say that Paul is simply not that concerned about the distinction between the rapture and the second coming in glory. Otherwise, however, it might seem that this event of ‘relief’ from persecution for the Christians (which must surely be the rapture) comes at the same time as Christ’s being revealed ‘in blazing fire with his powerful angels’ to judge the hostile, unbelieving world – which is surely His open second coming.
3. Then there is the following chapter, 2 Thessalonians 2 again. At the start of this chapter Paul is carefully warning the Thessalonians against thinking that the ‘day of the Lord’, the crisis of history, has already begun. But his reassuring argument focuses on the fact that that day of crisis will not come ‘until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed’ (v3). If the rapture indeed happens near the start of the ‘day of the Lord’, we might surely have expected him simply to say, ‘Don’t worry, you won’t be around at that time of crisis because the rapture will have occurred.’(20) Well, possibly just that is the implication of verse 1, which could be translated ‘By reason of’ or ‘On account of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Paul uses the same word here as in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 about the rapture) ‘and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers, not to become easily unsettled’; and having said that, in verse 3 Paul adds a second reason for them not to be alarmed, that the day of the Lord won’t come until the rise of evil has reached its zenith with the Animal deifying himself in the temple.(21) Or again, perhaps the reason is that the ‘day’ of which Paul speaks, that desperately difficult period of the 1260 days, will begin, not with the rapture itself (which may be somewhat earlier), but with the revelation of the ‘man of lawlessness’, the Animal whose actions are its hallmark; and so Paul focuses on the fact that this hasn’t happened and therefore the ‘day’ has not yet begun. Or yet again, perhaps their fear – overreacting to his warning in 1 Thessalonians 5:2-3? – is that somehow the rapture has already occurred and they’ve missed it (22); and therefore Paul points them to other reasons why they shouldn’t think that the ‘day of the Lord has already come’.
4. The other challenging passage is 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, where we learn that the time when we believers will be transformed into our spiritual bodies – presumably the rapture – is at the ‘last trumpet’ (emphasis mine). This verse fits very well with the angels gathering the elect with a ‘loud trumpet call’ in Matthew 24:31, which is most naturally (though not unavoidably) read as happening at the time of Christ’s open appearing of 24:30, and after the tribulation of 24:15-28. But the challenging question about the Corinthians passage is how the ‘last trumpet’ of the rapture can come at any point but the end of the sequence of trumpets Revelation depicts occurring throughout the tribulation; and in Revelation the last trumpet (11:15) seems to come at the close of the terrible period of forty-two months or 1260 days (11:2-3).(23) Yet again, however, the argument is powerful but not totally conclusive: it is possible to argue that (whatever reality is described by the trumpet of Matthew 24 and 1 Corinthians 15) it is the ‘last’ of its historical kind; whereas Revelation’s trumpets, like the vials, are different, being more symbolic in significance, and used to structure the book’s narrative.
5. One last `post-trib` argument: The New Testament has many references to Christ’s return: waiting ‘for His Son from heaven’ is one of the three key marks of those who have turned to God in 1 Thessalonians 1:10; ‘we eagerly await a Saviour from there’ (heaven), says Paul in Philippians 3:20; it is ‘to those who are waiting for him’ that Christ comes to bring salvation in Hebrews 9:28. And there are many others. But among all these, if the rapture really is the ‘next event’, definitely separate in time from Christ’s open return, it’s surprising that the New Testament seems so little concerned to make this distinction clear. Again that might be because, just as the Old Testament’s readers had not
been shown how Christ’s first coming was separated from the second, so it was only as the New Testament proceeded (and particularly after Paul received a special revelation about this? – see the ESV of 1 Thessalonians 4:15), that it became plain that the second coming itself had two phases. Making this clear had not been a priority, because both phases were so far away.
Nevertheless, there are really very few passages that can be pointed to with conviction as making this distinction. There are the references to God not destining us to pass through the ‘coming wrath’ in 1 Thessalonians 1:10 and 5:9, which we looked at briefly in the previous section; and sometimes Revelation 3:10 is read this way too. Lastly, perhaps most important, there is Matthew 24:36-44, particularly v38 onwards: ‘For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.` But even this is debatable. Because the interpretative issues with this passage are complex we’ll provide a detailed appendix after the footnotes below on its interpretation; our conclusion there is that we can’t be certain whether these verses are presenting a pre-trib rapture.
So if the rapture is indeed separate from Christ’s open return, it might perhaps seem a bit surprising that the New Testament does so little to make this unarguably plain.
There, then, is the data. What do you think? (And: what might we take away from all this if we feel we can’t be definite?)
So what?
So there are two scenarios. It’s very possible that history’s final crisis is near. If so, what is the ‘next big event’, the rapture or the tribulation? As we’ve seen, the ambiguity of much of what Scripture says about this means that it’s hard to say(24) — and maybe God meant it like that!
For me personally, either position is possible. We don’t know. And I wonder if God has left it deliberately unclear because we benefit practically from both possibilities. It’s vital to live aware that Christ may come at any minute to take us home. It’s also vital to live aware that being Christians may involve us in facing serious persecution; it’s happening in many other countries, and may happen one day in ours, whether it’s the end times or not. (What could prove disastrous is the unpreparedness for both that comes from ignoring all the Bible passages embodying what the Lord has told us about all this.)
Economic breakdown in 1920s Germany led rapidly to the rise of the dictatorship of Hitler, and it’s all too easy to see how economic or environmental breakdown could have such results again – with the warning from Revelation that the final ‘firm government’ will turn out to be demonic. As we’ve said, maybe we or our children will be the ‘hero generation’ called to stay faithful to Christ when the Animal comes, who will refuse the Animal’s mark (whatever that turns out to be), even if it costs us our lives. But even if we believe the rapture will save us from the worst time, there is a chance we may face the early days of the Animal’s reign, or our own country may anyway start treating believers as badly as others have done. Either way, we should make it a goal to get used to pressure, seeing it as training.
What matters in that case is developing a faith that’s robust, not childish and dependent on our feelings and external circumstances; cultivating solid roots in the Word, and the habit of living it out whatever the cost; because we know that the gospel really is true and is the only way to heaven and the infinite joy and glory of God. ‘He who stands firm to the end will be saved,’ Jesus told us (Matthew 24 again, this time v13). We will need supernatural grace and power: God has promised it in (not before!) the time of need (Hebrews 4:16); and He guarantees that He ‘will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear’ (1 Corinthians 10:13). But He also tells us to ‘arm yourselves’ with Christ’s attitude (1 Peter 4:1), to ‘put on the full armour of God’ (piece by piece) for ‘when the day of evil comes’ (Ephesians 6:13). (That’s worth doing also because these ‘days of evil’ can come in everyday life!)
In other words: Just maybe the ‘post-tribbers’ should be listened to. If so, I will need supernatural power; God has promised it. But if so, Lord, how should I pray, how should I aim to grow? Please help me look the issue in the face!
Or: maybe the ‘pre-tribbers’ are right! Maybe what comes next really is the rapture and 1 Thessalonians 4:17: Jesus suddenly takes His people home. It’s vital for us to live conscious that this might happen at any minute. Jesus said that when He comes back, it will be exactly when we aren’t expecting it (Matthew 24:36-44). We must be prepared – as He said, ‘Be always on the watch … like servants waiting for their master to return’ (Luke 21:36; 12:36). We should live our whole lives ready for Him to come!
This possible scenario is a powerful motivator for evangelism. It would be catastrophic for anyone we care about to get left behind, suddenly left out, too late; and we know that God’s offer of salvation does have a deadline (2 Corinthians 6:1-2). If you’re not a Christian, think: in this case Jesus is saying that, even before you close this post, history as we know it may end; the die could be cast, and we could be left behind to face the final crisis of history. Maybe that focuses your mind, as it does mine. If we don’t know we’re forgiven, if we don’t know we’re Jesus’ son or daughter, now is the only time we possess to sort that out. ‘You must also be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him’ is the counsel from Jesus’ own mouth!
And if we are Jesus-followers: we live on the edge of eternity. It’s always been so: any day may see our lives end in a car crash. Or Christ may return: maybe today. Either way, later today we may see Him face to face. Our ‘Bridegroom’ will come, utterly unexpectedly; we’ll give account to our loving Lord of the lives and the years He’s entrusted to us (Romans 14:12). And then come millions of years of glory and joy beyond our imagination! But to grasp that Christ may really be ‘standing at the door’ (James 5:9) is to grasp that radical holiness matters. It matters that we do those things that last for eternity, so what are they? They do include our secular work (Colossians 3:17,23), and the social, political and environmental engagement that comes from loving our neighbours as ourselves!
‘Are you ready for the day of the Lord?’ asked Bob Dylan on his Saved album. How would I live if I knew Christ would return this month? What would matter more? What wouldn’t? Because He may!
So, loving God, help me to live for You! Give me supernatural strength when I need it. I could not do alone what we’ve talked about here, but only by Your grace. But that’s always how it is. Help me learn to build steel into my soul from Your Word. Help me learn to feed on Your grace, through Your Word. Help me learn how to be an ‘overcomer’, as Revelation says. Help me grasp the fact that You may come back at any time; and in the light of that, to live for radical holiness, and to do those things that last forever! Amen!
—
(1) F F Bruce’s commentary says that ‘caught up’ in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 implies ‘violent action’; 1 & 2 Thessalonians (Word, 1982), p102. The parallel usages in Acts 8:39, Acts 23:10 and 2 Corinthians 12:2,3 are very illuminating.
(2) I have to say that, for me, the implausibility of the alternatives as to who or what this ‘restrainer’ that is ‘taken out of the way’ might be (the preaching of the gospel, and the law and order embodied in the Roman empire, seem the two most popular suggestions) is a strong argument for the whole ‘pre-trib` rapture framework.
(3) Should we see this as a brief reversal of Pentecost, a return to the pre-Pentecost situation, before the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh more fully than ever once Christ returns as King?
(4) Bruce (p102) notes that the word used for ‘meet’ in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 can imply coming back with a dignitary – see Matthew 25:6 and Acts 28:15. One can see why this classical custom would fit well with God’s desire to honour His persecuted people, 2 Thessalonians 1:10, Colossians 3:4.
(5) As one of the vast numbers of people who were blessed because of the Jesus Movement, it grieves me a bit that the story of its successes and failures is almost forgotten now. It is, after all, the only time we’ve come close to seizing the high ground of contemporary youth culture in the last hundred years. See for example R M Enroth, E E Ericson and C B Peters, The Story of the Jesus People (Paternoster, 1972).
(6) There are several versions of this powerful song on YouTube, including the one used in The Leftovers television series and another by DC Talk.
(7) We don’t have space to look at this here, but that would be particularly so if, as Daniel 9:27 seems to be saying, the beginning of that final terrible three and a half years is marked by the Animal breaking a treaty with Israel and forcibly desecrating its temple – the event also highlighted as a sign by Jesus in Matthew 24:15. See also Daniel 12:7.
(8) It’s true that the ‘normality’ of verse 38 could refer to the people of the world generally, and could easily be happening even when believers specifically are facing terrible persecution. On the other hand, it does seem very strange as a description even of unbelievers living through the end-time horrors described in Revelation.
(9) There may be other ways of resolving this first enigma, but they are not straightforward. Douglas Moo (in Three Views on the Rapture , ed Gleason Archer [Zondervan, 1996], p253), cites E E Ellis to the effect that ‘Evidence from Qumran indicates that “generation” could be used to indicate the last generation before the end’. Moo suggests that the apparently blatant clash can be resolved in that the uncertainty of verse 36 applies to Jesus’ time (effectively ‘No one knows now’) and to ‘every generation except the last’; whereas the certainty of verse 33 applies to ‘this generation’ (v34), whom His hearers would easily understand as the last generation, the one that sees the ‘fig-tree’ signs, and for whom verses 32-35 apply. When they see these signs, they will know that, despite the terrible things that are happening, the Lord is ‘at the door’ and they won’t all die before the Lord returns in glory. However, that would have been a strangely misleading message for Jesus to leave for the
generation that lived through AD70; surely then, when they saw the abomination in the temple, they would have seen themselves as this special ‘last generation’, the one that would know they were about to see the End and His imminent return. And isn’t that precisely the disastrous error Jesus was seeking to guard them against in verse 6? Equally, the problem disappears if most of the time up to Matthew 24:34 Jesus is speaking of AD70, and He moves on to speak of His second coming only from verse 35 on. But see my post on Matthew 24 (on this site in Bible intros 3-1) for a discussion of the major problems in that theory.
(10) Paul had been teaching them carefully about the end-time ‘day of the Lord’ and the satanic dictator central to it (2 Thessalonians 2:5). Why had it been so much on his mind? Perhaps because (knowing the second coming might possibly be soon) he was watching developments in imperial Rome with considerable unease?
(11) In contrast, Moo, p186, paraphrases Paul’s argument as being that their salvation (vv5,9) ‘should act as a stimulus to holy living – holy living that will enable them to avoid experiencing the Day [ie “wrath”] in its unexpected and destructive features’; but that seems a little odd – holy living won’t keep them from being ‘destructively’ slaughtered, Revelation 13:15.
(12) Certainly Revelation 14:14-20 seems to take us to the End. On first reading these verses might seem to be entirely about judgment (particularly in the light of the similar words in Joel 3:13). Earlier in the chapter, however, we’ve heard of people who are the ‘firstfruits to God’ (v4), and if ‘firstfruits’ is positive in verse 4, the full harvest in verse 16 could well be positive too, with Christ’s Church being the ‘positive’ harvest of the earth, the fruit of its history (cf Matthew 13:23; John 12:24). So in that case Revelation 14:14-16 and 14:19-20 could give the two sides of the final reaping, to blessing (in the rapture) and to judgement, just like in Matthew 13:28-30 and 37-43. Compare also Matthew 24:30-31.
(13) There isn’t a problem with the length of time available after the rapture for these things to happen. Assuming that the rapture happens near the start of the final crisis (rather than towards its end, as ‘post-tribbers’ would argue), there is no passage – at least that I can see – that would narrow down how close the two may be. Indeed, there is scholarly debate in the USA between those who see the rapture as occurring close to the start of the 1,260 days and others who (drawing on the end of the prophecy in Daniel 9, which we don’t have space to consider here) expect it an extra three and a half years before that.
(14) In Tim LaHaye, The Rapture (Harvest House, 2002), pp69-70.
(15) Whereas, in contrast, the Old Testament does warn ethnic Israel of a very tough time to come before the era of great blessing: eg in Zechariah 14 or Jeremiah 30.
(16) We should note, too, that the teaching of Matthew 24 about Jesus’ coming flows on specifically from His words in 23:38-39. Here, the ‘you’ who ‘will not see me again until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”,’ refers undeniably to ethnic Israel and their relations to their rejected Messiah. Arguably this is the context for Matthew 24.
(17) This links to a final reason why those of us who believe in a literal golden age or millennium after Christ’s return – and for good reasons, see the companion post on this site on the millennium – might also believe in a ‘pre-trib’ rapture. Who are the people who live through the final crisis into the millennium and then have children there (eg Isaiah 65:20,23)? How can it be those who have participated in the rapture, when ‘with the trumpet call of God’ (1 Thessalonians 4:16), ‘at the last trumpet’, their bodies have been transformed and transfigured (1 Corinthians 15:52)? Given what Jesus says in Matthew 22:30, is it likely that they will then have children? So again, does there not need to be another group of people such as we have been discussing, who will enter the millennium, totally separate from those who will be taken in the rapture? But this argument isn’t quite as conclusive as, for example, LaHaye thinks (The Rapture, p130), because of the mass repentance of ethnic Jews we considered above in #5. It would seem from Zechariah 12:10 that this repentance occurs only when Christ visibly reappears; the greatest number of these repentant Jews, then, may not have been involved even if there were a ‘post-trib’ rapture of Christians, and therefore may be the ones who survive to populate the millennium. Nor can we be sure who Jesus is talking about in Matthew 25:34 and whether they are entering the millennium. That an ‘iron sceptre’ will be exercised in ‘authority over the nations’ both by Christ (Revelation 12:5) and the overcomers (Revelation 2:26-27) might imply that Wayne Grudem could be right in suggesting that at Christ’s return many unbelievers ‘will simply surrender without trusting Christ and will thus enter the millennium as unbelievers’ (Bible Doctrine [Inter-Varsity Press, 2009], p450). Or (to my mind, more plausibly) we may also be looking at the children of those unbelievers, who were themselves not judged along with their parents when Christ returned, and so entered the glorious millennium.
(18) Indeed, some readers may be amazed that the idea of a ‘pre-trib’ rapture can even be considered after Tom Wright’s diatribe against it in his popular Surprised by Hope (SPCK, 2007). And here is where I wish this were an academic post with space to analyse Wright’s deep dislike of ‘rapture theology’. It isn’t, so I can only note that Wright builds on several assumptions which, listed together, make a somewhat outlandish package. Wright argues (1) that Jesus’ own beliefs and concerns are, first and foremost, those of a first-century Jew (see also Jesus and the Restoration of Israel, ed Carey Newman [Paternoster, 1999], pp260,270); and because the prime concerns of the mainstream of first-century Jewry were ‘political’ ones, the relationship of Israel to their Roman conquerors and how God might step in soon to end Israel’s exile and place her in a position of glory, these, not the overall future, must be seen as the questions at the heart of Jesus’ teaching too. (This although God’s input normally seems to be designed to help His people have very different concerns from their cultural mainstream.) (2) That therefore the gospel passages we usually read as about the second coming are all really about Jesus’ first coming, and then God’s coming in judgement on Israel through Rome in AD70. (3) That, in fact, ‘during his earthly ministry, Jesus said nothing about his return’ (Surprised by Hope, p137) (Matthew 16:27? Matthew 19:28? Matthew 23:39? Matthew 24:30?? Mark 14:62?? John 14:3??) – although the early Church did (but again, what started them doing so if not Jesus’ own teaching?) (4) That the passages about Jesus coming on the clouds are all about His coming to the Father (Daniel 7:13), not His coming back to earth (but again, Matthew 24:30? Mark 14:62 1? Revelation 1:7?) (5) That Jesus will certainly not ‘descend like a spaceman from the sky’ (Surprised by Hope, p147; on p140 Wright quotes Acts 1:9-11 yet ignores the fact that it says Jesus ‘will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven’. In Jesus and the Restoration of Israel, p271, he describes [or sets aside?] this crucial chapter, with no evidence, as a ‘stylized narrative’); however, Wright gives no description of how Christ’s return will happen instead of a ‘spaceman descent’. (6) That 1 Thessalonians 4 on the second coming is ‘not to be taken as a literal description of what Paul thinks will happen’ – but he offers no proof; remarkably, he sees the reference to Christ’s descent from heaven as an allusion to Moses descending Sinai, which isn’t mentioned in the passage at all, rather than to the promise of Acts 1:11 which would have been so important to these early lovers of Jesus (Surprised by Hope, pp143-44). It’s also quite hard to feel that Wright has listened seriously to any intelligent proponent of the position he attacks. If he had, he would surely have learned that most proponents of the rapture believe in a millennium to come in which this present world is transformed in glorious ways, and most certainly not that ‘God intends to destroy the present space-time universe … quite soon now’ (Surprised by Hope, p103).
(19)1 Corinthians 10:15.
(20) A point well-argued by John Piper in http://www.desiringgod.org/sermons/what-must-happen-before-the-day-of-the-lord. Interestingly, Piper describes himself as a post-tribulationist and ‘hope-filled premillennialist’, a combination which would be (sadly?) unusual on this side of the Atlantic in anyone subscribing to Piper’s kind of Reformed theology. See also https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/are-you-becoming-a-postmillennialist. Moo comments (p189) that if the Thessalonians had been taught a pre-trib rapture, one might have expected them to conclude this themselves. But then again, 1 Thessalonians 4:15 may seem to present some at least of what Paul says about the rapture as being a new revelation (‘This we declare to you by a word from the Lord’, ESV) which came after his departure and significantly expanded the teaching he had given when he had been with them (2 Thessalonians 2:5).
(21) It’s worth noting also that some writers – Presbyterian J Montgomery Boice for example, see https://lifecoach4god.life/2013/06/20/james-montgomery-boice-on-the-distinction-between-the-rapture-and-the-lords-day/ – point out that the word the NIV and ESV translate as ‘rebellion’ in verse 3 – ‘that day will not come until the rebellion occurs’ – can be translated ‘departure’, and argue that this refers to the rapture.
(22) One objection to this idea is that then the false teachers might seem to have missed the rapture too. But the ‘letter supposed to have come from Paul’ could have been an earlier threat that the rapture was imminent and that if they didn’t listen to the false teachers in Thessalonica, their entire church would be left behind; and the false teachers were presumably now saying that, because the rest of the church didn’t listen to them, that has happened.
(23) Indeed, many commentators read the ‘two witnesses’ of that chapter, Revelation 11, as a symbolic portrayal of all God’s people on earth at that time, and hence can see 11:12 as the (post-tribulation) rapture.
(24) For a more in-depth debate, see Three Views on the Rapture, ed Gleason Archer. But let the buyer beware: the ‘post-trib’ essay by Douglas Moo is by far the most compelling.
APPENDIX: Matthew 24:36-44 and Luke 17:22-37
As we said above, a problem with the ‘pre-trib’ view – that Christ takes us his people out to be with him before the final crisis of history, or ‘tribulation’, and so the ‘rapture’ is a separate event from his open coming in glory – is that so few Bible passages can be pointed to with confidence as making this distinction; if indeed the two are separate in time.
One really key section often seen this way (at least on this side of the Atlantic (25)) is Matthew 24:36-44, particularly v38 onwards: ‘For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. “ Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come!`
This passage can surely be read (in the light of God’s subsequent revelations, again see perhaps 1 Thess 4:15 ESV) as describing a rapture that ‘takes’ believers away to safety, just like Noah (v38), before the terrible period of the tribulation; and reading – and preaching – it that way can be very powerful indeed. And such a view does explain the very puzzling shift from v33, which clearly encourages Christ’s followers living through the events of vv15-24 to sense the approach of the climax of history, to verses 42 and 44, emphasising that ‘that day’ will happen when people, believers included, simply aren’t expecting it. (Which might be a very surprising thing to say if they were indeed living through the horrific `tribulation` times described in Revelation.(26)) The problem then disappears: verses 30-34 refer to Christ’s open return in glory and the events that will happen before it, but verses 36-44 to the earlier, unforeseeable ‘coming of the Son of Man’, the rapture, when one will be taken and the other left (vv40-41); when (just like Noah, v37) God’s people are taken out to safety before the judgment comes.
But how much weight can we put on this interpretation? There are four key questions here.
First: what time period are all these verses referring to? The whole problem of relating the unpredictability of verses 36, 42-44 to the clarity of verses 32-34 changes if the subject all the way through to verse 34 is the events of AD70. (Indeed, Tom Wright asserts that the second coming isn’t in view even here in vv36-51.(27)) There are, however, a number of very strong reasons for seeing the verses preceding Matthew 24:36 as referring to the end times, which can be found in the post on Matthew 24 on this site (in Bible intros 3-1). And equally significant is the context provided by the parables that immediately follow chapter 24; because the first and third at least are surely not about AD70 but about the second coming as normally understood, along with the ‘wedding banquet’ of Revelation 19, and the final judgment, not of Israel, but of ‘all the nations’ (25:32).
A further argument against an AD70 fulfilment arises if we look carefully at the parallel teaching in Luke 17:26-35, apparently given on a different occasion but using very similar words. (Compare Luke 17:26-29 and 34-35 to Matthew 24:37-41.) This will be the time, Luke says, when the Son of Man ‘lights up the sky from one end to the other’: surely the end times? Luke 17:22 in particular presents further evidence against the following verses, 17:26-37, being about AD70. The point of v22 seems to be that some fairly serious event is on its way (most obviously the judgment of AD70, surely?); and at that time, Jesus says, the disciples will long for the Messiah’s intervention (‘one of the days of the Son of Man’). But, He continues, that is not what will happen; you will long for the coming of the Messianic deliverer (because your capital and temple are being destroyed), but that is not the time of His coming. So the judgment of AD70 seems to be distinguished very clearly here from what is not happening, `the days of the Son of Man`, that is, `the coming of the Son of Man` (compare Luke 17:26 to Matthew 24:37), and likewise from the ‘day’ of the Son of Man (v24) – and this latter, in the Matthew 24:27 parallel to Luke 17:24, is the ‘coming of the Son of Man’. And then when we move on to Luke 17:26, we now seem to have transitioned to a different time that in contrast is the ‘days of the Son of Man’ (v26), `the day when the Son of Man is revealed` (v30) (or again, ‘the coming of the Son of Man’ – the parallel to v26 in Matthew 24:37). The existence of this contrast surely gives us good reason for thinking we are hearing about the endtimes from Luke 17:26 onward; the days when the Son of Man `lights up the sky from one end to the other` (v24). And reading it that way also creates a continuity of theme right through to Luke 18:8: ‘When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?’, which surely is about the second coming. We should note, too, that this entire section of Luke, 17:11 to 19:28, culminates with a story about how the kingdom of God will – after some delay – ‘appear’. Unlike AD70 – surely? – it involves its King being fairly visible, judging (in a way that they recognise and interact with!) how his followers have served him, and giving them new assignments to rule over entire cities. All in all, then, these verses sound much more like the end time than AD70: which implies that the same is true of the parallel passages in Matthew 24.
So then comes the second question. It’s true that a ‘pre-trib’ rapture does explain why Matthew 24:33 says that Christ’s followers on earth at that terrible time should sense ‘these things’, the climax of history, coming, and yet the following verses, particularly verses 38 and 42-44, seem to present people living in a more ‘normal’ life situation, and therefore emphasise repeatedly that the second coming, ‘that day’, will happen exactly when they aren’t expecting it. It’s hard to see those verses as referring to exactly the same time as verses 15-22: if such unprecedented distress is taking place, will Jesus’ disciples (‘you’, v44) really have no sense of His impending return?(28) So as we’ve noted, a simple explanation is that Matthew 24:36-44 are describing the rapture and the time before it, and that these verses are fulfilled before the very obvious ‘great distress’ of the earlier verses, eg verses 15-22, after which Christ returns openly. There is a rapture before the tribulation; the unexpected event Jesus speaks of in verses 36-44 is then the ‘next big one’.
But might there be other ways of explaining this shift without involving a ‘pre-trib’ rapture?
One solution would be if 24:36 refers only to the situation right then: the incarnate Jesus Himself has chosen not to know the time of the second coming right then when He is speaking, and nor do His disciples; but when the time of verse 33 happens, the disciples will realise it. In that case the people in darkness about it all in verses 38-41 will be the ones who will face judgment: that can be what these verses are about. (Compare 1 Thessalonians 5:1-5, which can perhaps be read as saying that at the time the Thessalonian believers will know that the second coming is at hand, unlike those who are ‘in darkness’.) But the big snag with this understanding is that in verse 44 the disciples also are not expecting the second coming even when it happens.
Or, the problem might equally disappear with ‘post-tribber’ Douglas Moo’s suggestion that ‘Evidence from Qumran indicates that “generation” could be used to indicate the last generation before the end’.(29) Moo proposes that the apparently blatant clash can be resolved in that the uncertainty of verse 36 applies to Jesus’ time (effectively, ‘No one knows now’) and also to every generation except the one that would actually see Him come back; whereas the certainty of verse 33 is that of ‘this generation’ (v34), who His hearers would easily understand as the last generation, the one that sees the ‘fig-tree’ signs, and for whom verses 32-34 apply. When they see these signs, they will know that, despite the terrible things that are happening, the Lord is ‘at the door’ and they won’t all die before the Lord returns in glory. However: that would have been a strangely misleading message for Jesus to leave for the generation that lived through AD70; surely then, when they saw the abomination in the temple, they would have seen themselves as this special ‘last generation’, the one that would know they were about to see the End and His imminent return. And isn’t that precisely the disastrous error Jesus was seeking to guard them against in verse 6?
So these considerations might send us back to the `pre-trib` understanding, that Matthew 24:36ff are about a rapture separate from Christ’s open second coming. But there is another alternative to consider. Because there are also significant problems in relating these key verses to a ‘pre-trib’ rapture; and they come when we look more carefully at Jesus’ parallel teachings in Luke 17:26-35, and the context that passage gives to those key words ‘On that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left’ (17:34-35 = Matthew 24:40-41).
First then, according to Luke 17:30, these verses (verses 26ff) are describing ‘the day when the Son of Man is revealed’ (emphasis mine). Now, first, that might seem a rather odd way to speak of the rapture in distinction from Christ’s open, visible return. However, one could respond that it will be specifically to his followers, who have in the past (presumably AD70) longed for deliverance that didn’t come (`you`, v22), that He will now be `revealed` as rescuer, by the rapture. (This is what did not happen in AD70.)
More problematically, however, Luke 17:31-32 at least – ‘No-one who is on the roof of his house, with his goods inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no-one in the field should go back for anything’ – is clearly about surviving some catastrophic event of judgment, and not about the rapture. (The exact parallel of Luke 17:31 is in fact what Matthew 24:15-18 has to say about escaping assault on Jerusalem.) After all, someone who is going to be `taken up` in the rapture doesn’t need to be told not to go downstairs for their belongings (17:31). So in that case, what Jesus has to say about it being unexpected would be a warning to the unbelieving Jews of 17:25 (who in 17:20 were asking what the future holds), that this judgment, when it comes, will be totally unexpected as far as people like themselves are concerned. And then the key words ‘one will be taken and the other left’ might seem in Luke to be about being taken by judgment, or captured (‘taken’) or butchered by the invader assaulting Jerusalem, and not about any rapture, whether pre- or post-trib. (Let’s note, however, that it is not merely a time of judgment, because it is clear from Zechariah 12:2-9 and 14:2-3ff that it is in this moment of end-time judgment, unlike AD70, that Christ will indeed be visibly revealed; and also [Zechariah again, 14:5, and indeed Rev 19:19] that even when He is revealed there is still a time of delay, a moment about which the Jerusalem people might very well need to be warned to flee and therefore not (materialistically) to rush back home to get their goods.)
However: a reading of these verses, particularly in their Matthew form, as entirely a warning of divine judgement coming through an invader unexpectedly assaulting Judaea, and not of the rapture, has problems of its own.
First, it might be difficult to reconcile with Jesus’ emphasis that what He is speaking of will come totally out of the blue. ‘They knew nothing … That is how it will be,’ says Matthew 24:39. Is an overwhelming invasion that hard to see coming? It seems a particularly unlikely thing for Jesus to have said if we’re thinking of a pre-technological era like AD70 when the invading Roman legions had to march on foot into Palestine. However, it could make more sense if instead it’s about the end time; many will read Daniel 9:27 as warning of an unexpected treachery in the end time, when the satanic dictator will break a disastrous covenant made with him by the Jews, stopping their worship suddenly by invasive military force and desecrating their temple(30); that could be sudden and speedy.
But secondly: when both Matthew 24:39 and Luke 17:27-30 speak about the judgment to come, they state that ‘all’ the people in view are involved. So doesn’t that imply that we’re dealing with something different – that is, the rapture – in the following verses, Matthew 24:40-41 and Luke 17:34-35, because there some at least are not ‘taken’? And thirdly, the description of these days as a time when the Son of Man ‘will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other’ (Luke 17:24), sounds like a coming of Christ marked by something much more visible – to those He comes for, at any rate – than merely His role as a hidden, secret cause behind judgment of Judaea, by the coming of evil human invaders. (As does `the coming of the Son of Man` (the parallel to v26 in Matthew 24:37’s parallel to v26, and to v24 in Matthew 24:27’s parallel to v24).)
And if we’re wanting to interpret these verses in Luke 17 and Matthew 24 as only about judgment — the fact is that, when Matthew uses these words about `one will be taken and the other left`, his context does lead straight into 24:42-51, and there the `day your Lord will come` and the lessons Jesus draws from it do surely speak primarily of a coming of Christ for his own people (not the coming of invaders). And, to me most strikingly, is there not a further close continuity of theme there between the practical emphasis on the need to be prepared in the whole of Matthew 24:36-51 (`Therefore` in v42 ties the entire section together), and the same theme of readiness in the story of the ten virgins that follows immediately (25:1-13), and that ends by reprising in 25:13 the same firm warning to be ready as in 24:36,42,44? But that story of the ten virgins is contrasting those who are prepared and, because of that, ‘taken’ with the Bridegroom into the wedding banquet, as against those who are unprepared and therefore left outside. It’s clearly about the unexpected coming of the Bridegroom (a figure Jesus uses of Himself in Matthew 9:15) to take His people into the banquet; and not at all about the unexpected coming of judgement, nor of invaders. So that implies that the same is also true of the last parts of Matthew 24; they too are about Christ’s unexpected coming.
There is a third interpretative possibility to consider in this Luke 17 passage, however, which, instead of leaving us with a simple either/or between a rapture interpretation and a judgment interpretation, may give us both, but still bring us back to seeing the rapture in the passage, and hence in the parallel verses of Matthew 24. Even if judgment is in view in Luke 17:30, there is still a case for seeing a vital switch of topic (to the rapture) in the following verses, about one being taken and the other left (which are on `that night` as distinct from `that day`). After all, `one will be taken and the other left` might possibly be about being taken by judgment, but doesn’t immediately sound like what happens to a couple in bed being captured (`taken`) by an invader assaulting Jerusalem. Douglas Moo (who is not a ‘pre-tribber’), suggesting that these last verses may be about a (post-trib) rapture, notes significantly that the word for ‘taken’ in the Matthew equivalent, 24:40-41 (= Luke 17:34-35), is not in fact the same as that used for ‘taken’ in judgment in 24:39.(31) A switch of topic from ‘taken in judgment’ in 24:39 (paralleling Luke 17:27) to ‘taken to heaven’ in 24:40 might seem rather abrupt; but Jesus’ vital point could be precisely that the person who has not been ‘taken’ to heaven in v40 does now face being ‘taken’ by unexpected judgement. R T France (likewise not a ‘pretribber’!), notes equally significantly that “‘Taken’ [in Matthew 24:40-41] is the same verb used e.g. in 1:20; 17:1; 18:16; 20:17; it implies to take someone to be with you, and therefore here points to the salvation [ie a divine rescue] rather than the destruction of the one ‘taken’” (emphasis mine). (32)
(Indeed, it is actually quite striking how many commentators who certainly aren’t `pre-tribbers` see something like the rapture here. Amillennialist Riddlebarger views vv26-29 as referring to judgment, but links vv34-35 (`Those who are taken away, presumably believers, are the elect`, he says), to Matthew 24:31 – which can be seen as the rapture. And in his Tyndale commentary Morris (no pre-tribber) sees Luke 17:26ff as a whole as being about endtime judgment, but in v34 `”taken”… evidently means taken to be with Him (cf 1 Thess 4:17)` – that is, the rapture.(33)
Pulling this all together, then: it’s very possible that Jesus’ words in the difficult passage of Luke 17:26-35 are directed at readiness both for the outbreak of the judgment of the end-time `great distress`, and also (especially in the last verses) for his return to take his people out by the rapture somewhere around it. In itself the `as in the days of Noah’ parallel could present either theme: both unexpected judgment and the unpreparedness of the disbelieving lost, and the supernatural deliverance of the righteous (as perhaps in the rapture). The same is true of Lot (Luke 17:29). In both cases something dramatic happens: the righteous are supernaturally taken out, and the lost are left behind for judgment. So we may well have the rapture here, and therefore in the parallel verses in Matthew 24.
But there is one final question before we can assume that this rapture is `pre-trib`. If indeed the rapture is in view in Luke 17, must it not (`that night`) be at least close to v31’s `that day` when judgement breaks out on Jerusalem at the end of the tribulation? Coming as they do near the very end of Luke 17, these verses might seem more likely to be linked to a post-trib than a pre-trib event. Still, it’s perhaps not entirely unreasonable to suggest that, since God had not yet revealed, or explained, the distinction between the pre-trib rapture and the open post-trib second coming (again, did this need to wait for the special revelation of 1 Thess 4:15 ESV?), these verses could still in fact be about a pre-trib rapture. And equally a question remains if we want to see this as a post-trib rapture; we must then distinguish between the Christians (for whom this rapture happens), and those godly Jews who, after Christ’s revelation (Zechariah 12:10ff – presumably this would be when the rapture happens), will turn to Christ and become the central focus of God’s purpose, after which (instead of being raptured) they stay and live on earth into the millennium. But the passage offers no overt distinction of this kind.
Tough passages; their practical teaching is clear, but as regards what we can take from them about the rapture, it’s hard to be certain. But we must at least conclude that we can’t simply assume a reference to a `pre-trib` rapture in those key words ‘one will be taken and the other left’. We do still need to explain the clear and surprising contrast between the unexpectedness of the coming in Matt 24:36-44 and the strong encouragement in verse 33 to sense the imminence of the open coming of the Son of Man in the clouds in what precedes it. Nevertheless, we can’t be certain that the penultimate section of Matthew 24 is speaking of the rapture.
The interesting thing is that there is one more verse elsewhere in that chapter that does make complete sense as describing the rapture, namely Matthew 24:31: Christ ‘will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other’.(34) But here’s the problem: if verse 31 is describing the rapture, the most natural way to read it (coming as it does after verses 21-30) is definitely at the end of the time of ‘distress’ in verse 21, so post-tribulation, and as an integral part of Christ’s open return described in the previous verse, verse 30. Again, of course, this could be because God was not yet revealing clearly that the second coming would be in two phases, and so verse 30 and verse 31 could be separated in time, just like Jesus’ two comings in Isaiah 61:1-2 or Zechariah 9:9-13. Nevertheless, if verse 31 and verses 36-44 are both describing a ‘pre-trib’ rapture, we might have expected them to be together, rather than separated by verses 33-34 with their apparent focus on the events of the tribulation.
All in all, then, there might be said to be a lack of NT passages that can be pointed to with complete conviction as distinguishing the rapture from Christ’s open return in glory. And this might seem a little surprising if the two are indeed separate in time, and the rapture comes first.
—
(25) Ironically, because many American ‘pre-trib’ writers are dispensationalists concerned to argue that Matthew 24 is written entirely for Israel rather than for the Church, they do not see the rapture in these verses either; see, for example, Charles Feinberg, Millennialism (Moody Press, 1980), pp231,298, and LaHaye, The Rapture, p204. But this just makes the absence of biblical passages distinguishing the rapture from Christ’s appearing in glory even more glaringly obvious.
(26) It’s an even more surprising thing to say if, as Tom Wright argues, these verses (indeed the entire chapter) refer primarily to AD70. Either the Roman invasion of AD70 would be all too obviously imminent (see vv32-33), or it will come as a complete surprise (vv37-39), including to the disciples (vv42,44); it can’t be both.
(27) Although in his books for the popular market Wright tells Christians reading them as warnings to be ready for the second coming or for their own death, ‘You can read the passage in either of these ways, or both. Often the voice of God can be heard in Scripture in ways the original writers hadn’t imagined – though you need to retain, as the control, a clear sense of what they did mean’; which in this case, he thinks, is the great crisis of AD70 (Matthew for Everyone, pp126-27).
(28) The same question arises regarding Jesus’ warning in the endtime section of Luke 21 about being ‘weighed down with … the anxieties of life’ so that ‘that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap’ (21:34, emphasis mine). This seems an unlikely thing to say about AD70 when Roman invaders were pouring into Palestine. But equally if it’s end time it reads rather oddly after verses 25-26 (‘There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. [People] will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world’). Unless, that is, Jesus’ warning applies to a period before an unforeseeable pretribulational rapture; this would be an argument for that.
(29) In Three Views on the Rapture, ed Gleason Archer, p253, citing Ellis’ New Century commentary on Luke.
(30) Some would see this as linked to the sudden end-time attack on Israel prophesied in Ezekiel 38 and 39, and there Israel is ‘unsuspecting’ (38:11) – and God says this complacency was because of their ‘unfaithfulness … when they lived in safety in their land’ (39:26), which might imply an unwise dependence on a protective treaty with a deceitful outside power rather than on God. This could provide a background for Matthew 24:38-39.
(31) In Archer, p196.
(32) R T France, Matthew, p348.
(33) Kim Riddlebarger, A Case for Amillennialism, p205; Leon Morris, Luke, pp261-62.
(34) We might be a little surprised by the reference here to angels; but there are other situations where angels are presented as the immediate agents of something that elsewhere the Lord Himself is described as doing; eg Exodus 23:23, Numbers 20:16 or Galatians 3:19. However, William Kelly, who is ‘pre-trib’, sees this verse instead as part of the Jewish focus of the chapter, referring to the angels gathering the Jews who have been scattered throughout the nations (Lectures on the Second Comingof the Lord Jesus Christ [A S Rouse, n.d.], p213). There is undeniably a fair amount about that in the Old Testament – see Deuteronomy 30:3-5 and Isaiah 11:11-12; 14:2; 43:5-6; 66:20; Ezekiel 39:25-28. But it’s the nations who bring the remaining Jews back to Palestine, not angels, Isaiah 14:2; 66:20.
(This is an edited version of two sections from my A Guide to the End of the World, available on Kindle or in book form from https://instantapostle.com/books/a-guide-to-the-end-of-the-world/ .)
