by Zack Hunt
Two interesting things are going on here, though—things that throw a wet blanket on this passage’s use as a proof text for the rapture. The first we’ve already talked about. Despite the beautiful harmonies of Larry Norman, it’s actually not entirely clear that being left behind is a bad thing in this passage. The Greek words the writer of Matthew uses for “taken” and “left” can be used in both positive and negative ways.2 If, for example, a hostile alien force invaded Earth, kidnapping random people and taking them away to become slaves in the spice mines of Kessel, you wouldn’t want to be taken by the aliens. You would want to be left behind. In other words, being left behind might actually be a good thing! In fact, as we’ll see later on, being left behind might even be a calling.
The subsequent chapter of Matthew’s Little Apocalypse also makes it clear that Jesus is talking about his return, not a temporary visit. We know that because, in Matthew 25, Jesus continues describing both his return and how to be prepared for it, but then goes on to explain why there is such urgency to being prepared. It’s not for fear of being left behind to suffer through seven years of tribulation, but because “when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his throne of glory” and begin the final judgment when he will divide the sheep from the goats (Matthew 25:31-33). So, while the Little Apocalypse of Matthew does make for classic rapture music, it is clear that nearly every verse is describing just one return of Jesus, not a two-stage process beginning with the rapture.
What is in the Bible
But the biblical problems with the rapture go much deeper than a lack of the word itself or misinterpreting proof texts. The very concept of the rapture goes against the entire narrative of the Bible—in particular, how the people of God confront trials and tribulation.
Just take a look at some of the major characters in Scripture. Very few, if any, had anything resembling what we would call an easy or good life. Sure, there were good times here and there. Eden was literally paradise, the Promised Land flowed with milk and honey, and after his epic trial, Job was blessed with riches far greater than he had before. But if it is nothing else, the story of the Bible is a sustained narrative of how God sees God’s people through trials and tribulations, not how God whisks them away to safety before the trials and tribulations begin.
God warned Noah that a flood is coming and told him to build a boat to protect his family, but the ark was no pleasure cruise. Noah and his family were trapped inside a dark, dirty, stinky ark with a menagerie of animals for months on end, after listening to their neighbors beat against the walls of the ark until they all drowned and everything and everyone Noah and his family had ever known had been utterly destroyed. The story of Noah’s ark isn’t a fairy tale of God whisking God’s people away from trials and tribulations. It’s a horror story of the most unimaginable kind.
God called Abraham and promised to bless him and make of him a great nation, but Abraham’s journey was anything but easy. He had to leave his friends and homeland behind. He almost lost his wife in Egypt. He did lose his nephew and his family. He almost lost his son. There was family drama with ripple effects that carry on all the way to the present day. Abraham may have been blessed, but God didn’t whisk him away from trials and tribulations. The same was true for Abraham’s descendants.
Abraham’s great-grandson Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. The great nation that Abraham’s faithfulness gave birth to spent four hundred years in slavery. Israel’s liberator, Moses, was constantly berated by the people of Israel and riddled with doubt while wandering in the wilderness with them for four decades. Life in the Promised Land saw a never-ending succession of evil and corrupt kings. Despite a life of faithful devotion, Job lost his entire family and everything he had. The people of Israel were eventually conquered and shipped off in bondage to Babylon.
Even Jesus didn’t escape brutal trials and tribulation. Pursued by Herod as a baby, he and his family became refugees. When he grew up, he was an outcast in his own hometown. His ministry culminated in being betrayed by one of his best friends and then being arrested, tried, publicly humiliated, beaten, flogged, spit on, stripped naked, and nailed to a cross. Yes, Jesus rose triumphantly from the grave, defeated death, and changed the course of history through the power of his resurrection. But that wasn’t the end of trials and tribulations for his disciples. Jesus’ followers constantly faced persecution and even infighting within the church. Very few of them were not martyred. Tradition says Peter was crucified upside down and Paul was executed by the very Roman government to which he appealed for mercy.
So the idea of a rapture, in which God whisks God’s people away to safety and away from people who need our help, isn’t just nonbiblical; it’s anti-biblical. And when we consider the incarnation itself—that God didn’t stay up in heaven but came down to earth to dwell among us and all the problems we create—the rapture becomes more than just not biblical. It becomes antichrist.
No, not the guy from the Left Behind series. I mean antichrist in the sense of being antithetical to the way of Christ, the way of Jesus.
The way of Jesus
Lack of biblical support not withstanding, this is the fundamental problem with the rapture and the end-times theology that goes with it: it creates a way of life that stands in stark juxtaposition to the way of Jesus. The way of Jesus is incarnation, but the way of the rapture is escape. Jesus came to bring the kingdom of God down to earth as it is in heaven, but end-times theology seeks to leave earth and its problems behind. Jesus was born in human flesh because God cares about the here and now. Jesus went out across Galilee because God cares about the here and now. Jesus called disciples and taught them how to live because God cares about the here and now. Jesus healed and fed people because God cares about the here and now. Jesus laid down his life because God cares about the here and now. Jesus rose from the dead, leaving behind the gift of the Spirit and promising to come back here to earth, because God cares about the here and now. The way of Jesus is incarnation in the here and now—not escape to some far-off safe place.
The rapture promises we can leave the world behind, creating a radically self-centered faith that is all about me and how I get to heaven and avoid going to hell. The rapture makes discipleship irrelevant because all it takes to escape hell on earth and hell down below is belief in the right things. Jesus calls us to be his hands and feet in the here and now, but end-times theology, with the rapture at its center, tells us to sit around and wait for God to act.
This problematic foundation leads us to a long list of very specific here-and-now problems that the rapture and end-times theology create beyond just bad exegesis and poor discipleship. It all starts with a nation that seems so very biblical: Israel.
Israel’s role in end-times theology
Whether it’s Jack Van Impe, the Left Behind series, Hal Lindsey, or any other self-proclaimed expert, end-times theology begins, ends, and is driven along the way by Israel. Israel- related news usually manages to get spun by dispensationalists into some sort of prophecy fulfillment or precursor to prophecy fulfillment. The establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948? Prophecy. The Six-Day War? Prophecy. The Oslo Accords? Prophecy. Donald Trump moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem? Prophecy.3
If dispensationalists were just spinning old news to fit their end-times chronologies, that would be one thing. But they’re also driving foreign policy in the United States and giving cover to the nation of Israel for anything it does. For example, Jack Van Impe claimed to have been consulted by the national security advisor during the George W. Bush administration to see how then-current events in the Middle East lined up with biblical prophecy.4 For years, in a move the international community has denounced as illegal, the state of Israel has stolen land from Palestinians under the euphemism of “settlements.” In the process, Israel has committed all sorts of atrocities against Palestinian civilians, even turning Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, into a de facto pri
son through the construction of a wall that restricts access for outsiders and limits travel for residents. All of this is defended in the United States by people on both sides of the aisle and for a variety of reasons. But arguably Israel’s most staunch defender in the United States is the Republican Party, which is driven by an evangelical base that excuses all of Israel’s actions as part of reclaiming the land promised to them by God in the Bible. In other words, in the world of dispensationalism, what we are witnessing is not the political defense of another nation-state. It’s the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
President Trump, in an action clearly meant to appeal to the 81 percent of white evangelicals who voted for him, moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This action was met not just with international condemnation but with violent protests that resulted in the deaths of nearly sixty people.5 But again, dispensationalists saw Trump’s decision as a fulfillment of Scripture—even though there is no such prophecy in the Bible or anywhere else in the Christian tradition. As for the dozens of people who died? They were just collateral damage, unavoidable sacrifices to the cause of biblical prophecy.
Beyond the issue of occupation, there are at least three other significant problems with this Israel-driven prophetic agenda. The first is that the modern nation-state of Israel is not the same Israel as in the Bible. This is one of the most basic mistakes that dispensationalists make. They conflate the people of God in the Bible with a modern political state. They are not the same. One was established by God when he called Abraham to leave his homeland—a promise fulfilled generations later when Moses led the people of Israel (the name of Abraham’s grandson) out of Egypt and eventually to the Promised Land. The modern state of Israel was declared after the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states by the United Nations after World War II.
Secondly, the biblical prophecies that Jack Van Impe and others breathlessly claim are being fulfilled in the Middle East are a lot like the rapture: that is, they’re not actually biblical. There is no passage in Revelation, Daniel, Matthew, or anywhere else in the Bible that says X, Y, or Z must happen in Israel in order for Jesus to return. What we see are dispensationalists taking real events as they unfold, contorting them to fit their predetermined maps and timelines, and then finding proof texts in the Bible to back up their claims.
Finally, and most importantly, is the aforementioned problem of sanctified violence. Yes, both Palestine and Israel are committing violent actions in the battle for control of what they both view as their homeland. But conspicuously, the only side ever condemned by dispensationalists, conservative evangelicals, and even the U.S. government is the Palestinians. They are perpetually cast as the bad guys standing in the way of Israel’s divine right to the land and therefore, somehow, preventing the return of Jesus. Yes, there is violence and guilt on the Palestinian side as well, but dispensationalism never holds Israel accountable for indefensible acts of violence against innocent men, women, and children, or for the theft and destruction of Palestinian homes and land. It is all sanctified in the name of fulfilling biblical prophecy. Dispensationalists who have decided that all Palestinians are their enemies rarely if ever stop to consider the fact that many Palestinians are Christians too.
This leads us to yet another core problem with end-times theology: its Machiavellian ethics.
Ethics suspended
The basic idea behind dispensationalism is that there are different time periods, or dispensations, throughout history. According to dispensationalists, we are living right before the final dispensation when Jesus will return and establish his kingdom on earth. This sounds nice and good until you flip the coin over and see the other side. The underbelly of dispensationalism is its Machiavellian “ends justify the means” theology. Because we are supposedly living before the final dispensation, and because we must do everything we can to make sure biblical prophecy is fulfilled so Jesus can return, normal ethics are suspended for the sake of the cause. With a moratorium on morality, dispensationalist Christians free themselves to turn a blind eye toward a whole host of atrocities not just in Israel but also here at home because, tragic as those atrocities might be, they can always be justified in the name of biblical prophecy.
Ironically, this is the very thing that conservative Christianity warned me about when I was growing up. Whether it was in church, at a big youth event, or on Jack Van Impe Presents, I was constantly warned about the dangers of moral relativism—how the godless liberals were taking over and forcing moral relativism onto everyone to make way for the Antichrist. Christians, I was told, must stand firm in their convictions and values no matter what. But that edict was suddenly, if subtly, suspended whenever biblical prophecy was at stake. Whenever biblical prophecy was at stake, moral relativism suddenly stopped being the evil boogeyman and became the movement of the Holy Spirit.
A prime example of this is the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Trump is a known adulterer, liar, cheat, and gambler, a thrice-divorced, unapologetically crass, immoral, racist business mogul who uses fearmongering to rile up the worst in people while refusing to apologize for anything he’s done. On paper, he’s the kind of person who should make evangelical Christians reel back in horror. But 81 percent of white evangelical voters supported him, and despite a never-ending wave of scandals, racism, and bigotry since the election, that number has barely budged.6
White evangelical support for Trump is rooted in many realities, including radical partisanship, economic anxiety, racism, and a desire to overturn Roe v. Wade. But end-times theology can’t be overlooked as an important force in their embrace of him as a presidential candidate. If you tuned in to any pro-Trump Christian media outlet during the election or since, you would hear his Christian supporters describe him in the terms of a biblical king—even a pagan biblical king like the Babylonian king Cyrus, placed or chosen by God and anointed as God’s chosen leader for “such a time as this” (Esther 4:14). Ironically, it was Esther, not Cyrus, whom God anointed for “such a time as this,” to use her position to bring justice to those being oppressed and marginalized by their government, but awkward details are easily and often ignored in the world of biblical prophecy.7
From his promise to overturn Roe v. Wade to his over-the-top support for Israel to his guarantee that clerks at Target will say “Merry Christmas,” Trump is viewed by many of his Christian supporters as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. It’s why they can not only look past but even justify his countless sins. We are on the brink of the final dispensation, they believe, and to make it over that brink, we must do whatever is necessary. Otherwise Jesus won’t be able to return, because prophecy will not have been fulfilled. The suspension of ethics is necessary to ensure the fulfillment of those prophecies, because that fulfillment can sometimes be nasty business, like chasing Palestinians off their land or waging war on the Muslim world to take back the Temple Mount. The end, which is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and the second coming of Jesus, justifies the means, which is electing someone like Donald Trump. If his election means the fulfillment of key prophecies on the dispensationalist timeline, then we should overlook the unsavory details.
Trump also embodies another underlying problem that is, ironically, also incredibly appealing to many who believe in the rapture and the tribulation that follows: vengeance against one’s enemies.
Donald Trump is notorious for holding a grudge, for punching down and attacking anyone for even the most minuscule slight. He trashes his enemies, both real and perceived, on a daily basis and promises to wipe them off the face of the earth with fire and fury. In some ways, he is the incarnation of a dispensationalist Savior. For dispensationalism, the Savior we see in Revelation fixes the “mistakes” Jesus made in the Gospels: his soft stance on sin and crime, all that mushy stuff about loving our enemies, and most importantly, his humiliating defeat on the cross. A dispensational Savior returns to crush his enemies and wipe them off the face of the earth once and for all.
But first, faithful Christians get to be zapped up to heaven, where they’ll have a front row seat to revenge as they witness their enemies tortured and killed during the seven years of the tribulation.
Vengeance might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about the rapture or the end times, but consider what dispensationalism is really promising, with its talk of things like the rapture, the tribulation, and Armageddon. When the rapture happens, their smug enemies will be left behind and ashamed, forever having to face the truth that they were wrong and the Christians were right. But that’s just the beginning of their apocalyptic nightmare. The tribulation isn’t just a period of time without the benefit of nice Christians around to say “Have a blessed day” when you pull away from Chick-fil-A. The tribulation is a time when all the unbelievers left behind—all the enemies of the Christians that were raptured—are tortured for seven years through a series of plagues, wars, and all sorts of Antichrist-directed violence.
After the tribulation ends, there’s still more violence. After the tribulation comes Armageddon, the actual “war to end all wars.” It’s a massacre of unprecedented proportions, in which the enemies of God (or more accurately, enemies of dispensationalist Christians) will finally get their comeuppance. But even Armageddon is still not the end of dispensational vengeance. Once the hell of the tribulation and Armageddon is over, there’s still actual hell to deal with. In the timeline of dispensationalism, everyone, whether they’ve been raptured or left behind, will be dragged before the judgment seat to face the music. Their entire lifetime’s worth of sins will be read in excruciating detail for all of humanity to hear, and then Jesus will send all the unrepentant people to hell, where they will be tortured for eternity.
So when dispensationalists sanctify violence in the Middle East, atrocities by the state of Israel, or hatred, violence, and vitriol from Donald Trump, they can spin it as living out biblical prophecy, as a prophetic act of affirming the truth of what is to come by living it out in the here and now. It’s like a perverse eucharist. It’s living out the promise of the future here in the present, but in an objectively un-Christlike way. Yet violence is not seen as antichrist in end-times theology. It is the way of dispensationalist Jesus. It’s how dispensationalist Jesus is going to make the world right again. And because Jesus is coming back, enemies aren’t the only ones who suffer the wrath of end-times theology.