In this clip, Cy Kellett talks with apologist Jimmy Akin about the concept of the ‘rapture’ and whether or not it has biblical roots. Jimmy clarifies the meaning of the term, tracing it back to St. Paul’s writings in 1 Thessalonians, and discusses the historical context that shaped these teachings.
Transcript:
Cy: We’re gonna talk about the eschaton. Is the rapture part of it? Like, is that a real thing? And how should we respond to this rapture theology that’s all around us?
Jimmy: Well, it depends on what you mean. So there is an event that St. Paul describes in 1st Thessalonians 4:17 that has been called the Rapture. Now, raparemur in Latin means to be caught away. And so that’s where the idea of that’s where the term rapture comes from. This is not a term that’s in the Bible. It’s a Latin term. And it actually can also mean to kidnap, but it also means to catch away.
And there is a passage in 1st Thessalonians 4 where St. Paul is talking about how at a certain point in time in the future, believers in Christ will be caught up to be with Christ and meet him in the air. The context in which St. Paul is saying this now, you gotta understand a little bit of the backstory of St. Paul’s history with the Church of Thessalonica. He did go to Thessalonica, and he founded a church there. You can read about this in the Book of Acts.
But he only got to stay there for three weeks because the Jews in the city had a riot and he had to get out of Dodge. And he ended up going down to Athens, which is on the same peninsula that Thessalonica is, just down the peninsula from Thessalonica. He was very anxious about what’s going to happen with his converts that he was with for only three weeks. I mean, can you imagine how much of the Christian faith you would have learned in three weeks if you had not been a Christian?
Well, he was concerned about them and their faith, and he was afraid they were going to fall away since he didn’t have the chance to stabilize them in their faith. And so he was overjoyed when he got word that, hey, they’re sticking with the faith, they still believe in Jesus and so forth.
And he thus wrote 1st Thessalonians when he got this word that they’re doing okay in their faith, but they had some misunderstandings because he hadn’t been able to teach them very much. One of the things they had was apparently the idea, because, you know, you need to repent before Jesus comes back if you want to participate in his kingdom. Remember, that’s the gospel. You need to repent and turn back to him.
And the Thessalonians had gotten this idea that you need to do that before you die. They’d gotten the idea that in order to participate in Jesus’ Kingdom, you need to be alive at the time he comes back. And they were concerned because at least somebody, maybe several somebodies in the Thessalonian Church had died after Paul’s visit. They were afraid that, oh man, you know, Bob and Alice died. They’re not gonna get to be part of Christ’s kingdom. They’re not gonna be alive when he comes back.
And so St. Paul was writing to comfort them and say, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don’t worry about Bob and Alice. It’s gonna be okay for them. And so he tells them in 1st Thessalonians 4 that actually when Christ returns, the dead in Christ will rise first, and only then will we living Christians be caught up to be with Jesus in the air. And then we’ll always get to be with Jesus. So we’re not going to be left abandoned. We’re always going to be with him. It’s going to be great. Don’t worry. And don’t worry about Bob and Alice and anybody else who’s died. Now, Ted and Carol, they might be a different matter, but Bob and Alice, they’re gonna be okay.
Cy: 1970s film reference. In case anyone’s wondering.
Jimmy: A film I’ve actually never seen.
Cy: I don’t think I have either.
Jimmy: Yeah, but. So that’s what he’s doing here. What he does not do is say, well, once we get caught up and we’re always going to be with the Lord, what happens next?
And according to that school I mentioned at the top of hour number one, dispensationalism, what’s gonna happen is Jesus is gonna do a U-turn. He’s gonna come down, the dead Christians are gonna be raised, the living Christians are gonna be caught up with him, and then he’s gonna do a U-turn and go right back to heaven and stay there for a number of years, commonly seven years, sometimes three and a half years.
And while he’s doing that, all hell’s gonna break out on Earth. This is a period called the Tribulation. Tribulation is just a fancy word. It means trouble. So this is the time of great trouble. And the Antichrist is gonna be doing bad stuff and so forth. And then finally, at the end of the tribulation, Jesus is gonna come down out of heaven and squash the Antichrist and reign on Earth for a thousand years, physically present on Earth for a thousand years before the actual end of the world.
And then at the end of the thousand years, there’s gonna be a final unleashing of the forces of evil, and then we’re gonna get the general resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment and the beginning of the eternal order. So the people who actually use the word Rapture for this event in 1st Thessalonians are viewing it as part of a larger complex of events where after the Rapture, people go back up to heaven and stay there during the tribulation, and then they come back for a thousand-year reign of Christ on Earth, followed by the final unleashing of the forces of evil and the Last Judgment and all that stuff.
So people who use the term rapture for this event are presupposing this whole complex of events. And so I can understand it if someone who does not believe the whole complex wants to say, yeah, I don’t believe in the Rapture.
Cy: I see, yeah, because you’re using a shorthand for the whole thing.
Jimmy: Yeah, for the whole thing, yeah. Whereas you’d be confusing someone into thinking you believe all this big complex model when really you don’t. But I can also understand someone, and I tend to do this myself, saying, well, yeah, there’s this event in 1st Thessalonians 4 where believers get caught up to be with Jesus. And if you want to call it the Rapture, that’s fine with me.
And so I would say I don’t have a problem saying there’s a Rapture; we just need to understand it correctly. And then I’ll go on to explain how I think we need to understand it. So I always like to follow St. Paul’s instructions to Timothy where he tells Timothy to remind his congregations not to fight about words because it only ruins the hearers.
And so if you don’t have time to explain, then I’d say, yeah, or if you don’t have the knowledge needed to explain, then yeah, you could just say, I don’t believe in the Rapture. But if you do have time to explain, I tend to want to embrace people and say, yeah, I don’t have any problem with the idea of the Rapture; we just need to understand it correctly.
So what’s the correct understanding? Well, as I mentioned, dispensationalism is only about 200 years old. So previous Christians, including the Protestant reformers, did not believe that whole theory I just sketched out about there’s going to be a Rapture and a tribulation and a thousand. They didn’t buy that whole theory. Some would believe pieces of it. Like some thought that there would be a future earthly reign of Christ for a thousand years before the final end. But nobody had this specific sequence.
And what everybody historically understood the Rapture to be was what was going to happen at the second coming. And that’s clear from 1st Thessalonians and it’s clear from 2 Thessalonians where Paul goes into the same events in more detail. He talks about, because they didn’t, after 1st Thessalonians, they had three weeks of instruction plus one letter, they still weren’t really solid on a bunch of stuff.
And so he talks about the same issue again in 2 Thessalonians. He makes it really clear that this event where we’re caught up to be with is going to be at the end of the world at the second coming at least. And so it’s not going to be what’s called a pre-tribulation Rapture where he takes Christians out of the world before the tribulation.
Cy: Got it.
Jimmy: We’re going to go through the tribulation, and then Jesus is going to come back and rescue us. So what happens after the tribulation? Well, Jesus is not going to do a U-turn. He’s going to inaugurate his reign. Whether you understand that as an earthly millennium or as the eternal order, he’s going to inaugurate his reign when he comes back.
And you might say, well then why get, if he’s just going to come down to Earth and reign, you know, whatever reign it’s going to be, why does it talk about us being caught up to be with him and meet him in the air? And this is something that relies on a piece of first-century culture that moderns know nothing about.
Today, when a, let’s say a world leader visits a place, you know, they’ll fly in on an airplane and they’ll land at the airport, and then there will be some kind of party there of dignitaries to meet them. You know, the President goes somewhere, the Pope goes somewhere, there’s going to be this party of dignitaries to meet them.
Well, they had something like that in the first century, only they didn’t have airports. So what they would do, and this was a well-established custom, if you had someone like a king or a visiting general or something like that who’s visiting your town, you’ve got a really important person coming. What you do is, since there’s no airport to meet him at, you go out on the road to meet him.
And so you might even go two, three days down the road in order to meet him, to show how much you care about him coming to visit you. The farther you go to meet him, the more it indicates you care. And then when he comes, you escort him back to town.
Classical Bible scholars, Protestant and Catholic alike, agree that’s what Paul’s talking about here, that the dead who are buried in the earth and the living who are on the surface of the earth will be caught up to meet Jesus as he’s coming back to reign. And then they escort him back to Earth.
And so a historical and I would say correct understanding of the Rapture is it’s something that happens at the Second Coming, where both the living and the dead Christians get caught up to meet Jesus and then escort him back to where he’s going to reign. There is still a difference of opinion among Christians about, well, is he going to reign for a thousand years on Earth before the end, or is this the end, and he’s going to reign on the new heavens and the new earth? But that’s the basic, correct understanding of the Rapture.
Cy: That takes us to a break. So we will depart momentarily. Come back. I want to find out about the three days of darkness and the illumination of conscience and some of the things that lots of people talk about, particularly in Catholic circles…