What is the origin of the rapture theory?

In the Old Testament we do not get the coming of the Lord for His saints—that which we speak of as the rapture. That is a Mystery revealed in the New Testament. The Lord’s earthly people will look for Him to bring deliverance on the earth, and to set up His throne at Jerusalem. The Christian looks for the Lord to come and catch him up to the great meeting in the clouds, to be for ever in His own blessed company—a blissful event that is surely drawing very near.

I can understand some one now asking me where I bring in the taking up of the church, or, as it is commonly called, “The rapture.” I answer, it is caught up at the coming of Christ. And now I desire to say a word as to the rapture, as it is called. The only place in Scripture we have it mentioned, as far as I am aware, is in 1 Thessalonians 4. There it is brought in to explain a great difficulty, and that difficulty lay in the inability of the believers at Thessalonica to understand how those who had died, or fallen asleep as it is called, could share in the blessings of Christ’s personal presence at His coming. This the apostle explains by telling them something that up to that time they had not been made acquainted with.

The subject of the rapture of the saints at the coming of the Lord Jesus is one of a number concerning which Paul would not have us ignorant. There was real need of enlightenment as to this subject, for the truths here found had not before been revealed. But no doubt the sorrow of the saints at Thessalonica was made the occasion of this wonderful revelation. Evidently some among them had already departed to be with Christ, though it was so short a time since they had been converted to God. Suffering persecution as they did, it may, of course, have been possible that some were martyred. The apostle had taught them that, in accordance with Old Testament teaching, the Lord Jesus would come in glory to judge the world, and that the saints would be with Him in this marvelous. event. Now they had suffered the sorrow of some of their number having passed away, and they evidently feared that these would therefore not have part with the Lord Jesus in His coming in glory. But the apostle assures them that there is no reason to sorrow for these sleeping saints as they might for others who had died without mercy. He appeals to the blessed truth of the death and resurrection of Christ as a basis for the comfort he gives them. If He had risen again then those who had "fallen asleep in Jesus" could be certain to also come with Him in glory. But how could this be? To answer this question required a new and definite revelation of God, and this is now for the first time communicated by Paul, beginning with verse 15.

One of these is the remarkable action of the Spirit of God in reviving within the last sixty years the truth as to the coming of the Lord. Before that date the coming was universally interpreted to be death; and the statement, "Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh," was explained from all pulpits as meaning nothing more, and nothing less, than death. But God raised up earnest and devout students of Scripture to whom He imparted the knowledge, and also gift to teach it, that the Lord's coming meant nothing of the kind, but that before His appearing to the world He will come and receive the church to Himself. This will not be found in the writings of the so-called Fathers, nor in any writings or sermons between apostolic days and its being educed from Scripture in recent times. It was scouted and strongly opposed by the official ministry of all classes and parties of christians except those to whom God had given it. Now, needless to say, it is fairly well known in Christendom and accepted by the great majority of the godly. A large number of the latter are now earnestly looking for that blissful event — the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. Is there no significance in this? Is not the preparation by the Holy Spirit of a remnant to wait for the Lord Jesus Christ an indication that His coming may be about to take place? How blessed to be, when He does come, one of those who are waiting in happy earnest expectation of seeing Him!

"I am not aware that there was any definite teaching (i.e. in the early days of the Plymouth movement) that there would be a secret rapture of the saints at a secret coming, until this was given forth as an utterance in Mr. Irving's church, from what was there received as being the voice of the Spirit. But whether anyone ever asserted such a thing or not, it was from that supposed revelation that the modern doctrine and the modern phraseology respecting it arose. It came not from holy scripture, but from that which falsely pretended to be the Spirit of God; whilst not holding the true doctrine of our Lord's incarnation in the same flesh and blood of His brethren, but without taint of sin."

It needs indeed “all boldness” to make this assertion. It is true the Lord announced in John 14:1-3, that He would come again for His own. But nothing was said as to the sleeping saints. Not till Paul’s inspired records are given, do we get the “new revelation” as to the exact details of the coming in relation to the sleeping saints and the living saints. Indeed in a kindred passage, 1 Corinthians 15:51-56, it begins with the words, “Behold I show you a mystery,” a “new revelation,” not known before. There certainly was largely an element of “a new revelation” in 1 Thessalonians 4. Mr. Reese does not allow for this in his sweeping remark, and he forgets, “Behold I show you a mystery in 1 Corinthians 15:51. He is so indignant with what many intelligent, honest, sober expositors of Scripture believe on these matters that he speaks “of the Rapture craze, fathered by theorists.” (p. 142)

The answer to this is: Mr. Darby drew attention to the teaching of Scripture that goes back to A.D.33-96. He appealed to the Scriptures, and that appeal still remains.

Of course it is known that Henry only left MSS. for the latter half of the N.T., and that D. Mayo completed the Epistles to the Thessalonians. But this only confirms the fact that "rapture" was commonly known in that day. instead of being a modern phrase due to Irvingite vagary.

The last that we need is the respectable Dr. John Guyse, who wrote the Practical Expositor (i.e. of the N. T. in three quarto vols.). The Second ed. of 1761 now lies before me. In his paraphrase of 1 Thess. 4:17, he says of the dead saints raised, "and we with them shall be carried up by a divine rapture," etc. These quotations are the more seasonable, as whether Anglicans or Dissenters they were little conversant with the blessed hope. Nor was anyone more uninstructed than Dr. G. For in the Lord's call he hears only "an awful summons," and he confounds the glorified saints when caught up with the sheep or blessed of all the nations (Matt. 25:34). Like all the theologians and their Oxford critic, Prof. Jowett, he, with even more evident blundering, makes the apostle entreat them by "the awful coming" of the Lord to the final judgment at the last day, and by their hope of being then gathered with us to meet the Lord in the air. That is, he makes Paul treat of the same subject in his true comfort and in the falsehood he refuted! Yet even Dr. G. did not go so far as a highly respected Bp. of Carlisle (an Oxford double first), who translated ἐνέστηκεν will immediately come. Dr. G. was more grammatical; but all err who deny it to mean that the day of the Lord "is present."

One of the arguments we hear quite often is that Mr Darby received his ideas about the rapture through a prophetess or medium in the school of Mr Irving. It is clear that Mr Darby was used by the Lord to teach the imminent coming of the Lord and that believers should live in a daily expectancy of His coming, with all its practical and moral consequences.

On the face of it, the "supposed revelation" [among the Irvingites] declared that, within three years and a half, the saints would be caught up to the Lord, and the earth wholly given up to the days of vengeance. The power came upon another at the same time confirming the rapture of the saints within three years and a half. Mr. N. 's words are purposely quoted from the article in the "Christian Witness'', though at hand is Baxter's Narrative from which he drew the information. This betrays a source and character totally different from Mr. Tweedy's suggestion, or Mr. Darby's letter, for the doctrine [the pretribulation rapture of the saints] which became a factor of force not only among brethren so-called but among saints of God largely throughout the world.

The oracular utterance was grounded on the ordinary system, which Mr. B.W.N. shared, of making the Lord's coming a link in the chain of prophecy. The rapture was to be within three years and a half from the time of prediction; as the voice then or afterwards taught that those described in Rev. 7 and 14 (for they confounded the two companies) would be the saints caught up. But all such ideas are baseless, and prove the absence of any real intelligence as to the book of Revelation. In neither case is there a translation to heaven, which takes place between Rev. 3 and 4. For the saints are still viewed as in the churches on earth according to the one chapter; and in the other they are seen under the symbol of the twenty-four crowned and enthroned elders. During that interval Christ must come to fetch them on high. The hope is thus carefully kept in scripture from confusion with the prophetic account of God's dealings with Israel and the Gentiles which follow. The like distinction is not less carefully marked by the coming of the Lord in 1 and 2 Thess. with other corresponding scriptures, and has nothing in common with the Irvingite voice in its unfounded and false application to the prophetic part of the Apocalypse.

Whatever men think, scripture (in the capital seat of the revelation of Christ's coming for the church, 1 Thess. 4) is express, that the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we the living that remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. All must believe in this rapture at some time, for it is surely the common hope of Christians. The humbling fact, even among prophetic students, is that it has occupied so little their hearts and lips. But allowing this, why should any who wish to decry its prominence rush to the malignant conclusion, that it was derived from an Irvingite source, by those who are and have ever been as far as possible from such teaching, and who deem it utterly antichristian?