The Rapture is a comparatively recent teaching. It did not gain momentum until proclaimed by John Nelson Darby, the founder of the Exclusive brethren in England just 200 years ago. It was picked up by an American lawyer called Cyrus Scofield who produced the Scofield Bible. This contains the text of the KJV, but it is full of Scofield’s own annotated commentary. More than any other factor, it is Scofield’s notes that have caused generations of Western evangelicals to accept that God demands their uncritical support for the modern State of Israel. Scofield also highlighted the concept of the Rapture, the bodily ascent to heaven by Christian believers, in his notes about Thessalonians 4:17.
I have researched this subject and found many reasons to reject this teaching and here they are.
First, the teaching of the rapture violates the expectation of the believers who eagerly awaited the return of Christ. It was the hope of believers in the first century that Jesus would return in their lifetime based on Jesus’ words in Matthew 24:30-34. They eagerly awaited this event to complete their salvation:
And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21:27-28 my emphasis)
Second, the parables of Jesus, the gospels and the whole NT is all about the coming Kingdom of God, coming to the believers here on earth, from heaven where it has always prevailed. The kingdom was coming down and not going up. The kingdom was already in Heaven! Such a great expectation!
Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. (Mat 6:10)
And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. (Rev 21:2)
1 Thessalonians 4:17 is not about believers going up to heaven! The remaining believers affiliated with Christ would be seized (Grk harpazo) into a meeting in the air (Grk, aer), the word Paul used for the space just above the earth’s surface (see 1 Cor 14:9 and Eph 2:2). This ‘meeting’ (Grk., apartesis) is not merely any meeting. The word also occurs in Mat 25:1, 6 and Acts 28:15. It’s about people going from their city or place to meet and welcome a dignitary and escorting that person back into their city or place. This meeting is in the ‘air’, not in Heaven. Christ comes out of heaven with the resurrected ones who had ‘slept’, to meet together with those who ‘remain alive’ who welcome Him to this planet, not upwards into Heaven !
Third, by teaching that saints would somehow float up to Heaven, it minimizes the expectations of millions, because only a very select few would experience it—those alive at His coming. On the contrary, Paul’s language in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 means that ‘we all will be with the Lord always!’ After His return, he abides in us! See John 14:
There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? (John 14:2)
Jesus replied, “All who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them. (John 14:23)
Fourth, it also violates the promises in both OT and NT—what all the faithful were expecting, from Abraham to the present (See Heb 11:1-38 and especially vs 39-40).
Fifth, it introduces a dispensation that Christ never taught—this is totally absent from His recorded teachings.
Sixth, it violates Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 15 on the nature of the resurrection of the dead. When the physical body dies it decomposes and is no more. Our physical bodies are not fit for Heaven. We need a spiritual body to be in heaven. The Rapture teaching denies this in suggesting bodies floating up to Heaven. So Paul insisted:
it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. (15:43-44)
We shall all die. Even Jesus had to die! As it says in the Letter to the Hebrews:
And just as each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment, so also Christ was offered once for all time as a sacrifice to take away the sins of many people. He will come again, not to deal with our sins, but to bring salvation to all who are eagerly waiting for him. (Heb 9:27-28, my emphasis)
Seventh, it interrupts the flow and spread of the kingdom of God on earth, leaving a wide gap in the people of God by taking them away which is clearly not what Jesus prayed for. See John 17:
I am not asking You to take them out of the world, but to keep them away from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. (John 17:15-16)
Jesus second coming restores us to that state before the Fall. Complete atonement! Rendered sinless for His presence. Further, He promised His disciples He would come within their lifetime:
For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:27-28)
Until the return of Christ your redemption is incomplete! When our great high-priest has appeared for us out from the heavenly sanctuary having offered his own blood (as per Leviticus 16 and Hebrews 9), we are assured our salvation is complete (Heb 9:28). He came out long ago!
Ian Thomson 