Doctrines of Devils: The Rapture (Part 1)

Grace and peace unto you, saints.

I want to expose a false, deceptive, and poisonous doctrine that pervades the Body of Christ today, and makes us look like fools before the unbelieving world.  That doctrine is the Rapture.

The doctrine of the Rapture is a false, unbiblical teaching that directly conflicts with the Bible’s teaching on the Resurrection.  It is a heretical doctrine that is part of the Great Apostasy.  Anyone who believes in the Rapture is actually calling Jesus Christ a liar.

The doctrine of the Rapture was never preached.  What was preached was the Resurrection, which has been corrupted by the preaching of the Rapture.  The most vocal proponents of the Rapture tout a pre-Tribulation event, or the teaching that the body of Christ, the Church, will be taken to heaven by Jesus prior to the Tribulation.  The problem with this theology is that it conflicts with Jesus’ teaching that there would be only two resurrections: the resurrection of believers and the resurrection of unbelievers:

“Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice,

“And shall come forth, they that hat done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:28-29).

This was also taught in the Old Testament: 

“And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2).

So, there will be one resurrection for all believers: past, present, and future.  Further proof that the Resurrection will happen after the Tribulation is the fact that John saw in his vision the martyred Tribulation saints:

“And I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands” (Revelation 20:4).

It is important to understand that this passage is not talking about all the saints who have ever been martyred, but only those killed during the Tribulation, because the passage specifically states that they were all beheaded.  During the Tribulation this will be the punishment for all who follow Jesus.  Not all the Tribulation saints will be put to death, however, because Jesus taught that some would spared:

“For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. 

“And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened” (Matthew 24:21-22).

So the bloodshed will be stopped only by Jesus’ coming.  Therefore, the resurrection will include the living and the dead: the dead saints and martyrs from all ages and the saints who are alive when Jesus comes.  Paul verifies this when he said:

“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51).

Further proof that the Resurrection will be after the Tribulation is the Two Witnesses. 

“And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothes in sackcloth. 

“These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth. 

“These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will” (Revelation 11:3-4,6).

See our post entitled, “Don’t Get Too Enraptured by the Rapture” for the identity and importance of the two witnesses.  Now, notice that these two men will preach for “a thousand and threescore” (one thousand and sixty) days.  That equates to 42 months or three and a half years.  At the end of this time, Scripture says that the Antichrist will kill them (Revelation 11:7), after which time, their dead bodies will lie unburied in the street of Jerusalem for “three days and a half” (11:9).  At the end of this time, the Holy Spirit will enter into them, and they will stand on their feet.  Then, a voice from heaven will summon them, and they will ascend into heaven in a cloud (11:12).

I submit that three and a half days is symbolic for three and a half years.  This is because if there is only one resurrection for believers, and that resurrection will occur after the Tribulation, then the two witnesses would have to be a part of this resurrection also.  If the witnesses will testify for three and a half years, be killed, and lie in the street for three and a half more years, that makes a total of seven years—the number of years of the Tribulation.

Moreover, the Tribulation is also called “Daniel’s 7oth Week” because it is the last week of a prophesied 70 weeks that God showed Daniel at the end of which Jesus would be anointed King.  The sixty-ninth week ended when Jesus was “cut off” (crucified).  The 70^th week will begin when the Antichrist signs “a firm covenant for one week (7 years).”   In prophetic language, one week is seven years, rather than seven days, so three and a half days is three and a half years.  If Jesus told the truth about only one resurrection for believers, then the only way for all the past saints, the Tribulation martyrs, the living saints at Jesus’s coming, and the Two Witnesses to be included in one resurrection would be were it to occur after the Tribulation, before God’s judgment on this sinful planet.

Therefore if Jesus told the truth, then the Rapture is a lie—or at least the way it is understood today.  I believe that the teaching originated when some tried to reconcile Jesus’ teaching of the resurrection of the dead with his teaching that all would not perish during the Tribulation.  As we have seen, though Jesus clearly states in Matthew Chapter 24 that not all would perish, when speaking of the Resurrection He mostly stressed the resurrection of the dead.  I believe this was because He knew that He would die and be resurrected, and He wanted us to understand that in the same way He rose from the dead, we shall also rise.

Rapture theologians like to use 1 Corinthians 15:51 and 1 Thessalonians 4 as proof.  But they neglect to consider the preceding verses and in so doing, they miss the fact that in both of these passages Paul is talking primarily about the Resurrection of the dead.   1 Corinthians Chapter 15, for example, is devoted entirely to the Resurrection, for Paul begins this discussion by saying:

“Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?” (v. 12.)

It is obvious that false doctrine concerning the resurrection had crept into the Corinthian church, for Paul later says,

“Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.  Awake to righteousness, and sin not, for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame.  But some man will say, How are the dead raised up?  And with what body do they come? (vv. 33-35.)

Obviously there was a false teaching abroad concerning what type of body the dead will get in the resurrection.  Paul explains that they will have the same body they had before they died, but that it will be changed because the body of sin cannot enter heaven (vv. 42-44).  He then goes on to say that in the same manner the dead will be changed, those who are alive at Jesus’ coming will also be changed (v. 51-52).

The passage most often cited as proof of the Rapture is 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18, but again, the preceding verses are often neglected.  Yet they are important, for they contain the context of Paul’s dissertation, which is based on the resurrection of the dead: 

“But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.  For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him” (v.v. 13-14).

It would seem that the church at Thessalonica was worried about whether their deceased brethren would be resurrected, so much so that they worried “as others which have no hope” or unbelievers.  For Paul to have to reassure them about the Resurrection it would seem that, as did the church at Corinth, the Thessalonians had somehow come to a corrupted understanding of this teaching.  Verse 15 gives us interesting insight into the dilemma: 

“For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep” (v. 15).

The key to understanding this verse is the word prevent.  It is the English translation of the Greek word phthano (f-than-o), which means, “to precede” (Strong’s Concordance, 1990).  It would seem that Paul is reminding them that both the dead and the living will be resurrected together.  But notice that the Thessalonians aren’t worried about themselves—the living, but about the dead saints and whether they would be resurrected.  I believe that this was because they felt that the Lord’s coming was imminent and wondered if their dead brethren would also be resurrected.  This is the reason why after explaining that both the living and the dead would be resurrected together (vv. 16-17), Paul goes on in 5:1-2 to say that he had no reason to write them about “the times and the seasons,” and that “the day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night.”

The case of the Thessalonians is closest to what we see today concerning the Rapture.  Unlike the Corinthians, they still believed in the Resurrection, but they somehow came to believe that the living would be resurrected first.   This became a problem for them, because they knew that there is only one resurrection and that if only the living saints would be taken, then the dead saints would be left behind.  That is why they were worried, and why Paul had to remind them that both the living and the dead would be resurrected together.

This is the same problem that Rapture theology presents to the church today.  If the Rapture only concerns the living, then it is a heresy because the Bible clearly teaches that both the living and the dead saints would be resurrected.  If the Rapture also includes the dead in Christ, then it is the Resurrection and should be called such.  If the Rapture includes both the dead and the living, but occurs before or during the Tribulation, then again, it is a heresy, because the Bible again teaches that the Resurrection will occur after the Tribulation, and as we have already discussed, it must include the Tribulation martyrs and the two witnesses, who are not resurrected until the end of the Tribulation.  Lastly, if the Rapture includes both the dead and the living and occurs after the Tribulation, then it is the Resurrection, and it should be called such.

If Christians would have adhered to Jesus’ teaching that the Resurrection would occur after the Tribulation “on the last day,” the Harold Camping fiasco would never have happened, and he would have been seen as the horribly deceived man that he is.  Instead, the church looked foolish, weak, and selfish, because, unlike the Thessalonians, who worried about their dead brethren, many so-called Christians were only concerned about themselves.  That’s Rapture theology.

I hope that it is becoming clear to you that times have not changed.  The Mystery of Iniquity doth still work, and we as Christians will have to stay in the Word of God and walk in the Spirit 24/7 so as to not be deceived.

Stay tuned for “Relief In A False Belief” Part 2 of Doctrines of Devils: The Rapture, coming soon.

Stay encouraged and look up; your redemption draweth nigh.

The Still Man

Copyright © 2011 Anthony Keeton, The Still Man ®.  All Rights Reserved.