I am currently writing a pdf concerning ‘Dispensationalism’… maybe if I simplify that term to refer to the whole system of teaching that centres around a ‘secret rapture’ or two stages to the return of Christ – once for his people to get them to safety before the big bad days arrive (the ‘Great Tribulation’). Invented around 1830 with a man called J.N. Darby and given real legs through the Scofield reference Bible. A great way to promote a theology… I read a text (for example ‘Gog and Magog’) have no idea what it is about, but my (Scofield) Bible has notes in that tell me what it is about… I no longer need to read the Bible for myself as I now know what it means, in other words the notes become the text I read! In later times the whole framework of antiChrist, Tribulation and rapture was given a great boost with the novels / movies of ‘the left behind’ series. Claiming to be novels, but basing themselves on a (recent) interpretation of Scripture leaves them with the all-but implicit weight of Scripture. If I embrace the novels the lens through which I read Scripture will be defined.
Better to have whole parts of Scripture that is not understood than to cancel out Scripture through something imposed on it… my opinion, and maybe my excuse for reading whole parts (particularly of the OT) and not getting it!
Anyway I have noted that there has been a recent pushback among dispensationalists where there is a claim that ‘the rapture’ has been taught in earlier history, with even some quotes going back to Irenaeus (132-202). I have not yet had time to read all the claims but a few responses.
- Any such references (going by the ones I have read) could possibly be interpreted as a rapture but probably are referring to escape by death (along the lines of Jesus: they will kill you but not a hair of your head will be damaged… wonderful language!) or by protection throughout any time of persecution / tribulation.
- There is certainly no systematisation that resembles the later structure – that lies totally in the era beginning 200 years ago.
- If there are such references we have to put them against not simply the NT texts but the Hebraic world view, not the Greek view of salvation being one of escape! (I think I remember that someone prayed that the Lord God would not take the disciples out of the earthly context????)
- This escapist theology does not appear in any of the foundational creeds of Christianity. The Nicene Creed (325), the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381), the Chalcedonian Creed (451), and the Athanasian Creed (500) make no reference whatsoever to such an approach. Later confessions of faith likewise do not present this idea of a secret rapture (e.g.the Augsburg Confession (1530), the Canons of Dort (1618-1619), the Baptist Confession of Faith (1644), the Westminster Confession (1646), the Methodist Articles of Religion (1784)). ABSENT from any historic line of understanding.
Maybe some prior to Darby believed in the rapture, though I remain unconvinced. Certainly it is Darby who develops it. And I personally find no evidence of it in Scripture… 1 Thessalonians uses the normal language relating to a visiting dignity to a city – using the same literal words as when the disciples went to meet Paul on his way to Rome – they went out to come back with him to Rome. No need to posit a movement into the sky (or ‘heaven’) but a clarity that Jesus will come with all his saints – those who have died prior and those alive at the time of his parousia. Oh and who will be left and who will be ‘taken’ – in the context of the Roman assault on Israel / Jerusalem?
I have got more reading to do but don’t think I will find anything significant before 1830. It is always interesting to see how eschatologies change. Late 1990s I did a thesis on the eschatology of the wider ‘New Church Movement’ and traced back to the late 50s / early 60s the changes that came through. The vast majority of those within the movement came from a Plymouth Brethren (or Pentecostal) background and steeped in the secret rapture approach with the letters in Revelation being descriptive of the church from the time of the NT to the ‘end’. The last letter was to Laodicea, so the last era would be a ‘lukewarm’ church. In the margins of the notes I had from that era was written ‘but what about Laodicea’… written there as the speaker was speaking about the restoration of the church now that apostles and prophets were becoming the foundation. The restored church and the Laodicean church were not compatible in the end times!
I suspect that a lot of Scripture ends up not compatible with our beliefs!
I of course am the exception! Aided by I am really not convinced there is any series of events laid out for us – no tribulation, no antiChrist, no millennial rule, and certainly no rapture. Although the first two in my short list might come to pass, though the relevance of them is minimal – Scripture pushes us to live in the light of the return of Christ, so by default means quit the speculation and get on with life!