by Neil Earle
On May 21 even “Saturday Night Live” took a shot at the Secret Rapture theory. This was in response to the media attention that gathered last week around the prediction of an elderly Bible teacher that Christ’s saints would be whisked off to heaven that very day.
The Secret Rapture is supposed to protect the saints from horrific events to strike the earth before the Second Coming.
This sad event proved was yet another bad introduction to Bible prophecy for millions of people – especially to young people involved in the omnipresent social media.
Strangely, something like the Rapture will actually occur in the unknown future. The problem is that those who teach a “Secret Rapture” of the church are misreading Scripture and always get their timing off. Let’s take a look.
The word rapture is from the Latin “rapio” or “rapere” which means “to be caught up” or seized quickly. In the Greek New Testament the word is “harpazo” which means to be “suddenly seized” as the Roman officers did to protect St. Paul in Acts 23. Views of the Secret Rapture are not found very much before the 1500s. The historic Christian Church in the West represented by Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Wesley and Edwards appear to know nothing of such a teaching. In the American colonies it appeared in the wild exuberance of an early time when some religious folk felt God was beginning his holy rule in New England. Puritan luminaries such as Increase and Cotton Mather (1663-1728), holding a view of history culminating with Christ’s return in fiery judgment, subscribed to the theory in its broadest terms. According to their readings of 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, the church would be sheltered from the coming storm by being miraculously seized up to heaven. (See Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More, page 75).
Such views really took off in the early 1800s when the stresses and strains of the French Revolution (1789-1801), the identification of Napoleon Bonaparte as the Beast of Revelation or the final Antichrist, the increasing destructiveness and intensity of warfare on a worldwide scale – all this rocketed a very negative “annihilationist” approach to Bible Prophecy to the fore. Nowhere was this more prevalent than in the newly formed United States with its well-known “free market in religion.” The American Bible Society (1816) would soon place 300,000 Bibles a year in the hands of 13,000,000 Americans – an astonishing total.
It took the appearance of a charismatic Bible teacher from Ireland named John Darby, however, to fasten the Secret Rapture firmly on the surging American evangelical movement. According to the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Darby, an Irish minister, was convinced of the secret rapture in 1830 by a young Scottish girl under the ecstatic sway of the spirit at a revival in Scotland (EVD, pages 908-909). Darby’s views of prophecy were so convincing that his American tours fastened the idea of the deliverance of the saints from the “all-devouring rage” that would fall before Christ’s return. The Scofield Reference Bible of 1909 was almost the institutionalized version of the teaching. In our day preachers such as Hal Lindsey, Jerry Falwell and the authors of the mega-selling “Left Behind” series have kept the idea alive – and how!
But the historic mainstream denominations have never accepted the Secret Rapture theory or the Darby-Scofield prophecy scheme in total. As late as the 1960s it was possible to be a faithful practicing member of an Anglican, Episcopal, Methodist or Presbyterian and Catholic Church and never so much as hear the word “rapture.” Hal Lindsay’s best-selling book of 1970, The Late Great Planet Earth, began to change all that. But still, Christians in the majority tradition see 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 as being fulfilled just before Christ’s return to save the world from itself. The saints will be gathered by the returning Lord “to be ever with him” which usually means to either usher in the millennial reign of peace through the rule of Christ on earth, or to get on with God’s purposes for the human race after a final period of judgment, alluded to in Matthew 25.
In short, the Secret Rapture is as embarrassing to majority Christianity as the latest titters on twitter. The idea of the saints being safe in heaven while the earth and its inhabitants burns is about as elitist and self-centered a teaching as one can find. It usually brings reproach on Christianity and takes away from the message of salvation the church is committed to embrace. Yet even our own church – formerly known as the Worldwide Church of God – was not immune to such “group think” speculations in the past. Our former teaching that we in “the one true church” would be led off to a place of safety somewhere on the earth was based on a misreading of Revelation 12. In the 1990s those view were radically altered. So…those of us in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
As we all know, none such schemes predicting the End Time have ever worked. The batting average of Christian preachers advancing the time of the Rapture and the Second Coming is an absolutely consistent .000. This would all be somewhat irrelevant and even humorous were it not for the lives of such as Jim Jones and David Koresh whose predatory careers point out the tragic consequences of the misuse of the Bible. The idea of Christians withdrawing from the world while “the world burns” is about as far from Christ’s teaching to be light and salt to the world as we can get. It also directly rejects the implications of Christ’s Great Commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. The Secret Rapture teaching undercuts the witness of millions and millions of Christians who sponsor food banks, hospitals, homeless shelters and countless helping agencies.
May God forgive those recent misled advocates of the Secret Rapture as he has forgiven our church and may those wounded emotionally and financially by this spiritual detour be healed and spared and eventually led back to the true Way, Truth and Life.
Such failures and dead ends are a sadly recurring pattern in church history. The phenomenon always needs addressing before other teachers with even more convincing and nefarious schemes either wittingly or unwittingly lead the flock astray. Ephesians 4:14-15 speaks to this. And finally, here is an explanation of our church’s teaching on the rapture as found on our website gci.org. We hope you will find it helpful.