The Origin of the Rapture
The Origin of the Rapture
The Hoax That Fooled America
I’m not a believer in the “Rapture” for several important reasons:
The Rapture is not in the Bible
Again, it isn’t in the Bible.
The Rapture is a new teaching - it is only 200 years old!
I am writing a series of articles addressing the Rapture and the Bible, but in this post, I would like to focus on #3, that the Rapture is a rather new teaching, compared to the creeds and essentials of our faith.
Most people assume that the Rapture was the way that the early church believed about the end times - that Jesus would come and snatch the church away before the great tribulation and then return again as a warrior to wipe out the heathens. But in reality, the Rapture wasn’t a teaching for the first 1800 years of the Church. Think about that for a sec.
None of the Apostles believed in the Rapture, nor the Church Fathers, nor the saints of the church. No one until the last 200 years.
For all of church history, followers of Jesus believed in the second coming of Jesus, but not a Rapture.
The Rapture didn’t surface until the 1800s with a guy named John Nelson Darby (1800–1882). He was ordained in the Church of Ireland and founded the Plymouth Brethren. Legend has it that Darby heard about the idea of the rapture from a 15-year old Margaret MacDonald, who during a healing service, had a vision of a two-stage return of Jesus. Everyone believed that Jesus would return, but this new vision had an initial return in which Jesus would come for his church and remove them from the world. Darby ran with this idea and developed dispensationalism: the belief that history is divided up into seven time periods that correspond to the seven churches in Revelation. In dispensationalism, we are in the last age of the church waiting for the coming(s) of Christ.
Darby evangelized America with the Rapture theory and won over many people during his campaigns in the United States between 1859-1877. His teachings became so popular that they were included in the famous Scofield Reference Bible. The Rapture belief spread throughout America, eventually become the foundation for the famous books: The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey and the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. The rest is history.
Why talk about the Rapture? I believe it is a dangerous heresy. Dr. Barbara Rossing says it plainly:
“THE RAPTURE IS A RACKET. Whether prescribing a violent script for Israel or survivalism in the United States, this theology distorts God’s vision for the world. In place of healing, the Rapture proclaims escape. In place of Jesus’ blessing of peacemakers, the Rapture voyeuristically glorifies violence and war. In place of Revelation’s vision of the Lamb’s vulnerable self-giving love, the Rapture celebrates the lion-like wrath of the Lamb. This theology is not biblical. We are not Raptured off the earth, nor is God. No, God has come to live in the world through Jesus. God created the world, God loves the world, and God will never leave the world behind!” Barbara Rossing - The Rapture Exposed
Almost every denomination in America denies the Rapture as a doctrine or article of faith. But most Christians assume that the Rapture theory is written in stone.
The Rapture is a hoax and we have been fooled by it.
"When Jesus comes back, it's not to snatch people away from earth but rather to transform earth with the life of Heaven and to transform us as well. He doesn't come back to take us away, but to heal the world and to heal and transform his people." N.T. Wright
It is time to Unlearn the Rapture and realize the Bible’s story is one of healing, not of escape. It is time to Rethink Revelation and realize the we are invited to be faithful witnesses of the slaughtered Lamb who sits on the throne.