Will There Be a Rapture?
Dr. Richard J. Krejcir

Yes and no! Yes, Christ is coming back and we will meet Him and it will be spectacular and no words or speculations could ever describe it effectively, especially not in the way most books and TV preachers have sensationalized it. There has been a lot of debate over what the rapture is all about. Most Christians today think it is fact and only seek to argue its particulars or just go by feelings. However in fact, it is not a biblical idea or even a word in the Bible. In fact, even the concept is not in the Bible although it seems so from a simple English reading of the 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 passage.

Do you believe in the rapture?
 
“What’s that,�?he said? ...that we are all going to rise up in the air and be taken to heaven? “Really? Where is that in the Bible,�?my professor responded. A seminary professor told me this years ago and I thought he was nuts! At the same time, I was the deer in front of the headlights. So, I did my research and tried for months to prove him wrong—to no avail. After all, most of my mentors on this subject, like Ray Steadman and Walter Martin, were confident and assured that a seven year tribulation and a Rapture would occur; the only debate, as they and I saw it, was what the order and timing was. My other main mentor, Francis Schaeffer, did not consider this a worthy subject; he was an Amillenialist and Reformed and left it there for more effectual pursuits. Perhaps I should have done the same, but I could not leave this alone. It has to be true; if not, why are so many good people teaching this?
So I engaged this subject enthusiastically and aggressively. I wanted to see for myself. I read all the passages and the books on the Rapture I could. I could not find where in the Bible we could get a Rapture. Yes, I know the passages that Hal Lindsey and others like Scofield used, the ones taught by so many preachers as dogmatic and even essential. The passages used to support a Rapture and a seven year tribulation said nothing to support this. “Why,�?I asked, “were they teaching this? How can they rationalize it?�?I came to the conclusion, after a lot of homework, that they just did not do their homework well. I found that the only way to come up with a Rapture was to read it into the Bible, because it just is not there. Yes, I was disturbed and confused. So I spent months in the Fuller Library pouring over all the books—original Greek, scholarly references, and all that anyone had ever said of it. I hunted what is clearly said in God’s Word, using the Inductive techniques I taught in seminars at that time. I wanted to find not what was popular in my theological tradition, but what was biblical and effectual for our faith. Yes, this was tough; a lot of sleepless nights and struggle were spent to look at what I thought I already knew so well. And, this did not stop as a paper; I then spent another ten years carefully researching all the popular end-times scenarios.

Rapture: Friend or Foe?

After a lot of careful, biblical, exegetical digging and research, I found out the scary story. The Rapture had gone from a campy hook used by evangelists to grab people’s attention to the Gospel to it perhaps becoming a threat to the Church. So many false teachers are gaining so much ground on this and inflecting their misguided influence upon average church members as well as prominent ministers of the Word. Too many people are being duped into false Eschatology, while real, biblical Eschatology is ignored. This has resulted in the local church having a skewed mentality, majoring on the minors and ignoring the majors.

So, let me lay this out for you: all you have to do, if you are honest and you know how to read is to read the Scriptures, pray, and see for yourself.

I have found that a lot of Bible teachers on this subject have no credibility and/or ignore the very teaching of our Lord! They just quote others as fact and do not do the research or else they make grandiose statements without concern for the integrity of the Word. Many on this subject lift themselves up, saying they have a new teaching, when God’s Word remains the same yesterday, today and tomorrow! By the way; this is how it all started. While we start coming up with new doctrines not found in the Bible, there has come an assault from the academic world. The Bible has been at siege since the 19th century liberal moment, and now the siege is coming from inside the church, from ignoring truth and common sense in reading the text and seeing the clear meaning in its context. We must deal with attacks from the secular world, but I believe we should not have to deal with it from within.

What About the Rapture?

Where does this all come from? Look at the text:

According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 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 forever. 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17

Let’s take a look: the context is Paul being “pastoral�?and encouraging his people who were being martyred, and seeing their loved ones killed or imprisoned at worst and at best losing their homes and livelihood. In these extreme tough times, Paul addresses his grieving people with a prophecy to look forward to. He gives a hope to foster them with the consolation of anticipation of what Jesus will do to support them, so they can press on with their persevering faith. The prophecy is real and will come about; the fact of our Lord’s return is a reality that no Christian group that adheres to God’s Word would deny. The questions and debates center on what is not important, and that is the details of when and how this will come about. One of these details is called the Rapture where Christians will be caught up and rise into the air to meet Jesus in the clouds. The passage in English clearly teaches this, or so I thought until a little research told me otherwise. And now, I was faced with a paradigm shift in my eschatological thinking. What I had always thought was not backed up with facts—only presumptions. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 has been the principle passage for this theory. It is interesting to note that none of the Church Fathers nor any of the Reformers or anyone in Church History taught this “theory�?until the 1830’s when heretical groups ignoring the context of the passage, Greek word meaning, and the meaning of the metaphors in question, as what they meant to a first century Jew or Greek.

The word rapture is not in the Bible, which is not a problem since many theological terms are not in the Bible such as Trinity or essential ministries such as Youth Ministry. But, the concept of a rapture cannot be found either. It is, at best, a misunderstanding, and at worst, a cynical, sinister pawn to distract us—the Church—from that to which God is calling us. As a word, rapture is originally from a Latin word meaning "caught up�?or “caught away", and is based on 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17. The exegetical problem is our being “caught up�?with Him as air being lifted up in the sky. Is this what the text actually says? In reality, it was a Greek military term set in Jewish judgment language that is used here; John and His readers would have laughed at our theories! Let’s look at this word-by-word in the Word.

Word of the Lord means Jesus is telling us all that He indeed is coming and when He does it will be loud and clear. This was a term used in other ancient texts for a special visiting king who was celebrated (Matt. 24:27; Luke 22:61; Acts 20:35; 1 Cor. 7:10).
Shout/loud command, refers to a command or a stern summons, and in connection with Trumpet (1 Kings 1:34; Rev. 1:9-20; 9:13; 11:15-19).
Trumpet means God is calling like a war cry, of impeding danger, and for us to pay attention (Ex. 19:16; Psalm 47:5-9; Isa. 31:4; 42:13; Amos 2:2).
Caught up. This is a metaphor for meeting, as in catching up to the party with whom you are meeting. Heed this; an important emissary or king is coming such as one of the Caesars coming to join him and/or to escort Him, or He will escort those who show. Here it indicates that Christ has come, and His angels escort us as we meet Him. This does not mean to rise up in the air, although God can certainty do this if He chooses, but this is not what the text says. This is about the excitement and ecstasy of the event.
Clouds. This means judgment is coming or hear and the end is here, time is up and the coming of the son of man from Daniel. This also means a spectacular event, such as numbers of angels testifying to God’s glory. It could also mean an extraordinary storm of clouds (Ezek. 30:3; 32:7; Joel 2:2; Dan. 7:13; Zech. 12:10; Matt. 16:28; 24:30-31, 34; 26:64; Rev. 1: 1-8).
Meet the Lord in the air means two opposing armies who meet in the middle of a battlefield to discuss terms. Meeting in the air was also a way to say dignitaries are here (which was a great honor), from a city and are meeting with emissaries from another city to escort them to a meeting. Sometimes this meant meeting halfway, like diplomats or generals of opposing armies at a village as a neutral zone. This also meant gathering people to join and/or meet. Here, it is with Jesus when He comes back as a “royal coming�?(Matt. 24:27-31; Acts 17:7). Rapture is the Latin rendering of the Greek word “harpazo.�?The Latin rendering of “raptus�?is where we get the word rapture. It is not from the Bible. This does not mean we get to fly up into the air; we may, but the passage and the others people use to support this theory in the contexts clearly states otherwise.