Doctrine of the Last Things (Part 4): The Rapture Interpretation Concluded

The Rapture Interpretation Concluded

We have been talking about eschatology (or the doctrine of the last things), and we’ve been discussing the question whether there will be a single return of Christ to Earth or multiple returns of Christ. We have been looking at one of the most prominent multiple views (at least in evangelical circles), namely, the Rapture view, which says that prior to Christ’s final advent to establish his Kingdom and judge the world there will be an invisible return of Christ to snatch out of the world his elect and take them to be with him in heaven. I argued that this view is very difficult to square with the scriptural teachings on the Second Coming of Christ. When you look at the biblical passages, especially the Olivet Discourse given by Jesus but also Paul’s Thessalonian correspondence, there is simply no reason to think that there is such an event as a rapture prior to the Second Coming of Christ. Certainly one can read these things into the text, but I don’t think one will naturally read them out of the text.

Let’s continue our discussion today of this subject. Some persons suggest that in 2 Thessalonians 2 there is, at least implicitly, the teaching of a rapture. In 2 Thessalonians 2:1-2 Paul writes,

Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet him, we beg you, brethren, not to be quickly shaken in mind or excited, either by spirit or by word, or by letter purporting to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.

Paul says don’t be shaken or excited by anyone telling you that the day of the Lord has already come. Paul goes on to explain that that day will not come until quite a number of things take place first.

Here we face a methodological problem in that it is very difficult to reconstruct the teaching of Paul’s opponents. We don’t have the writings of these opponents and very rarely even have quotations from them. So it is difficult to know exactly what it was that Paul’s opponents were teaching. For example, in Corinth there is a great deal of discussion among New Testament scholars as to exactly who the opponents of Paul were in Corinth and what it was that they were teaching. Therefore, any attempt to reconstruct the teaching of the persons that Paul is opposing is by its very nature speculative. It is going to be based upon conjecture.

The question that we face here is what is meant by the expression “the day of the Lord”. Whatever the Old Testament meaning of this expression may have been, it is clear that Paul interprets this expression Christologically. That is to say, Paul takes the day of the Lord to be the day of Christ’s return. It will be on that day that Christ returns, the dead are raised, and particularly the wicked or unrighteous dead are judged.

In saying this, Paul is following the teaching of Jesus as given in the Olivet Discourse. Turn to Matthew 24:42-44. In Matthew’s version of the Olivet Discourse we have this saying of Jesus,

Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the householder had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Here Jesus is talking about the coming of the Son of Man which will be a visible worldwide event to gather the elect and take them into his Kingdom. Jesus says it is going to come like a thief in the night. Now, turn over to Paul’s Thessalonian correspondence – 1 Thessalonians 5:1-2, 4. You can see how Paul echoes this phraseology of Jesus. He says, “But as to the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” Here Paul refers to the day of the Lord in the same way that Jesus did – as coming like a thief in the night. Then in verse 4 he says, “But you are not in darkness, brethren, for that day to surprise you like a thief.” Here Paul is echoing the teaching of Jesus with respect to his Second Coming. Now turn over to 2 Thessalonians 1:9-10. Paul refers to this day again. Talking about the unrighteous, he says,

They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at in all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.

Here Paul again is referring to that day when Christ will come again. He will inflict vengeance upon the unrighteous dead and be marveled at and glorified in his church. Then in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-2 Paul goes on to say,

Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet him, we beg you, brethren, not to be quickly shaken in mind or excited, either by spirit or by word, or by letter purporting to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.

Here it is consistent to think that Paul is talking about the day of the Lord as being the return of Christ – the Second Advent of Christ. This is the same way that Paul uses the expression in other letters. For example, in 1 Corinthians 1:7-8 he says,

so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ; who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Here you see his Christological interpretation of the phrase “the day of the Lord.” It is not just the day of the Lord; it is the day of “our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Similarly over in 1 Corinthians 5:4-5 he talks about a man whom he has put under discipline in the church of Corinth because of the immoral lifestyle he was leading. What Paul says is, “When you are assembled, and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” That is the day when Christ will be revealed and when he will come again.

So I think that when Paul assures the Thessalonians that “the day of the Lord” has not yet come, he is talking about the Second Advent of Christ – the return of Christ.

Now, ask yourself: do we have in the New Testament anywhere references to people who were teaching that the Second Coming of Christ had already occurred? Is there any place in the New Testament like that? Well, yes, there is. In 2 Timothy 2:15-19 Paul talks about certain persons who are teaching godlessness and unsound doctrine. He says in verse 17, “Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth by holding that the resurrection is past already. They are upsetting the faith of some.” So here are people who taught this bizarre doctrine that the resurrection was already past. Since the day of the resurrection is the day of Christ’s return, in effect they were saying the Second Advent had already occurred and the resurrection is past already.

Now, obviously they could not have meant this in a literal sense. The graves would be emptied if the resurrection were past already. There wouldn’t be any corpses. So they must have meant this in some sort of a spiritualizing sense. We know that Gnosticism was a threat in the early church. Gnosticism was a Greek doctrine which depreciated the value of the material and exalted the value of the spiritual. It could very well be that there were some sort of Gnostic teachers here that were saying that the resurrection is not a physical, bodily event but a sort of spiritual event, and it is already past.

We know from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that in Corinth there were people who objected to the idea of a physical resurrection. Therefore, Paul goes to great lengths in chapter 15 to answer the question: With what kind of body do they come who are raised from the dead? What sort of body is it that they have? For the Greek mentality the idea of the resurrection of the physical body was disgusting and revolting. It was the spirit or the soul that was to be preserved and be immortal.

So it could be that what Paul is confronting in Thessalonica would be something similar, some kind of proto-Gnostic teaching that the resurrection and the day of the Lord were already past. What he wants to say to them is that this is not true. A lot has to happen yet before the day of the Lord will occur. Proponents of the rapture doctrine will say that the Thessalonians feared that the rapture had already occurred and they had missed it. But there just isn’t anything in this passage to suggest that the problem here is either that the rapture occurred and they were left behind or that it didn’t occur as they had expected and now they were in the last days. If the rapture had already occurred, the graves should be empty and Paul would be gone and not writing to them. So, I just don’t see any reason to read any sort of rapture doctrine into what Paul says.

Having said that, again I say, this is conjectural. We don’t know what Paul’s opponents in Thessalonica were saying. It’s possible that they were not saying that the Second Advent of Christ and the resurrection had already occurred. The Greek word used here is enistemi, which means “to be present, to arrive.” It could be that what the Thessalonian heretics were saying was that the day of the Lord is present. It has arrived. This word enistemi can even mean “be imminent.” So they may have been saying that the day of the Lord is imminent; it is almost upon us. And what Paul is saying is: No, no, that is not right – it is still a good ways off and a lot has to happen first. Perhaps they thought the day of the Lord was just around the corner, it was imminent, and therefore they were living in the last days, and Paul wants to correct that error. But there is nothing in the passage to suggest that they thought the rapture was past or that it was near or that it had failed to take place.

Whatever Paul’s opponents were teaching in Thessalonica – whether they were saying the return of Christ is already past or whether they were saying it is about to happen or it’s imminent – Paul’s teaching, at least, I think is clear. We don’t know what his opponents taught, but we do know what Paul taught. And what Paul says is: Christ’s return is still a good way off. A lot of things have to happen first. Therefore, the day of the Lord, the return of Christ, is neither past nor imminent. It still lies sometime in the future.

Next time we will turn our attention to other versions of the theory that there are multiple returns of Christ.^[1]