Tribulation over the Rapture

What the Bible Really says about a Pre-Tribulation Rapture

A previous edition of this article was published in Impact (Singapore).

The “pre-tribulation” rapture makes better fiction than Biblical interpretation. Yes, sincere Christians today believe in and teach that we will be raptured, caught up to meet the Lord in the air, before the final “Great Tribulation” begins. I was even saved partly through a book that taught that very thing. But the doctrine stands on shaky grounds. No one for over 1,800 years of church history saw the pre-tribulation rapture in scripture because no scripture teaches it.

The pre-trib rapture is founded on three pillars:

• (1) the assumption that the Jews are a separate people of God;

• (2) the belief that imminence of Christ’s return must preclude the tribulation;

• (3) the conviction that the tribulation must exclude the redeemed since it is an out-pouring of God’s wrath on earth.

I. The Israel of God

In pre-trib theory, God takes the Church out so that He can deal with Israel. The problem with that is that scripture tells us that all born-again Christians are part of Israel – the true Israel. The Apostle Paul wrote that Christians are “no longer foreigners [to Israel], but fellow citizens [in Israel] with God’s people” (Ephesians 2:19, in light of v.12.) The same Apostle argues that not all who are of Israel are Israel (Romans 9:6). The Apostle Peter, writing to all Christians, says that we are all, together, “a holy nation” (1Peter 2:9.) There are many other scriptures, in both testaments, suggesting that God’s true “Israel” is made up only of those who believe (Galatians 6:20). I’ve written an academic article showing that Genesis teaches that Israel was, from its inception, the church. (See: Genesis’ Definition of Israel and the Presuppositional Error of Supersessionism.) So there is not going to be an era in the future in which God focuses on an ethnic group. His bride and body is the Church. For His church, Jesus prayed that it would not be taken out of the world (John 17:15.) Since all of Jesus’ prayers are answered, a pre-tribulation rapture is impossible.

II. No One Knows the Day or Hour

If the pre-trib rapture was true, it would give those “left behind” a seven-year warning, exactly, of when Christ is returning.

Pre-tribers think that the warnings about the suddenness of the Lord’s return makes a pre-trib rapture necessary. Because pre-tribers hold that the tribulation must be exactly seven years and that it will begin noticeably, and that since Jesus’ return is to be unexpected, there must be a surprise return before the tribulation. That “return” is what Paul warns comes like a “thief in the night” (1 Thess. 5:2.) There are three major problems with this. First, it assumes a literalistic interpretation of the number. The number is from Revelation that uses numbers symbolically. Second, pre-tribers assume a special coming just for Christians (something not clearly described in scripture). Every time scripture mentions the rapture, it’s part of the same event as the second coming. The third problem is rich with irony: If there is a pre-trib rapture and a literal seven-year tribulation, then Jesus’ real return will be able to be predicted to the second. Those “left behind” and who know pre-trib teaching, will be able to mark on their calendars, seven years ahead of time to the day, when Jesus will finally return. The pre-trib rapture, if true, would give unbelievers a seven-year warning, exactly, before they’ll face judgment. So, despite the pulpit-pounding about “imminence,” the pre-trib rapture actually takes all the surprise out of Jesus’ return. The Lord Jesus said that’s impossible because “no one knows the day or hour” (Mt. 24:36.)

III. The Wrath of God

The final leg of pre-tribulationism is the shakiest. The idea that Christians have to be raptured before the tribulation because it is a time of wrath on sinners, is a Biblical non-sequitur. Through scripture God’s faithful people had to drink the same cup of sufferings as the wicked when God punished them. Undoubtedly, the seven thousand who did not bow the knee to Baal during Elijah’s time also suffered from the years of drought sent to punish sinful Israel; Jeremiah suffered during the siege God sent on Jerusalem because of its sins though he was a faithful prophet. Even we who are redeemed experience the sting of the curses that came on the world because of sin, including our last enemy: Death. To imagine that we don’t still feel their sting before He comes again is simply not Biblical. The “wrath to come” that we are rescued from is the wrath of God at the final judgment, the wrath of hell (1 Thessalonians 1:10.) That wrath is being revealed now in the gospel (Romans 1:18.) People are now being told that there is wrath to come for them unless they are redeemed by Christ.

Every time the rapture is mentioned in the Bible, it is simultaneous with the Lord Jesus’s return.

But the clearest refutation of pre-trib theory is what scripture positively teaches about Jesus’ second coming. In Matthew 24 Jesus tells us that His coming will be for all the world to see, no secret pre-coming seven years earlier. At the conclusion of the chapter, He said (in Mt. 24:30), there will be a sign in the sky, “all the nations of the earth” will mourn upon seeing it, and then, THEN, the elect will be gathered. Not seven years before. The rapture, as Jesus Himself describes it, comes at the after tribulation. In In 1 Corinthians 15:52, the Apostle Paul says the rapture happens at “the last trumpet.” Since there are trumpets in the tribulation in Revelation, the rapture cannot be before then. In 1 Thessalonians 4-5, the rapture happens simultaneously with Jesus’s return. (Listen to the message below.) He comes, we rise to meet Him in the air, like a emissaries from a city going out to meet their coming king, and then we escort Him back to earth. “So shall we always be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:17.)

For a message on one of the main rapture passages, listen:

A pre-trib rapture also assumes pre-millennialism.  Throughout Church History many faithful Christians have held to post- or amillennialism. Good Christians can legitimately hold to all these positions. We need to be less dogmatic on the fine print of these theories and more focused on the main point: Jesus will return for His people and judge the wicked.

Maranatha!

John B. Carpenter, Ph.D., is pastor of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church, in Danville, VA. and the author of Seven Pillars of a Biblical Church (Wipf and Stock, 2022).