Do You Still Believe in the Rapture?

Dave Hunt’s book When Will Jesus Come? Compelling Evidence for the Soon Return of Christ is the topic for this segment of our program. And last week, before we ran out of time, we were discussing the historic rejection in Christianity of the Rapture of the church, which, if you’re not familiar with the biblical teaching, is the return of Jesus Christ to take His bride, His saints—all those who have put their faith in Him, past and present—to heaven. It involves the resurrection of the bodies of those who died in Christ and the instant translation of the bodies of living believers into new incorruptible bodies. The doctrine is given to us in 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4, John 14, and many other verses. Nevertheless, professing Christians, both Catholic and Protestants, regard the Rapture as unbiblical. Catholic teachings of purgatory and indulgences nullify the direct access to heaven that the Rapture promises. And, although one of the cries of the Reformers was Sola Scriptura—the Bible alone as one’s teaching authority—they held onto many practices and beliefs that were carry-overs from the Catholic church, such as infant baptism and the rejection of the Rapture.