Gone?
Why the Rapture doctrine is being left behind.
Rapture, Antichrist, and Tribulation are words Josiah Hesse associates with his apocalyptic upbringing—an upbringing he says was built on “the urgency of avoiding hell.”
In his article “Apocalyptic upbringing: how I recovered from my terrifying evangelical childhood,” Hesse looks back on a stormy night in his Iowa town when he was 10 years old and home alone because his parents were running late after being out for the evening. Unsure of their whereabouts, he feared they had been raptured, and he had been left behind.1
After grabbing snacks, juice boxes, a knife, and his Bible, young Josiah ran down to the basement. He knew being left behind would mean hiding from the Antichrist and denying the mark of the Beast—a branding that seals your doom. All of a sudden, he heard the sound of his parents returning home, relieving his apocalyptic anxiety. However, Hesse said he carried the same anxiety into adulthood, finally jettisoning the theology of his youth and, sadly, his faith as well.
Josiah Hesse represents a vast number of Christians who, for one reason or another, have abandoned belief in the Rapture of the church—the doctrine that Jesus will snatch His church to heaven in an instant, and only true believers will see Him (1 Cor. 15:52; 1 Th. 4:16–17).
What happened to this once-popular theology? Why do so many evangelical Christians reject it today?
The Pop Culture of the Rapture
Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye’s wildly successful, 16-book series Left Behind introduced eschatology (the doctrine of future things) to a much broader audience by merging popular fiction with premillennial and pretribulational Rapture doctrine. People who are premillennial believe Jesus will return physically to Earth before setting up a literal Messianic Kingdom over which He will rule for 1,000 literal years. People who are pretribulational believe Jesus will rapture His church before seven years of unparalleled tribulation afflict the entire world.
From 1995 to 2007, Left Behind unhinged the Rapture from the confines of a Sunday sermon and made it the framework of suspense novels that Christians and non-Christians alike discussed at the watercooler. Everyone was enraptured with the Rapture.
In the past, books and videos—such as Hal Lindsey’s bestseller The Late Great Planet Earth and the film A Thief in the Night—raised awareness about the pretribulational Rapture. But nothing connected Rapture theology to contemporary pop culture like Left Behind. Seven books from the series rose to number one on The New York Times Best Seller list, selling more than 63 million copies worldwide.
As the Rapture gained exposure in the secular world, it rapidly devolved from theology into theater. 30 Rock, a popular sitcom that aired on NBC, featured a character named Kenneth Parcell, a dedicated NBC page and outspoken charismatic Christian. In one episode, Parcell leaves his job after his pastor tells him the so-called date of the Rapture. When the date arrives, Kenneth dons a shirt with the word Rapture across the front and says his final goodbyes to his friends, only to find out the next day it was all a hoax.
The episode aired shortly after Harold Camping, the late president of Family Radio, spent more than $100 million advertising his particular version of a doomsday event that he said would remove Christians from Earth on May 21, 2011.2 (Camping was neither premillennial nor pretribulational, nor did he believe in the Rapture as taught by The Friends of Israel.)
CAN WE STILL BELIEVE IN THE RAPTURE?
Don’t fear the culture’s criticism of the Rapture! See why the Bible gives us reason to hope in Can We Still Believe in the Rapture? By Ed Hindson and Mark Hitchcock.
The national news media waited to see if Christians would suddenly disappear. When May 21 came and went and Camping was still here, the then 89-year-old recalculated his numbers and came up with Oct 21, 2011. Yet again, the day came and went. Unfortunately, many people who could not distinguish between the biblical doctrine of the Rapture and Camping’s unique stance mocked the Rapture all the more.
Christians who believe in the Rapture are often portrayed as escapists who are out of touch with reality and ready to leave this world and all its problems behind. Consequently, this once-beloved teaching has eroded. Some Christians don’t want to associate with a belief that is mocked publicly or abused by date-setters, so they distance themselves from it; and this distancing appears more in the pulpit than in the pew.
From Culture to Christian Education
In Christian higher education, students are introduced to multiple ways of interpreting Scripture. They learn biblical history, different theological perspectives, and the development of doctrine.
Christian education is definitely worthwhile, yet most Christian colleges today disregard the value of the pretribulational Rapture and view it negatively. Today the Rapture is not taught as biblical doctrine but, instead, as a byproduct of apocalyptic evangelicalism that started with 19th-century British Bible teacher John Nelson Darby. Students who once sat under a pastor who taught about the Rapture from God’s Word become more susceptible to abandoning the doctrine altogether after they graduate from college or seminary.
In a 2016 LifeWay Research telephone survey of 1,000 Protestant senior pastors, one third said they believe in the literal Rapture of the church. However, of those pastors, 60 percent have no college degree. Only 26 percent of those who earned a master’s degree believe the church will be raptured at the appearance of Christ in accordance with 1 Thessalonians 4:17.3
The survey also showed that pastors under 45 are less likely to believe in a pretribulational Rapture and more likely to believe the Rapture will occur simultaneously with Christ’s Second Coming.4
It’s no coincidence pastors under 45 with advanced degrees are forsaking the pretribulational view. Christian higher education over the past 20 years has shied away from treating this doctrine with the seriousness it deserves, and we are reaping the results.
When actor Nicholas Cage starred in the reboot of the Left Behind movie in 2014, Dr. William Lane Craig, research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and professor of philosophy at Houston Baptist University, said Christians should enjoy the movie but beware of the theology behind it.
According to Craig, the pretribulational Rapture is an unbiblical doctrine held by good Christians who lack the insight to disprove it. “It is astonishing, if I’m correct about this,” he said, “American evangelism is very widely misled, that it has departed from the historic Christian position about the second coming of Christ. That’s really rather sobering, because if we’re wrong about this, what other things might we have misinterpreted?”5
When we ask why the Rapture isn’t being taught much today from pulpits, at least two places we can look for answers are pop culture and Christian higher education. Together they have produced an apathy, which trickles down from the puplit to the parishioner, toward this important end-times doctrine.
Hopefully, the Rapture’s relevancy will resurface if believers sincerely examine the texts for themselves. There are plenty of valid biblical arguments to persuade any Bible-believing Christian that the pretribulational Rapture is the blessed hope of the imminent return of Christ and the resurrection of His church.
ENDNOTES
- Josiah Hesse, “Apocalyptic upbringing: how I recovered from my terrifying evangelical childhood,” The Guardian, April 5, 2016 <goo.gl/mv4huj>.
- Christopher Goffard, “Harold Camping is at the heart of a mediapocalypse,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2011 <goo.gl/9D75Dw>.
- Bob Smietana, “Only One-Third of Pastors Share ‘Left Behind’ End Times Theology,” Christianity Today, April 26, 2016 <goo.gl/uo43vd>.
- Ibid.
- Morgan Lee, “No, Christians Should Not Believe in ‘Left Behind’s’ Rapture Theology, Says Prominent Christian Philosopher,” The Christian Post, July 30, 2014 <goo.gl/cVrwMf>.
Through personal Bible study, and some excellent online writers and their articles, I also came to reject the so-called ‘Pre-Trib’ teaching I was raised with. However, as we can see from this very article, the term ‘Rapture’ itself is nuanced. Do I still believe that “Jesus will snatch His church to heaven in an instant”? Yes. Do I believe that only “true believers will see Him”? No. So do I believe in the Rapture? Does William Lane Craig? We reject the Pre-Trib spin on this, but still accept the concept of being ‘taken’ i.e. timing and context is everything! Is the doctrine itself being ‘left behind’ as the intro to this article states? Not necessarily — for some like myself, it is being ‘corrected’.
Not a statement of my own personal opinion
Just wanted to say that we were given a copy of this article on church this morning and I found it to be fascinating. I felt compelled to locate the full article online. This is a great read, and very thought provoking. Thank you for this great piece.
I was raised in Darby’s movement, the so-called “Plymouth Brethren.” I was taught Premillenialism from an early age and I still accept it. I believe in a literal tribulation and literal millenium. Christ’s return is indeed a blessed hope. But I have changed my mind about the timing of the rapture. I have gone from pre-trib to post-trib based on my own private study of the Scriptures.
Chris, I recently published a book, “The Second Coming of Jesus Christ” that shows why the pre-trib timing of the rapture cannot possibly be correct. As many pastors apparently are finding, there is only one coming of Jesus, not two, where the imagined pre-trib coming for the church doesn’t count as his coming because His feet do not touch the ground. If the pastors under the age of 45 are rejecting the pre-trib position, it is not because they have abandoned the truth. It is because the church has made serious mistakes in its “detective work” in constructing the second coming timeline. Pre-trib doesn’t make sense and requires taking serious liberties with the Word of God to make things fit. The big mistake everyone makes is assuming that Matthew 24:29-31 at the end of the Olivet Discourse occurs at the end of the 7-year period. Its does not… It perfectly matches the 6th seal in the book of Revelation, which occurs before the 7th seal, which occurs before the trumpets, and we know that the 5th trumpet lasts for 5 months. Armageddon happens at the 7th trumpet, so the second coming in Matthew 24:29-31 occurs some unknown time after the great tribulation (which begins at the abomination of desolation – the midpoint of the 7-year time period) but at least 5 months before Armageddon (which occurs at the end of the 7-year period). With this understanding, Jesus returns, raptures His church, saves all of the Jews, and then the wrath of God is poured out during “The Day of the Lord” for at least 5 months. The rapture is really the “rescue” event that saves believers and Jews from (1) persecution by Antichrist, and (2) The Day of the Lord wrath of God that follows. With this timeline, every end-times prophetic passage falls into place and all of the inconsistencies with pre-trib go away. For example, if the pre-trib position were true, then do new believers saved after the rapture experience God’s wrath? The answer is of course not. But, then why did we need a pre-trib rapture in the first place. Was it God just saying, “Surprise, I came when you least expected – I caught you red-handed doing something bad!” Of course not; that’s kind of silly. Jesus comes and raptures His church for an important reason; He needs to rescue Christians and Jews from great persecution by Antichrist. He tells us that nobody would survive if He waited any longer. He cuts the tribulation short and returns for the sake of the elect. Jesus also tells us in Mathew 24 that he delays coming until the gospel is preached to all the (gentile) nations fulfilling the great commission. The “end of the age” in Matthew 28 (and repeated in Matthew 24, prompting the Olivet Discourse) is the second coming and rapture (notice how Jesus keeps telling us as He describes events leading to His second coming that it is not the end yet). He waits as long as He can for people to get saved, but not so long that every believer is slaughtered from the persecution of Antichrist. My book goes into much more detail on all of this. I hope you will take the opportunity to read my book and I would love to talk with you personally. It is important, especially if we are living in the last days, for the church to get this right.