rapture in XX, CHRZESCIJANSTWO, WIZJE PRZEPOWIEDNIE, CZASY OSTATECZNE
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
TMSJ
13/2 (Fall 2002) 149-171
THE RAPTURE IN TWENTY CENTURIES
OF BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION
James F. Stitzinger
Associate Professor of Historical Theology
The coming of God’s Messiah deserves closer attention than it has often
received. The future coming of the Messiah, called the “rapture,” is imminent,
literal and visible, for all church saints, before the hour of testing, premillennial,
and, based on a literal hermeneutic, distinguishes between Israel and the church.
The early church fathers’ view s advocated a sort of imm inent intra- or post-
tribulationism in connection with their premillennial teaching. With a few
exceptions, the Medieval church writers said little about a future millennium and a
future rapture. Reformation leaders had little to say about prophetic portions of
Scripture, but did comment on the imminency of Christ’s return. The modern period
of church history saw a return to the early church’s prem illennial teaching and a
pretribulational rapture in the writings of Gill and Edw ards, and m ore particularly
in the works of J. N. Darby. After Darby, pretribulationism spread rapidly in both
Great Britain and the United States. A resurgence of posttribulationism came after
1952, accompanied by strong opposition to pretribulationism, but a renewed support
of pretribulationism has arisen in the recent past. Five premillennial views of the
rapture include two major views—pretribulationism and posttribulation-ism—and
three minor views—partial, midtribulational, and pre-wrath rapturism.
* * * * *
Introduction
The central theme of the Bible is the coming of God’s M essiah. Genesis
3:15 reveals the first promise of Christ’s coming when it records, “He shall bruise
you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”
1
Revelation 22:20 unveils
the last promise when it records “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am
coming quickly,’ Am en. Come, Lord Jesus.” In fact, the entire Bible can be
All Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible unless otherwise indicated.
149
1
150
The Master’s Seminary Journal
understood in relation to this theme. The Old Testament declares,
He is coming
(Isa
7:14; 9:6). The four Gospels declare,
He has come—and is coming again
(John
1:29; 14:3, 18-19). Finally, Acts, the epistles, and the book of Revelation declare,
Having come, He is coming again
(Acts 1:11; 2 Thess 1:10; Rev 1:7).
2
As Alva J. McClain points out, the revelation of the Messiah’s coming is
a “revelation in which the different elements are related, not mechanical, but
dynamic and progressive. . . . A revelation in which the different elements are
related, not in any merely
external
manner, but as the parts of a
growing plant
are
related.”
3
As Mark 4:26-28 describes it, “The kingdom of God is like a man who
casts seed upon the soil. . . . The soil produces crops by itself; first the
blade,
then
the
head,
then the
mature grain
in the head.” In the same way, “[T]he doctrine of
our Lord’s Coming into the world unfolds like a growing plant, which at every stage
of revelation contains the germ of the yet unrevealed.”
4
Each element of this
progressive revelation
takes the reader deeper into the complexity of His coming.
•
The Old Testament gives the promise of Christ’s coming.
•
The Gospels unfold this coming in two comings.
•
The Gospels unfold the
first
coming as a series of events, including the Virgin
conception, birth, perfect life, ministry, atoning death, resurrection, appearances,
and ascension.
•
The Epistles unfold the
second
coming into two main
phases
; the rapture and the
revelation.
•
The Book of Revelation unfolds these two
phases
into a series of events, separated
by 7 years (Dan 9:27). The
first
of these is the rapture, accompanied by the
resurrection, translation, judgement seat of Christ, and the marriage supper of the
Lamb. The
second
of these is the revelation, accompanied by Armageddon, the
millennial kingdom, and the white throne judgement.
5
The deeper one looks into the coming of Christ, the more complex, intriguing, and
astonishing it becomes, much like the beauty and complexity of human DNA under
the microscope, or the heavens as viewed through a telescope (Ps 8:3-4).
Sadly, many fail to discern this intrigue and approach prophecy with the use
of Ockham’s Razor principle (from the great English scholastic, William of Ockham,
Thomas Dehany Bernard (
The Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament, Eight Lectures delivered
before the University of Oxford on The Bampton Foundation, 1864
[New Y ork: American Tract Society,
1891] 22) terms this d ynamic of Scripture as progressive revelation and profoundly concludes that “the
progressive system of teaching in the N ew Testament is an obvious
fact
, that it is marked by distinct
stages,
and that it is d eterm ined by n atural
principle s.”
See 22-46 for his full d evelopm ent.
3
2
Alva J. M cClain, w ith revisions by Dr. John C. Whitcomb, Jr., “Christian Theology: Biblical
Eschatology”
(unpublished clas sroom syllabus; W ino na Lake, Ind .: Grace Th eolog ical Semin ary, n.d .)
39.
4
Ibid., 39-40.
5
Ibid
.
The Rapture in Twenty Centuries of Biblical Interpretation 151
1280-1349). In Ockham’s development of a nominalistic pursuit of the real, he
insisted upon using the razor to slash away at complex explanations “of the
hierarchy of being, of ideas and concepts, which sheer speculation had invented” in
the realist’s pursuit of what is real.
6
He asserted that what could be done with
fewer assumptions is done in vain with more, and therefore, he called for the
“rejection and pruning of all concepts w hich are not absolutely necessary.”
7
posttribulationalists, historic premillennialists, postmillennialists as well as
amillennialists
8
all say, “Apply the razor!” and in doing so, reduce the two-phase
second coming of Christ to one phase. Such tragic conclusions are similar to those
of anti-trinitarians who find one person in the Godhead rather than three, or early
students of Christology who said one nature of Christ rather than two distinct natures
in the one person of the God-man (Phil 2:6-8). Rather than “apply the razor,” one
should plunge into the depths of biblical teaching on the comings of Christ, making
clear the biblical distinctions, and look deeply into the issues and nuances of the text,
rather than being satisfied with traditional answers originating in unquestioned
preunderstandings w hen approaching the text.
The Subject at Hand
The study of the rapture is part of a wider study of the
parousia
. The Greek
word
B"D@LF\"
(
parousia)
literally means “being along side,” “presence,” or “to
be present.”
9
New Testament usage makes it clear that the
parousia
is not merely
the act or arrival of the Lord but the total situation surrounding Messiah’s coming.
10
Oepke writes, “The parousia, in which history is anchored, is not a historical event.
. . . It is rather the point where history is mastered by God’s eternal rule.”
11
The uses
of the term in 2 Thess 2:1; Jas 5:7-8; 2 Pet 1:16; 1 John 2:28 all refer to the coming
of Christ in general. Thus, the parousia looks backward to Christ’s first coming on
6
He iko A. O berma n,
The Dawn of the Reformation.
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992) 27.
7
Ibid
.,
54 .
Each position entails an oversimplification of the doctrine of Christ’s coming. For example,
posttribulationism, which often operates within a dispensational framework, regards the second coming
“as having one posttribulational phase.” Historic premillennialism, which takes a similar position but
uses covenant theology as its underpining, eliminates the Israel-church distinction among the people of
God.. Amillennialism disallows the earthly millennial kingdom and thus views Christ’s future coming
as a brie f ev ent follow ed by the eternal state. See R olla nd Da le M cC un e,
An Investigation and C riticism
of “Historic” Premillennialism from the Viewpoint of Dispensationalism
(Winona Lake, Ind.: Grace
Theological Seminary, 1972) 5-9.
9
Albre cht Oepke, “
B"D@LF\"
,”
TDNT
, 5:859.
10
8
Ge rald B. S tanton ,
Kept Fro m the H our
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1956) 20 notes, “The primary
meaning seems to be
presence, rather than mere coming, as further illustrated by I Cor 10:10. . . .
The
eschatological use of the word seems to add the thought
of
arrival
, or
ad ven t,
and is not restricted to
eith er p hase o f the sec on d com ing ” [emp hasis o rigin al].
11
Oe pk e, “
B"D@LF\"
” 5:870.
152
The Master’s Seminary Journal
earth and looks ahead to the future, beginning with the rapture, followed by the
seven-year tribulation, followed by the revelation (second coming), followed by
Armegeddon, and finally the one-thousand-year millennial or theocratic kingdom.
It is a wider term than “The Day of the Lord,” w hich is best understood in Scripture
as the judgement which climaxes the tribulation period (2 Thess 2:2; Revelation
16–18) and millennium just prior to the eternal state (2 Pet 3:10-13; Rev
20:7–21:1).
12
The pretribulational view of the rapture to be considered here sees the
rapture of the church taking place at the beginning of the next phase of the parousia
and thus before the tribulation period begins.
The rapture represents the translation or removal of the church to be w ith
Christ forever. Scripture describes this great event in 1 Cor 15:52 by “the dead in
Christ shall rise first, and we shall be changed”; in John 14:3 by “I will come again,
and receive you to myself”; and in 1 Thess 4:17 by “we shall be caught up together
with them in the clouds . . . and thus shall we always be with the Lord.” The word
for “caught up” in 1 Thess 4:17 is from the Greek word
DBV.T
(
harpaz
Ç
) which
means “to take by force” or “to catch up or away,”
13
and is also related to the Latin
verb
rapio
, meaning “caught up,”
14
or the noun
raptura
.
15
Assuming that the rapture
begins the parousia,
16
several characteristics important to discussing the history of
the rapture should be noted.
•
The coming of Christ at the rapture is imminent, in the sense of an any-
moment coming. Though there are no signs for the rapture, there are signs
of the second coming to follow and these may appear before the rapture.
Note Phil 3:20-21; 1 Thess 1:10; 4:16; Titus 2:13; Jas 5:7-9
•
The coming of Christ at the rapture is literal and visible. Rev 1:7 states
“Every eye shall see Him.”
•
The coming of Christ at the rapture is for all church saints, deceased or
living. First Thess 4:14, 17 and 1 Cor 15:51 record the order of this great
event.
•
This coming of Christ occurs before the outpouring of the great trial upon
the earth. A literal translation of Rev 3:10 states that the believer is kept
12
Richard L. Mayhue, “The Prophet’s Watchword: Day of the Lord,”
Grace Theological Journal
6 (1 98 5):2 30 .
13
W ern er F oerster, “
DBV.T
,”
TDNT
1:472.
14
Support for this position and the characteristics that follow can be found in other articles of this
issue of
TMSJ
.
Robert G. Clouse, “Rapture of the Church,” in
Evan gelica l Dictio na ry o f Th eolog y,
ed. Walter
A. Elwell (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984) 908.
15
New Shorter
Oxford E nglish
Dictionary
, 19 93 ed., s.v. “ rap ture .”
16
The Rapture in Twenty Centuries of Biblical Interpretation 153
in “a continuing state outside of” the
hour
of testing upon the earth.
17
•
This coming of Christ is premillennial, that is, before Christ returns to fight
the battle of A rmageddon and set up the 1,000-year kingdom, and judge
unbelievers. First Cor 15:23-24 along with Dan 12:1-2 places the coming
of Christ before these events.
18
•
This coming of Christ assumes a literal, normal hermeneutic in the
interpretation of Scripture, and it recognizes a fundamental theological
distinction between Israel and the church.
Having identified the pretribulation rapture and its major characteristics, this article
will now focus on a history of those who have held this position.
The Rapture in Church History
The rapture in church history is really a history of pretribulationism. Other
related, historically held views do not distinguish between the two phases of Christ’s
coming: rapture and revelation. Partial, midtrib, and pre-wrath positions are recent
positions that have very little if any history.
The Early Fathers
A cursory examination of the early church fathers reveals that they w ere
predominantly premillennialists or chiliasts.
19
Clear examples in the writings of
Barnabas (ca. 100-150), Papias (ca. 60-130), Justin Martyr (110-165), Irenaeus (120-
202), Tertullian (145-220), Hippolytus (c. 185-236), Cyprian (200-250), and
Lactantius (260-330) make this understanding impossible to challenge successfully.
20
No te the careful development of the issues surrounding Revelation 3:10 by Paul D. Feinberg, “The
Case for the Pre tribu latio nal Rapture Po sitio n,” in R ichard Re iter e t al.,
The Ra pture: Pr e-M id-, or Post-
Tribulational?
(Grand Rapids: Academie, 1984) 64-70.
18
See Robert D. Culver, “A Neglected Millennial Passage from Saint Paul,”
Papers . . . read at the
Eighth An nu al M eeting of th e Evang elical T heolo gical S ociety,
ed. Jo hn F . Walvo ord (Gra nd R apid s,
1955) 27-33.
19
Millard Erickson (
The Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology
, rev. ed . [W heaton, Ill:
Crossway, 2001] 31) defines
chiliasm
as “Belief in an earthly millennium; in particular, in the early
centuries of the church a premillennialism that held a very vivid and imaginative view of conditions
during the millennium.” George E. Ladd (
Crucial Questions About the Kingdom of God
[Grand Rapids:
Eerdman s, 1952] 23) forcefully concludes, “[W]ith one exception [Caius] there is no Church Father
before Origen who opposed the millenarian interpretation, and there is no one before A ugustine whose
extant writin gs o ffer a d ifferen t interpretation of Revelation 20 than that of a future earthly kingdom
conso nant w ith th e natural in terp retation of th e lan gu age.”
20
17
See Alexander Rob erts and Ja me s D on aldson , eds.,
The Ante-Nicene Fathers
, 10 vols. (Grand
Rapids: Eerdman s, 19 81 ): B arn abas,
The Epistle of Barnabas
15 (14 6-4 7); P apias,
Fragments of Papias
6 (15 4-5 5); J ustin M artyr,
Dialogue with Trypho
80 (238); Iren aeu s,
Irenaeus Ag ainst Heresies
5, 30, 3-4
(559-60); Tertullian,
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
22 (56 0-6 1); H ipp oly tus,
Treatise on Christ and
Antichrist
65 (218); Cyprian,
The Epistles of Cyprian
55 :1 (3 47 ),
The Treatises of Cyprian
11:1-2 (496);
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]