Lesson 5: Surveying the Rapture Views – The Rapture
Lesson 5 Overview
Is the Rapture of Christians Really in the Bible? with Dr. Andy Woods
This lesson completes the tenth truth about the rapture (that it is a traditional doctrine now being recovered) and then closes the “what” question and opens the “when” question by surveying the major views on the timing of the rapture. Use this overview to review the key points after watching the full video.
Why the Church History Objection Fails
Dr. Woods continues answering the claim that the pre-tribulation rapture is missing from the creeds and church councils. His key point is timing: the great creeds (like the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed) were formulated after the fourth century, after the allegorical school of Alexandria eclipsed the literal school of Antioch and after Augustine cast the church under an allegorical “spell” through his book The City of God. So the absence of the doctrine in those creeds only reflects that they were written after the church had already turned away from literal interpretation.
A Minority That Held the View
Despite Augustine’s influence, Dr. Woods argues a minority in church history still read prophecy literally and held something like a pre-tribulation rapture. He cites “Pseudo-Ephraim” (fourth to sixth century), whose statement that “all the saints and elect of God are gathered prior to the tribulation” sounds exactly like modern pre-trib teachers. He also cites the research of George Gunn, who found that early church fathers before Nicaea (such as Papias, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and even early Origen) read John 14:1-3 as Christ returning to rescue His people and take them to the Father’s house, and that references to that passage faded once Augustinian amillennialism took hold. He adds Jesse Forrest Silver’s observation that the earliest fathers expected the Lord’s return in their own day, which reflects belief in imminence.
Daniel 12 and Progressive Illumination
Dr. Woods offers a biblical reason the doctrine was unclear for so long: Daniel 12:4 and 12:9, where Daniel is told to seal up the words until the time of the end, when “many will go to and fro and knowledge will increase.” Cross-referencing Amos 8:12, he argues “going to and fro” means searching the Scriptures, and “knowledge will increase” means understanding of the end times, not technology or travel.
He distinguishes progressive revelation (which he rejects; God has said everything in the 66 books) from progressive illumination, in which already-revealed truth becomes clearer as a generation nears the events. This, he says, is why eschatology was among the last doctrines to be systematized. He traces the order of the church’s doctrinal focus: first the canon, then Christology (around AD 500), then the atonement, then salvation (at the Reformation, around AD 1500), and only around AD 1800, with figures like John Nelson Darby, did eschatology receive careful systematic attention. He quotes Sir Isaac Newton, a serious student of Daniel and Revelation, who predicted that near the end a body of men would insist on the literal interpretation of prophecy amid much opposition.
Review of the Ten Truths
Dr. Woods summarizes the ten truths that answer the “what” question: the rapture is an important doctrine, it is distinct from the second advent, it is the catching away of all living believers, it is a reunion, it is a resurrection, it is an exemption from death for a generation, it is instantaneous, it is a mystery, it is imminent, and it is a traditional doctrine now being recovered.
Beginning the “When” Question
With the “what” question complete, Dr. Woods opens the “when” question, meaning when the rapture occurs relative to the seven-year tribulation, not a calendar date. He surveys the main views: pre-tribulationism (his view, the rapture before the tribulation), mid-tribulationism (in the middle), post-tribulationism (at the end), and the pre-wrath view (the church remains until about the sixth seal). He argues the pre-wrath label is misleading since every view considers itself pre-wrath, and suggests it is better described as a “three-quarters” rapture. He also mentions partial rapturism, the idea that only watchful believers are taken while carnal believers are left to be purified in the tribulation.
He acknowledges that many respond to all this disagreement with slogans like “pray for pre, plan for post” or by calling themselves “pan-tribbers” (it will all pan out), but he says his goal for the rest of the study is to show that a person can arrive at real certainty about the pre-tribulation view.