The
Rapture
UP, UP AND AWAY? –
MAYBE NOT!!!!!
By Anthony M. Coniaris
As I was driving one day I
encountered a bumper sticker admonishing me: “WARNING! In the event of
Rapture, this car will be driverless.”
The strange belief in the Rapture
teaches that some day (sooner rather than later), without warning, born-again
Christians will begin to float up from the freeway, abandoned vehicles
careening wildly. There will be airliners in the sky suddenly with no one
at the controls! Presumably, God is removing these favored ones from
earth to spare them the tribulation of the Anti-Christ which the rest of us will
have to endure.
Unfortunately the Rapture has been
promoted widely by the Left Behind series of books that have sold over 70
million copies.
The Rapture represents a radical
misinterpretation of Scripture. I remember watching “Sixty Minutes”a year
ago and was appalled to hear the announcer say that “the Rapture is an
unmistakenly Christian doctrine”. It is not!
It is a serious distortion of
Scripture. It is astonishing that a belief so contrary to Scripture and
the tradition of the Church could be propagated by so-called “Christians”.
According to the Bible and
according to the belief not only of Orthodox Christians but also of the Roman
Catholic and most Protestant mainline churches, the true Rapture will not be
secret; it will be the great and very visible Second Coming of Jesus at the end
of the world. That is the one and only “Rapture”. It will not be a
separate, secret event but one that every eye shall see (1 Thess. 4:16-17).
The word rapture is not found in Scripture
but hearkens to 1 Thess. 4:17 where St. Paul says that when the Lord comes
again “we who are alive…shall be caught up…in the clouds to meet the Lord in
the air.” This “being caught up…in the clouds”—arpagisometha in Greek, is
translated by some as “raptured”. The word itself is not found in
Orthodox theology.
The notion of a rapture in which
Christ comes unseen to take believers away secretly, and only later comes back
again for everyone else publicly—this whole teaching is quite novel. It
was almost unheard of until John Nelson Darby formulated it in the 1800s as
part of a new approach to the Bible, sometimes called “dispensationalism”.
The purpose of the “Rapture” is to
protect the elect from the tribulations of the end times. Yet Jesus said
nothing about sparing anyone from tribulation. In fact, He said, “In the
world you have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the
world.” Nowhere did Jesus ever say that He would return secretly to
rapture the elect. Rather, He promised to be with His elect in all
tribulations. “Lo, I am with you always. I will never leave you or
forsake you.” He even had something good to say about being persecuted:
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:10).
Those who espouse the Rapture
claim that Matthew 24:40-41 refers clearly to the rapture of the just, “Then
shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other
left.” The entire passage, however, refers to Christ’s second coming
where He will judge the living and the dead and separate the just from the
unjust.
Darby taught as dogma that when
the Scriptures reveal that the Lord will reign on earth for a thousand years
(Rev. 20:4), this figure is to be taken literally, rather than as a symbol for
eternity as we believe. The Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 condemned as
heresy this teaching which is called chialiasmos (millenianism or 1000
years). In fact, the Seven Ecumenical Councils (325-787 A.D.) in which
the essential truths of the Christian faith were defined never mention a
rapture. Yet evangelical Christians and Pentecostals keep using obscure
passages of the book of Revelation which purport to give a detailed timetable
of what will happen at the end of the world, despite the fact that Jesus
Himself warned that no man knows either the day or the hour when the Son of Man
shall return.
A major problem with the Rapture
is that it ends up teaching not two but three comings of Jesus—first His birth
in Bethlehem; second, His secret coming to snatch away (rapture) the
“born-again”; and third, His coming at the end of the world to judge the living
and the dead and to reign in glory. Yet only two not three comings of
Christ are mentioned in the Bible. We have the clearest definition of
this in the Nicene Creed when we confess that “the Lord Jesus Christ…will come
again in glory to judge the living and the dead. His Kingdom will have no
end…. I expect the resurrection of the dead. And the life of the
ages to come.” There is no mention of a “Rapture”.
As already stated, most
Christians, Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Protestants do not believe in the
Rapture. In fact, one Protestant pastor, John L. Gray, summarized
magnificently what we Orthodox and most other Christians believe about the
Rapture when he wrote these remarkable words, “Though many believe and
teach this “Pre-Tribulation Rapture” theory, they erroneously do so, because
neither Jesus, Paul, Peter, John, nor any of the other writers of the Bible
taught this. Nor did the early church fathers, nor any others for many
hundreds of years…. Did you know that NONE of this was ever taught prior
to 1812, and that all forms of Pre-Tribulation Rapture teaching were developed
since that date? …. If I were to preach something, or believe something,
supposedly from the Bible, but cannot find that ANYONE ELSE before 1812 ever
believed it or taught it, I would seriously question that it is based on the
Bible.”
Thus the Rapture is foreign to the
Bible and to the living tradition of the Church. It is what we call a
heresy, a false teaching. False teachings, such as this, happen when people—like
John Darby—believe that they have the right to interpret the Scriptures
individually apart from the Living Body of Christ—the Church—where the Spirit
of Truth abides and leads us to all truth.
I can think of no better words to
conclude than those of Jesus when He speaks of the one and only “Rapture”, the
Second Coming: “Be on guard. Be alert! You do not know when that
time will come…keep watch…if he comes suddenly, do not let Him find you
sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: Watch!” (Mark
13:32-37).
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