Happy Halloween everyone! This will be my last Halloween post for 2023. I have touched on horror, the origins of Halloween, and the psuedobiblical concept of hell. Now, I would like to turn to Christianity’s biggest focus this season: the end times. As the church prides itself on nonbelievers going to hell, so do they portray the last humans on earth as facing a swath of horror for not accepting their beliefs. Much of this centers around the prideful and abhorrent doctrine of the rapture.
In the 1990s, evangelicals Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins rose to prominence with their novel series Left Behind. Any churchgoer is likely to have a copy of at least one of the books in this series. Churches almost always have copies of them. You can certainly find a copy, or many, at your local thrift store. If you are lucky enough to have no familiarity with these books, they portray the evangelical interpretation of the end times.
Firstly, let me give you a brief summary of what such fundamentalists believe. One day, out of nowhere, Jesus is going to appear in the sky. Suddenly, members of the church will start floating towards him. They will enter into Heaven with him. Meanwhile, all hell will break loose on earth. The nonbelievers will go to war, one of them rising to global dominance as the antichrist, and anarchy will fill the streets. All the events described in the book of Revelation will lead to human extinction and later, the casting of impure souls into a lake of fire.
Of course, as you may notice, I am highly critical of this concept. Here is a summary by a prominent evangelical in the United States:
“… the Rapture is an event where all who have put their trust in Christ, living and deceased, will suddenly be caught up from the earth, be joined with Christ in the air, and taken to heaven.”1
Is the rapture biblical?
Despite what wholly devoted evangelicals proclaim, the rapture is not a biblical doctrine. We will start by looking at the terminology. Like hell, the rapture appears nowhere in the Bible. The term comes from the Latin word rapio, which Latin-Dictionary.net defines as “destroy, drag off, hurry, pillage, seize, or snatch.” The passage fundamentalists use to proclaim the indelible truth of the rapture is as follows:
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a rousing cry, with a call from one of the ruling angels, and with God’s shofar; those who died united with the Messiah will be the first to rise; then we who are left still alive will be caught up [rapio] with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and thus we will always be with the Lord. So encourage each other with these words. (1 Thess. 4:16-18, CJB)
Now, to begin with, fundamentalists cannot comprehend the heavy use of symbolism in the Bible. They believe every word, even when translated into English, is literal. Attempting to explain metaphor in the Bible to a fundamentalist is akin to trying to teach astrophysics to a first grader. They simply cannot wrap their minds around it, and refuse to have it any other way.
N.T. Wright, a popular biblical theologian, explains the message Paul is attempting to convey in the passage. He identifies three things Paul echoes in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18: the story of Moses descending Mount Sinai with the Law (Ex. 34:29-35), the vindication of saints and their rising to glory with God (Daniel 7), and imagery of an emperor visiting a village, where the townsfolk gather to meet him. Even after explaining this to the fundamentalists, they will still play defensive and imply that the imagery is to conjure up ideas of the rapture.
If you have ever attended a fundamentalist church, you know well that they love word play. “There are three C’s of salvation!” “The three R’s of redemption!” Well, here is a case where word play bites the fundamentalist. They believe Paul is advocating for [R]apture, when in fact, he is arguing for [R]esurrection. Paul writes to encourage the saints who God will vindicate that as Christ was resurrected, so will he resurrect them.2 Paul is attempting to console his audience that those who die in Christ will be raised in Christ. The distortion fundamentalists make is that Christ is simply going to snatch believers, alive or dead, and take them to heaven.
The “Rapture” in Matthew 24
1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 is the favorite “rapture” verse of fundamentalists. When one debunks their misinterpretation of Paul’s letter, they turn to Matthew 24:39-42. In this verse, Jesus claims the following:
“Then there will be two men in a field — one will be taken and the other left behind. There will be two women grinding flour at the mill — one will be taken and the other left behind.” (Matt. 24:40-41).
Here is a case where fundamentalists jump to conclusions. This is a case where they do not stop to think through what is going on. Most significantly, they do not examine the context of the verse they cite. Verses 40-41 are right in the middle of one line of thought. Verse 37 introduces Jesus’ message, that when the son of man comes, it will be like the days of Noah. People were eating and drinking when the flood came out of nowhere and “swept them all away.” So who is left behind?
Fundamentalists immediately use this verse to teach rapture theology. They argue that the one God takes away is righteous, being caught up in the clouds with God. Only, this ignores what Jesus starts the conversation with. As Wright shows, “’taken,’ in this context means being taken in judgment.”3 For a group bent on literalistic interpretations of every word in the Bible, it bewilders me that they cannot grasp context. Jesus’ message is literally right there in front of them. This verse in Matthew has much to do about Jesus’ second coming, but absolutely nothing to do with the mythical “rapture.”
So, how did we get here?
Examine the New Testament and you will find nothing about the rapture. Consult ancient Christian literature and you will find nothing about the rapture. Turn to Christian writings from one thousand, or even five hundred, years ago and you will find no mention of the rapture. This off-the-walls concept is practically brand new. There is zero history of rapture theology… until the nineteenth century.
Rapture theology, as Americanized as it has become, actually originated in Britain. A man by the name of James Nelson Darby started this unquenchable fundamentalist movement. The idea of Jesus returning to earth was not new, however; what Darby introduced was the idea that Jesus would return twice.4 According to Darby, Christ will return once secretly to snatch churchgoers and take them to Heaven, then again to establish his kingdom on earth after the tribulation.5
Darby traveled to the United States where rapture theology caught fire. Furthermore, he created a new theological system known as Dispensationalism. For the sake of space, I will not give full treatment to this belief. What I want to highlight is that it invigorates rapture theology. A proud dispensationalist who lacked theological training wrote The Scofield Reference Bible.6 This is the first “Bible” to address the rapture. Ironically, despite being a “reference Bible,” it was written by someone who had no theological education. And fundamentalists are okay with that.
Conclusion
Friends, the rapture is not real. It is not going to happen. Fundamentalists like to believe that they are special and will not face the wrath of God. This pseudotheology consoles them. Like believing in the unbiblical concept of hell, it allows them to assume a “holier-than-thou” attitude. Because they are so special, they are going to enter heaven while all us non-churchgoers suffer and die in Armageddon. Before God casts us into the lake of fire, of course.
By far the gravest implication of rapture theology is that it promotes complacency. Fundamentalists are so enchanted by the rapture that they believe they will not face any repercussions when the end comes… Because it is coming, they say! Soon! If the world is going to end next week, why care about the environment? Why fight world hunger? Why put an end to all the wars going on? They do not need to worry about these things, only their enemies, the nonbelievers!
Again, as I have discussed in each of these Halloween posts, Christians resent horror. If you watch Halloween or Friday the 13th, you are a no-good sinner who is going to face supreme suffering. The only way horror can be redeemable is if you use it to advance a theological message that Christians are better than everyone else. Everyone else will be left behind to suffer in misery for seven years, then have their souls tormented for eternity. And yet, horror movies are bad? I have questions.
Happy Halloween, everyone. Do not let the church ruin your festivities. Have fun. Be safe. Remember, you are not going to hell. You will not be left behind. The fundamentalists want you to turn or burn. It’s too bad the Bible does not promote this ill-fated lie.
- David Jeremiah, “What is the Rapture?,” The David Jeremiah Blog, https://davidjeremiah.blog/what-is-the-rapture/
2. Barbara R. Rossing, The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation. New York: Basic Books, 2007. Accessed October 31, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central, 175. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/liberty/reader.action?docID=879536#
3. Wright, Jesus Victory of God V2: Christian Origins and the Question of God. Minneapolis: 1517 Media, 1997, 366.
4. Barbara R. Rossing, 22
5. Ibid.
6. Erik Reed, “Is the Rapture Taught in the Bible?,” Knowing Jesus Ministries, 2022, https://www.knowingjesusministries.co/articles/is-the-rapture-taught-in-the-bible/