The rapture is the notion that, one day, Jesus Christ will return to Earth, and all faithful
Christians, living and dead, will rise to meet him in the sky before being welcomed into Heaven.
"Are you an angel?"
"Yes, sir."
"That's so cool, man, congratulations, dude!"
"Fellas... "
"Awwww!" "Dude! You got one!"
It's a pervasive concept in the modern understanding of Christianity,
spread largely through television evangelists, various religious tracts,
and even pop culture. But what exactly does the Bible itself have to say about the rapture?
Well, the short answer is "nothing." In fact, the word "rapture" doesn't actually appear anywhere
in the New Testament. That's not to say that no similar word is used to explain such a concept,
however. The Apostle Paul's First Epistle to the Thessalonians says:
"We [...] will be caught up together with them in the clouds."
In the Latin translation of the original Greek,
this segment contains the word 'rapiemur,' another form of the verb that gives us "rapture," which
means "seize" or "tear away." The current version of the rapture doesn't appear in the Bible,
however, but rather arose out of developments in thought during the Great Awakenings of the
18th and 19th centuries. It's also important to understand that the rapture is far from
a universally held Christian belief, being prominent primarily among Evangelical Protestants.
However, just because the Bible doesn't literally say that Jesus will summon the dead into the sky
in an event called the rapture, isn't to say there's no scriptural basis for the idea.
All four canonical gospels mention a time at which the living and the dead will all
be gathered together and judged before being sent to their eternal destiny.
But while the resurrection and judgement of the dead is a pretty unambiguous part
of the Bible's message, a physical levitation into the sky is less universally accepted.
The idea of a physical rapture was popularized in the 1830s by an Evangelical British minister
following visions of Christ's Second Coming by a young man from Scotland.
This idea spread to American Evangelicals in the early 20th century,
and the doomsday-minded American media only fanned the flames.
The idea of the rapture is far from universally believed either, even among Christians.
Part of the reason for this is that one of the murkiest aspects of Christian theology
is the study of the end times, otherwise known as eschatology. While most Christians believe
that Christ will return to Earth, the Second Coming and the rapture are not always synonymous.
The key evolution of the idea is a concept called premillennial dispensationalism.
This is based on the idea that God has treated humans differently at different points in history,
and that history can be broken up into different eras based on the different stages of God's plan.
For example, God seemingly treated the world differently before the Flood than after,
and things changed big time after he gave the law to Moses.
The belief is that the current era of humanity will be followed by a seven-year period of
tribulation for non-believers, after which Jesus will come back with the righteous and rule
over a thousand-year era of peace known as the Millennium. It's also suggested that the rapture
will occur before this tribulation, making the rapture and the Second Coming two separate events.
There is also a sect of belief known as postmillennialism,
which suggests that we're already in the so-called Millennium,
as it began at Christ's resurrection. This line of thought suggests that we are slowly moving
toward the consummation of God's kingdom, which will end with Christ's Second Coming.
Then there are the amillennialists,
who believe that the Millennium is a metaphor that represents the era of Christ's church.
They say it's not a literal thousand years, there's no actual seven-year tribulation,
and, perhaps most notably, there'll be no actual rapture at all. This view argues that Christians
don't get a "get out of tribulation free" card to enjoy time with Jesus before the end times.
Instead, they have a moral obligation to improve the world in preparation of Christ's return.
The truth is, though, these are relatively obscure beliefs in the wider Christian dogma. Despite the
prevalence of the rapture in popular culture, the vast majority of Christians — from Catholics to
Lutherans and Methodists to Anglicans — don't subscribe to the concept of a bodily rapture.
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