Around the middle of the nineteenth century there was a series of charismatic revivals in Scotland. It was during this time that a 15-year-old girl named Margaret MacDonald, on her sickbed, had a vision regarding the Church being taken away before a time of suffering in the last days. Soon after, a preacher named John Darby began to preach the doctrine of a ‘rapture’ of the Church. When Darby came to preach about the rapture in the United States, he influenced a Bible student named Cyrus Ingerson Scofield, who later published notes on the rapture in the 1909 Scofield Reference Bible. Since these notes on the rapture were in the Bible, swarms of Christians took them to be actual scripture, and this ‘rapture’ theology took off.

To be fair, Margaret MacDonald’s vision may not have actually been the direct source of the ‘rapture’ theology popularized by John Darby. Nonetheless, her story does encapsulate the more general milieu of the eschatological thought and preaching which ultimately gave rise to the escapist theology of Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye, and the like. This is an eschatological understanding that simply did not exist among early Christians.

Aside from the fact that the word “rapture” does not appear anywhere in the New Testament (or the Old Testament, Apocrypha, or Pseudepigrapha for that matter), there are several other reasons why rapture theology is bad theology. Our attention will be briefly focused, however, on the two passages most commonly cited in support of an escapist ‘rapture’ eschatological understanding, namely Matthew 24:36-41 and especially 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17.

A discussion of the events surrounding the coming of the Son of Man is indeed the context of Matthew 24:36-41. These events include signs of cosmic distress (24:29) and mourning among all the nations of the earth (24:30). Indeed, it is said that the Son of Man will arrive in great power and glory in the midst of his angels’ loud trumpet call (24:30-31). This makes the idea of this coming as being clandestine or secret incredible if not absurd.

What is described beginning in the following section has the same event in view, namely “the coming of the Son of Man” (24:37). The concern here regards what is meant by, “one is taken, and one is left” (24:40-41). Most recently many Christians, especially Evangelicals, have understood the Christian to be the one taken and the non-Christian to be one left behind to endure the cataclysmic (Greek, kataklysmos, used in 24:38 to describe the flood) events just described. The key to understanding who is taken and who is left behind, however, involves the analogy drawn with regard to the days of Noah in the previous verses. Notice that here it is those who are swept away by the flood (i.e. those who are being judged) who are “taken away,” not Noah and his family.

This is exactly what Jesus means when he speaks of the two men in the field and the two women working at the mill in the following verses. The “one [who] is taken” is being taken away for judgment—not to escape the cataclysmic events of the eschaton! Clearly, Jesus’ first hearers would have understood the analogy this way. Quite unlike many evangelical Christians today, they didn’t want to be taken away!

But what about those who are “snatched up … in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” in 1 Thessalonians 4:17? First of all, it is important to realize that Paul does not intend for this to be taken as a literal description of eschatological events. This is simply a metaphorical way of alluding to the parousia, that is, the return of Christ to eternal presence among his people. I’ll allow N. T. Wright to explain further:

When the emperor visited a colony or province, the citizens of the country would go to meet him at some distance from the city. It would be disrespectful to have him actually arrive at the gates as though his subjects couldn’t be bothered to greet him properly. When they met him, they wouldn’t then stay out in the open country; they would escort him royally into the city itself. When Paul speaks of “meeting” the Lord “in the air,” the point is precisely not—as in the popular rapture theology—that the saved believers would then stay up in the air somewhere, away from earth. The point is that, having gone out to meet their returning Lord, they will escort him royally into his domain, that is, back to the place they have come from. … Being citizens of heaven … doesn’t mean that one is expecting to go back to the mother city but rather means that one is expecting the emperor to come from the mother city to give the colony its full dignity, to rescue it if need be, to subdue local enemies and put everything to rights. (Surprised by Hope, pp. 132-3)

This is exactly the picture we find in Revelation 21 (cf. also 2 Peter 3:13) of Christ returning to rule over his domain and bringing with him a new heaven and a new earth. The hope of the biblical salvation-history is not that God will take his people away from this evil planet to dwell with him, but that God will return to the world he created in order to “put everything to rights” and dwell with his people.

From beginning to end, the biblical story is one of a God who longs to cohabitate with the human beings whom he created. In Genesis 1, God creates the earth and human beings and dwells with them in Eden. When things go awry, Yahweh still chooses to dwell among his people in a tabernacle and then a temple (cf. Exodus 29:45, “Then I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God”). In John 1 we meet the Word who “became flesh and dwelled among us” (1:14) through the person of Jesus Christ. Finally, when Christ returns, John of Patmos tells us that he saw

a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” (Revelation 21:1-5a)

Thanks be to God.