The Rapture
Are you Pre, Mid, or Post? If you don’t know how
to answer that question, you’re probably a Catholic. Most Fundamentalists
and Evangelicals know that these words are shorthand for pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation, and post-tribulation.
The terms all refer to when the rapture is supposed to occur.
The Millennium
In Revelation 20:1–3, 7–8, we read, "Then I saw
an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key of the bottomless
pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent,
who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw
him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, that he should deceive
the nations no more, till the thousand years were ended. After that he
must be loosed for a little while. . . . And when the thousand years are
ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison and will come out to deceive
the nations which are at the four corners of the earth."
The period of a thousand years, the writer tells
us, is the reign of Christ, and the thousand-year period is popularly called
the millennium. The millennium is a harbinger of the end of the world,
and Revelation 20 is interpreted in three ways by conservative Protestants.
The three schools of thought are called postmillennialism, amillennialism,
and premillennialism. Let’s take a look at them.
Postmillennialism
According to Loraine Boettner in his book The
Millennium (he also wrote the seriously defective anti-Catholic book
Roman Catholicism), postmillennialism is "that view of last things
which holds that the kingdom of God is now being extended in the world
through the preaching of the gospel and the saving work of the Holy Spirit,
that the world eventually is to be Christianized, and that the return of
Christ will occur at the close of a long period of righteousness and peace,
commonly called the millennium."
This view was popular with nineteenth-century Protestants,
when progress was expected even in religion and before twentieth-century
horrors were tasted. Today few hold to it, except such groups as Christian
Reconstructionists, an outgrowth of the conservative Presbyterian movement.
Commentators point out that postmillennialism is
to be distinguished from the view of theological and secular liberals who
envision social betterment and even the kingdom of God coming through purely
natural, rather than supernatural, means. Postmillennialists, however,
argue that man is incapable of building a paradise for himself; paradise
will only come about by God’s grace.
Postmillennialists also typically say that the
millennium spoken of in Revelation 20 should be understood figuratively
and that the phrase "a thousand years" refers not to a fixed period of
ten centuries, but to an indefinitely long time. For example, Psalm 50:10
speaks of God’s sovereignty over all that is and tells us that God owns
"the cattle on a thousand hills." This is not meant to be taken literally.
At the millennium’s end will come the Second Coming,
the general resurrection of the dead, and the last judgment.
The problem with postmillennialism is that Scripture
does not depict the world as experiencing a
period of complete (or relatively complete) Christianization
before the Second Coming. There are numerous passages that speak of the
age between the First and Second Comings as a time of great sorrow and
strife for Christians. One revealing passage is the parable of the wheat
and the weeds (Matt. 13:24–30, 36–43). In this parable, Christ declares
that the righteous and the wicked will both be planted and grow alongside
each other in God’s field ("the field is the world," Matt. 13:38) until
the end of the world, when they will be separated, judged, and either be
thrown into the fire of hell or inherit God’s kingdom (Matt. 13:41–43).
There is no biblical evidence that the world will eventually become totally
(or even almost totally) Christian, but rather that there will always be
a parallel development of the righteous and the wicked until the final
judgment.
Amillennialism
The amillennial view interprets Revelation 20 symbolically
and sees the millennium not as an earthly golden age in which the world
will be totally Christianized, but as the present period of Christ’s rule
in heaven and on the earth through his Church. This was the view of the
Protestant Reformers and is still the most common view among traditional
Protestants, though not among most of the newer Evangelical and Fundamentalist
groups.
Amillennialists also believe in the coexistence
of good and evil on earth until the end. The tension that exists on earth
between the righteous and the wicked will be resolved only by Christ’s
return at the end of time. The golden age of the millennium is instead
the heavenly reign of Christ with the saints, in which the Church on earth
participates to some degree, though not in the glorious way it will at
the Second Coming.
Amillennialists point out that the thrones of the
saints who reign with Christ during the millennium appear to be set in
heaven (Rev. 20:4; cf. 4:4, 11:16) and that the text nowhere states that
Christ is on earth during this reign with the saints.
They explain that, although the world will never
be fully Christianized until the Second Coming, the millennium does have
effects on earth in that Satan is bound in such a way that he cannot deceive
the nations by hindering the preaching of the gospel (Rev. 20:3). They
point out that Jesus spoke of the necessity of "binding the strong man"
(Satan) in order to plunder his house by rescuing people from his grip
(Matt. 12:29). When the disciples returned from a tour of preaching the
gospel, rejoicing at how demons were subject to them, Jesus declared, "I
saw Satan fall like lightning" (Luke 10:18). Thus for the gospel to move
forward at all in the world, it is necessary for Satan to be bound in one
sense, even if he may still be active in attacking individuals (1 Pet.
5:8).
The millennium is a golden age not when compared
to the glories of the age to come, but in comparison to all prior ages
of human history, in which the world was swallowed in pagan darkness. Today,
a third of the human race is Christian and even more than that have repudiated
pagan idols and embraced the worship of the God of Abraham.
Premillennialism
Third on the list is premillennialism, currently
the most popular among Fundamentalists and Evangelicals (though a century
ago amillennialism was). Most of the books written about the End Times,
such as Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth, are written from
a premillennial perspective.
Like postmillennialists, premillennialists believe
that the thousand years is an earthly golden age during which the world
will be thoroughly Christianized. Unlike postmillennialists, they believe
that it will occur after the Second Coming rather than before, so that
Christ reigns physically on earth during the millennium. They believe that
the Final Judgment will occur only after the millennium is over (which
many interpret to be an exactly one thousand year period).
But Scripture does not support the idea of a thousand
year span between the Second Coming and the Final Judgment. Christ declares,
"For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father,
and then he will repay every man for what he has done" (Matt. 16:27), and
"[w]hen the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him,
then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all
the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates
the sheep from the goats. . . . And they [the goats] will go away into
eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Matt. 25:31–32,
46).
The Rapture
Premillennialists often give much attention to
the doctrine of the rapture. According to this doctrine, when Christ returns,
all of the elect who have died will be raised and transformed into a glorious
state, along with the living elect, and then be caught up to be with Christ.
The key text referring to the rapture is 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17, which
states, "For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command,
with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And
the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left,
shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in
the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord."
Premillennialists hold, as do virtually all Christians
(except certain postmillennialists), that the Second Coming will be preceded
by a time of great trouble and persecution of God’s people (2 Thess. 2:1–4).
This period is often called the tribulation. Until the nineteenth century,
all Christians agreed that the rapture—though it was not called that at
the time—would occur immediately before the Second Coming, at the close
of the period of persecution. This position is today called the "post-tribulational"
view because it says the rapture will come after the tribulation.
But in the 1800s, some began to claim that the rapture
would occur before the period of persecution. This position, now known
as the "pre-tribulational" view, also was embraced by John Nelson Darby,
an early leader of a Fundamentalist movement that became known as Dispensationalism.
Darby’s pre-tribulational view of the rapture was then picked up by a man
named C.I. Scofield, who taught the view in the footnotes of his Scofield
Reference Bible, which was widely distributed in England and America.
Many Protestants who read the Scofield Reference Bible uncritically
accepted what its footnotes said and adopted the pre-tribulational view,
even though no Christian had heard of it in the previous 1800 years of
Church history.
Eventually, a third position developed, known as
the "mid-tribulational" view, which claims that the rapture will occur
during the middle of the tribulation. Finally, a fourth view developed
that claims that there will not be a single rapture where all believers
are gathered to Christ, but that there will be a series of mini-raptures
that occur at different times with respect to the tribulation.
This confusion has caused the movement to split
into bitterly opposed camps.
The problem with all of the positions (except the
historic, post-tribulational view, which was accepted by all Christians,
including non-premillennialists) is that they split the Second Coming into
different events. In the case of the pre-trib view, Christ is thought to
have three comings—one when he was born in Bethlehem, one when he returns
for the rapture at the tribulation’s beginning, and one at tribulation’s
end, when he establishes the millennium. This three-comings view is foreign
to Scripture.
Problems with the pre-tribulational view are highlighted
by Baptist (and premillennial) theologian Dale Moody, who wrote: "Belief
in a pre-tribulational rapture . . . contradicts all three chapters in
the New Testament that mention the tribulation and the rapture together
(Mark 13:24–27; Matt. 24:26–31; 2 Thess. 2:1–12). . . . The theory is so
biblically bankrupt that the usual defense is made using three passages
that do not even mention a tribulation (John 14:3; 1 Thess. 4:17; 1 Cor.
15:52). These are important passages, but they have not had one word to
say about a pre-tribulational rapture. The score is 3 to 0, three passages
for a post-tribulational rapture and three that say nothing on the subject.
. . . Pre-tribulationism is biblically bankrupt
and does not know it" (The Word of Truth, 556–7).
What’s the Catholic Position?
As far as the millennium goes, we tend to agree
with Augustine and, derivatively, with the amillennialists. The Catholic
position has thus historically been "amillennial" (as has been the majority
Christian position in general, including that of the Protestant Reformers),
though Catholics do not typically use this term. The Church has rejected
the premillennial position, sometimes called "millenarianism" (see the
Catechism of the Catholic Church 676). In the 1940s the Holy Office
judged that premillennialism "cannot safely be taught," though the Church
has not dogmatically defined this issue.
With respect to the rapture, Catholics certainly
believe that the event of our gathering together to be with Christ will
take place, though they do not generally use the word "rapture" to refer
to this event (somewhat ironically, since the term "rapture" is derived
from the text of the Latin Vulgate of 1 Thess. 4:17—"we will be caught
up," [Latin: rapiemur]).
Spinning Wheels?
Many spend much time looking for signs in the heavens
and in the headlines. This is especially true of premillennialists, who
anxiously await the tribulation because it will inaugurate the rapture
and millennium.
A more balanced perspective is given by Peter,
who writes, "But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord
one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord
is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing
toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach
repentance. . . . Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what
sort of persons ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting
for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens
will be kindled and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire! But
according to his promise we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which
righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you wait for these, be
zealous to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace" (2 Pet.
3:8–14).
NIHIL OBSTAT:
I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR:
In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
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