The Rapture: What If Being “Left Behind” is the Better Option?

Just a few seconds were enough to terrify me. It was a Sunday night in the 1970s, and for the evening service, my church was viewing a film about the rapture called, “A Thief in the Night.” We were warned it was scary. That’s why I, along with all the other young children, weren't actually in the auditorium. We were dropped off in the church nursery to spend the evening with building blocks and board books that I’d already read dozens of times. But my curiosity got the better of me. On one wall of the nursery was a window covered by a large drape. Behind that curtain was the lobby that led into the auditorium. I lifted the corner of the curtain and peered out through the window, across the lobby, and up the center aisle to the screen where the film was showing. Honestly, I don’t remember what I saw, but just the muffled sounds of the film, the darkness of the room, and the notion that what was happening in there would cause nightmares was enough to jolt my hand off the curtain as I turned to run. 

Fast forward a good twenty years, and we all became experts on the end times as we devoured the apocalyptic novel Left Behind. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ series of books sold over 80 million copies, and I devoured them all. I think I knew enough to remember I was reading fiction, but the storylines still played with my theological imagination. I could summarize the message I took away from the series this way: Make sure you’re part of the rapture so you don’t have to live through hell on earth.

But then, a funny thing happened. I actually studied the book of Revelation, and I couldn’t find the rapture in there anywhere.

Now, I know I am treading on volatile ground here. It seems there are two kinds of people when it comes to end times theology: those who passionately defend their views and those who don’t even bother with it. Admittedly, I’ve lived most of my adult life in more of the second category, but I’m now trying to live somewhere in the middle. I want to have an open curiosity about such things, accepting mystery in the things we just can’t know, while also taking hold of things that have implications for how we live as disciples of Jesus today. 

So, let me share some things I’ve learned about the rapture.

What was most surprising to me was that for the first 1800 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, no one talked about it. It is crazy to think that if we were to time travel through history and meet the early church fathers and the great theologians, none of them would tell us about a rapture. And I don’t think it’s because they all were somehow in the “don’t even bother with it” group.

Our contemporary views on rapture theology appear to have their origins in two people who lived across the pond in the 1800s. The first was a 15-year old girl named Margaret McDonald who experienced a vision of the end of the world in 1820. In her vision, a chosen few were saved from a purifying fire. At some point, McDonald’s vision was published and circulated throughout Europe.

I’m not sure if the second individual was influenced by McDonald’s vision or not, but an English evangelist named John Darby is the person who put some theological flesh around the idea of Christians being removed from the earth prior to a time of great tribulation. He traveled to the United States several times in the mid-1800s teaching his theory of the rapture. 

One of the people influenced by Darby’s teachings was a man named Cyrus Scofield, and he did something never done before. He put together the very first Study Bible, a Bible that included interpretive notes in the pages of the text. Scofield had no formal theological training himself, but he picked up on Darby’s teachings and included them in his revolutionary Scofield Reference Bible. 

His Bible sold like hotcakes and was widely read throughout England and the United States influencing countless people including prominent pastors and leaders like D.L. Moody. Moody accepted this teaching on the rapture and spread it across America.

The idea picked up steam in the 1970s when Hal Lindsey published his bestselling book, The Great, Late Planet Earth and again in the 1990s in the Left Behind craze I mentioned earlier. And so here we are, 200 years after a 15-year-old girl had a vision, and millions of people believe in a theological idea that in view of human history is relatively new.

I think that should give us pause.

So, what does Scripture really say about the idea of a rapture? The New Testament scholars and theologians I’ve been reading would say “nothing.” As I mentioned, you won’t find it in Revelation. But let’s briefly look at two passages that seem to be at the heart of rapture theology. The first is found in Matthew 24. Take a moment to read it:

“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 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.” -Matthew 24:36-41

This is the passage I think of most in conjunction with the idea of a rapture. I remember as a kid, imagining two guys walking in a field when suddenly one of them is whisked up into the sky. I think of two women preparing a meal when poof! One of them disappears. When I read this passage, I always thought the two who disappeared were “raptured.”

However, look a little closer at the passage. There is a very important phrase in the second sentence that is key to accurately interpreting the passage: “As it was in the days of Noah…” Matthew is using the Old Testament story of Noah as a metaphor for how it will be when Jesus returns. What happened in the days of Noah? The good people were put into the ark. The evil people were swept away by a flood. Then Matthew says, “That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.” So, when you read about the two men and the two women in the next verse, you don’t want to be the one swept away, you want to be the one left behind! Anyone who wants to use this passage to describe a rapture has the wrong people leaving! (Thanks to scholar Shane Wood for this insight.)

So, what about that other passage? The one about meeting Jesus in the air? This is the passage most frequently used to argue for a rapture.

“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 4:16-17

To understand this passage, we need to ask ourselves what Paul was intending to communicate through it. Why was he writing what he wrote? What was the context? It’s right there in the letter. If we back up to verse 13, Paul writes:

“Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.” 1 Thessalonians 4:13

This church had members who were dying before the second coming of Jesus, and they were concerned about what was happening to these dearly loved family members and friends. What Paul is reminding them of in this passage is not a rapture, but a resurrection. As I argued in a previous post, when the Biblical writers looked ahead to the future, their focus was on a bodily resurrection in a new heaven and a new earth. We’re not “going up there,” Jesus is “coming down here.” Paul is reassuring the Thessalonians that those who have died in Christ will be raised when Jesus comes again, and that those who are still living will be reunited with them. He’s not trying to argue for a new theology of a rapture in these few short verses; he’s reinforcing the important Christian belief of resurrection.

I really am fascinated by how a theology that has no reliable grounding in Scripture and had not been taught as part of the historic, global Christian faith for the first eighteen hundred years could have become so accepted and pervasive. 

Doesn’t it give you pause? I think it should.

So, how did this theology become so widely accepted? I think because we wanted it to be true. It sounded good to us. It soothed our fears. We found it comforting. And so, we embraced it as truth.

Learning what I’ve learned about the rapture over these past few years hasn’t shaken my faith in God or the truth of his Word, but it has made me more deeply aware of the fallibility of human beings. We can get stuff really wrong and yet be so vocal and confident while doing it.

May the lesson of the rapture keep us humble and keep us honest as we seek to live lives faithful to Christ and his teachings.