One of the most intriguing passages of 1 Thessalonians is also  both the most widely referred to (these days) and the most universally misread.  It is the passage that conservative Christians cite to support the idea of the coming “rapture,” when Jesus will allegedly arrive from heaven to take his followers out of the world before the appearance of the Anti-Christ and the horrendous period of disaster and “tribulation” that must take place for seven years before the Final Day of Judgement.

The “rapture” is one of the firmest beliefs of conservative evangelicals.  And it is not found in the Bible.

Here is what I say about it, in relation to 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 in particular, in my book Armageddon.

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Here is an interesting factoid that, in my experience, almost no one knows:  No one had even thought of the idea of a “rapture” until the 1830s.   Of the many, many thousands of serious students of the Bible throughout Christian history, who pored over every word – from leading early Christian scholars such as Irenaeus in the second century, to Tertullian and Origen in the third, to Augustine in the fifth, to all the biblical scholars of the Middle Ages up to Aquinas, to the Reformation greats Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin, on to, well, on to everyone who studied or simply read or even just heard passages from the Bible – this idea of the rapture occurred to no one until John Nelson Darby came up with the idea in the early 1800s (as we will discuss in chapter 3).

Even so, back in my fundamentalist days, I too was completely certain the rapture was in the Bible, right there in black and white.  The key passage was 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, a letter by the apostle Paul to his converts in the city of Thessalonica, written to provide assurance and comfort because they were about “those who have fallen asleep.”  That’s a euphemism in the Bible for “those who have died.”  When Paul converted the Thessalonians, he had taught them that the end of the present age was coming very soon: God was about to bring a utopian world to the world, the glorious kingdom of God. Now, some of the Thessalonians had died before this could happen, and the survivors were very upset: had those who were no longer living lost out on their chance for the coming kingdom?

Paul writes to assure these people that they do not need to “grieve as the others who do not have hope” (that is, the non-Christians; 1 Thessalonians 4:13).  When Jesus returns from heaven, the very first to be rewarded will be the believers who have already died.  They will be raised up from their graves to meet Jesus on his way down; then those still living on earth will also rise up to meet him in the air.

That’s the rapture, right?  It sure seems to be if you read the passage with fundamentalist eyes:

For we tell you this by a word of the Lord: we who are living, who are left until the coming, of the Lord, will not go before those who sleep.  For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God — and the dead in Christ will rise first.  Then we who are living who remain will be taken up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.  And so we will always be with the Lord.  (1 Thessalonians 4:15-18)

How can this not be referring to the rapture?

To begin with, it is important to read the passage, and all passages of the Bible, in context – a point I will be beating like a drum throughout this book.  Paul certainly did believe Jesus would be returning from heaven and it would be soon.  The key, though, is to understand Paul’s explanation of what will actually occur at that second coming.

Throughout his writings Paul insists that Christ will return in judgment.  Jesus was crushed by his enemies at the crucifixion, but he is coming back to annihilate them.  His return will bring destruction to everyone who has not accepted the good news of his salvation.  The “saved” will survive the onslaught and be rewarded with glorious bodies that will never again be hurt, sick, or die; they will then live forever with Christ in the coming kingdom (see 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10).

I want to pause here to discuss something seemingly small that will help us understand Paul’s this passage and every other passage in the Bible.  Our Bibles today have chapter and verse divisions.  These are extremely helpful, of course, since without them it is very hard indeed to tell someone where to find a passage.  But the authors did not write in chapters and verses. One problem with our having them is that they make us think that the next chapter (or even verse) is changing the subject.  But Paul would have written the first sentence of what is now 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 right after the final sentence of what is now chapter 4 (quoted above), without skipping a beat. In these next words, he indicates that the coming of the Lord (4:13-18) will bring “sudden destruction” for those not expecting it (5:3).  Christ will be like a “thief in the night” (5:4).  This is not a reassuring image.  The robber comes to harm, not to help.  But the good news for Paul is that this harm will come only to those who are not among Jesus’ followers; his faithful will survive the onslaught, “For God has not destined us for wrath but for salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (5:9).

So what does Paul mean in 4:17 when he says that Jesus’ followers will “meet him in the air”?  It can’t be a “rapture” that removes his followers from the world before the long-term tribulation.  Jesus is not coming to provide an escape for his followers but “sudden destruction”  for his enemies.  Then why are his followers floating up to meet him?

The Thessalonians, reading this letter in 50 CE, would have had no trouble understanding.  As scholars have long suggested, Paul’s description of Jesus, the “Lord,” coming to his “kingdom,” uses an image familiar in antiquity.  When a high-ranking official, such as a king, arrived for a visit to one of his cities, the citizens would know in advance he was coming and so prepare a banquets and festivities.  When the long-awaited king and his entourage approached, the city would send out its leading figures to meet and greet him and before escorting him back to their town with great fanfare.

For Paul in 1 Thessalonians, that’s what it will be like when Jesus comes.  He is the King coming to visit his own people, who will go out to greet him.  In this case, though, he is not coming with his entourage on horses; he is coming with his angels from heaven to destroy his enemies.  And so, to greet him, his followers – all of them, not just the leaders – will be taken “up” to “meet him in the air.” But this escort would not remain in the air any more than, on earth, the king’s welcoming committee would remain outside the city walls.  They would accompany him back to earth, where he enters his kingdom and rules forever, in a paradise provided to his chosen ones, now that all others have been suddenly destroyed.

There is no “rapture” here, no account of Jesus’ followers being taken to heaven to escape a massive and prolonged tribulation on earth.  The same is true of other passages used by fundamentalists who insist that the rapture is taught in Scripture. Another popular verse – we used to love this one – is Matthew 24:39-40: So too will be the coming of the Son of Man.  Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.  Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.  Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.

We took the verse out of context as a pretty obvious reference to the rapture, where some will be taken out of the world and others abandoned for long-term misery.  If we had read it in context, however, we would have seen that this is the opposite of what Jesus was teaching.  In the verses right before the passage (Matthew 24:38-39) Jesus likens the coming of the Lord to what happened in “the days of Noah,” when only Noah and his family were saved in the ark when the flood took away – that is drowned — everyone else. In this passage, then, it is the people who are “taken” who are destroyed; those “left behind” are the ones who are saved.

Both Matthew and Paul warn their readers that they need to be alert because Jesus is coming soon.  But how soon?  When Paul talks about this coming day of judgment, he speaks about the reward that will come to Jesus’ true followers, both those who have already died, who will be raised from the dead, and those who are still alive.  Notice that Paul appears includes himself among the living at the time.  When he speaks of the two groups, he refers to “those” who are dead and “we” who will still be alive.  It’s a point worth emphasizing.  These New Testament authors who speak of Christ’s return thought it was to happen in their own day.