Like many other evangelical Christians, I grew up in churches that taught a pretrib rapture. Some of us were vaguely aware there were other views, but everyone I knew held to and taught that the rapture would take place before the tribulation. The myriad books and tape sets about the end times all taught a pretrib rapture. After a few years of spiritual wandering I returned to my faith in Christ and to life in the church—a pretrib church. My initial ministry training was in this kind of setting, and so were my earliest teaching experiences. I confidently taught the pretrib rapture as the correct, biblical view.
But then I began to notice two troubling developments. The first was in my difficulty with teaching certain passages from a pretrib perspective. I felt more and more as if I was trying to force a square peg into a round hole. Too often I was taught to limit particular biblical instructions as being for the Jews only, when the text didn’t seem to indicate this at all. I felt the pressure to somehow explain why passages that didn’t seem to be speaking of the rapture really were, and passages that seemed to be speaking of the final return of Christ really weren’t. I wanted to trust all the pretrib books and tape sets, but I was having trouble seeing their claims clearly taught in Scripture.
About this time I was learning to access more advanced biblical commentaries, and I made an interesting observation. It was difficult to find current, scholarly commentaries from a pretrib point of view—and I’m talking about conservative, evangelical commentaries. There were plenty of amillennial commentaries and works from scholars who held a historic premillennial view (i.e. posttrib), but up-to-date pretrib commentaries had somehow become scarce. I discovered that most of my favorite scholars held a posttrib view of the rapture, and historic premillennialism appeared to be the standard view among premil scholars now, not the pretrib view.
How had this happened? Unbeknownst to most ordinary Christians who were reading the latest pretrib bestseller, a quiet exodus from the pretrib viewpoint was taking place. Beginning with highly-respected, New Testament theologian George E. Ladd in the 1950s, more and more premil scholars moved from a pretrib to a posttrib understanding of the return of Christ. And as the seminary and Bible college profs have gone, so have gone the pastors. Pretrib pastors are in the minority in evangelical churches now, and the minority is continuing to shrink. I was part of a denomination that insisted on the pretrib rapture, so I was shocked to discover how many well-respected pastors and leaders no longer held a pretrib view.
Thus began a time of intensive and exhaustive analysis of the differing views and the relevant biblical texts. It will come as no surprise to anyone who’s been reading this blog series that I, too, became convinced that the posttrib view was the more biblically sound one. Why?
The Scriptures never describe the rapture and the final return of Christ to earth as separate events taking place at different times.
We’ve looked at this already in our examination of the pretrib rapture, but this is an incredibly significant insight. One begins to suspect that if a Christian didn’t have any of the many pretrib books, tape sets or prophecy experts—but just relied on the clear teaching of Scripture—they would never come up with a separate rapture event seven years (or three-and-a-half years) before the return of Christ. And history confirms this because no one taught such a view throughout the history of the church until the 19th century. The burden of proof was shifting over to the pretrib view. If I was going to be teaching it, I needed to know why.
The foundational principles I was told supported a pretrib rapture weren’t actually supported by Scripture.
We’ve spent three weeks examining these principles (see the links below), and they are simply not borne out by a careful study of the biblical passages. This left me with no substantive reason for holding onto a pretrib view. And the scriptural patterns I did see, such as God’s protection of his people through the flood and through the plagues of Egypt, tended to support a posttrib understanding more than the pretrib view.
The posttrib view made much better sense of all the scriptural passages.
When I went back through all the prophecies regarding Christ’s second coming—now looking at them from a posttrib perspective—I had a dramatically different result. Scriptures that before were awkward and problematic now flowed together effortlessly. It was as if they had suddenly come into focus. I was fitting square pegs into square holes. Everything fit. I saw that the posttrib view is the natural reading of these biblical passages.
For instance, Matthew 24 is a familiar chapter describing events leading up to the return of Christ. It speaks of wars and rumors of wars; famines and earthquakes that are the beginnings of birth pains; great persecution, great apostasy, and also great evangelism; the abomination of desolation; false messiahs and false prophets performing great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even God’s own people. After seeing how this will all take place, we read this (beginning in verse 29, from the HCSB):
Immediately after the tribulation of those days:
The sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not shed its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the celestial powers will be shaken.Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the peoples of the earth will mourn; and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. He will send out his angels with a loud trumpet, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.
When teaching this chapter from a pretrib understanding, one struggles with the fact that the text certainly seems to be describing the rapture occurring after the tribulation. Pretrib teachers routinely have to explain why this passage doesn’t mean what it seems to mean. But if we set aside a pretrib presupposition, we can simply allow the text to speak for itself. (It’s also revealing that, in a private conversation with his disciples [v. 3], Jesus describes the abomination of desolation that takes place in the middle of the tribulation, and expects that it will be seen by his followers [“when you see . . .” v. 15].)
Here’s another passage that comes into much more clear focus when we take off our pretrib glasses:
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him: We ask you, brothers, not to be easily upset in mind or troubled, either by a spirit or by a message or by a letter as if from us, alleging that the Day of the Lord has come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way. For that day will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he sits in God’s sanctuary, publicizing that he himself is God.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-4
This passage is talking about the ‘Day of the Lord.’ The Thessalonians were apparently worried this day had already taken place. Paul is encouraging them this day won’t occur until after a great apostasy or rebellion takes place, and not until after the Antichrist shows his true colors. And what happens on this Day of the Lord? “the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him.” Notice the passage never distinguishes these as happening at different times, but combines them as part of the same event. This is the natural reading of the text, and any other understanding has to be imposed on it.
Even the most familiar rapture passage makes more sense when read from a posttrib perspective:
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the archangel’s voice, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are still alive will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore, encourage one another with these words.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-18
This is quite a description. The Lord is descending with a shout, with the archangel’s voice, and with the trumpet of God. This doesn’t exactly sound subtle! It doesn’t sound like merely a secret return for his people and then a quick return to heaven. It sounds like the final, cataclysmic return of Christ to earth. If we weren’t forcing this square peg into a round, pretrib hole, that’s the natural reading of the passage. And notice that we’re meeting him, he’s not meeting us. The nuance of the wording implies that he is continuing in his descent, that we are meeting him and accompanying him to earth, he’s not meeting us and accompanying us to heaven. And as we discovered previously, they were accustomed at that time to just such a welcome for returning, victorious kings. They would go out and meet the king, and then accompany him into the city.
With passage after passage, the posttrib understanding is like a square peg fitting naturally into a square hole, and the pretrib perspective is something that has to be forced into the text. Because there is nothing in Scripture that would cause us to distinguish the rapture from the return of Christ, the posttrib view takes the natural reading of the Bible and accepts the rapture as part of the same event.
What does it matter?
Some don’t hold to any particular view on the timing of the rapture. They have a pan-trib (or pan-mil) view: it will all pan out in the end. That’s probably better than being overly dogmatic and fighting over our rapture positions. But I do have a pastoral concern for believers who just assume the pretrib view.
If a Christian believes in a posttrib rapture and God actually raptures his people before the tribulation, this saint is just in for a great surprise. But if believers are expecting to be raptured out of here before the tribulation . . . and they’re not . . . this could be devastating to their faith. This is especially true if they’re not familiar with the historic premillennial (i.e. posttrib) view.
So if you’re reading this series, you believe in a pretrib rapture, and you’re not persuaded by these posts that the posttrib view is the more biblical one—that’s fine. Just please be aware there is another view that many pastors and scholars feel is more faithful to the scriptural witness. And if you start to see some of these end times prophecies being fulfilled and you’re still here(!), realize it doesn’t mean the Bible was wrong. It just means the pretrib teachers were wrong. If that’s the case, and these things are beginning to happen around you, just do what Jesus told us to do:
. . . stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is near!
Luke 21:28
The return of Christ series:
The return of Christ: Keeping the main thing the main thing
Examining the pretrib rapture: Israel and the church
Examining the pretrib rapture: Removed or protected?
Examining the pretrib rapture: Is the rapture imminent?
Examining the pretrib rapture: Assorted claims
The posttrib rapture [see above]
Locusts and dragons and beasts, oh my! (Or the great tribulation)
“Pleased to meet you . . .” (Introducing the Antichrist)
The return of Christ: Odds and ends
In Revelation 1, we read John’s introduction to this book and his description of his initial vision and encounter of the resurrected Lord. In chapters 2 and 3, we have the letters to the 7 churches. But after this—Revelation chapters 4-22—we find no place where the word “church” is used. We often hear it claimed this is because the church is already gone. John doesn’t refer to the church because the church isn’t here. Is this a good interpretation of Scripture?
There are many other passages, in the Old and New Testaments, that stress what this period of time will mean for the people of Israel. It will be a time of unprecedented distress for them, but it will result in their salvation. But remember we’ve 
Do we really want to tell fellow believers who are suffering that the long-awaited end of their suffering is not a blessed hope? Doesn’t suffering only make them long all the more for Jesus to appear and put everything right? And do we really think we’re somehow better than these other Christians? too good to suffer for our faith? If not, wouldn’t our suffering cause this hope to be even more blessed to us?
The last few weeks we’ve been talking about the rapture. After a 
Now, if we look carefully at these verses, we see a familiar problem for the pretrib view. These passages are wonderful reminders that we don’t know exactly when Jesus is returning and so we must stay alert—but they don’t say anything about what will or will not happen before he returns. We simply can’t use these Scriptures to teach that the return of Christ for his people must be an “any-time” event and that nothing has to happen first. These verses don’t tell us that. Just because we don’t know precisely when something is going to happen doesn’t mean there are no other events leading up to this happening. In fact, in the same instructions to his disciples we quote from above, Jesus said this (after describing what would happen at the time of the end):
As the axiom goes, “The Bible can never mean what it never meant.” Whatever these words of Jesus (or Paul, or James) meant to the people to whom they originally spoke or wrote, that’s what they mean to us today as well. The statements about not knowing when he would return and for his people to be ready couldn’t mean that his return for them was imminent because there were still events that had to take place before Jesus’ return. Jesus wasn’t teaching his return could occur at any time and that there were no events that must happen first. And if these instructions didn’t teach an imminent rapture to them, then they don’t to us either.
When the conversation turns to different views of the rapture, some people frankly admit, “I just don’t want to be here for all that terrible stuff!” Now, some of this stems from a perception the tribulation will be seven years of one horror after another. Actually, the Bible seems to indicate that the most dramatic judgments and signs will occur at the very end—some even occurring after the tribulation. It’s as if, in the final moments, all of history builds to a screaming crescendo. We’ll look at this more closely in a future post.
But there’s a problem with this comparison. Where did God pour out his judgment during the flood? On the earth. And where was Noah and his family? On the earth. Did God remove them from the earth before he poured out his righteous anger on a rebellious world? No, he did not. He preserved them through the judgment. They were present on the earth for the entire flood event, but they were supernaturally protected by God. Though they were right in the midst of the flood during this pouring out of God’s wrath, his wrath was not poured out on them. God sheltered them from his judgment.
So every year when the people of Israel observe the Passover, they are commemorating the truth that God chooses his people to save them, not to pour out his wrath on them. But he did this for them by preserving them through the judgment, not by removing them from where the judgment was taking place.
Here we see this protection or ‘keeping safe’ is not accomplished by removing the apostles from the world, but by protecting them while they’re right in the midst of the danger. We really have no reason to assume that Revelation 3:10 means anything other than this same kind of protection. There is nothing in Scripture leading us to think God will remove us from the earth before this period of testing. But we can be sure he’ll protect us from the judgment he will pour out on those who continue to defy him. (The one remaining claim is that the rapture must be imminent, it must be able to happen at any time. We’ll examine this belief next week.)
The pretrib, midtrib, and even pre-wrath views are all variations of the same basic viewpoint. While they may differ on the length of the tribulation, they all agree the rapture is an event that is distinct from the final return of Christ. Whether it’s seven years earlier, three-and-a-half years, or mere months or weeks, all of these views claim that Christ will first return for his church, and then later return with his church. Of course, those who hold the posttrib view would demur. This is the fundamental difference that separates the differing views of the rapture. So we’re going to spend the next few weeks answering this question:
He explained that God’s chosen people of Israel were like a cultivated olive tree, and the Gentile believers were like wild olive branches graciously, but unnaturally, grafted into the cultivated tree. We need to understand it was God’s will for the people of Israel to naturally progress from the Old Covenant into the New. God always intended for the church—the New Covenant people of God—to be the ultimate destination and home for his chosen nation, Israel. (Don’t forget that the original church was thoroughly Jewish.)
The problem for them is that this powerful, historical testimony to God working once again in the national affairs of Israel is happening before the rapture. These events are occurring during what is supposed to be the church age, when God only works with the church, not Israel. So this claim that God works exclusively with either Israel or the church simply doesn’t fit what God is actually doing in history.
When we talk about different views of the return of Christ, many people immediately think of the rapture. Especially since the 1970s, there have been countless books, articles, tape series, and even movies about the rapture. Whether from The Late, Great Planet Earth in the 70s or the Left Behind series of books beginning in the 90s or Harold Camping’s unsuccessful prediction that the rapture would occur May 21, 2011 (and then October 21, 2011), there is strong interest in the rapture. Even the secular media report at times on this fascination with the rapture.
For those who are new to discussing these issues, this is where things can get a little tricky. Remember there are three views Christians hold regarding the millennium: pre-mil, post-mil, and a-mil. [If you don’t recognize these views, you might want to read 
We should remind ourselves that sincere, Christ-loving, Bible-honoring believers hold to each of these views. This doesn’t make all of the views right, but it does mean there’s no need for us to fight and divide over these issues. I’ve stood shoulder-to-shoulder in fellowship and leadership with Christians who held different views on the rapture and millennium. There’s no reason why we can’t vigorously—but graciously—discuss these views while remaining united in the harmony of the essential truths of the gospel and the loving bond of the Spirit. Next week, we’ll begin evaluating these competing views.
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