The rapture

Meeting the Lord in the air

The Thessalonian Christians were grieving: would those who had died miss the Lord's coming? Paul told them that when the Lord descends from heaven the dead in Christ will rise first, and then:

After that, we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.

1 Thessalonians 4:17

‘Caught up’ is harpazō (ἁρπάζω), to seize or snatch away. The Latin Bible rendered it rapiemur, and from that comes the English word ‘rapture’. Paul describes the same moment elsewhere: "We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed" (1 Corinthians 15:51). The Westminster Confession likewise confesses that those found alive at the last day "shall not die, but be changed" Westminster Confession 32.2.

‘To meet’ translates apantēsis (ἀπάντησις), a meeting. The same word is used of going out to meet the bridegroom (Matthew 25:6) and of the Roman believers who came out to meet Paul (Acts 28:15). Some scholars picture citizens going out to welcome an honoured visitor and escort him into the city, and so read believers as meeting the Lord in the air and coming down with him at once. Others think the word alone cannot settle the question.

When will it happen?

Through most of church history this catching up was understood as part of Christ's one visible return. In the 1830s John Nelson Darby taught the rapture as an event distinct from the return, and the view spread widely through the Scofield Reference Bible of 1909 Scofield Reference Bible. Dispensational premillennialism teaches that Christ will first take his church to meet him in the air, and come to earth with his saints after a seven-year tribulation. It points to the promise that "God has not appointed us to suffer wrath" (1 Thessalonians 5:9), to Christ's word, "I will also keep you from the hour of testing" (Revelation 3:10), and to the hope that the Lord may come at any moment. Some place the rapture in the middle of the tribulation.

Historic premillennialists, amillennialists and postmillennialists generally see the rapture as happening at the return itself. Jesus said that "Immediately after the tribulation of those days" he would send his angels to gather his elect (Matthew 24:29), and Paul, writing about the Lord's coming "and our being gathered together to Him" (2 Thessalonians 2:1), says that day will not come until the rebellion occurs. Dispensationalists answer that these passages concern Israel or the Day of the Lord rather than the church. Some read "one will be taken and the other left" (Matthew 24:40) as the rapture; others, noting the flood that "swept them all away" in the verse before (Matthew 24:39), take those taken as those taken in judgment.

What all hold together

This is a difference among evangelicals, and no view of it is a condition of salvation. All share the hope that Christ will come again and that "we will always be with the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4:17). Paul gave this teaching not to frighten but to comfort: "Therefore encourage one another with these words" (1 Thessalonians 4:18). Setting dates or driving people by fear is not a use Scripture allows. For more, see What are the rapture and the millennium? and the lesson Christ’s return and the millennium.