The Secret Capture of the Church: Why I Hope We Move On From Left Behind

Originally posted: September 13, 2023

For the record: I do believe that Jesus will return one day to planet Earth – publicly, gloriously, victoriously, and savingly – just as He promised.  Those who are alive at His returning will meet Him in the air.  He will judge the world – both those who are alive and those who have died - and He will establish His Kingdom with justice, peace and life as it was created to be.  All of this has been believed by believers across cultures and across centuries and is part of the “faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 3)

Here is what I don’t believe:  I do not believe that Jesus will return half-way and silently in order to secretly remove the church and the Holy Spirit from the planet for the seven year Great Tribulation and then “come again-again,” this time to judge and reign for 1,000 years.  These ideas are the product of a particular perspective called Dispensationalism that was unknown among Christians until late in the 19th century.

Why bring it up at all?  Because the peculiar idea of a “pre-trib rapture” followed by a 7-year period of Great Tribulation will be served up for a fourth time by Hollywood on October 3 in the movie Left Behind starring Nicolas Cage (!?!).  And like leftover food, microwaved and served for a fourth time, I recommend that you just throw it in the garbage once and for all.

A Peculiar Scheme For Interpreting The Bible

Years ago, an attractive young woman who is now my wife of 37+ years was studying at a Bible College in the Midwest.  I was studying at a small, liberal arts college in the South.  She was taught – in effect – that large portions of the Old Testament were not to be considered by Christians because they applied to “a different dispensation.”  I was taught that large portions of the Old Testament were not to be considered by anyone because they were unreliable in transmission across the centuries.   Hmmmm.  Strange that a “conservative” – read Dispensational – Bible College and a “liberal” – read unbelieving – mainline college were teaching us similar things, although for very different reasons based on very different methods.  The conclusion was similar: don’t bother with most of the Old Testament.  It was apparent to me that liberalism was a form of unbelief, but I was not sure what to make of Dispensationalism at this point.

With some digging, I became convinced of two important things:

First – the “Pre-Tribulational Secret Rapture of the Church” teaching had no history among God’s people until late in the 19th century.  Augustine.  Martin Luther.  John Calvin.  Jonathan Edwards.  Charles Spurgeon.  None of these men believed or taught such an idea.  If we could go back in a time machine, no believer in Christ before that time would have any idea what we were talking about or where that could be found in the Bible.  No one.

There is a historic "pre-millenial" view in which Jesus returns, those who are alive meet Him in the air, and He "lands" to establish His Kingdom on earth.  But the idea that Jesus comes part-way back in silence to remove the church from tribulation only to return publicly and establish His Kingdom at a later time is unknown.

Further, even now this idea is fairly limited in its following.  Limited largely to Americans in the Midwest and South and to churches formed by those people and their missionaries.  You can understand how hard it would be to convince believers in South Sudan or Northern Iraq or in the underground churches of North Korea, Saudi Arabia or Burma that Christians don’t have to go through the Great Tribulation.

The actual historical beginning of the idea of a “Pre-Tribulation Rapture” and the system of ideas that became connected with it is fairly murky.  There is a school of thought that connects it to a vision received by a young girl in the church of Edward Irving.  Click Here for an overview of this story.

Whatever the true source, it is clear that the “pre-trib rapture” ideas gained a wider audience in the teachings of John Darby (1800-1882) and the Plymouth Brethren in the 19th century. They were transmitted through the English-speaking populations in the notes of the popular Scofield Study Bible (1909), and most recently into popular culture through books like The Late, Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay and the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye.

My second conviction, and this is a bit more involved, is that Dispensational Theology is built on a distinct method of reading and interpreting the Bible.  I have come to believe that this interpretative scheme minimizes Jesus and the Gospel.  Let me explain.

Dispensationalism is based on the perspective that God has established separate time-periods or “dispensations” along the time-line of history and that each represents a different way of dealing with humanity and involve a different “test.”
“These periods are marked off in Scripture by some change in God’s method of dealing with mankind, in respect to two questions: of sin, and of man’s responsibility. Each of the dispensations may be regarded as a new test of the natural man, and each ends in judgment – marking his utter failure in every dispensation.” C.I. Scofield

Scofield based this foundational concept on an outdated rendering of II Timothy 2:15 in the King James Version:  “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. “ 

Compare these translations:

• ESV – “rightly handling the word of truth,”
• HCSB - “correctly teaching the word of truth,”
• NIV - “who correctly handles the word of truth,” and
• NASB - “accurately handling the word of truth.” 
• The Message (just for fun!)  - “laying out the truth plain and simple.”

Nothing about separate divisions of God’s plan there!

Scofield and his followers took a good 17th-century translation of a Greek word and made that word’s 19th century meaning the basis for an entirely new and previously unknown perspective of Bible history and interpretation.  This is a HUGE leap. 

Scofield is seeing something that all Bible readers see: God has “spoken at many times and in many ways.” (Hebrews 1:1)  No one doubts that God has spoken through different people in different settings – e.g. Abraham, Moses, Judges, David’s Kingdom are all different times and settings for God’s message.  But together, these different settings point in the same direction: to Jesus.  That gets lost when they are walled off from one another as separate and distinct programs of God at work.

What follows is the effort to place various portions of the Bible into different time divisions or dispensations for their application.  Example: “This Old Testament passage applies to the Dispensation of Law, but not the Church Dispensation.”  That is to say, it applies to other people – in this case the Jews – and not to us – the church.  This is how a conservative Bible College ended up disqualifying large portions of the Old Testament for the life of Christians.  It is a different means, but the same outcome as the liberal college that I went to.

For Dispensationalists, the study of eschatology – Doctrine of “Last Things” – has been re-translated into the Doctrine of “End Times.”  This reflects a near obsession in Dispensationalism with laying out a virtual train schedule of events related to the end of the world.  The nation of Israel plays a particularly important role in this scheme because of all the “unfinished business” that remains from “their Dispensation.”

Let me be clear about something.  In my experience, few people who hold these convictions are aware of the history or interpretative scheme of Dispensationalism.  In their mind, this is “just what the Bible teaches.”  Because of the amazing public relations impact of popular books and movies, these ideas have been propagated through much of the United States without any real reflection.  Church-goers of all stripes have “breathed in” the ideas.  Even worse in my mind, non-church-goers wrongly assume that these ideas represent historic or mainstream Christian beliefs.  Dispensational ideas about the end-of-the-world surround us like the water that fish swim in.  Movies like Left Behind only make the situation worse.

This Is More Than A Family Difference Of Perspective

I am up in arms about Dispensationalism because I see it as far more than simply a different perspective on the same truth.  This is not the variation among denominations that Americans, in particular, have learned to live with.  The method of Bible interpretation used by Dispensationalism is different than the one that Jesus Himself teaches us, and so their scheme affects our understanding of Jesus Himself and the Gospel of His Grace.

Many times, Jesus said that He was the fulfillment of the Old Testament.

• And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. - Luke 24:27
• Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” - Luke 24:44
• You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, - John 5:39
• “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. - Matthew 5:17

Instead of dividing the Old Testament into sections, some of which will apply to our present dispensation, and some that won’t, Jesus says that they are intended to point us to Him.

The Dispensationalists that I know talk much about “literal interpretation” of the Bible and the “grammitico-historical” method of reading the text.  Every evangelical I know will agree that it is important to take the plain meaning of the text as written, including its historical context at the time of writing.  I am with them to this point.  We part ways here though: I believe that each text – in its historical setting – is part of a larger story – the Gospel. That larger story is part of the full context of each single story.

By limiting any single text to only the context of its specific historical setting, we remove it from the larger context of the overarching story of the Gospel.  We lose the larger context of the whole story, even as we concentrate on the immediate context of its single, historical setting.  And that changes or misses the full meaning.

Imagine this: If you put a book together with chapters about each mile marker on I-95 between Fredericksburg and Quantico, you would read those chapters in one way.  If these were chapters in a collection of books on the role played by the interstate system as part of the development of transportation that enabled the United States to have an impact on the world, then you would see those same chapters differently.  Context matters.  By removing the larger context that Jesus gives – all of this is fulfilled in Me – we alter the meaning of the text itself, even as we haggle over the immediate context of any one story.  There is a larger story that is part of the context of each single story.

I recently heard a person say confidently “you need to understand: God has two programs, one for the church and one for Israel.”  “By that do you mean two different ways to be saved and in covenant relationship with Him?” I asked.  He pondered and did not answer, having never thought of what was meant by “two different programs.”  Further conversation later made it clear, that he had accepted without understanding a Dispensational understanding of the Bible. 

Ideas have consequences.  The ideas that underlie Dispensationalism drive our understanding of the Bible in particular directions that it was never intended to go.  And eventually end up with movies like Left Behind – Part 4.

I am more than aware that much of what I write here will sound odd to many people who have grown up hearing about the church getting raptured and various “end times” ideas as “just what the Bible teaches.”  Stepping away from those assumptions and conclusions would be a big step that is worth considering carefully and without haste.  Ponder the things I’m pointing out.  Dig deeper on ideas that are new or different.  Be like the Bereans in Acts 17:11 and search the scriptures to see if this is true.  Make sure to think deeply about the assumptions that underlie your reading of the Scriptures as well.

Resources

Three initial places to learn more, form shortest to longest in length.  I don’t want to overwhelm anyone with options, as A LOT has been written pro and con on Dispensationalism and the “pre-trib rapture” ideas, but these are three good places to start the journey.

9 Reasons We Can Be Confident Christians Won’t Be Raptured Before the Tribulation – A Blog Post by Justin Taylor summarizing a 1987 article from John Piper.  Piper looks carefully at a number of specific Bible texts to make a case against the idea of a "pre-tribulation rapture of the church."  Justin includes a link to the original article as well as a trailer of the upcoming Left Behind movie.  Check it out by clicking here.

How Will the World End? by Jeramie Rinne - Billed as "A short, readable book that explains clearly and simply what the Bible says about Jesus' return and the end of the world," I think this book delivers well on what it sets out to do.  It is 93 pages long, clearly written and covers a good deal of material without being obtuse.  He's much kinder to the Dispensational view than I am, which is good, I’m sure.  Check it out by clicking here.

Understanding Dispensationalists by Vern Poythress – This 1986 book by Westminster Seminary professor Vern Poythress is now available FREE online by clicking here.  It is a deep analysis of Dispensationalism, particularly in its classical form, so it can be a challenging read, but if you want to really dig in, this is a great resource at a great price.  Poythress is himself Reformed and not Dispensational, but his aim of helping two differing views understand one another keeps the tone balanced and healthy.