What is the rapture?
Reading Time: 6 minutesWhy we should believe in the ‘Rapture’ (from the Latin for ‘caught up’)
What is the partial rapture theory?
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10028. The partial rapture theory teaches that only those believers who are watchful, spiritual and ready will be caught up when Jesus comes, while carnal or careless Christians are left behind to pass through the Tribulation as a kind of discipline. It is an unusual view, held by a sincere minority, and I want…
What is the pre-wrath rapture view?
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10027. The pre-wrath rapture view is a more recent proposal that places the catching away of the Church late in the Tribulation, after most of it has run but before the final outpouring of God’s wrath in the closing months. It became widely known through the writing of Marvin Rosenthal and Robert Van Kampen,…
What is posttribulationism?
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 10026. The posttribulation rapture is the view that the Church will pass through the entire seven-year Tribulation and be caught up only at its very end, meeting the returning Lord and coming straight back to earth with Him. Posttribulationism is probably the oldest of the rival timings, and it is held by many sincere…
What is midtribulationism?
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 10025. The midtribulation rapture is the view that Jesus will catch the Church up to Himself not before the Tribulation and not at its end, but at its midpoint, roughly three and a half years into the seven-year period. Midtribulationism sits between the pretribulational and posttribulational positions, and it deserves a fair hearing before…
What is pretribulationism?
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10024. The pretribulational rapture is the view I hold, and it is simply this: Jesus will catch His Church up to Himself before the seven-year Tribulation begins, not partway through it and not at its end. Pretribulationism is not a fringe curiosity but a reading that flows naturally from taking the whole Bible at…
What is the difference between the rapture and the Second Coming?
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10023. The second coming of Jesus and the rapture of the Church are often folded into a single event, and that folding causes more confusion in prophecy than almost anything else I can name. Keep them distinct and the whole prophetic landscape comes into focus. Blur them and you will be forced to spiritualise…
Is the rapture taught in Scripture?
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10022. Critics love to say that the rapture is a nineteenth-century invention, cooked up in a British parlour and unknown to the church before then. It is a confident charge, and it is wrong. The rapture is taught in Scripture with a clarity that only a settled prejudice could miss, and I want to…
When will Jesus return?
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10011. The return of Jesus is the most asked-about event in Christian teaching, and the question people actually put to me is nearly always the same one the disciples put to Him: when? Let me answer honestly from the start: I do not know, you do not know, and anyone who claims to know…
How Does Pretribulationism Depend on Scripture?
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 1121. The pretribulational rapture is not, as some of its critics sometimes suggest, a doctrine simply invented out of thin air by nineteenth-century prophecy teachers with no genuine textual foundation behind it. It rests on a specific reading of specific texts, held together by a consistent, literal-grammatical-historical hermeneutic applied to prophecy the same way…