When Jesus promised His disciples “I will come again” (John 14:3), He created a hope that has burned in the hearts of nearly all Christians for two thousand years. And seldom since the first century A.D. has this hope burned more brightly in the hearts of more Christians than it does today.
This hope is darkened, however, by one shadow. According to the Bible, a terrible time of trouble—often spoken of as the “tribulation”—will take place on earth just before Christ’s second coming. For nearly eighteen hundred years, Christians believed that all of God’s people would pass through this tribulation. However, about two hundred years ago a new theory was proposed—that God will take true Christians out of the world and transport them to heaven prior to the tribulation. Those left behind will pass through the tribulation, during which millions of Jews will be converted to Christianity. The second coming of Christ will take place after the tribulation.
The carrying away of the saints to heaven prior to the tribulation is called the “rapture.” According to those who hold this view, the rapture will be secret in the sense that no one will know when it will occur, and those who are left behind on earth will only know that it has occurred when they realize that many people have suddenly disappeared for no good reason. A number of books and films like “Left Behind” portray cars and airplanes crashing because their drivers and pilots were “raptured.” They picture startled people wondering what happened to their friends and loved ones.
This view of the end of the world could be called a dual second-coming theory, because it splits Christ’s return to our planet into two parts: the rapture before the tribulation and the Second Coming after the tribulation.
A careful study of the Bible suggests three reasons for rejecting this two-stage theory of the second coming of Christ.
The Vocabulary of the Second Coming
Advocates of the rapture claim that when Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians 4:15, he used the word parousia, which means “coming,” to describe the secret rapture. But in 1 Thessalonians 3:13, he used the same word to describe “the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints” (NKJV), which according to advocates of the rapture, occurs at Christ’s actual second coming. Again, in 1 Thessalonians 2:8, Paul employed the term parousia to refer to the coming of Christ that will cause the destruction of the antichrist, which rapture proponents understand refers to Christ’s actual second coming.
Thus, the vocabulary of the Bible provides no basis for a two-phase second coming of Christ. Its terms are used interchangeably to describe a single, indivisible, post-tribulational advent of Christ to bring salvation to believers and retribution to unbelievers.
Not a Secret Second Coming
The “rapture,” according to its advocates, will be a very secret event. However, 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, which gives the most famous description of Christ’s second coming, suggests the very opposite. It speaks of the Lord descending “from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God.”
The “loud command,” the “voice of the archangel,” and “the trumpet call of God” hardly suggest a secret event. On the contrary, this may well be the noisiest passage in the Bible. And the references to a trumpet call in the parallel passages of Matthew 24:31 and 1 Corinthians 15:52 corroborate to the public nature of the Second Advent. No trace of a secret rapture can be found in any of these passages.
Furthermore, Matthew 24:30, 31 uses language that is very similar to 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, yet according to the secret rapture theory Matthew 24:30, 31 refers to Christ’s actual second coming while Paul’s statement in 1 Thessalonians refers to the secret rapture.
God’s People and the Tribulation
In His Olivet discourse, Jesus spoke of the great tribulation that will immediately precede His coming, promising that “for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.” (Matt. 24: 21, 22, 29). To argue that the “elect are only Jewish believers and not members of the church, means to ignore that Christ was addressing His apostles, who represent not only national Israel, but the church at large. This is confirmed by the fact that both Mark and Luke, who wrote their gospels for the Gentile church, report the same discourse (Mark 13; Luke 21).
Christ never promised His church a pre-tribulation rapture out of this world. Rather, He promised protection in the midst of tribulation. In His petition to His Father, He said, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.” (John 17:15) If the church were absent from this earth during the hour of testing, there would be no necessity of divine protection.
In light of the reasons discussed above, the answer is clear. The popular teaching of a secret coming of Christ to rapture the church before the final tribulation is devoid of any biblical support.
How and When Jesus Will Come
The second coming of Christ will be anything but secret. Here are some of the Bible’s clearest declarations:
1. It will be very visible: “Every eye will see him” (Revelation 1:7)
2. It will be very audible: “The Lord Himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God” (1 Thessalonians 4:16)
3. It will be glorious: “The nations of the earth … will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory” (Matthew 24:30)
4. It will have consequences: “The Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done” (Matthew 16:27). “The dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17)
