The Pre-Trib Rapture Doctrine

The pre-trib rapture doctrine is very popular among the Evangelical denominations. Many are taught this doctrine and when asked will say they agree with it. There are best selling books and movies founded on this doctrine of the any moment return of Christ and the rapture of the church.

Does this doctrine best express what the scriptures teach? Just because it is so popular in some circles, is it right?

As a new Christian this is the doctrine I was taught. I sang with our youth group, "I Wish We'd All Been Ready". I accepted what I was taught and read many teaching books on this subject. I read Hal Lindsay's "Late Great Planet Earth" and Salem Kirban's "the Anti-Christ".

I was always reading something, and loved to go to the Christian book store and browse for new books. I also studied the scriptures, using numerous study aids to try to understand the scriptures and gain knowledge in Christ and his will for me.

I was taught early, that the scriptures are our basis for our faith and practice, so I tried to be a good student of the scriptures.

Early I learned that there were differences in doctrines. I listened to the teaching programs on the radio and found that different teachers would teach different things from the same passages. Some of these teachings were directly opposed to the other. This caused me to learn that there are different theological and doctrinal camps or schools of thought. Many are based on the teaching of a founder of that denomination, Calvinism, Lutheranism, or Methodism for example.

I studied some church history, to try to understand the differences. I found some small differences and some large ones. One area I have found differing is in eschatology, the study of the end times or last days.

In my studies I have considered many of the different views of eschatology. As a young believer I had a hard time finding agreement in scriptures for the pre-trib rapture doctrine. At first I just considered myself too unschooled and needing more understanding. But as I went on, I just could not see it fitting.

I read a book that showed that the anti-Christ, the man of lawlessness, must come before the end.

2Th 2:7,8 (LITV, eSword)

"For the mystery of lawlessness already is working, only he is holding back now, until it comes out of the midst. And then "the Lawless One" will be revealed, "whom" "the Lord" "will consume" "by the spirit of His mouth," and will bring to nought by the brightness of His presence. "

According to the pre-trib rapture teaching I was taught, there was no event in the prophetic calander that needed to take place for the rapture to happen. It could be today, tonight, tomorrow. Yet Paul tells the Thessalonians that the anti-Christ must first be revealed, and I knew he had not been revealed yet, because the children of the light would be aware of the times and seasons, the events leading up to that last day.

1Th 5:2-4 (LITV)

"For you yourselves know accurately that the day of the Lord, as a thief in the night, so it comes. For when they say, Peace and safety! Then suddenly destruction comes upon them, like the travail to the one having babe in womb, and not at all shall they escape.

But you, brothers, are not in darkness, that the Day should overtake you as a thief."

We, the church, the body of Christ, would know the times and seasons of Christ return. So we as children of the light, would not be caught unaware, and we would see the man of sin and lawlessness be revealed before the rapture. That was my understanding, and this to me totally discredited the any moment return of Christ and rapture of the church.

The next view I remember studying was the pre-wrath return of Christ and rapture. This view set up Christ's return and the rapture, before the pouring out of the bowls of God's wrath. So that the church would experience part of the tribulation, but not God's wrath, for we were saved up for salvation, and they were saved up for wrath and destruction.

I thought this view held merit, but again the more I considered it, against all of eschatology it just didn't fit.

In a Christian discussion group, a brother brought up the historic fact that Herod's temple, the one Jesus and his disciples walked through was destroyed in 70AD, not one stone left upon another, just as Jesus said it would be.

He also said that this would have been within the generation that Jesus addressed while in his ministry. That some of the disciples who heard him on the Mount of Olives were alive to see this destruction.

In all the eschatology and historic teaching I had heard and studied, I had never heard this historic fact. This started me to study the preterist view of eschatology. And over the last twenty years of considering it, and comparing the idea to all of scripture, I find it most agrees with a plain and simple reading of scripture.

To me this is a hard won view, I have spent decades arriving to it and am finding a more hopeful faith. Seeing that things happened just as God through the prophets and Jesus said it would. God said what he meant, and meant what he said, and did according to his word.
Jesus said he would return in judgment upon Israel, and that the destruction of the temple would happen as part of Messiah's judgment wrath, and that this would happen in the generation of his disciples, and it did.