Why I Don’t Typically Argue About the Rapture

Mike Leake 1 Comment


Last week I wrote an article on why I oppose a pre-tribulational rapture. Today I will explain what I mean by “oppose a pre-tribulational rapture” as well as share why I seldom argue about a rapture.

There are times when I will speak up and there are times when I am mostly indifferent.

When I Speak Up

Rarely will I challenge a persons belief in a pre-tribulational rapture. But there are at least four times when I will speak up:

  1. When their belief makes them swallow other silly things.
  2. When their belief is giving them a dangerously wrong view of suffering.
  3. When their belief is negatively impacting the way they follow Jesus.
  4. When they are obsessed/distracted to the detriment of themselves or others. Usually in the form of being divisive and argumentative.

I’ve found only a handful of instances in which one of these is present that would necessitate my speaking up. For the most part there isn’t much benefit in arguing about the timing of certain eschatological events—this includes the rapture.

Why I Don’t Typically Argue About the Rapture

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 is a proof passage for those that believe in a pre-tribulational rapture. There we see that believers are “caught up” into the clouds to meet the Lord and so be with him always.

Those who believe in a pre-tribulational rapture believe that here Christ is calling believers to himself and back into heaven where they will wait together for the tribulation period to end. After this Christ will return with believers to reign with them for a millennium.

For me, as a historic premilliennialist (who would really like to be amillennial), I believe that 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 is the second coming of Christ.

What we both have in common is that we believe 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 is going to happen. The difference is that I don’t believe there is a second second coming. (That isn’t a typo). I believe this “catching up” and the second coming are the same event.

But at the end of the day this isn’t a point worth arguing over. I say that because we both believe that Christ is going to return—and do so in the fashion of 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. When this event happens I will believe that it is the second coming of Christ. Those that believe in a pre-tribulational rapture will believe it is the rapture of the church.

At that point we’ll be with Christ and the next step after this return of Christ will be settled. If we hang out with Jesus for seven years in the heavens then I’ll gladly become a pre-trib guy. But if we meet the Lord in the air and come back with him to the earth at that point I’m sure all my pre-trib brothers and sisters will happily admit they were wrong on their rapture charts.

Either way we are both looking for Jesus to return. And because of that I don’t see that it ought to have much of a practical difference on the way that we wait for Jesus to return. For that reason I don’t typically argue with people about the rapture.

Can You Hear Him? (YWS Week 40)

Nick Horton 1 Comment

richardsibbessmallWelcome to a year of reading Richard Sibbes together! The reading plan for the entire year can be accessed here. I encourage you to stick with us, allow yourself time to read, and soak in the riches of this gifted and prolific Puritan preacher. You will be edified and encouraged.

If you have trouble with how Sibbes used words, check out the Lexicons of Early Modern English for definitions from the period.

Summary/Engagement

I have prayed often and much for the sick to be healed. Many friends and family members who suffer from cancer have been prayed over. Others had illnesses, injuries, and viruses. In some cases, these friends and family members died. In other cases, they have healed and continued to live.

In this reading Sibbes relates something that might be problematic at first blush. That all sicknesses are a result of sin, and our duty is to search out what sin is in us and repent, before seeking God’s healing. We can read this and think that all sickness is a direct result of our sin. For instance, because I did not do the speed limit, I now have a cold, etc. That’s not what Sibbes is saying.

All illness is as a result of sin. Through Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden sin entered the world, and death with it. The corruption of sin is more comprehensive than our broken relationship with God and his judgment and wrath on our souls. The whole world has been subjected to the effects of sin. (Romans 8:18-25) Scripture says that creation itself groans as in the pains of childbirth to be set free. Death came from sin. Disease came from sin. Cancer came from sin. We know, in our bitterness and longing and hot tears of grief, that death is not how things should be.

Sibbes is stating that a Sovereign God has control over all things. This includes illness. God can use illness and sickness as a direct result of specific sin, but we have no knowledge of when that is.  You or I cannot point in our life and say that because I did this, God has afflicted me with such and such a disease. That is, unless our sin directly correlates to illness, such as contracting a disease as a result of sharing heroin needles, etc.

You or I cannot claim to know or solve the mind of God. We often cannot know when our sickness is a result of the common effects of the fall or our specific actions. However, we can know something of God’s design for suffering.

“But blessed are those sicknesses and infirmities that occasion us to go to God, that makes us cry to God.”

Application / Further Discussion

What is our purpose in living? We have lost it along the way when we cry out to God for deliverance from something and use Him as a means to an end. God is not a magic talisman to be consulted when things don’t go our way and then put away when we are comfortable and well. Yet, so many of us live this way. This is functional unbelief.

Living this way presupposes that we are the main attraction. We are the gods of this world and God is nothing more than our butler to accomplish what we desire when we ask (demand) it of him. Do you live this way? Have you any use for God when you are well, or only when you are sick?

Friends, we’re all desperately sick. Sin has corrupted our very nature. Because we are by nature sinners it can be hard for us to see that we should be something else. A dog born with three legs doesn’t know it ought to have four. We humans born under sin don’t know, or suppress, that we were meant to live in fellowship with God but our nature leaves us separated and justly condemned, awaiting eternal punishment.

God didn’t leave us there. Suffering points us to Him. Suffering humbles us and shows us that we are not gods of this world. We have no power over ourselves, our health, our station in life, or our eternity. C.S. Lewis said “Suffering is God’s megaphone to a deaf world.” He shakes us loose from our drunken stupor, heads spinning on the fumes of sin, and through bleary eyes shows us something of Himself.

We come to know that we are not all there is. God uses suffering to throw cold water in our sin-hungover faces. By His grace He shows us something of Himself. I pray he grants you the gift of faith, and repentance, and salvation. He is the reason we exist, any suffering or grace in this present age is window dressing for the ages to come. This is not all there is to life. Thank God this is merely the beginning of what is to come.

Even when evil men do evil things, can you cry out in the midst of suffering to God for deliverance, comfort, and grace? Can you cry out in the best of times, realizing we are poor, pitiable creatures deserving death before Almighty God? Will you humble yourself and seek His glory above yours?

Suffering is God calling, can you hear Him?

   “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:1–10, ESV)  

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Last week, we had a catch up week.

Next week, we read Josiah’s Reformation.

Today in Blogworld 10.10.14

Mike Leake

The Songs We Sing

Here are a few lesser-known songs that you might want to consider singing in your church.

7 of the Biggest Pitfalls of Being an Introvert as a Pastor

I can identify with a couple of these—but I’m a weird hybrid of introvert and extrovert.

Tear Away The Mask

This is good stuff from Jen Thorn

Christ and Ebola

Great reflection by Denny Burk on the Ebola virus

This is incredibly silly but also quite mesmerizing:

The Greatest Reason I Oppose a Pre-Tribulational Rapture

Mike Leake 4 Comments


With Left Behind in theaters I’m sure we’ll be dealing with more talk about the secret rapture of the church. I’ve expressed in the past that I abandoned that view years ago because I was no longer convinced that it is a biblical argument.

So, I guess the greatest reason I oppose a pre-tribulational rapture is because I don’t find it in the Bible. But that’s not quite what I had in mind in the title. Here is the greatest practical reason why I oppose it—or to put that another way here is where I believe the doctrine can do great harm.

A belief in a Pre-tribulational rapture lends itself to an inadequate view of Christian suffering. My friend Barry Wallace posted this on Facebook yesterday:

In China, the Christians were told, “Don’t worry, before the tribulation comes you will be translated – raptured.” Then came a terrible persecution. Millions of Christians were tortured to death. Later I heard a Bishop from China say, sadly, “We have failed.

“We should have made the people strong for persecution, rather than telling them Jesus would come first. Tell the people how to be strong in times of persecution, how to stand when the tribulation comes, – to stand and not faint.”

I feel I have a divine mandate to go and tell the people of this world that it is possible to be strong in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are in training for the tribulation, but more than sixty percent of the Body of Christ across the world has already entered into the tribulation. There is no way to escape it.

We are next.

(Excerpt from a letter written by Corrie Ten Boom in 1974)

When I was a full-on pretrib rapture guy, I remember thinking that this doctrine was great for evangelism. The message was simple: There is something really bad going to happen in the near future, but if you believe in Jesus he will rescue you from the terrible time of suffering. Repent and believe in Jesus and you won’t experience any of these terrible things.

Who wouldn’t sign up for that?

But rapture evangelism doesn’t work. The gospel is a call to come and die. Not a call to believe in Jesus so you don’t have to endure seven years of hardship.

I’m not intending to say that all those who subscribe to a pre-tribulational rapture have a terrible theology of suffering. Nor am I trying to say that everyone who believes in a rapture does so only because they do not want to suffer.

What I am attempting to say is that a pre-tribulational rapture would not challenge someone with an inadequate theology of suffering. It will not lend itself to training folks to suffer well. There is nothing in a belief in a pre-tribulational rapture that would cause someone to ask, “How are we going to endure the intense suffering and persecution that is coming our way”?

But that is a question we must ask. Because Corrie Ten Boom is likely correct—we are next.