The more I study the New Testament, the more it persuades me that what we call the “Rapture” was an inseparable element of the Gospel that the apostles proclaimed to the first century AD world. Today, however, it’s either ignored or ridiculed in most churches.
Since I began writing on a full-time basis five years ago, I have learned much from those who have criticized and mocked both my premillennial and pretribulation beliefs. I am thankful for them and for how they have driven me to the words of Scripture where I have found added conviction for these beliefs.
Two things stand out in my mind from listening to (or talking to) pastors who deny a literal thousand-year reign of Christ over a gloriously restored kingdom of Israel. First, they rely heavily on human wisdom that leads them to retrofit God’s promises to Israel with an understanding foreign to the biblical prophets at the time they wrote. And second, they rarely if ever teach about our hope of glorious, resurrected bodies.
In essence, they divorce our imminent hope in Jesus’ glorious appearing from the Gospel, which was something the apostle Paul and the other apostles never did.
2. PAUL’S BRIEF MINISTRY IN THESSALONICA
Paul’s ministry in Thessalonica illustrates the central focus of the rapture in his proclamation of the Gospel to the Gentiles.
Commentators agree on the brevity of the apostle’s ministry in this city. Acts 17:1-9 tells us that he spent “three sabbath days” in the local synagogue talking to the Jewish people after which they forced him and his team out of town. Based on the fact that Paul received two monetary gifts from the church in Philippi while he was in Thessalonica (Phil. 4:16), it’s likely that he was there longer than three weeks before the Jews forced him and his team to leave the city.
Despite Paul’s short-lived stay in the city, his new converts immediately gained a reputation for waiting up Jesus’ appearing to take them home. “For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything. For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:8-10). This is not the Second Coming, but rather the rapture when Jesus would deliver them from the coming wrath of the day of the Lord (see 1 Thess. 4:18 -5:11).
Paul’s statement in 2 Thessalonians 2:5 is more than a little remarkable, “Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things?” What is the apostle talking about here?
First, it includes the defilement of the temple by the “man of lawlessness” or antichrist (2 Thess. 2:4). Second, the apostle told his new converts about the start of the day of the Lord (2 Thess. 2:3; see also 1 Thess. 5:1-3). Third, his new converts knew enough about the day of the Lord to cause great panic in their midst when someone told them it had started already (2 Thess. 2:2). Fourth, the Thessalonians knew all about the work of the restrainer in preventing the appearance of the antichrist on the world scene (2 Thess. 2:6-7).
In other words, after the apostles brief ministry in their city, his new converts in Thessalonica knew much more about future things than the majority of believers today. And this was over forty years before John wrote the book of Revelation.
Eschatology, the study of future things, was not a topic reserved for the more intellectual and mature believers in the early church. Paul’s initial proclamation of the Gospel in Thessalonica included the rapture as their imminent hope. Not only that, his teaching also included the appearance of the antichrist, the defilement of the Jewish temple, the start of the day of the Lord, and a future time when God would pour out His wrath on humanity.
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