Is There a Rapture?

Home › Questions › The Rapture

Where the word comes from

“Rapture” is not a word in English Bibles. It comes from the Latin Vulgate's rapiemur, “we shall be caught up,” in 1 Thessalonians 4:17. The NABRE's own note on that verse explains the origin of the term and observes that it has been joined to other passages of the Gospels and Revelation in a dispensationalist scheme of the end. So the question is not whether believers are “caught up,” but when.

Where the pre-tribulation rapture comes from

Many Evangelical Christians hold what is called the pre-tribulation rapture. In this view Christ comes first for his Church, unseen by the world, and takes believers to heaven. A tribulation of about seven years follows on earth, under the Antichrist. Then Christ returns visibly with his saints and reigns on earth for a thousand years. The framework is called dispensational premillennialism.

This reading took shape in the 1830s. Its best-known early teacher was John Nelson Darby (1800–1882), a former Anglican clergyman and leader among the Plymouth Brethren, who developed it in these years, when it was discussed at the prophecy conferences held at Powerscourt in Ireland (1831–1833), and spread it in many writings afterward. It spread in America through the Scofield Reference Bible, edited by C. I. Scofield and published by Oxford University Press in 1909, whose notes carried the scheme into millions of homes. Later it reached a wide public through Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) and the Left Behind novels of Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (1995–2007).

Those who hold this view are fellow Christians who love Scripture and long for the Lord's coming, and that longing is good. But the view is fairly recent, and most Christians, Catholic, Orthodox and many Protestant, read these texts as describing one return of Christ.

What the Church teaches

The Catechism treats Christ's return in paragraphs 668–682 (668–677, 678–679, 680–682). Christ already reigns, yet “Though already present in his Church, Christ's reign is nevertheless yet to be fulfilled ‘with power and great glory’” at his return (CCC 671). That return can come at any time: “Since the Ascension Christ's coming in glory has been imminent,” though its hour belongs to the Father (CCC 673).

Before it, “the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers” (CCC 675). She is not lifted out of that trial: “The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection” (CCC 677). Then comes the one return of the Lord: “On Judgement Day at the end of the world, Christ will come in glory to achieve the definitive triumph of good over evil” (CCC 681). The resurrection belongs to that same day, for “the resurrection of the dead is closely associated with Christ's Parousia” (CCC 1001), and the Catechism quotes 1 Thessalonians 4:16 to show it.

So the Catholic answer keeps everything the rapture teaching rightly prizes, the meeting in the air and being “always with the Lord,” and places it where Paul does: at the glorious coming of Christ. St. John Henry Newman, gathering the teaching of the Fathers, described the last persecution as a trial the Church herself will endure (Newman on the Antichrist).

How to live it

The hope of being caught up to meet the Lord is meant to comfort, not to frighten. Paul ends the passage, “console one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18). He then asks for readiness rather than calculation: “let us stay alert and sober” (1 Thessalonians 5:6), because “God did not destine us for wrath, but to gain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:9). Jesus promises the same to those who endure the trial: “But the one who perseveres to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13).

The surest way to be ready to meet the Lord in the air is to meet him now, in the Eucharist, in his word, and in the least of his brothers and sisters (Matthew 25:40). On the final trial, see Who Is the Antichrist? and What Is the Great Apostasy?; for the thousand years that dispensationalism places after the return, see the thousand-year reign.

Read more on this site