Objections To The Rapture (Part 3)

Objection: 1Thessalonians is deploying a metaphor in which the people leave the city to greet the king & escort him into the city. They do this in a time of great judgment & travail on the Earth.  


Reply: It’s hard to see how this is refutes the concept at issue.  According to your own logic, the people leave the city.   They escort the king to his rightful home, the city.  At its core, that’s precisely what the rapture entails. From the perspective of Christ Himself, it’s the Ascension all over again, but this time, He enters the plane of the Earth, returns home to the Earth itself, & moves the seat of His power directly to the Earth from its location above. 


Objection: In Matthew 24, Christ refers to people marrying & being given in marriage being swept away in the judgment whereas Noah & his people survived in the ark.


Reply:  In Genesis, the difference between Noah & his people & those killed is the ark.   Everyone was suddenly swept up in the judgment.  God didn’t set a precise time table for the Flood to happen; —- rather, He commanded Noah to build the ark & accomplish certain things & when the day came, God drew the animals & the people into the ark. 


By way of analogy, the people in the metaphor in 1 Thessalonians works in similar fashion.  People leave the city & go to their king (who is the their Deliverer) & escort him home to the city.   This happens during the Day of the LORD, which happens suddenly, &, for some people, unexpectedly.


In Genesis, the Day of the LORD comes suddenly.  The people are caught off guard.   Some of them leave the city, ie; they are drawn into the ark with a representative number of animals, & they are with their covenantal Prophet-Priest-King/Judge (Noah) & after 40 Days & Nights, they return to the city (Dry Land), where Noah (who prefigures Christ) offers sacrifices, intercedes for the people & animals, receives & renews covenant with & from the LORD, & sets about rebuilding civilization (which is analogous to Christ’s role upon His return. 


As we have said before:  At the barest minimum, God’s covenantal pattern has included a removal event every time, so there is no reason to think that the overall concept of the rapture lacks biblical support.    What doesn’t have biblical support is the Left Behind version of events in which people are removed & retained corporeally for 7 years during which they are not on the Earth.   Rather, the Bible indicates a precious few if any would ever just disappear that way.    Instead the majority or everyone in a society as connected as our own would be removed & retained then gone for however long & then returned to Earth a point in time a moment or two after they were removed & then history continues with barely a feather ruffled until Christ Himseif returns at the end. 


Simply put — Removal, Retention, &  Return of people fits covenantal pattern, & while it may be true that the list includes a number of events that are literary only, the fact of the matter is that Christ’s Ascension is the literal, historical event that grounds them all — & if you pay close attention to what it means to be united to Christ, a pattern emerges that indicates that we ourselves are living out the general contours covenantal history on a species wide, even individual basis, & there is a real sense that, broadly speaking,  what God has done to & for Christ will also be done to/for us to one degree or another.   


Therefore, in all likelihood the rapture is, generally speaking, a biblically sound concept that needs refinement as to its specifics. 


O LORD, Hear our prayer(s)?

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