If you
believe that Christ will return invisibly to snatch away the church (the living
and the dead, who will be resurrected), you believe in the doctrine of rapture.
You would also believe that God will give glorified bodies to all raptured
believers of Christ so to live with HIM unto eternity.
Your belief
would include the great tribulation - a future seven year period of
extraordinary suffering for mankind (need not be a literal seven year period). With
reference to the timing of rapture and the great tribulation, you could believe
that rapture would be: (we shall only consider the three major views)
Pre
Tribulational (rapture before the tribulation period)
or
Post
Tribulational (rapture at the end of tribulation)
or
Mid
Tribulational (rapture during the midpoint of the tribulation)
Rapture is
a rather recent view. Rapture was initially propagated by John Darby in 1827. A
majority of Christians believe in Pre-tribulational rapture.
Miraculous
is always exciting. Rapture is miraculous, for it alludes to believers being supernaturally
snatched away from this world.
Apart from the
church’s teaching, the doctrine of rapture has been popularized through movies,
such as “Left Behind.” Those who have been greatly impacted by these movies as
well as the teachings consider rapture to be an essential doctrine of Historic
Christianity. But is it so?
Dr. William
Lane Craig, an acclaimed and an accomplished Christian philosopher, expressed
his public disagreement with the rapture theology.1 His disagreement
was based on his hermeneutical consideration of the following verses that
apparently espouse rapture: Mark 13:19-20, 24-27; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17; 1
Corinthians 15: 22-26, 51-55, and 2 Thessalonians 2:1-8. 2
When such a
sharp theological disagreement occurs at the highest academic realm, how would
lay Christians respond?
An average
Christian mind would respond through a few pertinent questions:
1. Should I
[continue to] believe in rapture?
2. What would
happen to me if there will be no rapture?
3. If I would
not be raptured, then am I doomed to suffer during the terrible period of
tribulation?
Primarily,
there are essential and non-essential doctrines in Historic Christianity. How
do we identify an essential doctrine?
Dr. Norman
Geisler defines essential doctrine as, “First,
the doctrine must concern and be connected to our salvation; that is, it must
be salvific. Second, its connection to our salvation must be crucial; that is,
it must be so tied to our salvation that if it were not true, our salvation as
God revealed it would not be possible.” 3
For
instance, Christ’s divinity or faith in Christ is an essential doctrine. But baptism
by water is not an essential doctrine.
In other
words, water baptism is not a means to our salvation. However, we cannot agree
to disagree about Christ’s divinity. As Christians, if we believe that Christ
is not God, then we are not Christians. We may as well consider ourselves as
people of other religion or atheists or agnostics, since they do not believe
that Christ is God.
Therefore,
while certain doctrines are considered essential to Historic Christianity,
there are other doctrines that are non-essential. Rapture falls under the
non-essential category because it is not connected to our salvation.
Rapture
does not hinder man’s relationship with God or salvation in any possible
manner. Rapture merely espouses the snatching away of the believer from this
world and into God’s presence. The crucial aspect of rapture is not the act of being
raptured (snatched away), but the fact that the person is a believer of Christ.
Faith in
Christ gains salvation (it is not the faith that Christ is one among the many
gods, but the faith that saves man is the faith that Christ is the only [way
to] God whose redemptive sacrifice saves man of his sins). If man rejects
Christ, then he rejects himself from God’s presence. So faith in Christ is an
essential doctrine.
Therefore,
even if the doctrine of rapture is incorrect, Dr. Craig affirmed that it would not
affect believers’ relationship with Christ or their salvation, “I think that the rapture doctrine is wrong,
but that’s not going to inhibit anyone’s relationship with God.”4 Dr.
Craig’s statement reflects the notion that rapture is a non-essential doctrine
in Historic Christianity.
What if
there is no such thing as rapture? Would a believer of Christ be with God
nevertheless? Of course!
Pre-tribulational
rapture espouses the snatching away of the believers of Christ from the impending
gory of the great tribulation. But the mid-tribulational and post-tribulational
rapture includes the believers of Christ in the gory of the great tribulation.
Whatever the case may be, believers of Christ will either go through the great
tribulation or not.
Since
rapture is a subset of Christ’s second coming, let us observe rapture from the
vantage point of the Lord’s second coming. There are then two stages of
Christ’s second coming.
The first possible
stage is the rapture, which is the “coming for” the saints. The second stage of
the Lord’s second coming is the “coming with” the saints. The great tribulation
separates these two stages.
Even if
rapture does not occur, it is certain that the Lord will come again!
Effectively,
if rapture does not occur, then the Lord’s second coming will occur in one stage
or as a single event.
However
which way you look at it, when the Lord returns again in all HIS glory, the
believers of Christ will be with the Lord forever in their glorified bodies. So
rapture really does not matter!
If rapture does
not occur, then the believers would be included in the great tribulation. In
this scenario, Christians should just be ready for this inclusion (cf. 2
Corinthians 12: 9).
Would those
who disagree with rapture be termed heretics or would those who profess to
rapture be considered heretics? In the words of Dr. Craig, “A heretic is someone who has a doctrinal error so serious that it
separates him from salvation” 5
Whether
you believe in rapture or not, there is no doctrinal error that separates you
from salvation. As said earlier, faith in Christ is mandatory to one’s
salvation. Rapture is not essential to man’s salvation. So ‘heresy’ is not something
that we should be concerned about in this context.
However, it
is rather unfortunate that Christian denominations have warred over
non-essential doctrines, such as rapture and water baptism. Spiritual pride is one
major reason for this sad reality. So we continue to pray that God would enable
us to follow this maxim, “In essentials
unity, nonessentials liberty, and in all things charity.” Amen.
Endnotes:
1 http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/10/09/theologian-claims-rapture-proponents-might-be-reading-the-bible-all-wrong-and-reveals-an-alternative-end-times-interpretation/
2 For an extensive
rebuttal of the doctrine of rapture, please visit these links:
Link 1: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/defenders-2-podcast/transcript/s13-2
Link 2: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/defenders-2-podcast/transcript/s13-3
3
http://www.equip.org/article/the-essential-doctrines-of-the-christian-faith-part-two/#christian-books-1
4 http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/10/09/theologian-claims-rapture-proponents-might-be-reading-the-bible-all-wrong-and-reveals-an-alternative-end-times-interpretation/
5 http://www.reasonablefaith.org/defenders-2-podcast/transcript/s13-2
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